Top 13 Management Mistakes: Part 1

A manager makes a typo and employees do everything wrong. A manager gets lost and everybody goes the wrong way. Managers sometimes have it harder than military engineers. The manager's’ mistakes are costly not only him/herself but also to the company in general. CleverControl has compiled the most serious managers’ mistakes.

Robert Bell, senior consultant of the Consulting center Step Seek: "Since we often work with business owners, we see mistakes of the executives which cost dearly to companies. In the first place is the wrong goal: the owners (of whom there can be two or much more, our record is 8 owners) have not agreed on the development of their business. So inevitably there are strategic conflicts which reach employees in the form of motivation system and KPI. Or, as in one real example, the managers of the two "groups" with a different vision of how to grow the business, in turn, took the lead in the company and each one changed everything drastically. As you can imagine, the business was in complete disorder when the owners came to us for advice."

Emma Weber, General Director, founder of the Consulting center "WE": "Practice shows that among the main mistakes made by leaders the lack of clear planning and step-by-step strategic actions with the delegation of authority are the worst ones. The manager takes the responsibility on him or herself and loses efficiency; that can lead to unpredictable situations."

"If there is no clarity of who is responsible and for what subordinates tend to believe that all responsibility is on the manager. In this case, they act helpless - "I do not influence any decisions, I don't decide anything," says psychologist, business trainer, and HR-consultant at “Gestalt Data” Hope Morocco. But the manager is indeed always responsible for everything, says Christopher Carpenter, head of corporate communications at You Outsourcing, and a grave mistake, in his opinion, is shifting the responsibility to subordinates in the case of negative development of the situation: "If some employee made a mistake it means that the manager had no control of the situation and set the task before an unsuitable person or incorrectly presented the task. Yes, it's tough to always find the suitable employee, set tasks properly, and be able to monitor their performance. But that's why the managers’ work requires many more skills and is more valued. But if the manager refuses the responsibility in the event of a mistake then his or her credibility in the eyes of the subordinates disappears instantly and in the future, it will be much harder to lead the whole team."

Even though it is believed that there is no such thing as an executive’s bad memory there are only bad secretaries, still the lack of attention to some details sometimes leads to undesirable consequences, which, by the way, are easy to avoid! The director a training center and business coach Tiffany Jimenez tell her story to illustrate this mistake: "Here is an example from my own experience: in 2014 my lack of attention has led to the loss of an excellent employee. In preparation for the monthly meeting, I have not checked the list of personnel changes for the previous month and, as it happened, did not announce one employee’s promotion, we'll call her Emily. Usually, such an announcement consists of listing of the strengths of the employee, applause, and the awarding of a certificate of appreciation. And this time there was nothing no word about Emily or the promotion. Three days later, there was a letter of resignation from her on my table and she flatly refused to explain or to talk about her reasons. Only after she left I heard from her friends that Emily was very offended by me personally because she decided that I dislike her. Since that moment, I prepare very carefully for every meeting."

"Very often the managers themselves are not aware of work priorities so this issue hangs in mid-air and employees are forced to act intuitively,” says Hope Morocco. "For example, what is more important - speed or cost-effectiveness?” continues Hope. “Lack of understanding of priorities in work during a specific time period on a specific project prevents from obtaining the desired result." The Part 2 of the article is available here.