Three Simple Habits You Need to Develop To Become A Smart Manager

There are three important lessons (or habits) I think everyone should learn in order for them to be a smarter manager or executive. Three easy ones that everyone should practice.

The first one is from Mark Cuban. We all want to talk in a meeting. 80% people are missing the point. People should listen more before they talk. Mark Cuban received this advise not long he got out of college. The advise was every time you go into a meeting, have a notepad ready and the minute you sit down, you write the word ‘Listen’ right there on your notepad. So listen first. “No lie,” Cuban said, “if you go back over the last 40 years now that I’ve been going into meetings and taking notes, he writes, ‘Listen,’ first thing.”

Second one is I often give to my team when I was CEO of IC. When you walk into a meeting, write on your notepad or whiteboard “What problem are we trying to solve?” 80% people have no idea what problems they are trying to solve. Identify the person who should be introducing the problem and push the team to reframe the problem in different ways. If it is a status meeting, then ask what progress you’ve made and always refer back to the problem statement. The problem can evolve overtime and it is fine. Know the problem.

The third one is think visual. Draw diagrams during meetings and not just notes. Those who use visual thinking – aka design thinking – can tap into our brains' powerful visual processing center. Even if you’re not artistically inclined, visual thinking makes it easier to organize your thoughts, form new ideas, understand systemic relationships and allows you to start framing even without full information. During my 30 years of career in design thinking, this method can get you to the right space a lot faster. It is my best public secret. I used to walk out of each meeting with a few diagrams and 50% of the time I had some idea of the solution already. Just needed to do more data finding and pretty Power Point to justify the high fees.