Operations, Processes, and Decisions

• Do not  respect them
• always criticise them
• Do not care about their personal problems
• Do not let them innovate
• Always disregard their suggestions
• Do not keep your promises to them
• Let them work hard on something and then simply destroy it
• do not let them learn
• Tell them that their job is not important for the company
• Do not create any social life at work
• Do not allow them to take any decision
• Do not try to train them
• Ask them to do silly jobs
• Be rude with them
• Never thank any of them
• When someone is sick do not call him
• Do not tell him that you will take a vacation
• Do not make the information available
• Do not have any system

It is very easy to demotivate your employees and it is so easy to motivate them. Why do some managers emotivate their employees?

Sometimes one needs advice from more experienced people. That happens when you join a new job especially when you are a recent graduate. I try to list here some advices that may be valuable for young employees:

Business Ethics: Stick to business ethics and don’t listen to bad guys. Do not make any concession on that. If you make one mistake, it will be easy to make ten mistakes. If you don’t make any mistake, it will always be difficult to make the first mistake.

Work hard…don’t lie…don’t cheat…be honest with everybody…be cooperative…don’t use your position for your personal benefits…follow company code of conduct…..

Get to know the organization: In the first days and week try to know many things about the organization: the location of different departments/facilities, the organization structure, the organization culture, the regulations, your job description, the role of every department. This is essential step in order to be able to live and work in that organization.

Get to know your boss and his way of doing business; what he likes and what he does not like. Try to cope with your boss and the organization culture as long as it does not contradict with business ethics and any legal issues.

First Impressions: Unfortunately, first impressions are very important. You shouldn’t say this employee is irresponsible because he made a mistake in his first days, but most people do that. They get an impression in the first days and weeks and then it is difficult to get them change their view.

So, you need to be careful in the first weeks. Follow the organizations rules, dress as required or as reasonable in that culture. Go to work early and don not leave early. Be nice with people. show them that you are serious. Follow the regulations regarding the break time. I am not saying that you’ll cheat them but you just need to be careful because simple things may be taken against you. For example, if ask for permission to come 30 minutes late in your first week, it may be interpreted as if you do not care. However, after few months if you ask to come one hour late, you may be welcomed.

Seek advice: Try to get advice and listen to people but you must have a filter in your mind that saves good advices and negelect bad ones. If you find a mentor that will be great if that mentor is really a mentor i.e. honest and cares about you.

Self Development: You may get training and support from other employees but you need to develop yourself. Search for information. Read the operations/work standard/procedures. Read the manuals. Find books related to what you are doing and red them. Heavily use the Internet to develop your self. Visit the company library.

Team work: Try to support team work. Create that culture if you have subordinates. Try to show your colleagues that you like to be part of the team. Do not hide information to show that you are the only one who knows.

Infromation:We need information in order to do and develop our work. Keep the important information. Do not depend on your memory for two reasons. First, others cannot read your memory. Second, you’ll forget one  day. If the company has a system for filing, reporting, and sharing knowledge then follow it. Otherwise, suggest similar systems in your area.

Build a creative culture: Try to be creative. Search for creative ideas. Encourage your subordinates, if you have any, to be creative. Respect their ideas, discuss with them, reward them.

Don’t make a mistake twice: When you make a mistake then find the root cause and make the necessary countermeasure to prevent yourself from doing that mistake again. Always search for the root cause and the countermeasure that makes it almost impossible for this mistake to happen again.

Manage your time: Don’t waste your time. If you have spare time at work, then try to solve problems, develop new things, learn new skills, train others, read articles related to your job.

Be Organized: Do not have piles of papers on your desk. Have a good filing system. Get prepared prior to every work activity.

Don’t get frustrated: Sometimes you do not like the work for any reason and you cannot find another job, so you have to continue. In that case, you should not allow yourself to get depressed. Try to maximize the good parts of the job and minimize the part that you don’t like. Try to see the good things in your work and use them. Do activities outside work that minimize the bad effect of your job on you. Do things that you like. Do not yield to frustration. You have to continue alive (mentally and phscchologically)  to save your health and your work skills.

Related sites:

Your first Days working at a new job

Success tips for new employees

You cannot eyesight is limited. You cannot see a building from inside and outside at the same time. You cannot see a building from the front and the back at the same time. You cannot see the details of things that are far away from you. So what?….As a manager you see things from one side and in many cases you need to see the other sides. You need to see what they see.

Departments (islands) of the same organizations

Every manager or employee in one department of af a big organization knows aht he is doing and what others are doing around him in the same department. But when it comes to other departments, he does not know much. He knows they are doing so and so but he does not know their capabilities, their problems, their challenges, what they can do in few minutes and what they can do in hours.days …

The result is that the departments are islands and population in those islands really need some tourism in other departments. We need to understand each other. The design department should know the capabilities of the manufacturing so that the design department will not ask for impossible or very difficult/expensive processing. The IT department needs to know what other departments need and they need to know what the IT can do and cannot do. The maintenance people should see the plant from the operation view and the operation people should see it from the maintenance view. We need to see what other see.

Managers and their decisions

Managers see their decisions from their sides while employees see it from a different side. The manager takes the decision based on certain information and obviously he is biased towards his decision. The employees may not the information the manager knows and may know other information that he does not know. The employees see the decision from their side. They see the results and may feel it themselves.

The point is that the manager needs to see what employees see and sometimes need to show them what he sees. Managers need to do that before and after taking the decision. Obviously, it is not the same case for every decision but it is important for the decisions that affects the employees and the way of doing work.

The produce and the customer

The producer likes his product, of course, and he knows the details of the manufacturing and the financial data. The customer is using the product and he sees it differently. The customer knows nothing about the manufacturing and the financial data. He likes and hates certain things in the product.

The producer needs to know what the customer sees in his product. He needs these information in order to imporve the product. All the managers in the producing company needs to get information about the customer view of the product. 

The trainer and the trainees

The training knows the training material and thus he feels it is so easy. The trainer may have never heard about the training topic and so he thinks it is so difficult. The trainer may not feel tired quickly because he is talking about something he knows but the trainer gets tired because he is trying to understand new things.

The trainer needs to see things from the trainers view. He needs to know when they are tired, how do they feel, whether they understand or not.

Simply, we need to communicate, to visit each other, to listen to each other. We need to realize that we can’t see from all sides and that we need to get help from the others to see what they see.