Best Manager Principles - The High Performance Manager

The best managers don't always know what make them so good but if you look at them and what they do, they seem to abide by a number of principles that have to do with effective management. Here they are along with how the Hooper-Bacal model helps exemplify the principles.

• Effective managers know what's going on. They have an idea of what each employee is doing, what they are doing well, and not so well, and how the various projects and initiatives are faring. Not at the end of the year, but all throughout the year. The Hooper-Bacal method, based on informal discussion all year, allows the manager to know what's going on, and so s/he can alter the direction of the ship before it's too late.
• Effective managers recognize that the context they work within is constantly changing, so they manage flexibly. That is, they alter priorities, move human resources around as needed, again, use the information about "what's going on" to make decisions quickly. Individual staff objectives are changed, specific job responsibilities evolve even over a month or two, so the methods for managing performance need to provide for quick responses in staff responsibilities and priorities.
• The best managers realize that each employee is different, and so uses methods of communication and performance management that may differ somewhat from person to person, even if the staff do the same job. They understand that managing is about people, not just objectives, and not about job descriptions. The Hooper-Bacal method is flexible within a common structure for the discussion of performance.
• The best managers know that their job is to help each employee succeed, remove barriers to success, and to "aim" staff". When staff understand what they should be doing, the relative priorities of their job tasks, and why they do what they do, managers can back off from micromanaging. In effect, it's about making sure staff have the information to do their jobs independently. The Hooper-Bacal method stresses that, and there's the added benefit of managers not having to step in to fix things, because quite honestly, if you do it properly, there are less screw-ups.

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