Whether you call it a management methodology, approach, style, manner, way or even a system, if it lacks one aspect it will not be effective.

If you are leading a team or department you are to communicate your tactics. You must tell either how you want activities organized or what the results should be. If you are combining both, people will wonder: “which one is the most important”. If you will not choose, others will choose for you. Yet others, being a team of twenty employees, might make their own choices. And all those choices added up will most certainly lack coherence.

They credited George Soros for cracking the bank of England in 1992. But was it really on his account (only) that the European Monetary System (EMS) fell apart? Excuse me for bringing up such an old history, but history appears to repeat itself sometimes. Credibility was one of the major reasons why the EMS was not sustainable. Credibility is not a topic for the economic section only. Even there it is about management; the management of the EMS, management (and control) of inflation, management of the treasury. The same fundamentals apply. For which in this case it is all about being credible.

Credibility is a psychological factor that is always present in management. Many projects that are lined up will not count on commitment because of a scope or objective that fails to be credible. Or that available resources that are in no proportion to the required output. There are many other examples. It is your job however to have them sorted out before you start managing.

© 2005 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company where Internet is the main interaction medium. By offering online tools we can address management issues in hours what normally would take days of consultancy. Astor White. Committed to your management issues. On a distance.