Is People Management that tough?

I was at a forum yesterday morning and it was meant to be a breakfast session of "select HR" people ( I only had a miserable cup of tea and they had some muffins on the table, I was actually expecting a spread and I almost starved since I will not touch the muffin with a long pole) and some entrepreneurs (you know entrepreneurs are also HR people since they manage their little group). But all in all, it was a good gathering of real professionals. Anyway, one guy expressed so much frustration at managing people and how he spends 70% of his time sorting out people issues and not have time to face his 'core business' which is bringing in the deals/sales. My heart went out to him that I even made a personal commitment to hear him out and maybe help during the networking break. May be he does not have so much of a problem. Besides, they say that a problem shared is half solved.

However, my encounter with a number of entreprenuers from this part of the planet show that thier major problem is that they have no well thought out people management philosophy when they start their business. Truly, they do not think of it at all. I have met only one person who said "I planned ahead of time the kind of people who will work here and how they will manage themselves" and today, that company is a point of reference for others. I even have one or two things to learn from them when I start my business (keep your fingers crossed). A major flaw that I have noticed is that they seek and employ 'workers' and truly there is nothing wrong with that. So they get workers and from my experience 'workers' demand your time because they need a lot of supervision and they 'work for you'. I usually tell SMEs to seek and employ partners and that way, most of their problems are eliminated. The other ones can be handled by coaching and mentoring and normal people management processes. The idea of 'worker' is also a mentality. If you think that people should be grateful to work for you simply because you gave them a job...you get just that but if you treat them as part of the business and communicate (in action and words they also bring something to the table) and they understand that if the business goes down, they also go down, there is a shift in their mentality. Once you can get your employees to think as business owners and given the autonomy to act as one, productivity is higher, there is a higher level of commitment and the bottom line which is the focus is in green not in red.

I have always said that my professional bits will not be showing up here but this was part of my day yesterday and I thought I'd share it. By the way, I gave this gentleman my card and before the day was over, he called me and rattled on a heap of disjointed issues and programs that he has thought that will solve his problem and when I asked him how what he was willing to commit to this employee development of HR revamption for his company, he said he is willing to pay and I said I am not talking about money, I am talking about time. I asked if he was willing to sit with his employees to talk (not to bark) and if he has time to spend in ensuring that what the HR person recommends gets implemented...he said that he will like to pay the HR person to come up with the suggestions and implement them for him and at that point I knew he will have that people problem for a very long time...tra-la-la.

It is another weekend and I am looking forward it. It promises to be very interesting and I will make up for lost time. I will write everyday....I promise!!!!