Category: Employee management software online tools

Summary

Software has created unprecedented opportunities for the project manager. There are new applications for project management in almost every industry. In the military, the project manager can use software to synchronize knowledge, strategy, and operations. In the field of information management, the software project manager can coordinate the efforts of many software programmers. Software puts project managers into the center of business. Software projects seem to be everywhere, and you can't go wrong with software. Software is so successful that project managers have become important players in the corporate world. But software can be complicated. A project manager had to take his best guess at what to do.  Hence, Project management software will not take over the project manager's job,  but it does make it easier to do  the work.

background

As project manager, you often need software to do your job. One of your primary tasks is to keep track of your project: who is doing what, when, why, how much, and so on. Most project managers use some kind of project management software (or, sometimes, none at all). But do you have the right kind? How do you know? Project management software comes in many flavors. Some are useful, some are not. Probably the most common is the spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are useful for keeping lists. But lists of what? There is an important distinction between lists of things and lists of processes. A spreadsheet is usually good for listing things. But spreadsheets are not so good for making them. A spreadsheet is good for keeping track of which tasks have been assigned to whom and when. But spreadsheets are not so good at keeping track of why the tasks were assigned. A spreadsheet is good for keeping track of how much has been spent so far on each project. But a spreadsheet can make it hard to keep track of what the money was spent on. A spreadsheet is good for keeping track of when each task is supposed to be done. But a spreadsheet can make it hard to track when each task was actually started. A spreadsheet is good for keeping track of who is supposed to be doing what. But a spreadsheet can make it hard to keep track of who really is doing what. A spreadsheet is good for keeping track of when you are supposed to be doing whatever. But a spreadsheet can make it hard to keep track of if you actually did it. Spreadsheets are great for listing stuff. But they're not so great for keeping track of stuff. So spreadsheets are not a good project management tool. There are two other types of project management software (or, sometimes, none at all). One is a paper notebook. Notebooks are often useful for keeping track of stuff. But lists on paper are hard to manage. Thus, benefits of project reporting software evince when you want to succeed and reduce operational costs.

Start with end in mind when using project reporting software

A lot of people say project management is part of the problem, not the solution. I disagree. Project management is often a good thing. In almost all professional situations, project management is easier than doing the work yourself. There, I said it. Anyone who says otherwise isn't honest. But project management is not always a good thing. In a lot of situations, it is hard or impossible. There are at least two reasons project management is hard. One is that there are a lot of bad project managers. The other problem is that in many organizations, project management is taken for granted, and people just assume it will always work. The bad project managers are usually easy to spot. They bark orders, they micromanage, they intimidate, they demand unrealistic deadlines and unrealistic budgets, and they pretend money grows on trees. They are also usually incompetent.

The bad project managers are a problem, but not the only problem. The problem is also that many people in management positions don't know how to manage projects. They think they have to micromanage everything, so they can say, "I told you so" later. As we said, project management is easier, and this makes it hard for managers to admit they don't know how to do it. But project management is hard even when managers know how to do it. One reason is that many projects require new skills or different skills. For example, some projects require people to think in new ways, or to learn new skills, or to use existing skills in a different way. But what often happens is that the people who know how to do those things, the people who know how to do project management, don't put them to use in new projects. So project managers do the best they can, but they can't always do it right. The second reason is that project management is hard even when management knows how to do it. A project requires discipline and discipline entails following a plan. Plans are well documented using PMS tools and that's why you need a software in your business.

In 1992, I was a manager in a software company. Our project was behind schedule and over budget, and we were suffering a series of other setbacks. Since it was my job to tell people bad news, I was having trouble doing that gracefully. As my superiors told me what was going on, I wondered why they had allowed the project to get so far behind. They said they had given a lot of thought to the problem, and that they had concluded that we should have managed it differently. After they left, I looked at their notes, and the explanation they gave me made sense. They didn't say, "We should have done more planning." They said, "We should have been doing less planning. "Finally, I understood. The problems that were costing us time and money were the result of our having underestimated what it would take to do the project. The trouble was that when we made the initial plans, we were thinking in terms of months, not in years. We assumed that we could do all the work in six months, and that after that the project would be easy, because we would finally get to use many of the things we had already done. We had assumed that we could pretty much keep our plans, and so had underestimated the costs of learning something new, and the cost of changing our plans. Late in the project, we suddenly realized that the way we had planned was flawed. We had planned to make software that could be used by lots of people, and it turned out it had to meet the needs of only a small number of people. We realized that we had spent a lot of money on stuff that people didn't need, and that we had wasted a lot of time making something that people didn't need. The experience taught me something: Don't plan to do a complicated project quickly. The lessons of that project are valuable even when you don't manage a project. If you are planning to do something complicated, and it isn't obvious, you need all tools that can help you do better. That's where project reporting software comes in.  There may be many tools that fit different use cases but for me, I used online PMS tools, which could suffice the scope of my work.

