Ethics

Be ethical from day 1 until the day you leave the company, for whatever reason.

e-sourcing

Fight for e-sourcing to be implemented at work and don’t be afraid to explore new options in sourcing, be it local or global.

Question your current supplier base and use e-sourcing to find better alternatives.

Empowerment

Empower your people, but keep them close enough to make sure that the 2 of you feel confident on the work that's being done. Don't be big brother.

Budget management

Even if you are not in Finance, you as a manager own your department's budget. Get the full ownership of your budget accordingly.

Spend when you must, seek for no authorization if all company policies are being followed.

Put your people first, then you if there’s any money left for your trainings and travels.

Socializing

First and foremost, check your company policy on socializing. Some are quite lax about it, some are quite strict. Apply common sense.

Socialize and be friends with your peers, but let’s make it clear: not all of them want to be your real friends.

If you go out with your subs, don’t overdo the drinking. Have a couple, then call it a night. Keep your cool.

Surrounded by workaholics

Do you share space with a workaholic? Try not to be like her, but try to achieve like her.

Multitasking

Fan of multi-tasking? Forget about it. Concentrate on your 7 priorities and that’ll be already a good amount of things in your hands. Delegate if other things need your immediate attention.

Give yourself a break

Stop working every 90 minutes. Have a 7 min break.

If you're going to have a cup of coffee, make sure it's fair trade and from costa rica.

Delegate

Do you have an assistant? Use her for all those menial tasks that you keep insisting on doing (travel reservations, faxes, copies, etc). You will find more time for value-added chores.

Workaholic? Control yourself.

Try to work on your laptop at home for no more than 4 hours per week. More is detrimental to any relationship and your own life.

Motivation

Is motivation not coming from your upper management? Stop working at 5 and go to the gym. Motivate yourself!

Know when to call it quits

Tired of your job? Quit before you burn like a meteor entering the atmosphere... i know you know how much is left of the typical meteor after that.

Be agressive in a nice way

Follow all the steps prior to a good negotiation. Inform yourself where the prices are going and be ready to spend some quality time talking about the future of the business.

Ask for price revisions & reductions from your suppliers nicely, once a year. No more than that.

Your suppliers

Have weekly conference calls with your top suppliers. Let them know you care. If you're too busy, send them a short email.

People, again.

Support your people.

Define what needs to be done in terms of training to make them better.

Sacrifice your travel budget for trainings (from an environmental point of view, conference calls are much better).

Communication with upper management

Define with your boss what he expects from you in the first 6 months.

Let him know well in advance what you will use your first 3 months on. Be firm on that.

More Benchmarking

Ask for advice and opinion from your peers in the company.

Balance the answers against your previously defined 7 priorities. Redefine if necessary.

Training

If you start any kind of internal training, make sure people from your team do it at the same time. Don't try to be always the first or the best, but make sure everybody - including yourself -completes it before taking another one.

Taking immediate action

Analyze when there is time to do analysis. Act if there is no time. Afterwards, ask yourself why there was no time to analyze. Define what to do so that your immediate actions happen less frequently.

Feedback

Congratulate in public, as much as possible (when deserved, obviously).

Work together on corrective plans when things are not working for one of your subs. Set deadlines to see those plans implemented.

Isolation isn't a good idea

Benchmark with peers in other companies, whether similar or not, not only about structure, procedures and success stories but also about motivation.

Subscribe to online news related to your field of interest.

Things To Do

Keep a list of things to do.

Prioritize.

When the list gets past 7 items, either delegate the rest as much as possible or delete the other ones. These will come ONCE you finish the 7 top ones, unless more important ones come up in the meantime.

Set your deadlines one week before the ones you will present to your upper management. It’ll give you extra time if needed or make you look like a faster achiever.

Share your 7 with upper management as soon as they are defined. Do not define new ones until all 7 are completed. Make them achievable within 2-3 months. Break down projects into smaller ones if necessary.

How am I doing?

Your boss may or may not be a good coach. Take some time during your one on ones to ask her how good you are doing and how you can improve. Take notes and compare with your list of things to do.

Letting people go

In an ideal world, everybody in your team should be able to give you excellent results. However, this is not the truth. Replace people within your first 4-6 months, but don't make the mistake of filling all the positions with alphas. Here's where the people hiring skills come in handy.

Your first 3 months

Use them wisely. Go to every key position in your department and see how things are done. Do not learn how things are done. Instead, map those activities and work with your team to eliminate as many non-value added activities as possible.

Don't expect that everything is being done the right way simply because it has worked fine so far.

Start analyzing your team and figure out if the existing people will fit into your Key People structure and help you achieve the expected results.

Direct Reports

Do not let anybody under your supervision report to any other manager, even if it's upper management requesting it. Those "dotted line reports" simply destroy the cohesion of your department.

People

People are key. Do not call them key assets. Key People is what your team is or should be turned to be in the first 6 months of your tenure.