A Lesson in Failure:

Businesses fail for many reasons. The basic root cause of all failure is always the same. The business manager or entrepreneur failed to pay attention to the necessary details of the business. In The Missing Concept to Staying in Business the primary concept to staying in business is discussed.

Here we are going to explore management of human resources as one of the many ways to fail. In exploring this topic we will learn how to benefit from proper human resource management to make more money.

In Goldratt\\\’s The Goal he talks about how a company was constantly putting blame on the employee for poor production rather than looking at the process of production. He noted how focusing on the employee did not resolve the issue. Problems kept returning.

Most business managers do the same. They look at the human resource as the reason for the problem. The business manager rarely looks at the process the individual is preforming.

The actual issue is almost always the process. As has been pointed out many times, standardized processes lead to standardized methods to resolve production problems. Focusing on the individual instead of the process makes the subordinates uncomfortable. They become unwilling to discuss details of the job that would resolve the issues with production. They try to protect themselves instead of being open.

The business goes into a never ending spiral. more punishment of the individual, less communication, poor product performance, more punishment of the individual, less communication, poor product performance, and so on. There is no way out of the spiral because the business manager or entrepreneur is looking in the wrong place for solutions.

In The Missing Concept to Staying in Business a well formulated standardized format is given for documentation of processes. By describing in the process documentation how to resolve non-conformities in the process the spiral never occurs. The individual feels free to explain what is happening with the process. The process improves. The product improves. There is more profit. The customer is happier.

In the book The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail by Jean-Francois Manzoni, et. al., Manzoni shows how good managers setup their subordinates to fail. These otherwise good manages for some reason never learn that by setting up their subordinates to fail they themselves are the ones failing.

These good managers micro manage employees who they think are poor performers. They take away the encentive to succeed. So untimately, the subordinate fails. The business fails.

So what does a good manager do?

• They constantly challange their subordinates to do better.
• They expect outstanding performance by setting high yet obtainable goals.
• When the conditions under which the goals were set are changed the goals are changed accordingly.
• They give the subordinates leaway to succeed and make mistakes.
• They provide the oppertuinty for the expansion of professional knowledge.
• They do not micro manage.
• They do remove all roadblocks for the subordinates success toward the goal best for the business.
• They define the job requirements clearly.
• They allow for the expansion of job scope as required to meet the business objectives.
• They constantly review the subordinates performance with fact not oppinion to give timely constructive feedback.
• When problems ocure with atainment of the desired buinsess goal the process used to atain the goal is analysed. Seldom is the problem really the individual.
• Subordinates are not chastized for failure. The business manager or entrepreneur looks at themself and the process to see where the problem might be.

What should you do? Be like the good manager not like the micro manager.