 project managers can do better when using project reporting software tools

Projects, by their very nature, are uncertain. "Whenever you build a project," says project management guru Peter Drucker, "you are betting that the project will add value to your operation." The bet pays off only if the project turns out as planned. To succeed, projects must be planned, managed, and evaluated. But most people aren't good at planning and managing, and most people don't understand how to evaluate a project's success. Project management is neither art nor science, but a mix of the two. Most projects succeed or fail by the simple virtue of being done right. And most of what we do well or poorly is not based on any hard science, but on intuition, experience, and common sense. Project management is a skill, and like any skill it can be taught. Unfortunately, people don't learn much from books, and much of what they pick up from books gets forgotten. The best way to learn is by doing. The basic principles of project management are not difficult to learn. The hard part is getting past the fundamental misconceptions most people have about projects. The better you get at managing projects, the easier it gets.

What does success in projects really mean?

The most accurate thing you can say about a business project is that it was successful. A project that was 50% successful would have produced 50% of the desired results. But did the project really achieve 50% of the desired results? Maybe it achieved more than 50%, maybe less. So, for project management, success means more than producing results. It means exceeding expectations. And for exceeding expectations, the measure of success is not whether the result fits a predefined plan, it's whether the result meets the customer's needs. Software projects are often compared to construction projects. In construction, it's customary to bill by the hour. If a construction worker spends 3 hours per 1,000 square feet, you might think it's reasonable to estimate the cost of a 2,500-square-foot house at 10,000 hours. But most projects don't work that way. a long term project development is more like building a house using the plans an architect makes. The customer needs a set of requirements, and you develop software to meet the requirements. You don't get credit for the time you put in. You get credit for meeting the customer's needs. The way to measure a project's success is not by comparing it, after the fact, to some arbitrary goal. It's by comparing the customer's goals to the final project. Suppose a customer wants a calculator that can do arithmetic, and it can also do trigonometry and calculus. Hence, using the right PMS tools may help you achieve a higher success rate in projects.

Project Managers need help in work reporting

In my time as a project manager, I frequently heard the phrase "project lifecycle." This phrase is probably a relic from the days when projects were long and laborious affairs, involving lots of paperwork and meetings. The lifecycle is a series of phases, each with its own tasks and deliverables. The project manager is the person in charge of each phase. At any given stage, the project manager is juggling multiple projects. The lifecycle, though, is not really a lifecycle. It is a list of phases. If you pitch all over a project, you are talking nonsense. A single project might go through many phases, and phases might overlap. At any given time, the project manager might be working on three or four projects. The lifecycle is a diagram meant to help management keep track of what projects the project manager is working on. The lifecycle is supposed to help management keep track of what projects the project manager is working on. The project manager is supposed to be the person in charge of each phase. But management is not supposed to tell the project manager what to do. The project manager is supposed to find the best way to meet management's goals. The lifecycle, though, doesn't really help management. It is just a list of phases, and what management wants most is for things to get done. What management wants most is for things to get done. Management's job is to set goals, and to help the project manager achieve those goals. Lucky for project managers, technology advancement has led to invention of project reporting software that can solve most of these challenges. One of free software for is Finclock

