Basic Traits of Effective Management

Top companies throughout the world employ many of the same core management principles to conduct their business. All businesses, whether health care, retail, manufacturing, law, or engineering, benefit from emphasizing basic management traits and tailoring them to their needs. There are many studies and analyses of behaviors that lead to business success. This paper discusses the traits of successful organizations, summarizing essential managerial qualities and insights from a review of literature about excellent management, especially in the construction and engineering fields.

The general principles that play a significant role in successful enterprise are establishing a set of company values and a vision for employees to follow, focusing on the client’s or customer’s needs, knowing people are the most valuable asset in the organization, and communicating clearly within and outside the organization. Companies that demonstrate these fundamental principles tend to have excellent and effective management but are by no means guaranteed success. They will, however, have an edge in producing a quality product that will keep the customer happy and keep the workforce motivated and satisfied.

A sharpshooter needs to be able to see the target in order to hit it. Similarly, a company must have a clearly defined vision and goal if it hopes to achieve its goal. The goal cannot be overly broad or simplistic. Many times an organization’s vision is a large-scale strategic plan focused on marketing and generally where the organization is headed. This type of vision makes sense for the upper hierarchy of an organization. However, what is often absent is a strategic vision articulating how a company will manage the effects of competitive pressure that results in changes to business objectives (Thompson and Gomer 1998). An organization’s vision should not be unshakable. The core competencies, or special strengths, of the company must be identified, expanded upon, and driven by knowledge of the market. Furthermore, a company’s leaders must realize that all parts of the company’s vision could be subject to improvement, integration, elimination, and redesign (McArthur and Womack 1997).

Expanding the vision is a priority for many excellent companies; they actively seek out innovation and diverse ways to make themselves stronger. For example, 3M is constantly on the lookout for new applications for projects to be developed in and outside its labs. In the early 1980s, 3M bought a small Silicon Valley company that was working on ways to more efficiently store and access computerized data. The acquisition helped 3M to become a key developer in the optical storage media (OSM) market (Nathan et al. 1985). Although the product this Silicon Valley acquisition was developing, the laser disc, was relevant in the market for only a short time, it gave 3M a lead in the development of technology needed to manufacture DVDs and other widely used OSM.

Once its vision is laid out, a company needs to make employees feel like they are partners in that vision. The Walt Disney Company is a good example of this. From the first day a cast member (employee, in Disney parlance) shows up for work, the company tries to convey “Walt’s Vision” to him or her. One way management emphasizes the vision is by requiring that specific terminology be used in day-to-day operations: “costumes” for uniforms, “audience” for customers, and “on stage” for any area where an audience is present. The continuous repetition of these terms reinforces to employees the way that Disney looked at his theme parks. The company’s leaders consider it of the utmost importance that they not just tell employees their role in the show; they want employees to truly understand and share Walt’s Vision. Depending on the employee’s position in the company, his or her role in the show may be laid out specifically. For example, the cast members who play the riverboat captains on the Jungle Cruise ride are given scripts, authorized variations, and guidance on how to perform the script. Less scripted behavior is important in other areas of the organization. For example, cast members in the Imagineering Department (responsible for the creation and construction of Walt Disney Company facilities worldwide) are expected to keep true to the company vision but not shy away from innovation and attempting to make the world of dreams a reality (Nathan et al. 1985).

Once the vision and values are laid out, managers, who must also share in the vision, are responsible for motivating and guiding employees in understanding the company’s values and vision. If management is successful, employees will take initiative and become invested in the company’s success; they will take on greater responsibility, show more motivation, and feel pride of ownership for the products and services they provide.

A company can have the clearest vision, the noblest of values, and employees fully dedicated to its principles, but can still utterly fail if it does not put the customer at the core of its business.

Shearer (2006) compares obtaining and retaining clients to going fishing: the company needs to know how to attract and catch the fish, but landing a great catch is only the beginning. The company needs to know how to handle the fish for the best resulting banquet. For example, if the company treats the fish well, it may be able to spawn many baby fish for future banquets, but unhappy fish will not lay eggs.

