What is a Manager Paid to Do?

What are you paid to do?

Basically, you’re not. Paid to do, that is. Doing should occupy a relatively small part of your time as a manager.

So what are you paid for?

• You’re paid to THINK about a wide range of issues relating to your job
• Then PLAN what to do as a result of your thinking
• Then DO what you have planned
• And MONITOR your plans in operation
• And MOTIVATE your people to want to carry them out.

Think, plan, do, monitor, motivate, with the objective of adding value. In CYM we’ll tackle each of those headings and then look at the skills you need to achieve them.

Let’s get this next bit out of the way now because you’re probably muttering it to yourself as you read?

• You’d love the opportunity to think and plan, monitor and motivate, but it’s just not realistic!
• You have this huge pile of work on your desk, you come in early and go late and do not take all your holiday.
• You have inadequate resources and your own management expects you to do more with less.
• So all your time is taken up with doing.

But you’re already on your way to taking control. You have the desire and energy to find a solution, or you wouldn’t be reading about CYM, would you?

Congratulate yourself on that first step! It’s the foundation of the success you are going to achieve - with a little help.

When Willie Sutton was apprehended in Philadelphia, they asked him why he robbed banks. He reportedly* replied - “Because that’s where the money is.”

No comparisons intended of course, just a good ‘focus on the essentials’ quote!

Thanks for staying with us so far. Now the preliminaries are out of the way, we can have a look at the CYM Topics.

*Before somebody emails us to tell us he didn't say it, we know! But the legend remains. He did say later he would have said it, if he'd thought of it.