Managers – The “Make or Break” position of your company

Over the last few months, we have talked about vision, planning, investing, and embracing the changing industry. All of those are very well and good but everyone knows that if you do not have the right people in place, it can be extremely hard to get anything accomplished. The strongest and most profitable asset that any shop has, is its staff. That being said, one of the most important positions in the shop, is the manager.

Leadership is about getting people to understand and believe in your vision and follow you to where you want to go. Managing is about executing that vision and making sure that the right things are getting done to reach your goals. Some people can be a better visionary than a manager and vice versa or some people can be good at both. The point to take away from this is that the role of a manager is key to the success of executing your vision.

Today we are going to be talking about good management and why it is critical to make sure you have a good manager on your team. Before we get to what good management looks like, you should know the repercussions of bad management and how seriously it can affect your business.

More and more studies are showing that employees are not satisfied with their workplace. They feel unappreciated, undervalued, and feel that the workplace is a toxic environment filled with abuse, undermining, and disrespect. This toxic environment is essentially a cancer that will slowly kill your business. It will start by killing the morale around the shop which will lead to the death of any motivation to do good work. With no good work being done, quality will die and with that brings the death of the reputation of the shop which ultimately shuts down your business. This may seem like a dramatic analogy however it is incredibly accurate.

As you can imagine, this would manifest itself in things like, high turnover rates, poor quality work, bad cycle times, a stressful work environment and low employee engagement. Although not directly related to this article, it important to note that those same surveys we just referenced, are connecting the strong correlation between overall health and the workplace. Meaning that these poor work conditions are actually affecting your employee’s health and wellbeing.

You may think that it’s a bit ridiculous for one position to have that much effect, but the simple truth is that a good manager will make or break your company. If you owned a plane, would you hire a bad pilot to fly it? This may be a bit of an oversimplification but it’s definitely applicable. You have a business, and you want it to do well. Therefore, it makes the most sense that if you are hiring someone to run that business, they know what they’re doing.

A good manager will be able to take your strategic vision and bring it to life by doing things like:

• Creating relationships with their team and understanding their needs and being able to balance what the team want and what is best for the company
• Communicating the vision of the company to their team and galvanize them through positive engagement
• Organizing the team and workload in a such a way that it benefits both the employees and the vision of the company. 

Of course, these are not the only ways that a good manager will execute your vision, but they are some of the most important skills a manager can have.

The benefits of having a good manager on your team are almost incalculable. On that same note however, the repercussions of having a bad manager on your team are almost equally as bad. Some business owners can be both the leader and the manager but as the company size increases, it is important to delegate work and create a team so that you can continue to grow. As we mentioned in a previous post, sometimes investment is necessary to keep your company growing, and sometimes that investment, is into a good manager.

The best ships in the world that are manned with the best captains in the world, are only as good as their first mates.