When your management is spread too thin how do you manage them?

The majority of the management teams I meet today are just spread too thin. With reduced profits and increased workload created by compliance and regulations, today’s management teams are unable to be effective.

Many many companies have great management in place but they are unable to complete projects that are critical to the company’s growth. When meeting with today’s owners and their management teams while doing my consulting I find more and more really great teams are being stretched so thin that none of them are at 100% effectiveness. Every project is lacking the extra work it will take to create the GREAT results needed by today’s changing business environment.

I talk to the owners and they tell me all the wonderful initiatives that the company is undertaking, yet when I speak to the management team they just tell me how overworked they are and how they’re unable to keep up with all the projects on their plate. They are looking for help to get more done with less people.

As a consultant what I find is missing falls in the hands of the owner not the management team. What is missing it Is a clear plan to accomplish all of the task required or desired in a defined timeline. It’s not that everyone cannot  accomplish all of the tasks it’s that no one knows which one is most important or what needs to be done first or next. The owner must learn to prioritize and supervise their management team at a higher level in today’s complex environment.

In order to provide a clear plan to your team I am than using the same basic format for decades. An agenda. Yes just something that simple can help the group to prioritize and assign task in one simple location.

I use three sections in my agenda, new business, old business and parking lot.

Each item has someone of a group of people signed to it and timelines or milestones. A new agenda is created after each meeting or significant event in the project. Everyone involved is given the most updated version each time one is created even if they missed the event or meeting.

The answer is a clear communication of priorities and desires in a written fashion that is constantly updated and distributed. If your a CEO, department leader or manager learn this new trick today and get more done tomorrow.