Use project reporting software to achieve more at work

The best managers know how to do two things: run the business, and run the people who work in the business. Both of those tasks involve making choices. The better managers make better choices. And the better choices they make, the better their outcomes. Some choices are easy. You pick which stock to buy, or which project to assign to an engineer. Some choices have fairly clear, objective criteria. Which of the engineers is sick or has the flu? Which of the projects is behind schedule? Other decisions are harder. Who are your best people? How do you reward them? How do you motivate them? How will you deal with the inevitable turnover? What skills do you need most? Of course, you can't know in advance which choices will turn out best. You can't know, for example, that your team won't all leave for a better offer. And you can't avoid making a lot of mistakes. But you can make better choices, and you can make better choices faster, if you learn from your mistakes. And the best managers always learn. The better managers use specific tools to make that learning easy. They measure and track results. They analyze data and track data. They use checklists and templates. They automate repetitive tasks. They track costs. And those tools, though essential, are not the only tools they have. The best managers also know how to ask the right questions: How big a problem is this? Who do I depend on to help me? What do I need to do? They know how to ask the right questions, and then they ask the right questions. They recognize and do the right things, and then they recognize and do the right things. It's not always clear how a particular decision will turn out. Using online project management software tools can help project managers achieve the tons of tasks by streamlining the delegation process.

Want to succeed? Hire the right people

A successful employer needs more than a clever product. It needs a market that wants it. And it needs employees that know how to make it. So, in hiring, employers often fall back on stereotypes: energetic, enthusiastic people, or those who show initiative, or those who seem logical, or those who seem creative. Unfortunately, these stereotypes often end up selecting for the wrong things. If you hire enthusiastic people, you will end up with too many. If you hire logical people, you will end up with those who can't communicate, or those who can't solve real problems, or those who can't pay the rent. But if you hire initiative, or creativity, or communication, these will be skills that set you apart from the competition. That is how hiring should work. But in practice, it usually doesn't. The conventional way to get hired is to have qualifications. Qualifications are partly what you need to do the job and partly what the employer thinks you need. But employers often express qualifications in the wrong way. The want a competence, but they mean a competence that they have already: competence in systems they have spent years understanding. They want a competence, but they mean a competence they want you to have. Employers want people who are smart or smart-looking or nice or likeable or hard-working. But these are skills, not qualifications. Skills are things you can teach. Qualifications are things you can't teach. To hire well you have to think like an employer. You have to think about what the employer really wants, not what the employer thinks is important. You have to think about what skills the employer wants, not the skills you think will help. You may need tools and that is where employee project management software comes in. Lucky for you, Finclock team has developed cool software for you and you may try it for free.

Simplify Project Management and focus on results

When I see the words "project management" on a job post, I know two things: the job is boring and the person hiring it has no idea what they are doing. The job has two main tasks: 1. Figure out what needs doing. 2. Get the other people who need to be doing it to do it.

The trouble with the first is that most organizations have no way of figuring out what needs doing. They are, in effect, run by giant collections of people who don't know what they're doing. In any organization, the people who run things (the executives) have information the other people don't have. So they try to figure out what they need to know, and they try to give it to them. But they can't. The trouble with the second is that, even if you could get the people who need to be doing something to do it, they might not do it. Or they might not do it in the way that you wanted them to. Or they might do it partially, leaving some problem unsolved. Or they might do it out of order. Or they might do it in a way that makes no sense. Or they might not do it at all.

If you try to have somebody figure out what needs doing, and somebody else figure out who needs to be doing it, and then somebody else figure out how to get them to do it, things will go wrong. But if you try to have somebody figure out what needs doing, and then somebody else figure out how to get them to do it, and then somebody else figure out who needs to be doing it, and then somebody else figure out how to get them to do it, things will go wrong. No matter how many people you have, you can't avoid risk. The trouble with the first task (figuring out what needs doing) is that, even if you could figure out what needs doing, you might not know which of your needs are important. You might have thousands of needs, but you don't know which ones are most important. Using online project management software would help you focus on the right things in your project and avoid excessive paperwork. So, just use the right software and focus on results.

