Science vs Art

Management is both a Science and an Art. Part of the 'science' part is all the mechanical aspects of the job such as keeping track of information on your staff, hours worked, vacation earned, status reports, kudos, warnings, performance reviews, etc.

Some have all of this information 'well organized' in various notebooks or folders in their desk. Others have this information in both papers as well as in electronic form in Word and Excel files somewhere on their workstation.

Being one of the organized types (some of the time) I was frustrated by not having easy access to all of this information and using my technical background I picked up a copy of Domino Designer and created a simple database where I can keep all of the information on my team in one place. When I've shown this to other managers they are amazed at the ease and speed of finding this information and at the same time they are reluctant to try it themselves because they "don't have the time".

The amazing thing is that they will never have the time and yet they can't afford NOT to do this.

Something I have learned is that many times it is worth spending extra time one time to save many times that time investment later and this is one example where this philosophy has paid off.