MANSYS
Create a Defined Management System

MANSYS is an integrated management system which conciselysummarizes the tools and techniques used by effective managers. It is particularly useful when leaders are trying to get an entire management team to "play the game by the same set of rules." Does your organization need a systematic approach to managing? By getting commonality of concepts, tools, approaches, procedures and forms, variance in management thought and action is reduced and organization performance receives positive forward thrust.

One of the best ways to multiply a management team's effectiveness is to establish a systematic approach to their work. When everybody is using the same terminology, tools, and techniques it reduces miscues, slip-slide and wasted time. A shared management philosophy, and a common system means fewer conflict points and higher productivity. If you want your group to play like a team, teach them the same game. (see MANSYS Table of Contents and a Sample Chapter below). (MANSYS manual, forms and instructions).

NOTE: Use our MANSYS manual only as a first draft of what must be tailored in-house to fit your shop. Make edits to fit the organization, and use it as an accompaniment to your management development course (Our Uncommon Leader course can be used as a starting platform). MANSYSl reduces variance, and helps the team more effectively deal with the substantial work issues of Customer, Quality, Cost and People.

---

MANSYS Table of Contents

1. Be Effective

A. MANSYS—The Power of Effective Management
B. The President's Guide to Management Success

2. Keep Focused

A. Live Our Values

• What Does Our Organization Value?
• Your Personal Mission Statement

B. Serve Customers

• Who Is Your Customer?
• Operational Steps to Better Serve the King

C. Achieve Objectives

• What Are Our Corporate Stretch Goals?

3. Lead People

A. Make Communication Work

• The Communications Center
• Managerial Communication Rules

B. Get the Best Out of People

• Select Winners
• Managing Motivation Release

C. Grow Winners

• Development Tools and Techniques

D. Leadership & MBWA

• What's In & What's Out

E. Evaluate Performance

• 360 Degree Evaluations

F. Manage Problem Employees

4. Manage Work

A. Time Managing for Results

• The Key Results Hour
• Meeting Management
• Other Time Tips
• Basic Tools: Calendar, Contacts & To Do

B. Planned Performance: Work Planning & Specification
C. Planned Performance: Review & Development
D. Work Gating
E. Making Delegation Work
F. Priority Evaluation & Protection
G. Improve Work Processes

5. Drive Change

A. Change Managing

• Creative Destruction
• Getting Ideas & Gathering Knowledge
• Innovation Management & Intellectual Capital

B. Fast Action With Teams & Individuals

C. Proposal Selling

• What Executives Want In a Proposal

D. Conflict Management

• Personal Conflict Management
• Organization Conflict Management

---

Sample Chapter

1. BE EFFECTIVE

Are leaders born or made? Perhaps in some mystical fantasy we would like to believe that the great people of history were somehow made of different stuff from the rest of us, that they had some secret the rest of us don't have, but thoughtful reflection suggests otherwise. When Admiral "Bull" Halsey was hailed as a hero for winning the Battle of Midway in World War II, he said, "There are no great men. There are only common men forced by circumstances to greatness."

Research confirms that those who lead are largely made, they must learn the lessons that produce superior performance. Certainly this has been confirmed in managing people and work in organizations. We all have to learn how to do the job of being effective in management. The good news is that it is learnable!

What Does Effectiveness Mean?

The best definition of being a success in management is that one achieves, and achieves the right results. A manager who achieves results is said to be effective. Effectiveness is not concerned with who your friends are, how good your attitude is, how hard you tried or how many hours you put in. It asks only, what of significance did you achieve? At the end of the day, what of importance did you make happen?

The sad fact is that an estimated 50% of managers are ineffective. They have the title, but flail around in their job. They are busy, but busyness is not business; activity is not results. And it is in a manager's career interest to keep asking: "How effective am I? Am I getting the right things done? Or am I just running faster and faster but getting nowhere?"

What the reader will find in the following pages is a summary of the approaches and practices that effective men and women use in management. These tools and procedures were derived from observing what these winners did, how they talked and behaved, how they thought and made decisions. As an approach to the management job, they are recommended to you as the basis for how you might add to your own present level of effectiveness. Their promise is that they will allow you to achieve a greater percentage of wins in your day to day challenges on the job!

A. MANSYS—The Power of Effective Management

MANSYS, The Integrated Management System, is designed as a way to most quickly and effectively get things done. Looking at the manager's job from his/her perspective, the system was designed to most simply and effectively handle the significant challenges of the manager's job.