Employees leave companies all the time. And when they do, they bring all that expertise and knowledge with them. But that knowledge doesn't stay with the employee. It stays with the company. So if a company wants to take advantage of its knowledge, it has to collect it somehow. And companies do collect knowledge. They are hiring smart people, and they are giving them lots of tools, so they can do lots of different things. And the company keeps careful records of what they are doing. But all that data has to be organized to be useful. using employee project management software ensures business continuity and eliminates turnover challenge. Notably, a software company makes software for collecting, organizing, and using the data. That way, a company can keep track of all the knowledge and ideas its employees have. And it can use it, too. Some companies do manage their knowledge in-house. But the complexity of gathering and managing that knowledge has often been underestimated. Here are some things a company has to do well: 1. It must have people to collect, organize, and use the knowledge. 2. It must teach people how to use the knowledge. 3. It must design the knowledge so it can be used in ways that are useful. 4. It must have ways of collecting knowledge from outside, such as through Web sites. 5. It must keep track of what knowledge already exists. 6. It must keep track of what knowledge is becoming obsolete. 7. It must keep track of what knowledge should be improved. 8. It must keep track of what knowledge is being misused. 9. It must keep track of what knowledge needs to be shared. 10. It must keep track of what knowledge needs to be kept private. 11. It must deal with the business implications of all this knowledge.

Plan for the future using employee project management software

The future is unpredictable, and it is even less predictable if you don't know what you are trying to do. You can't predict the future if you don't know what actions you want the system to take. Most systems are collections of routines that respond to their environment, and these routines change and evolve. And they are not designed. They are evolved. As a result, the future is unpredictable. Moreover, we don't know what we are trying to do. Often, we are not even sure we understand what it is we are trying to do. No one knows what the Tesla Roadster is for. Nobody knows for sure what the Tesla Roadster is for, and to the best of our knowledge Tesla doesn't think they know either. A system that is not designed is often brittle. The routines change, and they don't fit together as nicely, and the system breaks. A brittle system is very difficult to maintain. Often, we know what we want the system to do, but we don't know how to do it, because we don't know what we want it to do. And often, we don't know why, either. The future is uncertain, and we don't know what we are doing. The best that we can hope for is that we are doing what we think we should be doing. Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are sitting in your office, and someone walks up to you and says, "I want to build you a Tesla Roadster." How would you respond? To you, the Tesla Roadster is an object, a thing, something you can touch. You can't imagine what you want it to do. And even if you could, you couldn't imagine how you might do it. This thought experiment illustrates that to build your own Tesla Roadster, you first have to know how you want it to be able to drive itself. And to do that, you have to know what driving itself means. How do you move a car without a driver? The best way is to use PMS tools that will benefit your business now and in future.

Employees are the most important asset of an organization. They are the ones who bring in the customers. They are the ones who deliver the profits. They are the ones who do most of the work. Yet employee management is an area that most organizations waste enormous amounts of time and money on. Surveys show that managers spend an average of an hour every day checking emails, checking voicemail, and responding to other messages. They spend another hour reading mail. The average person in a typical organization spends 40 hours a week just on email.

The average person in a typical organization spends four hours a week on actual work. Most people think they should spend even less time. The surveys don't say how much time managers feel they should spend; the only thing they are asked is how much time they spend. But managers also know that if they spend too little time, they are likely to be criticized for not spending enough time. So they try to spend just enough time to avoid criticism.

A manager's job is to keep the organization running smoothly. She should spend, on average, 14 hours a week on work. That leaves 10 hours a week for everything else: reading mail, checking emails, responding to voicemail, and so on. These administrative tasks consume 20 hours a week. That leaves 4 hours a week for everything else: meetings, performance reviews, training, and so on.

The manager has 4 hours of work time, 20 hours of administrative tasks, and 4 hours of meetings. 4X20=80 hours. 4X4=16 hours. That leaves 40 hours. 40 hours divided by 7 days=20 hours. So the manager should work 20 hours a week. However, these hours are split among multiple tasks and projects, which may not be beneficial to a business. Lucky for you, employee project management software is available to ease the work and improve productivity. Think of the software as an assistant to take care of most of your work and leave you with enough time to do the most critical tasks.

Manage employees online

Whenever someone new starts a job, he or she is assigned to a project. The project leader assigns tasks to the team members, and then monitors their progress. The team shares information, and the leader makes decisions about how to coordinate their efforts. It won't work if everyone is doing the same thing. The person who does most of the work has to know what's going on. The person who takes most of the decisions has to know what's actually going on. And so on.

