Managing for Results

- The managers who stand out over time are the ones who consistently perform at a high level. No one's perfect, but their batting average is the highest. Understanding how to get results is about moving past the basics of being a manager. In fact, to consistently lead your team to perform above expectations, you need a more advanced understanding of three key areas: motivating for results, staying committed to learning and improvement, and making decisions that have impact. In the first area, motivating for results, we'll move past the standard take on goals, and focus in on techniques that work, such as visual management, creating a purpose and higher calling, and using transparency and accountability to create deeper engagement.

Next, we'll discuss how a manager who gets results is never satisfied with the status quo or yesterday's achievements. They want positive change and improvement. As a result, they find clever ways to maximize the group's capacity, how to stretch budgets, how to tweak and improve processes, and they learn to interact effectively with bureaucracy. Now, the last big competency area is about understanding the difference between making decisions and making decisions that have impact. That means understanding the need for rapid decision making and what it means to adopt a mentality that requires solutions, not excuses.

Joining the ranks of the best managers at work will require a lot of thoughtfulness and a lot of hard work, but don't forget, it's all about building the right skills, and skills are things anyone can learn. So, let's get started.