Management akin Driving on road

Management is similar to driving on the road, sounds silly; though I could not ignore this, when I went through both for a while.

Management is about steering  through defined but still unpredictable situations with some well-identified rules and principles with multiple unidentified circumstances coming into play. A good or bad manager is based upon the results achieved through these situations by taking decisions, which make a positive, negative or no-impact based on timing, short-term or long-term approach, understanding of the environment, unilateral/multilateral-collaborative approach. You can go on and on to define the subject, given its vast meaning and scope…

Now what you do while on the road, while driving a car, or riding a bike or being a bus-passenger.

Keeping a balance, being prepared, taking a cautious approach, being good to others all look familiar in both these environment. Isn’t it??

If you have complex situations in office to manage, then you have heavy traffic on the road; both are not easy to manage, though are a good sail, if managed through with the right approach. What we need is right attitude, no hasty approach, well-thought strategy (though which might not work all the time), and timely and the appropriate decisions. There is no right formulae around it; although proper mix of these ingredients makes a huge difference.

Like the bad days, we have good days too in these places; which look like a cake-walk, easy to manage, with everything going hunky-dory.

There are times, when you are in hurry and drive like Schumacher on the road, though snail-speed traffic or red signals create unwanted bottlenecks and makes you feel at the same place. So, it’s vital to hold on your nerve and manage through well. Doesn’t it sound similar to one of our work situations at work….

What makes it crazy is to keep your eyes wide-open at all the time to be aware of all upcomings and and being ready for any unwelcome event. Like while preparing the slides for a crucial presentation next day early morning, if you don’t keep saving the document regularly; might see your comp going blank and loosing your all hard work at a blink. It must be giving a sense of deja-vu to you, since I know that we have been through it once earlier.

Keeping your cool all the time, wherever at work or on road, is very important. What kills or impair most of the people is the road rage, or that momentary emotionally driven decisions which made us say or do things that affects the world around forever. The outcomes are worse for the person in the driving seat or one in similar situation at work, than for the surroundings, since that will become normal the next moment. Value of emotional quotient (E.Q.) is being emphasised more & more to be a strong performer.

How about planning or executing for short and long-term; we all work on 1-year and 3-5 year plans. Even though the objectives might be same, still the approach changes in terms of the budget, resources, time-availability. We go through the same when we drive short distance to work, or to a long-distance place for tourism. Infact, for a short-place, we don’t even think twice and take it as it comes, often; which is not thinkable for a long-drive.

How about the road signals; red, orange, green, which sound akin to many a things; might be a RAG (Red, Amber, Green) rating of a project, that is more of a check-point; or kind of a bottleneck on a road or a committee in office to go through proposals to prioritise, or a place to take a breathe, relax and move on.

We can keep going on; the point is not to keep justifying the analogy, but to take practical learnings  and put them to use at work, to Manage well at work.