I'm often talking about ways to be a good manager. Today I'm going to talk about 3 processes that not only show bad management, but probably shows that manager as not having any idea what they're doing.

A. Doing something just to be doing something

Project Management Lifecycle
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I remember working for a chief financial officer who told me that something he liked doing every once in a while was move people around. His reasoning was that no one liked change, so breaking into their comfort zone not only shook things up but kept people on their toes. He figured that if everyone got mad at him that they'd rally around each other and produce better.

Doing something without a real plan isn't leadership, it's catastrophic. Belief isn't reality; having everyone get mad could have resulted in people not doing anything productive, which would have only hurt the organization. Personally needing to alter some things in your life by changing up a thing or two can be a valid way to break bad patterns. Doing it to others is reckless and could backfire.

B. Not having any real idea what the goal is

Whenever I give a presentation to medical billing professionals, one of the first questions I always ask is what their purpose is. Many times I get long winded responses but it's rare that I get the one true answer; bringing in more money (if you see me live now you know the correct response lol). Truthfully, CFOs don't care about anything else they have to say or what they do; they just want more money.

Every organization, department and employee always needs to know what the real goal is they wish to achieve. Since we know that those goals aren't always compatible, it has to start at the top and move downward so that initially everyone is on the same page. After that, if the director's goal is to get the best production out of all employees and an employees goal is to work towards a promotion, it's all fine as long as everyone knows what they want to work towards. People without goals are just existing; not all jobs, or people for that matter, can progress that way.

C. Job reviews based on incorrect assumptions

I'm always recommending that managers meet with employees more than once a year to not only let employees know how their work is, not only to help guide them towards specific goals, but to make sure that both parties know what the other is thinking, to see if each is paying attention to the other.

Almost every employee I've had working for me has thought they were doing a superlative job. Whereas my goal is to help everyone get to a pinnacle performance, every once in a while there would be something lacking that needed to be addressed. Also, even though I had notes about employees, sometimes there were things I had missed where an employee has gone above and beyond their normal duties. It's hard to do a proper assessment of people if you don't have all the information needed to do it properly.