Monday Manager Entrepreneur

Read time: 4 minutes

I've been a manager for 43 years.  I've loved nearly every minute of it.   Although for 5 years I was plain and simple invisible.  Whilst I thought I liked it,  this was because I was a new manager.  In reality I was overworked and way underpaid, and whilst I stayed stuck there, I had no chance of being offered 'choice' roles.  Nobody really knew I existed.

This article is what I learned on my journey so that people above, alongside, and below, me would at least know I existed.  On a good day they would even think I was a person of value - a Manager Entrepreneur.

Today, Id like to share with you how to do the same. Let's dive straight in:

Where did all this come from?

Essentially every iconic manager I could find who'd gone before me, run alongside me, or had a hand up from me and my colleagues along the way.  I wanted their secrets... and I got them.  Here they are:

9 big lessons that separated the icons from rest.   Most importantly though there was 10th overarching principle which I'll share at the end of this article.

So these are the things I believe you can reinstall:

#1. Be the enemy of entropy - wreak order in the sea of chaos.

If you think back to the birth of management - probably circa  1865 by all accounts.  Essentially , the gift of managers was to organise and bring more order to a more chaotic world where entropy had definitely not be conquered. 

155 years later there's been a sea change - most managers now seem to think their organisation's systems stay on top of the entropy. HR, Accounts, Payroll, Business Planning and the like.  No such luck!

Being great at spotting entropy's signs and heading it off at the pass is a real profile raiser!

#2. Be the champion of opportunity - managers are meant to be in(n).. ovation (what makes them famous),

Do you have a system for spotting, then testing, and where appropriate realising opportunities?  Not just in products or services, but throughout every aspect of the organisation? 

Fame, and names, are made once you have a track record for this.

#3. Be of your people, by your people. for your people!

If you've got this manager thing right, everything you achieve is created through others.  If you're busy working in your organisation, who's working on your organisation?

When you make your people famous, they will have made you famous too.  You work right alongside them  equal as people but in different in roles.  

Your job is to work on the organisation and help them do what they do even better!  Magician at heart!

#4. Find each individual’s ‘on-switch’ - motivate and mobilise!

At the beginning of managers, organisations were small, employees were local, knowledge of the community was shared.  Meaning for all those people was easy to create.

Now as the complexity of life and organisations has increased we find ourselves in a 'meaning desert.  Your job as a manager is to help your people join the dots - people whose lives you've changed will talk about you and appreciate you for years to come!

#5. Relentlessly make a machine that serves the world.

Ultimately back at the beginning this was why managers created organisations - to make their world a better place.  Since then many have lost their way.  How can you tilt the debate.

Money is meant to be a representation of the value one person creates for another not the reason why.  How does your organisations serve the world?  This really matters and so will you as it champion.

#6. Make sure hearts and minds, money and equipment, systems and communication, all flow to the same end.

How many organisations rip themselves or their people to pieces.  How many try to grow then break as the weakest link gives out.  Being a systems thinker and seeing the patterns of flow right across the organisation is a skill for the mighty and the wise!

#7. Make the future before you take the future — creation must have boldness to it!

Most of the heroes we revere are those that made a new better world possible.   Enough said about the iconic manager's job?

#8. Get your own ducks in a row - who you are, what you are for, and where you are going - because there go the rest of us!

People are silently begging to be led.  If you haven't got this sorted for yourself as a manager - why on earth should they follow you? 

If per chance you haven't got it sorted, and most managers haven't, you can get the premier toolkit to get it done here

9. Have an annual cycle and system for doing all of this!

If you haven't got one master system to control them all, then maybe its time for you to make one.  Or save a ton of time by getting the one I've spent my life forming, making and perfecting here

The Tenth Insight?

All the iconic, loved and famous managers I came across had one thing in common...

Though they all did incredibly well, they weren't just an ego on legs.  They saw themselves as part of the management body.  Sharing the role with every other manager, taking responsibility for the whole just as though they were an aspect of the Chief Executive. 

Their knowledge and insight was not of them but it came through them. Working in this way not only makes iconic managers but an iconic team who will go down in the annals of an organisation's history

In Summary

1. Be the enemy of entropy - wreak order in the sea of chaos
2. Be the champion of opportunity - managers are meant to be in(n).. ovation (what makes them famous)
3. Be of your people, by your people. for your people
4. Find each individual’s ‘on-switch’ - motivate and mobilise!
5. Relentlessly make a machine that serves the world.
6. Make sure hearts and minds, money and equipment, systems and communication, all flow to the same end.
7. Make the future before you take the future — creation must have boldness to it!
8. Get your own ducks in a row - who you are, what you are for, and where you are going - because there go the rests of us!
9. Have an annual cycle and system for doing all of this!
10. We're all part of the management body.  Everything is connnected. Together it is our job to make a better future!

We know for every hundred manages who read this…
- 2 will definitely take immediate action and get it done
- 14 will probably take action at some time (6 will, 8 won’t)
- 84 won’t even give it a look, and continue… stuck in ‘Groundhog Day’

What will you choose?

See you again next week. T

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Executive Review and Renew. Monthly sessions for executives and managers.   To join a group Click Here
2. The Regenesis Manager’s  Playbook – How to renegotiate your relationship with the rat-race.  Designed to show you how to take back you time and your life, improve your results, make your way to improved salary, recognition and rewards, and make your work way more enjoyable.  Click here.
3. Monday Manager Entrepreneur - Newsletter. Receive a weekly micro strategy to increase your contribution and value.  Click Here