To attract clients, it helps to know what the clients want and how they operate. Shortly after 3M developed the Post-it Note and realized its potential, the company knew that it needed to make customers as excited about the product as employees were. In an unusual but innovative move, 3M had its own high-level executive assistants send samples of the new Post-it Note product to the high-level executive assistants of other large companies. The assistants were impressed with the product and introduced it to their superiors, who also saw the product’s value and decided to buy Post-its (Nathan et al. 1985). 3M’s knowledge of its customers’ organizations and how to best serve them led to the quick and widespread use of Post-it Notes worldwide. One would be hard-pressed to find an office, large or small, that does not use Post-it Notes today.

Successful companies know and constantly remind their employees that they work for the customer. No customer will come in and ask, “What can I do for your company?” Projects do not pay the bills; only clients do (Shearer 2006). It is important for organizations to work hard to meet a client’s reasonable expectations and to keep an ear to the ground for any hints of needs or sources of dissatisfaction. Listening to the client is important. Stew Leonard’s, a small but successful East Coast supermarket chain, makes addressing customer suggestions a top priority each business day. The fixes can be as straightforward as adjusting a recipe for a deli or bakery product or as significant as remodeling a part of the store. The ethos of the business is “only a happy customer comes back” (Nathan et al. 1985).

Keeping up with client expectations and keeping a vigilant watch for dissatisfaction are certainly not exclusive to retail, and both practices are necessary even after a project or transaction is complete. Remember that it is much more difficult and expensive to secure new clients than it is to maintain an excellent relationship with existing clients and to secure follow-on work. Maintaining and building loyalty in clients is an important aspect of excellent management. Heightchew (1999) writes that maintaining client loyalty requires attention in the following areas: service, confidence, integrity, communication, relationships, and contact. Service is likely why the client chose the company in the first place, and getting projects completed to a client’s satisfaction will build confidence for the next project. Integrity includes doing what was promised by the time promised and charging the price promised; keeping promises is essential to building client loyalty. Integrity also includes honestly and effectively handling problems that arise. If there will be a delay, notify the client as soon as possible; if a mistake has been made, own up to it and truthfully assure the client that it will not happen again. A company should strive to understand the client’s point of view; the value of actively listening and comprehending the client cannot be overstated. Honesty and good communication also tells the client that his or her project is important to the company. Developing good relationships and staying in contact with a client, even when no project is currently under way, will help keep the company in the client’s mind when the next project comes up. Strong and loyal clients are also likely to spread the word about their satisfaction with a company.

A sustained and loyal client base is the fundamental core of any business. To use another analogy by Shearer (2006), carefully tending to a “client garden” will lead to a bountiful harvest for the company. And tending a garden of any type, client or otherwise, requires a lot of hard work, which ultimately must be done by people.

Every excellent company recognizes that employees constitute the organization’s most valuable resource and that they must be treated with dignity and respect. Earning the respect and trust of employees is paramount for a company to have excellent performance sustained for the long term. Companies must work hard to bring the right people into the organization and then must set up a positive work environment in order to retain those employees.

Steve Jobs said that one of his priorities when working on the Macintosh program was recruiting great people who shared his and the company’s passion for computers. He was looking for people whose eyes lit up and who got excited when speaking about developing a computer for the everyday person. He wanted people who shared his drive to be “insanely great” and who were self-motivated and capable of sustaining that motivation. He also emphasized that he was looking for people who were not necessarily interested in working for a company; he instead wanted people who would work for the ultimate vision laid out by Apple (Nathan et al. 1985).

