It’s a new year and a good time to focus on the positive side of your job as the manager of your business. In this post, I’d like to consider the question of what makes management fun and rewarding and what you can do to increase that pleasure. Here are four potential sources of management joy.

1.       DEVELOPING YOUR EMPLOYEES
It can be very gratifying to watch your staff grow under your leadership. Impacting the life of another person in a positive way can be an enormous source of pride and can do wonders for your organization.

To do more of it, think of your role as enabling your employees to be successful. As much as possible, you should be the coach on the sidelines helping them succeed. Make sure the work they are doing is designed properly, listen to them and act on what you hear, provide training opportunities so they can keep improving, and let them know when they’re doing a good job.

2.      CREATING INSIGHTS
An insight is an “aha moment”. It’s when you finally understand the true nature of a situation. It’s when a business or product opportunity suddenly comes into focus. It’s when you discover an elegant solution to a stubborn problem. And it can be a real high!

To create more insights, create processes that allow both you and your staff to do just that. You can systematically create business design insights, product insights, customer insights, and employee insights. All these processes usually involve gathering information (including through first-hand observation), collaborating with people who can add value, brainstorming, and testing to confirm your beliefs. Insight creation can be baked into your culture if you really think it’s important. If you do, you’ll be smiling all day long.       

3.      GETTING POSITIVE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
Since your business’s purpose is to somehow make the lives of parents and their children better, there’s not much in business more satisfying than getting product or service compliments from them. It makes all that hard work pay off. Similarly, a compliment from a major retailer goes a long way towards making you feel more secure.

It all starts with thoroughly understanding your customers including what they want and how they really feel about your products and services. You can’t make them happy if you don’t know what makes them happy. And you can’t keep them satisfied without having an outstanding ongoing feedback system that is both accurate and timely. 
 

4.      ACHIEVING FINANCIAL SUCCESS
You are running a business after all so while all the preceding management functions can be pleasurable, there’ll be no joy if you’re not also growing your top line and making money.

I would argue that if you do a good job of items 1 to 3 above, you’ll enhance your ability to succeed financially. But you can increase your chances even more while making your own job more enjoyable by hiring a business-savvy CFO who thinks of their role not as the company’s financial chief of police but rather as the “chief efficiency enabler”—helping everyone in the company reduce waste and improve productivity year after year.    

Happy Managing!