Book Content

1. Getting started as a manager.
Important information regarding management.

2. Manage the inputs
You can influence the outcome of tomorrow if you do something today. You can help your staff to draw up a list of tasks that will ensure a minimum outcome. If you apply the techniques in this chapter you will not to be surprised when you see the results in a day or a week.

3. Your responsibilities
Understand what it is that you and your staff must do and how to help them understand their responsibilities as well as how they will be measured. This chapter also deals with Key Performance Areas and reviews.

Your staff responsibilities

4. Your staff's responsibilities
Your staff must do the work your section must deliver as if they are you, without your constant pushing. Your staff needs to be "self propelled".

5. Management tools
A manager needs a set of basic tools. This can be as simple as a pocket book or as sophisticated as software. Get to know and use the tools that pack your toolbox.

6. Team building part 1 - All aboard
There are many people in a team and each has a specific job to do. They must work together to reach a common goal.

7. Adapt yourself to communicate effectively
Every person has different communication preferences. You can pick this up and adapt your style to improve your communication skills so that the other person is comfortable with how you communicate. It makes a difference where people are working together in the same team.

8. Team building part 2 – Lift off
With the knowledge of the different communication styles in the previous chapter, you can take the team to the next level of performance.

9. Train your staff
Incompetence is the number one excuse for poor performance. You can change this by teaching your staff and make opportunities for them to teach each other.

Safety and housekeeping in the workplace.bmp

10. Safety and housekeeping in the workplace
Your staff deserves to work in a safe place with clear and simple rules. Each one of us wants to tell our families in the morning that we will see them tonight.

11. Managing finances
Most of us struggle to manage our own finances. What must we do in a company?

12. Problem solving
Most of a manager's day can consist of solving some kind of problem. Most problems are easy to solve, but every so often there is a "show stopper" that needs to be solved properly and quickly. You can solve problems effectively if you apply a strategy.

13. Discipline and legal procedures
The organisation that you work for and the country that you work in have rules and regulations that need to be honoured and respected. Your staff may disregard these rules, resulting in your department performing poorly. How do you deal with those who refuse to honour the rules?

14. Acknowledgements and appreciation
I thank all the wonderful people who invested their time and efforts into my life and this book.

15. Finally
A final word regarding Management and Engineering.