MANSYS deals with the central core of activities that are necessary in order for a manager to get the right job done, and the right job done right and to succeed, not only in work attainment, but in the political realm that organizational living presents. At one level, MANSYS is a series of forms, checklists and specific action recommendations. At a deeper level, however, it is the essence of managerial performance. As one executive said, "MANSYS is the best set of tools I've ever seen for getting work done, satisfying the boss, and turning people loose."

The effectiveness practices outlined in MANSYS have certain characteristics that may surprise:

• Contrarianism. Effective managers don't do what everybody else in management does. If they did, they'd be ineffective. Get used to the idea that being a winner often means approaching the job tasks in an entirely different way than those who are losing.

• Simplicity. Effectiveness is not complicated. One doesn't have to be, as the saying goes, a rocket scientist. Effectiveness keeps things simple. And because these practices are simple, they are easy to learn.

• Disciplined Consistency. While the effectiveness practices are easy enough to do, they require a day-in, day out application. No one in management can be effective by doing the right things once in a while. As Vince Lombardi said, "You don't do things right once in a while. You do them right all the time." Managers who don't do things right all the time, are, ipso facto, doing them wrong some of the time. Any professional who doesn't follow the truths of his/her profession is guilty of malpractice.

Management System Specifications

Organizations get their work done largely by using systems. A system is a defined and usually effective method which has been found to work better than doing things on the fly where people run around making up answers as they go. Systems avoid unorganized and inefficient approaches to doing things in favor of ways which are logical, least effort, and avoid redo work. It would be difficult even conceiving of a modern organization that didn't have a financial system, an information system, a customer servicing system, etc. Interestingly, however, very few organizations have evolved a management system. MANSYS remedies that lack, and represents the installation of a management approach that is benchmarked on the management systems found in America's best organizations. As a system it will produce a greater focus on business objectives, requires less effort than doing things in non systematic way, produces less stress on managers in getting their work done, and produce far greater results for the organization.

MANSYS was designed using the experience thousands of managers have had with various time planners, scheduling charts, work planning systems, and the like. The field research that underlies the MANSYS system found that many of these tools did have value, but did not represent in their totality an integrated management system. That is, they were tools that were not related in philosophy or practice with other procedures the manager had to perform. Many managers reported trying to do a little of this or that, but did not have a sense that their approach got them a lot of mileage. Often, the "tricks of the trade" had been picked up by watching others or by experience. Almost none reported feeling that they had a comprehensive approach to managing. Out of this common managerial problem came a number of specifications that were used in designing MANSYS:

• All elements of MANSYS are practical and easy to apply. The system proceeds from the assumption that it must serve the manager, not the other way around. Each practice or tool is identified as to whether it should be considered as "Core," where all managers should use them, or "Secondary," where they are optional (useful, but not necessarily mandatory).

• The system represents the core of each aspect of managing. While not every possible permutation is allowed for, MANSYS gets to the central areas of work rapidly.

• The individual parts of the system stand on their own. This is necessary due to the wide variability of situations that managers encounter at work. MANSYS is a tool box where each individual tool can be used alone, but where the interactions between the various pieces represents a wholeness and logic flow.

• The system's content is based on solid management research on approaches that have proved effective at work. This is not theorizing or an amalgamation of platitudes.

• The MANSYS approach is based on a philosophy of work, and a philosophy of people at work, that is compatible with the New American Organization. While forms and check lists are some of the tools of the system, the system values what works for people more than it values the system itself. The magic of the system is that it fits the magic of people.

Why Managers Should Use MANSYS

Management is a profession. Like all professions it has a body of knowledge that has evolved over time as people found out what does and doesn't work. A manager who follows "the way" of his profession would be described as correctly managing. One who doesn't follow this defined way is shooting from the hip and malpracticing—a real amateur. MANSYS is a set of power tools that work in the here and now. It represents the way in which winners in management do their job. If you follow this path, there is a good probability you will win. If you do not follow this path, there is a low probability of getting results.

A second, and equally compelling reason to use MANSYS is that management is a team sport. No manager can get his/her job done alone. Imagine a team where some players are playing baseball, others football, yet others tennis. If we're going to play like a team, we all have to play the same sport and follow the same rules and play book. To shift the metaphor, we're all going to sound a lot better when we sing off the same sheet of music!