If it is your job to be a manager of an office, business or even a family, it might be well to consider the advice of Jack Welch, who successfully managed General Electric for over 17 years. Here are some of his secrets of successful management:
- Consider change an everyday process. Keep looking for better ways to do your own job and helping others to see better ways to do theirs. While it is usually more comfortable to do things the same old way, change is inevitable. If you don’t change with it, you will be left behind.
- Stop managing and start leading. Your job is not to police those you would lead, it is to inspire them to do their best. Managers slow people down. Leaders fire them up.
- Play the numbers game the right way. Financial figures measure progress but they don’t predict success. It is important to watch what others are doing and for new ways to do things. Get everything else right, and the numbers will fall into place.
- Keep looking for new ideas from within. No one person has all of the good ideas no matter how gifted. The person doing the job usually can see better ways to get his/her job done than the casual observer. So be open to new ideas and that will encourage others to look for them. Watch what everybody else is doing and see if following will create an improvement.
- Cross the boundaries. Everyone has his/her job and may be protecting turf. Each person has his/her influence that affects the total. Most people are offended only when they think someone is trying to undermine them or their job. If in breaking down the borders between job assignments care is taken to show sincere interest, the crossing of borders between jobs will be admired and encouraged.