Know the personalities and work styles of the people you are managing. Understanding what makes individuals tick is a strong tool to have in your arsenal. This will help you motivate these people and will eventually lead you to a place where you can use them to help with strategy.
Understand every role on your team and how the individuals fill those roles. Knowing how your team’s work flow happens will help you, especially once you understand how the individual personalities get the work done. These two are highly intertwined and know them both will help you advantage.
Find ways in which you can change the work flow or the motivation on an individual. Changing the way things are done in order to improve productivity is the best way to manage people for strategic advantage. By understanding how the person and the job relate, you can tinker with their responsibilities to try and improve things.
Keep a close eye on results. Changing the way work is done will have one of two results. It will either be good or bad. If your changes are not meeting your goals, it is best to change them before any irrevocable damage is done.
Change your management based on the results you have found. This can mean lightening one employees load to make them more productive, while another is more productive with a heavy load. Making these strategic changes is what creates a good manager.
