Think for a minute about your company’s hierarchy. When you look at the very successful relationships of who reports to whom, you’ll likely find something that appears commonsense after you identify it – but not highly pondered when an organization builds its structure. Successful relationships between managers and their teams can be tied to the similarity in the timeline scope of their goals and objectives.

The question to ask is: what is the thought horizon, or goal horizon, for each manager and team member? In other words, if the boss’ objectives, goals, even compensation, are tied to events and plans that take a year to achieve, can they effectively relate and manage people whose objective is that their goals be met by the end of the day? For example, should the bank branch manager manage the teller whose primary measurement is a balanced till at closing time? read more »