I think it intriguing, the leadership of the LDS church concept. The leaders, yes they lead when they need to. But they have such love for the peope, they would rather give service to those who need it, rather than play the boss and kick back and do nothing but order and watch. To be of service to those undeneith you flies in the face of typical world management styles, yet it appears to build more people’s character than micromanaging does.

The true mark of good management tactics are good communications, return and report expectations, help when you can, even in small things. Don’t play games with people. And last of all (there are others, but we will stop here), treat all your employees with great respect.

I like the sign in a business that says “Treat your employees like you would like them to treat your customers”. I think that somewhat summerizes it.

I was an intern on the Nintendo Power magazine staff and my primary responsibility was to take screenshots of that month’s featured video games. On one project I was given the added responsibility of making callouts for the location of items on every map in a 120+ page guide book. Because the game was still under development these item locations tended to move around from week to week. I had no documentation and was forced to play thru the game and recheck all of these callouts each time I got a new drop of code, which took time. Before the project started, my manager had given me a vague, loose description of what she needed me to do. She told me that it was my job to make sure that the maps were correct. It wasn’t until we were doing the final check of the proofs on the day before we went to print that she asked me if I had made sure that the locations of some ultra-rare items were correct. She was extremely anxious because as she put it, the game wasn’t very complicated, but that those items were difficult to find, so revealing how to find them was one of the most important value propositions of the guide. Luckily I had figured that out on my own and had checked those items on the final build and sure enough, they had moved.

Long story short, from that experience I learned that as a manager I need to define what success looks like and that on the flipside, I need to ask my manager to do the same.

Yes, people need to be responsible for their actions, but you can try to make it so that an accident doesn’t cause a detriment.

There is a fine line between being a useful part of a project team and hindering your teams progress.

[Joel: It's a great point. Thank you, Mario. Sometimes people invite management to get involved by asking questions in the wrong way or asking the wrong questions altogether. Employees should gauge the propensity of the boss to micromanage or to want things done a certain way and throttle questions accordingly. Managers should encourage people to ask questions, but try to be perscriptive only when it really matters.]

[Joel: You're hired!]