Why have a dog and…
Why have a dog and bark yourself?
We live in a fast paced world with the business world in particular seeming to be in a constant state of flux. As a result managers have it tough.
Not only are they expected to direct their teams efforts towards the business goals but they are also expected to be able to assimilate the new techniques and approaches and pass those on to the team without missing a beat. A tough call.
So what is a sensible, modern manager to do?
In a word…manage.
Yes the clue was in the title. A manager should manage all the resources at their fingertips. Including their team’s knowledge and abilities. So for example if a manager is sitting at home one Sunday reading the papers and thinking
‘oh wow smart phones can do a lot. I wonder how they could help the sales team or operations team work more efficiently?’
rather than doing all the research themselves a sensible manager should ask around their team. Identify the person who already has that knowledge and give them the task of explaining or doing any additional research. It’s classic delegation with a modern focus.
New technology has been coming out since someone created the first wheel. The difference is nowadays is that the people who actually know about the new stuff are often not the ‘specialists’ rather just regular individuals who happen to be early adopters. This is a phenomena common to those of us with children of high school age. My daughter has given me the low down on several new websites that previously I had not heard of.
So before you go putting in hours learning new things ask around – you might already have the required knowledge within your team!
Until next time; happy learning.
Stephen Hart
07733 88 11 90 (yes I use a smart phone that I picked out myself!)
stephen.hart@edenchanges.com
