Tell Me About your Manager

Do you have a manager, or do you havea glorified cashier, the only one you can trust to make a bank deposit? How do you know?

Ask these questions.

  1. If you change a procedure, do you have to tell each employee separately, or can you explain it once to your manager?
  2. Do you spend more of your time on employee issues, or on plans to improve and expand your business?
  3. Does your manager tell you about problems with the expectation that you are always going to fix the problems or does the manager tell you about problems and requests permission for his plan to fix the problems or reports what he did to fix the problems?
  4. Does your manager give you feedback from employees, customers, and suppliers when it is not a problem?
  5. If an employee decides he cannot come to work, who gets the phone call and who calls another employee to fill in, you or your manager?
  6. Have you had to cancel an appointment important to your business because an employee did not come to work?
  7. Can you tell your manager to discuss a problem with a supplier on Tuesday and reporting the outcome to you on Wednesday without your feeling a compulsion to phone the manager on Tuesday anyway?

There are significant advantages to having a true manager.

  1. Let's say you have 5 employees. You want to tell them about a new product. It takes 15 minutes to tell each employee. You are able to meet with two, but the other three you can only see one-on-one. It takes you an hour to tell all of them. It really takes you all day. In that hour's time, you can carefully write a memo making all the important points, give that to your manager, and have him report back to you that all employees received the information and reacted positively. He puts the copy of the memo on your desk with each employee's inititals. You did not have to stay in the store all day.
  2. You also have a dated written memo that you can post in a Policy & Procedure.
  3. Two or three customers complain to you that the mocha coffee has a strange taste to it, but only on some days, not today. You ask the manager to look into the problem. After a few days, your manager reports to you that one of the employees, otherwise a good employee, had been making the mocha coffee incorrectly. The problem has been fixed.
  4. You can be away from the business for a day or more. Your manager will know what things to report to you because they are important and what things to report because he knows you would be interested in them.
  5. You can spend more time on the long-term plans of your business and less on the day-to-day management. This will benefit the business.

What if you do not have a true manager?

  • Consider getting one.
  • Can your "glorified cashier" become a true manager? Start the training.

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