First-line managers are critical to the well-being of an organization, as they directly manage and have significant influence over employees who perform the day-to-day operational work. First-line managers who demonstrate a robust management system that focuses on both short-term and long-term operational goals, and, who have an effective employee engagement, enablement, and empowerment program, will enable an organization to focus on Its people, stabilize its operations, and drive continual improvement.        

The Management Foundations ensures that the First Line Managers have proper roles and responsibilities defined for their staff, their staff have all the processes and procedures documented, the staff have the necessary tools to execute the job, they are meeting with the staff to provide and gain feedback, the staff have the necessary reports and measurements to track, trend, and understand their and the team’s performance, the staff benefit from an analytics & optimization program that is looking to identify ways of doing things better, and a continual service improvement plan to drive service improvements.

We will focus on the roles and responsibilities process within the first-line management system, to delve deeper into what that process means.
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The roles and responsibilities process ensures that all staff are fully aware of their roles & responsibilities in the workplace. Clearly defined roles and their associated responsibilities are critical to relating how individual responsibilities contribute towards the organization's mission, vision, and goals. When this relationship is established, each employee will be able to see how they contribute to the organization and the value they add.

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In order to effectively manage the staff, it is essential to provide them with a clear definition and understanding of the role and responsibilities in the workplace. This will provide them with a good understanding of the job and the tasks they are to perform as individuals and within any of the teams, they are part of. It also provides information on where they fit within the organization, and whom they report to, helping to avoid disputes and misunderstandings.

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The most significant inhibitor to productivity, efficiency, and employee satisfaction is the lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Unclear roles and responsibilities can result in ineffective management of staff, important work being missed or falling short of the expected results, conflict arising from ownership of certain tasks, etc. This can impact not only the immediate department but also impact the quality and success of the organization.

Let’s take a look at the 7 management systems in more detail.

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Roles & Responsibilities Management

The objective of the Roles and responsibilities Management process is to ensure that all staff are fully aware of their roles, function, and responsibilities in the workplace. This system provides a reference framework of core roles and a template to document specific roles that every organization should implement to establish an optimized unified delivery model. 

Processes & Procedures Management

The objective of the Processes & Procedures Management process is to ensure that information fundamental to the team's success is captured and communicated, performed in a consistent way that meets the needs of the organization, and is reviewed at established intervals for currency. 

Meetings Management

The objective of the Meetings Management process ensure that meetings that are an important part of how work gets done are documented and executed. It ensures that meetings are held to provide and receive feedback so that everyone is in sync.

Technology & Tools Management

The objective of the Technology & Tools Management process is to provide a simplified, stable, and predictable technology platform that can benefit the organization and its support teams in providing improved service to its customers and having systems that have greater uptime and availability and more resiliency. It ensures that all Technology is planned, sized, approved, tested and deployed across the supporting Infrastructure.

Service Performance Management - Reporting & Measurements Management

The objective of the Reporting & Measurements process focuses on establishing reports that focus on internal and external operational and service level results. It is designed to provide information to both IT teams and Businesses to ensure informed decisions are being made. It allows both teams to track and trend performance and make any corrective changes.

Service Performance Management - Analytics & Optimization Management

The objective of the Analytics & Optimization process is to harvest various datasets to gain insights into the historical performance of the area being reviewed. The insights are used to develop foresight about how to reshape the go-forward strategy to drive operational improvements.

Continual Service Improvement Management

The objective of the Continual Service Improvement process is to leverage the Reporting & Measurements, Quality Management, Knowledge Management, and Training Management processes to drive the Shift Left strategy in the organization. The ultimate goal is to increase End-User uptime and availability by driving issues towards End User Self Enablement, Automation, and Self-Healing.

For a detailed explanation of each of these processes feel free to take a look at the book. journey to a unified delivery model, a framework for conducting operational health checks. The management whisperer series.

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Do your First Line Managers have the following processes in place?

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