This division of work between project manager and team is called "functional decomposition," and it is standard practice for software development. It's also standard practice in construction. If the team doesn't know what's going on, they can't coordinate their efforts. If someone doesn't know what to do, they can't do it. But you can have a different system. Instead of starting with the project manager, start with the team. Do the functional decomposition on the team members.

In the software world, we call it "distributed functional decomposition". Instead of one person calling the shots for the whole project team, each person is in charge of a small part of it. In construction, we call it "distributed management". Instead of assigning tasks or making decisions for the entire team, each person is in charge of a small part of it. Distributed management is risky. Distributed functional decomposition is safer. You can't build anything useful if you don't do some of the work yourself. But distributed management is more complex than functional decomposition.

Distributed management is hard to standardize. Do your team members need to know what's going on? Do they need to make decisions? Can they agree on what "what's going on" means? Or on what's actually going on? Distributed management is risky. Distributed functional decomposition is safer. You can't build anything useful if you don't do some of the work yourself. But distributed management work best when combined with online project management software for business, which automates most of the tasks and ensures team collaboration.

How to use employee project management software for business

Project management software has divided reputation. It's not because it's complicated, it's because people use it badly. People hate projects. They think projects take too much time, are too expensive, and generally suck. They hate them so much that 65% of people on projects quit within five years.

But project managers hate projects too. They hate them for the same reasons, but for a different reason. They hate projects so much because they've seen other people use projects badly. Project managers hate projects because they've seen teams waste months on pointless meetings, arguing about everything. They hate projects because they've seen people work long hours without getting anything done. They hate projects because they've seen people spend weeks building the wrong thing, only to find out later that what they needed was completely different.

Projects work okay if everyone on the team is on the same page. But most teams aren't. Most people think in one way, and they think in one way only. They don't think in the way that engineers do, or in the way that business analysts do, or in the way that managers do. A project can't help teams work the way they need. That's why most projects fail. But projects really can work if they let the people involved manage themselves. A project should create space for people to try out new things. It should help teams discover what they need to know.

But a project can't do that unless the team figures out what it needs to know and works together to find it. We can make it easier. We can start by helping teams learn what they need to know. That's the job of a project. Using employee project management software saves you the time and effort.

Employees don't think in terms of projects. They think in terms of jobs, and jobs are about solving problems. They don't think of problems as projects. Projects are a method of organizing work. They work especially well for large projects, but you don't have to do them that way. You can use a project to organize any job, and that is sufficient. Projects can make you more effective. But they don't make you more effective at solving problems.

The essence of a project is that its parts don't have to do what they are supposed to do. A project's job is to bring parts together so they will know what to do. Projects can work well, but you have to know what you are doing. As you get bigger, projects become harder to manage, and more important, because they also cause a lot of people to get fired. A project's job is to make your job easier, but you don't get that benefit unless you understand how the project works.

What is the best way to use employee project management software in a business?

There is no good answer. Management by committee is a really bad idea. But you also have to be able to manage by initiative, and that can't happen if it's driven by a committee.

I think the answer is a mixture. You have to make decisions, but you need to be aware of the possible consequences. If you are the person who makes the decision, you obviously need to be aware; but if the decision is in the hands of a committee, you also need to be informed. For example, if you are designing a new computer chip, you want the chips to be small, and you want them to run fast. So you want smaller transistors and a faster clock speed. But you also want the chip to be reliable. So you want bigger transistors and a longer time between failures.

But you can't have both. Sometimes you can't make both. If you make too many of them, you can't fit them all on the chip. If you make them too small, they get burned up. And if they run too fast, you burn up the ones you make. It's the same with missionaries. Sometimes you can't make both. Sometimes people won't listen. You need to know which you can make. And you need to know what the consequences are of making them. You need to weigh the benefit against the cost. You can't necessarily predict what the consequences will be, but you do need to be aware that they are possible. You can't be paralyzed by not knowing. You need to know that things can go wrong, but you also have to be aware that things can go right. And you need to know which they are.

You need to decide. But you also need to be informed.

Employee project management software for SMBs

Employees, by their very nature, are unpredictable. Their moods change unpredictably. Their priorities change unpredictably. Their needs change unpredictably. Their inputs change unpredictably. Their outputs change unpredictably.

