In the last video, I reminded you of your goals as a manager, but you don't pursue these goals in a vacuum. You're part of this swirling vortex of lots of constraints and influences like norms and culture, laws, maybe even labor unions. And so, in this video we're going to look at some of these major influences as a reminder of the things you need to contend with as a manager. Now first, let's start within the walls of the organization. First, organizational strategy. What is the organization's mission? How do you and your work group contribute to it? Your practices as a manager need to serve the organization's strategy, and certainly not run counter to it. Now, organizations also have culture and norms. They have a set of shared understanding of values. So, for example, at Southwest Airlines there's a culture of friendly employees. REI has a culture of environmental stewardship. Google has an culture of openness, creativity, questioning others. These create norms that shape acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. It's unacceptable to be grumpy at Southwest Airlines, wasteful at REI, hierarchical and authoritarian at Google. You, as a manger, need to be aware of these organizational values when managing others. But don't always see this as a constraint. Norms can facilitate behavior as well. So if there's positive organizational norms, make the most of them. If there's negative organizational norms at your organization that interfere with what you want your employees to be doing, try to change them. Try to use norms as part of your toolkit of managerial practices to shape good employee behavior and employee performance. Now, putting organizational strategy, culture and norms together also yields budgetary constraints perhaps in your organization. What is your organization's willingness or ability to pay? In a non-profit or government agency, might not be the resources to pay for high salaries or pay for training or development. A company might believed that they have razor thin profit margins. They might not choose to invest in high salaries or spend money on employee training and development. So, this can also provide a set of constraints that you face as a manager. If your employees are represented by a labor union, this can provide another set of limits or constraints on what you can do as a manager. In some countries there might be works councils which could have similar implications for you as a manager. But remember, you can create good relationships with a Union as well. And so, you can try to use Unions to facilitate not just constrain behavior. We'll talk more about managing in a Unionized environment in the next video. But as a manager, you don't live solely within the walls of the organization. Your corporation or your organization is part of a broader society. It's part of a local community, it's part of a global community. And so, what happens inside the walls of an organization is important, but you cannot ignore what's going on beyond the walls of the organization. The most concrete example of this is the law. Clearly, as a manager, you need to obey laws and regulations. This will be the focus of lesson number two in this module. But there's other external pressures besides just the law. There's political pressure, there's social norms, there's things called soft law. What is soft law? Those are guidelines and codes of conduct passed by government agencies, maybe the United Nations, the European Union, maybe even a local city council that aren't legally binding, but there might be pressures in the global community or your local community to try to adhere to those codes of conduct or to those guidelines. Outside the political arena, organizations and managers have to contend with social norms. For example, in some countries there's a movement right now to ban the box. This seeks to pressure companies to remove a box from their job application which asks whether an applicant has a criminal record or not. Some companies, such as the retail company Target, have changed their practice in response to this campaign without a legal requirement to do so. But beware, not all social norms involve campaigns. In fact, most probably don't. So be aware of what's acceptable and unacceptable in your specific culture and locality. If, as a manager, you try to push the boundaries of these constrains too far, for example, by violating organizational norms, it could be a bumpy road just as the sign here indicates. And so, what can a manager do? Well, again, just like there's a warning signs for drivers, there's a warning signs for managers. You should be looking for poor performance and attitudes. Now, this might not be a sign that you're violating organizational norms or other types of things. There can be other reasons for poor performance or poor attitudes, like workers not having the right skills. But when faced with these things, look in the mirror and see if there's things that you can be doing to improve. And also, look for whether people or excessively late, excessively absent, looking to leave early a lot of the times. Or, taking that to a higher level, people quitting at an excessive rate. Is it hard to retain your workgroup? Is it hard to recruit new people into your workgroup? You can also do engagement surveys. Your Human Resources professional can help you with this. Lots of companies do engagement surveys or pulse surveys. Your organization might have one already, and you can use this to create benchmark scores. You can look at the engagement score of your workgroup compared to the engagement score of other workgroups in the organization. You can also create a benchmark score that you can track over time. If, over time, your engagement score is trending downwards, that's obviously a bad sign. And you can look to try to diagnose what's going on. Maybe part of that is you're violating social norms, violating organizational culture. So, again, your human resources professional can help you create some metrics which you can use to make you a better manager and watch for warning signs of violating organizational norms, social norms and other constraints that you face as a manager. Watching for these warning signs is important because, remember >> People love their organizations and oftentimes stay longer because they have a great manager. But if they have a bad manager, they will leave in spite of liking the organization. >> So, as the Rolling Stones sang, you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need. Again, you're in this vortex of lots of influences. However, you can be a good manager. You can get what you need done without violating organizational norms. Without violating organizational culture. We'll talk more about managing in a Unionized environment in the next video. And then, in the next lesson we'll talk more about employment and labor laws that you need to be aware of.
