Has your client got clowns for managers?

Your clients will often be sceptical about the quality of their managers.

As they become the bottleneck in their business they get more and more desperate to get out from under all the things that, apparently, only they can do and the decisions that, apparently, only they can make.  They won't see their managers as part of the solution but as part of the problem.

They may ask you how to find some “big hitters” from larger businesses who will help them achieve their growth aspirations.

Try asking them how they know that managers aren’t up to the task.  Usually the answer will be a series of anecdotes about failures to do x or inability to understand the importance of y.  Then try probing how well your client has explained to their employees where the business is going, what their role in this is and what success in the role looks like.

Try asking yoru client what they do when an employee comes to them with a problem – whether that is an angry customer or a blocked sink.  You'll probably find they solve it for the employee and so are busy training their managers to be helpless.

At this point you might want to suggest that perhaps some or all of them might indeed be incapable of managing  - but they need to be given the chance to prove it one way or the other.  Furthermore, replacing them with strangers on twice the salary is, to put it mildly, a risk – particularly when they would be hired into the same disfunctional setup.

If your client is receptive to this, suggest they put in place a framework that enables managers to develop, with the aim of establishing whether they have indeed been desperately unlucky in hiring nothing but clowns or whether some other common factor is in play.  Suggest that your client involve employees thinking about the future of the business, got them to create their own job descriptions focused on responsibilities, devise with them simple performance measurements and discuss these in regular management meetings.  You might also suggest they they stop giving employees answers, instead taking every question as a chance to coach them to a solution and reinforce their responsibility.

Encourage your client to provide managers the clarity, structure and support to succeed.  Of course, as the business grows they will still have to hire some more managers - but not to learn from them.  Instead, your client will be teaching them how to do more of what is already working.

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Adapted from an original post on my website www.nickbettes.co.uk