So, when managers ask them to do predictable things, like tracking hours or meeting deadlines, they are asking for trouble. They have no way of knowing whether their employees will follow their directions.

But managers can't predict everything. So they have to rely on their employees to do the unpredictable things, like keeping track of time. If employees are doing their own time tracking, they have no reason to lie. That's where employee project management software for business comes in. The software tracks employees' time automatically. It reports the hours automatically. It gives them no reason not to tell the truth.

Why doesn't the software report the hours automatically? Because managers too often have no way of knowing whether their employees are doing the unpredictable things they are supposed to. Managers are given the time tracking data by the software, but they have no way of checking the data. The software doesn't know whether employees have tracked time, or whether they have accurately reported the hours they spent on work.

So managers have to ask employees, "Did you track time today?" And the employee has to lie. Managers can lie too. "What time did you start?" "I don't remember." "What time did you end?" "I don't remember." Managers can invent the time. Employees can't. Managers can estimate the time, knowing that if they guess wrong, they will lose face. Employees can't lie, because

Why Use Employee project management software in your business?

You can't motivate people; you can only pay them.

But pay them more than their competitors, and you can do that. Creative people want to go to places where they will be paid for their creativity. And in that kind of market, employees have a huge incentive to be creative. But markets for creative work are not easy to design. The better you are at something, the harder it is to get noticed; the more talented you are, the harder it is to get hired.

So any market in which employees can make money has to help employees get noticed. And that's where competition comes in. In normal markets, competition is usually bad. In normal markets, a company's only advantage is itself. But in a creative market, the employees' only advantage is the company. And a company's only advantage is employees. By helping employees get noticed, competition helps a company get noticed, and the cycle continues.

Of course, every market has a marginal cost. The more of one kind of work you do, the less you can profitably do of another kind of work. But in creative markets, where a lot of people are doing the same kind of work, the marginal cost of one kind of work is greater than the cost of another.

That is what makes markets for creative work different from normal markets. In normal markets, everyone has a comparative advantage. And in creative markets, everyone has a comparative disadvantage. But what's in that advantage? The advantage is creativity. And in creative work, creativity is your only chance. So, in markets for creative work, you can't motivate people; you can only pay them. But pay them more than their competitors. Using online project management software will simplify your work and improve productivity of your employees. Luckily, there are online software for you that you can try for free.

Summary

Business managers have three skills to learn:

1. How to find things. For example, they can find a good location for a shopping center: there are lots of customers near there, the rents are cheap, and there are plenty of empty buildings.
2. How to deal with other people. For example, finding the right online employee management software to guide them in decision making.
3. How to deal with change. For example, they can anticipate likely changes in their market, respond to those changes, and make money from them. But it is difficult to predict which changes will happen, and when.

What you need to know

You may be thinking, "I want to become a manager, so why should I care about what smart managers do?" Well, becoming a manager is risky. And being smart—being as smart as the most successful managers—is the best insurance against being riskily wrong. There are two ways to become a good manager. The first is to learn by imitation. The second way is to engineer your own path.

The engineering path is exemplified by Steve Jobs. The engineering path begins with the recognition that every manager is his own worst enemy. Steve Jobs might have found a better engineer, but being an engineer himself, he knew that was impossible. Instead, he invented his own management style: management by shooting.

The engineering path begins by identifying the obstacles in the way. This often means asking a question like "Whose job is it?" and realizing that the answer is "Yours." And then, armed with that answer, the engineer must ask "How am I going to do this?" And the question is hard to answer, because the answer depends on problems you can't solve. The best strategy is to start by coming up with some vague ideas, and then to try to develop them a little at a time. This attitude is called "Doing Nothing." It is also called "developing a framework."

Then, when the framework is ready, it's time to build something small. But be careful. Don't start too big. If you start too big, you will fail. Steve Jobs was famous for saying "Appreciate the failing faster," but what he said was "Appreciate the fast failing." The faster failing is the failing you can recognize sooner.

The world is full of people who are really good at something and terrible at everything else. They are often tempted to spend all their time doing their thing and neglect everything else. Some do this because they love it, some because they fear they will lose it, and others both. The result is always the same: they achieve some measure of success with the thing that they are good at, but at the cost of not being good at anything else.

