Strategic Management and Professional Well-Being
Management is an austere concept that withstands all your evacuation attempts. If you could focus on your industry and your clients, everything could be better, you say to yourself.
But in fact, practicing your trade well means serving your clients well. And serving your clients well means managing your clientele well. Managing your clientele well means managing your sources of revenue. Managing your revenues means managing your financial capacity well. Managing your financial capacity well means being able to afford your high-quality human and material resources. And being able to afford adequate resources at the right time ultimately means providing yourself with the means to practice your trade well. The circle is complete.
Experience has taught me that when people are satisfied with their work, they are happier. Making management a priority is, therefore, an appropriate way to improve your professional well-being.
However, rigorously managing the everyday realities of an office is not easy for managers who have to make their clients their top priority. That is why I recommend you use an alternative approach that will help you create an indirect or minimal management framework and gradually help you improve the well-being of all members of your business.
Management of an organization usually involves three levels of action:
Operational: Management of activities and routine tasks, such as invoicing.
Tactical: Monitoring of the expected results, such as monthly validation of the financial statements.
Strategic: Definition of the major objectives and determination of the ways to achieve them, such as when the office changes its orientation.
It is natural for a business to apply more rigour in its basic activities before focusing on its primary strategic considerations. However, this very rational idea means that managers need to save some of their time for management to validate and monitor operations (tactical level).
To make the most of the time you spend on management, I suggest that you consolidate your tactical actions into a single periodic team meeting, which could be weekly or monthly at least. The date and time should ideally always be the same.
Next, I recommend that you include topics of discussion in the order of strategic importance. The agenda of the meeting, which would last one to three hours depending on its frequency, should cover the following topics in this order:
1. Validation of objectives (revenues, missed meetings, specialized training, new equipment, etc.) set in the previous weeks or months.
2. Suggestions for improving the client experience at the office, or their well-being in other words.
3. Suggestions for setting the company apart from its competition.
4. Suggestions for improving the office environment and the quality of life for those who work in it.
5. Suggestions for improving team productivity.
6. Review of objectives and short-term action plan (who is doing what?). These items will be reviewed first at the next meeting.
The main point of my suggestion is to religiously respect the date and time of this periodic meeting. As a manager, if you try to achieve this simple objective and succeed in making this meeting an exciting weekly activity, you will soon notice some changes in your office.
The second point of my suggestion is to indirectly provoke strategic thought about general topics such as "How can we improve client welfare?" Thanks to discussions on this kind of topic, you will be surprised to observe just how easily your staff will be able to support you in determining your company's major strategic development objectives and management of the action plan.
I cannot conclude this column without emphasizing the importance of high-performance computerized management in this process. In fact, your management software is the best tool for measuring and confirming whether an action suggested by your team will provide the expected results. The rapid feedback you obtain sparks interest and promotes your team's adoption of the process in question and, therefore, ensures its continuity.
Good methods, good tools, and a good team; You have everything you need to create a working environment in line with your expectations, an environment ultimately based on greater well-being for all and, as a result, your own.