Once an employee has been hired, a company needs to provide an orientation that covers the company’s vision and goals, the background behind the goals, and specifics regarding how a new employee is expected to contribute to the goals and the organization’s success. Management needs to earnestly believe and share in the company’s vision in order for new employees to buy in to the goals and vision. Former IBM vice president of marketing Buck Rodgers said that leadership is getting an individual motivated to higher performance and then giving him or her the tools and the opportunities to achieve (Nathan et al. 1985).

Once an employee has been hired and oriented, management should give him or her an opportunity to grow. The length and pace of growth depends largely on the individual employee, the nature of the job, and the effort the company puts into employee development. Ken Blanchard (1999) breaks down employee development into four phases, with D1 being the least developed and D4 the most developed. As employees develop, their needs change, and thus, manager behavior should change too. Blanchard (1999) also breaks down managerial involvement into four phases that correspond with employee development. Successive managerial phases include varying amounts of directive (or telling) and supportive (or encouraging and facilitating) behavior. Employees often start at the least developed phase, during which they require a highly directive management style. As the employees grow, managers become more like coaches; they provide more support and less direction. Next comes the point at which the manager can take a more advisory role, giving little direction but still plenty of support. As employees become highly developed, managers act more like cheerleaders. They need offer only a little direction and support because the employee can now handle most tasks independently.

Losing good employees costs a company money; the loss of an employee can in the big picture be far greater than the loss of an expensive piece of machinery. The costs of maintaining human capital are not well defined and are often intangible (Stoman 1999). Failure to retain valuable employees can result in high turnover costs, including the time it takes to search for, interview, hire, and train a new employee, and can cause disruptions to the business and the clients (Smither 2003).

The proper tools will not only improve quality and productivity, they will increase job satisfaction and morale. There is little more frustrating than having a job that should take 10 min turn into a full-day evolution because the proper tools are not available. Tools do not necessarily need to be computers, machinery, or wrenches, although without the proper physical tools a job can become impossible. Training is perhaps the most important tool for developing competitive, state-of-the-art expertise. Effective managers will budget for training technical, business, and financial subjects appropriate to the employee’s position (Spatz 1999). Other tools include the administrative and clerical support necessary to maintain a meticulous filing system; this frees everyone from spending precious time maintaining their own files and will facilitate accurate and timely document retrieval (Stoman 1999). Scheduling is a powerful tool as well; developing and implementing a realistic and flexible schedule with meaningful milestones to measure progress provides a sense of accomplishment, boosts morale, and gives staff some workplace stability.

Once employees are trained and have the tools to succeed, they need the opportunity to excel. Micromanagers offer their staff no opportunity to grow. Effective delegation, in contrast, can boost morale. It may make the job more interesting and will give people a chance to work toward their highest potential and progress in their careers. When delegating or assigning tasks, a manager should explain the goal of the task and the reasoning behind it. This explanation could include the methodology, approach, and references. It should also include mention of the required level of detail, the deadline, and any milestone tasks (Shearer 2006). Managers should consider the capabilities of their staff when assigning jobs, and when defining the duration of the task, they should keep in mind that the strongest performers may not be those who perform the work. Delegating and training, when done correctly, will develop leadership and managerial depth in the workforce, so that when replacements are needed in management, there are well-prepared and able employees in-house ready to step into the position (Spatz 1999).

Managers should encourage innovation in the workplace and be receptive to new ways of doing things; this keeps employees engaged in the affairs of the organization. Encouraging innovation is a tenet of many successful businesses, and in these organizations, great care is put into creating environments conducive to innovation. Apple and 3M are both companies in which innovation is the vanguard of the business plan. Both of these companies cited minimizing bureaucracy as a key to allowing creativity to flourish (Nathan et al. 1985). Innovation will not always lead to success or the next big product—often it means failure and a loss for the company—but excellent managers realize this, forgive the failure, and push employees and the company as whole to learn from the failure in order to succeed in the future. The Post-it Note is a great example of learning from failure. The Post-it adhesive was initially considered a failure because it could not pass any of 3M’s tests for adhesion and strength (Nathan et al. 1985). Instead of throwing the idea away, however, the company found a way to make it not only useable but a wildly popular product.