Successful managers are good at everything. They have to be. They manage a whole company, and their success depends on managing the company well. And their manager's job is to make sure that everything that is done is right. When things are done right, management is easier than when they aren't. When they are not, it is easy. And management requires overseeing the work of many people, and those people depend on their manager's understanding of many subjects.

Make smart decisions in business

Let’s start with the basics. A business manager needs to be able to make smart business decisions quickly. They need to know how to find customers, how to find locations, and how to find landlords that will rent them space. These are simple skills that can be learned by anyone. Management is not hard, it just requires common sense and experience. The best way to make the right decisions in all projects is to use online project management software for business and get your team to work towards common goals.

What makes a Manager successful?

You would think that managers who get promoted would have an easier time of their job, but the opposite seems to be true. They learn the ropes of management the hard way. Managers do need to learn how to manage, but they don't know how to do it. They have to figure it out for themselves. And since they depend on other people to tell them what to do, finding their own way is often hard.

Managers start out as workers, and they improve themselves by looking at other workers. They watch other people's behavior and try to figure out what made them successful. Then they try it out themselves. But managers aren't all the same. Some managers are natural born managers. They didn't have to learn how to manage. They learned it naturally. They didn't have to watch other people. They watched themselves.

These managers are relatively rare, but they are also probably smarter and more capable than average. Probably because they already have most of the skills they need. And probably because they know how to take advantage of those natural abilities. The trouble is, the rest of us aren't like that. Most of us have to watch other people to learn how to manage. And we have to watch other managers to learn how to manage better. And watching other people is risky. It's quite likely that watching other people will lead us down the wrong path.

We can learn some of the skills we need by reading books and watching others at work.  The best way is to utilize PMS tools for projects and make very detailed reports. But we probably learn more by doing it ourselves. The problem is that we have to risk making mistakes. We can't just go out and hire ourselves a manager. We have to figure it all out for ourselves.

That's why managers often end up making mistakes. They learn by watching others, but they find out the hard way that other people don't always behave the way we think they do. And often when they do, it's not because they are bad people. It's because they are not us.

What are the habits of successful managers?

Most managers already know what to do. They read strategy books. They listen to advice from other managers. They read management newsletters. They watch CNBC. They read business magazines. They go to management training seminars.

They think they do. But if they knew, they wouldn't be managers. Managers don't get to know. They manage. And they don't always know what to do. What makes managers different from everyone else is not what they know. It's what they don't know. What is a manager? A manager is someone who works for other people. Whatever other people need to be successful, they hire managers to do. But managers don't know everything they need to do those things.

Managers solve problems. Their job is to figure out the right way to do whatever it is they're hired to do. But they don't know which problems to solve. They don't know how to solve them, and they don't know how to solve them fast enough. And we don't know either. Managers get hired to solve problems, but they don't know what problems need solving. Why should they?

Managers get hired on the strength of their recommendations, not on the strength of their solutions. A manager's job is to make other people behave. But sometimes other people behave in ways the manager doesn't understand. Management is the art of getting other people to do their part of the job. The manager's job is not just to get the work done, it is to make sure the work is done in a way that's efficient, effective, and satisfies some vague, unarticulated sense of what's right.

A manager has to balance the interests of the people he works with against the interests of the people who hired him. And those interests are not as different as you'd think. An engineer will say that if you can't design a solution yourself, you're not an engineer.

Handling risks as a business manager

Business management is a career for risk takers. People who succeed in it are willing to take big chances. Most people are risk averse. They take small chances, especially where money is involved. The payoffs are often small, too, and sometimes negative. When managers make risky choices, the payoffs can come only from unexpected events, or from unexpected combinations of many events. For example, suppose you take a flyer on investing in a new technology. You believe that it will turn out better than you think. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. But either way, you stand to make a lot.

This much is clear: the only way to make a flyer like this payoff is for you to risk a lot. But what are the chances? The odds are against you, of course. But you'll have a much better chance of succeeding if you spend enough time studying the odds. I don't mean count them; just study them. If you know the odds, you can calculate your chances, and you can decide whether the risk is worth the payoff. To understand risks in projects, business managers use online project management software and get real-time reports, which helps them to make informed decisions.