The concept of on-site management originated from the quality management of the production process. It refers to the method of managing personnel, equipment, materials, production processes, production environment and information through standardization, visual management and Kanban management at the manufacturing site of the production department. For Amazon’s operations, the method of on-site management is still applicable.
Some managers believe that on-site management must be present in person, which is actually a misunderstanding of on-site management. In essence, on-site management has established a set of optimized ideas and methods, and the management itself is constantly updated through the PDCA cycle.
Let’s first take a look at what the PDCA cycle is. P stands for Plan, D stands for Do, C stands for Check and A stands for Action.
The PDAC cycle is actually a way of thinking that runs fast and iterates quickly. Many sellers have this problem. They don’t know why their links are good, or why a certain product of theirs is poor. If it is an individual operation, then it can be performance-oriented, but if it involves leading a team, there must be a set of clear ideas. Because team management involves many factors, the gap between the goal and the current situation is often the result of many problems, so it is more necessary to continuously improve by controlling variables in order to keep approaching the goal.
The “plan” (or “hypothesis”) in the PDCA cycle accumulates enough data through “execution”, then “checks” whether the “hypothesis” is correct, and “acts” according to the results. For example, if managers find that the average performance of women in the team is better than the average performance of men in the month, it is easy to make a one-sided judgment that “women are more suitable for Amazon operations.” However, this is only a speculation based on short-term performance data and cannot be used as a basis for team recruitment. Because in addition to considering gender factors, managers must also consider factors such as work experience, on-the-job training and educational level. The correct management method should be to make a sales performance tracking table, and record the personal situation of team members and the performance changes of their respective stores in the past 6 months. Through data analysis, managers can easily find that the correlation between performance and gender is weak, and the correlation with work experience and on-the-job training is strong. At this point, a PDCA cycle is declared complete. Based on the conclusions drawn, managers can give priority to hiring experienced operators in the subsequent recruitment process, and conduct centralized training for operators with average performance.
When the team size is relatively small, managers can work with team members and use the PDCA cycle to follow up on everyone’s work at any time. However, once the team expands, managers will lack energy and will not be able to track everyone’s work results in real time. At this time, managers can divide operators into smaller teams according to their professional fields and conduct their own on-site management.
After clarifying the management ideas, managers need to form a closed-loop thinking in daily management work, so that everything has an explanation, everything has a place, and everything has a response.
Everything has an explanation means that there are clear indicators for the specific daily work and the goals to be achieved, which is the beginning of the plan. Managers need to confirm the work tasks and processes with the team in advance every day, make clear rewards and penalties, set clear assessment standards, and give fair and open results after the assessment period.
Everything has a solution means that the progress of work should be fed back according to the established time plan or a fixed time period agreed upon. It is forbidden to keep all plans verbal without implementation or execution. Even if problems that were not considered in the early stage are exposed after execution, it is a good thing for long-term management. Failure to discover hidden dangers in time will have a negative impact on the growth of the team.
Everything has a response means that the problems reported by team members are checked and solved in a timely manner, and the suggestions put forward are tried as much as possible within the feasible scope. In order to improve the overall business capabilities, communication between teams is particularly important. Managers need to fully understand the needs and problems and find corresponding methods to solve them. If the questions or suggestions raised by team members are not responded to many times, everyone will gradually lose the desire to communicate, and problems will accumulate, which will also have a negative impact on the business.
Finally, in the process of team management, managers should especially avoid managing for management’s sake. Because management is a means, increasing sales and profits is the goal, and ultimately team members should work together towards a unified goal. Maintaining effective communication between managers and team members is the basis for improving team cohesion.