Here is a way to reduce productivity ...

My seven month old has learned to crawl and get a hold of objects he shouldn't be. When I take the object away from him, he throws a fit. Human beings develop a sense of ownership very early in their childhood and it stays with them.

Take away the ownership of a task from an employee, intentionally or worse yet unintentionally, and he or she will no longer have enough motivation to be as productive as he or she could be. Managers for the most part do not intentionally take away the ownership of a task from an employee unless they have a good reason to do so.  However, it is quite easy to take the ownership away without realizing it by asking questions, overruling decisions to dictate a style, making decisions about a task without conferring with the employee, and countless other ways. 

I know I am doing my job right when ...

As a manager, I know I am doing my job right when a member of my team expresses his or her dissatisfaction with something I have done. It is that moment when I know I have created an environment where people in the team can express their opinions without concern of being reprimanded.

To Hire or not to Hire

Hiring is one of the most critical decisions a manager makes. No matter how objective our process of interviewing is, at the end of the day, there is a lot of gut feeling involved. As a manager, you should listen to your gut feelings.

I have a simple theory that the interview day is someone's best day at work. Candidates with a good common sense would try to do everything right. If they don't, they either don't have a good common sense, or they have a good common sense and still don't get things right. Take for example the person who comes in late for an interview and has no good reason to be late. If a person ends up late at the interview day, what are the chances the candidate will take the day to day job seriously?

Management and the replacement refs

I have been watching American football for many years. All along, it never occurred to me, even once, the referees are doing a pretty decent job. Once in a while, in a game, referees would make a poor call, and that would frustrate the viewers. But all in all, the focus is the game, and not the performance of the referees.

Then in the 2012 season, the regular referees went on strike and NFL deployed replacement referees. All of a sudden it occurred to me what a great job the regular referees do. Everyone was talking about the poor calls of the replacement refs. A bad call in at least one case reversed the outcome of a game.

Good managers are like regular referees. You generally don't realize they are doing a good job. Once in a while, they mess up, but the focus is the work and the not performance of the manger. 

The good work of a manager can easily go unnoticed. All it takes to appreciate the work of a good manager is to observe or worst yet to have a poor manager. The direct reports of a poor manager are frustrated, demotivated, and can't wait for Friday to come.

What good managers do has been the subject of many books and articles. The essence of all is a fundamental understanding of people.