Perhaps the most obvious way to keep employees happy is to thank them for a job well done, to sincerely acknowledge good work. Staff appreciation is usually most effective when done publicly. Rewarding employees is also helpful. Rewards can include an interesting and challenging new assignment, a monetary bonus, or in the case of the IBM sales force, an all-expenses-paid trip to an exotic destination (Nathan et al. 1985). A little public acknowledgment can go a long way toward keeping employees happy and loyal.

Disciplining or counseling staff members, however, should always be done in private or with a select few of the employee’s superiors. Every attempt should be made to keep the counseling constructive and not demeaning. Little can lower office morale and embitter an employee as quickly as admonishing a subordinate in front of his or her colleagues. It is even worse to do it in front of a client because it shows a lack of professionalism and respect within the organization and an inability to keep problems under control.

Companies with well-trained and equipped workforces that equate the organizational vision and values with their own and with cadres of loyal customers come about only through consistent and clear communication.

Communication is vital at all levels of a successful organization. Managers need to inform staff of what is going on and what needs to be done. Staff members need to inform managers of what is happening and the status of assignments. Clients want and need to be informed of the status of their projects, and their concerns need to be noted and addressed as soon as possible. People frequently complain that they have not been told what is going on, and it can be difficult to develop cohesiveness in employees if they feel they are treated as cattle. Cattle do not know what is going on; they mindlessly follow the direction of the rancher, and they often come to an early end. Few people like to be treated like farm animals.

Perhaps the most important part of communication is listening. It is difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with anyone if you do not know or care about what he or she has to say. At the highest levels of listening, one attempts to understand not only the facts the speaker is trying to communicate but also the feeling they are trying to communicate. This is referred to as empathetic listening, and it is the highest and most desirable level of listening. It means “listening with the intent to understand” where a speaker is coming from emotionally as well as intellectually (Walesh 2000). To ensure understanding, it is necessary to clarify confusing communication and to seek out additional detail when there is none. A technique to help with this is to paraphrase or summarize what you understand from a conversation and then check with the speaker to verify your understanding.

Communication of all types needs to be clear and unambiguous so that the recipient can understand the message and details. Speaking and writing should be courteous and professional. Because excellent managers are committed to the success and well-being of an organization, they should not tolerate any form of communication that is insulting, disparaging, or demoralizing.

Staff needs to be told about new policies and the reasoning behind those policies. When employees are better informed of the reasoning behind policies, they will more quickly buy in to the policies. When managers communicate new policies or tough decisions from the upper management, they should show full support for these policies and decisions in order to foster a quicker buy-in companywide. It is a betrayal of the upper hierarchy’s trust if a manager only halfheartedly supports decisions publicly or backhandedly trashes policies. Good ideas and policies, especially those that cause angst in the short term, will fail without support during implementation.

Perhaps the most important aspects of communication are openness and honesty. If managers lose the trust of those they lead, all hope for motivation, open communication, and unity vanishes (Spatz 1999). Employees and clients will find out when they are being lied to, and years spent building trust can be destroyed in moments. Secrets should be avoided whenever possible because they build mistrust and misunderstandings. However, when confidentiality is required, information should be handled in a discreet manner.

Excellent companies are successful owing to a mixture of factors, too numerous for any volume of books to completely reveal. However, some trends in management run through many of the most successful companies in the world. First, a company needs a direction based on company values, and then, it needs to convince employees to take on those values as their own. If employees are involved in creating the company vision from the first day, they will more likely support it and make it their own. Next, a company needs to focus on making the client the center of business and to develop a base of loyal clients. With a direction and clients, a company needs to employ people who are dedicated to quality and to maintain an inclusive environment. It needs progressive training and development programs to ensure that it is nimble enough stay competitive and meet future challenges. Clear, concise, and honest communications are the tie that binds vision, employees, and clients together in an environment of excellence.