Most of us overestimate our own capabilities to manage things and consequently end up projecting ourselves as better mangers than what we actually are. While good education in business management will improve your chances of becoming a good manager it does not guarantee good managerial performance. A wag once said that “education” is what remains after you have forgotten everything that they taught you in school. Is this why grey hair (read experience) is given so much importance in our culture?
Experience means making less mistakes and imbibing “efficiency enhancing” habits. Working at a job with the same inefficiency (not learning from past mistakes) for many years is surely not “experience”. Let us dear readers, look at what these habits are!

Are you proactive?
In India, managers take pride in measuring the importance of their jobs by the number of “emergencies” that they face every day – more emergencies being a sign of more importance. Do you realize that a managers’ main task is to prevent emergencies? So if a manager faces many emergencies, he is surely not a good manager. One can prevent emergencies by being proactive. Managers in the government sector have often complained of many phoney emergencies (receiving a minister at the airport during a visit that was suddenly decided) that affect their performance.

Can you work comfortably with subordinates who are smarter than you?
JRD Tata when once asked to name his most effective habit that led to his phenomenal success mentioned his ability to recruit (without any reservations) people who were smarter than him (to work for him). Even Azim Premji confesses that this ability of extracting work from “smarter than the boss” managers by giving them a free hand and “not getting in their hair” has done wonders at WIPRO.

Can you “delegate” without worry?
A manager who does not delegate his tasks to his subordinates is destined to be a clerk, all his life. People who have little or no faith in the capabilities of their subordinates should be in another profession. All managers sitting late after office hours and those who carry office - files home, are probably in this category. A sure sign of an efficiently run department is a manager with some free time being assisted by busily working subordinates. Don’t we find things exactly the other way around and don’t we appreciate the hard-working manager when we find him the busiest person in his department?

Can you prioritize your tasks?
We all tend to do the easiest things first but are they the ones that need to be done first? Good managers can quickly categorize tasks as “important” and/or “urgent”. This automatically helps them decide the group of tasks that needs to be attacked first. The easiest tasks are invariably in the group that needs to be given the lowest priority. All successful managers have an almost clinical ability of categorization.

Are you empathetic?
A dictionary defines “empathy” as the ability to look at a situation from someone else’s point of view. A manager who can do this, especially from the point of view of his “opponent” (in the many conflicts that he faces as a part of his managerial duties) is indeed the fastest resolver of conflicts that leads to increased efficiency.

Are you a “trainer” by nature?
Come to think of it, a managers’ perennial task is to keep improving the efficiency of his team. A good manager first detects the weakest link in his chain (the weakest member of his team) and spends time in getting him/her trained so that he is no longer the weakest member – someone else in the team obviously now takes his place as the weakest member of the team. The manager then directs all his attention to this new weakling. Since the speed of a team is that of its slowest member, this strategy keeps improving the speed of the team (as the weakest members keep working faster and faster).

Are you clear about what you want to accomplish?
You will be surprised at the number of managers who keep working day in and day out without having a clear idea of the overall picture of what is sought to be accomplished. When someone asked a sculptor how he managed to carve such beautiful statuettes out of a stone replied that all that he sees in his mind (while chipping away at the stone) is the final shape that he wants to produce and all that he therefore does is to chip away everything that is “not there” in this final image. Do you have this “one-track-mindedness” about your objectives?

Are you ethical in your approach?
Contrary to what most of us believe, a non ethical mindset does not lead to long term success – its gains are mostly short-term in nature. Being ethical makes you what they call in Hindi a “lambi race ka ghoda”. Don’t we all want to become one?

"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page."