Managing a winning team Most businesses need staff to operate effectively and this means that those staff need to be managed. However, what does ‘managed’ really mean and how can the ‘business manager’ also be an effective manager of people?
A good manager of staff should fully understand the roles and responsibilities of all of their team members, but ultimately, each of those team members should be better at doing their own jobs than the manager could. Secondly, the manager should be able to ‘get the best from the team they have and only change it when all other possibilities have failed’. In summary, the manager needs to know how to structure, manage and motivate his team to optimise their performance.
Critical
It is a well-known saying that people don’t quit their jobs, but they quit their bosses, but in reality this means that they left their job because it wasn’t enjoyable, or that their strengths weren’t being used or that they weren’t growing in their careers – and who is responsible for this – their manager.
Recent research showed that 31% would swap their manager if they could and 22% felt that they could do a better job themselves if they were given the chance. Ineffective management not only impacts negatively on staff retention, quality of work and morale, but also on customer service and your company’s image. Not good for either your staff or your bottom line.
The best managers know what they are doing, where their businesses are going and ensure that they have the right people in the critical roles to make it all happen. They then communicate and delegate effectively to their staff who have been trained, supported and motivated to fulfil their responsibilities. Businesses with well managed and competent employees are the best performers and frequently handle problems before they escalate to become real issues.
Guiding principals
So what are some of the key guiding principles for good people management?
1. Build solid and respectful relationships
Don’t aim to be liked, but aim to earn and keep the respect of your team
Take time to talk to members of your staff. It will show that you are interested, but it will also be both motivational and allow you to better understand their position and any concerns that they may have. Be confident, strong and professional, whilst remaining transparent, approachable and encouraging.
2. Strengthen your communication skills
Your ability to listen and communicate is vital to your success as a manger of people. I don’t just mean your ability to listen and speak on a one-to-one basis, but also your ability to capture people’s minds in order to present your ideas, values and visions as well as your ability to listen and soak up the ideas, values and visions of others; that is true communication. Whether you are speaking with one person, or presenting to a whole audience of people, strong communicative skills are a must.
3. Actively develop your team and be the team leader
As you build and strengthen relationships throughout your team, you should begin to identify the individual talents, abilities and strengths of your employees. Knowing this detail will help you develop your team so that everyone is positioned within a role in which they can succeed and excel. Take time to communicate with each employee individually, as quite often employees will be forthcoming about what they see as their strengths and where they aim to be; they may also spark ideas to strengthen your team and its performance as a whole. Sometimes low morale and performance can be due to a lack of support and training. Ensure that your whole team are up to date with regular training appropriate to their role.
To establish what your employees really appreciate and value, or to discover their training and support needs, use surveys, one-to-one appraisals or focus groups to talk through each key area to identify the good points, skills gaps or areas that should be improved. Quite simply, support your team.
4. Be transparent
Hiding things from your employees is a recipe for disaster. Remember that you have spent time building relationships with these people, relationships based on respect. As part of that mutual respect you also need to engender trust. By remaining transparent, honest and trustworthy with your employees you will further develop their respect and loyalty.
5. Take responsibility
This can often be tough, but is a sign of truly exceptional people management. As the manager, leader or head of your company, all responsibility should end with you. You are accountable for the performance of your employees. Remember failure is not a weakness; it’s an opportunity to learn, strengthen and improve. Take responsibility for your team and they will further respect you for it.
All of these people management principles are important internal management skills, but these will also be seen externally by customers in a variety of both obvious, and not so obvious, ways.
Perception
When customers experience your business, whether by telephone, e-mail or physically visiting, their perception will be significantly more positive if they feel that they are being looked after by a well run, well managed business with highly motivated and professional staff. Often it is almost imperceptible how this can be picked up, but for sure, if your staff are not working within a well led and motivated environment, it will be reflected in their attitude to their work and frequently, to your customers in a negative way.
The reality is good managers are not born, but learn the skills as part of learning how to understand people as individuals. Most of us work much better if we enjoy what we are doing. It has been said that the best qualification for running a business is not an MBA or a qualification in accountancy, but in psychology. Ultimately, good managers plan, monitor and review before delegating the work, but they can only do this effectively if their team is working well.
As a small business, it may be a difficult to become recognised as one of the Sunday Times ‘Best companies to work for’, but the same good management practices will still apply. Work hard with your staff and they will work hard for you.
xenconsultancy.com
Travelling without moving? A 2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA220 AMG 2.1 diesel was booked in recently, with the customer complaining about a lack of power. There was also a fairly lengthy story about recent work done to the car.
The vehicle had been booked into another garage locally for the same complaint. This somehow led to the DPF internals being removed and the software modified to delete the DPF system from the vehicle. This was done without the customer being told, and they had not authorised the work. When the vehicle was handed back it was no better, and the customer returned to the garage. It was at this point they learned about what had been done and quite rightly they were not impressed. The car was then taken to another garage which installed a functioning second-hand DPF, corrected the software back to standard and also corrected a few other issues including a seized exhaust flap. However, the car still exhibited a lack of power and clearly didn’t have the AMG get-up-and-go it left the factory with. It was at this point the vehicle was brought to me.
Initial inspection
As can be seen in Fig.1, upon initial inspection we had two fault codes. The first was for the boost pressure deviating from the specified value. According to the sub code of 71, this indicated the actuator was blocked. At this point I wasn’t sure if the turbo had an electronic actuator or used a vacuum/pressure waste gate but this code clearly could cause the issues as explained by the customer. The second fault code indicated a learning value for the injector on cylinder 2 to be at its lower limit. This could also cause a lack of power complaint or limp home to be activated. This meant I had some good diagnostic direction to create a test plan and start doing some checks to locate the problem.
I then drove the vehicle with live data displayed to look at boost data and injector data while also confirming the customer’s complaint at the same time. The vehicle was indeed low on power and felt flat, not what you would expect from a 2.1 litre turbo-charged engine. However, injector information looked okay and the boost levels reached where I expected them to. This included the turbo actuator position changing in relation to engine RPM and demand. The only points to note were that there was only actual boost in data and I could not see what the control unit was looking to see. It also felt too slow for the build in boost to happen and not as instant as it is usually with a modern diesel engine.
Turbo waste gate
Returning to the workshop, I decided to look into how the turbo waste gate was controlled to make sure it was functioning correctly. On this engine the actuator is electrically controlled by the engine control unit, also incorporating a position sensor for feedback to the ECU. The scan tool listed an actuator test moving the actuator arm from 5 and 90% travel. So, I decided my plan would be to test the actuator for correct operation and make sure the turbo control arm moved by the waste gate was free and had full travel. If this is stiff or seized then the actuator will struggle to move it. If all was ok, I would then verify the plausibility of the pressure sensors and also check the injector correction factors to see if an issue could be seen with the injector on cylinder 2, compared to the other three which didn’t log any faults.
Carrying out the actuator test, the arm moved freely both from 5 to 90% travel. However, there was not much of a difference in terms of travel between the two positions. With experience, I felt this wasn’t correct as most I had seen before travelled further. However, not having a lot of product knowledge with Mercedes, I took it to be ok but decided to keep it in the back of my mind, just in case everything else tested good and I still could not find the fault.
Removing the arm onto the actuator from the turbo vanes itself and moving it by hand showed it to be nice and free, so all seemed fine on the turbo side of things. Why then was it so slow to build boost on the road? Checking the plausibility of the pressure and temperature sensors showed all was well. However, checking injector data showed cylinder 2 to be way off compared to the other three. This indicated a fuel delivery issue or mechanical issue, and the control unit was attempting to alter the fuelling on that cylinder to smoothen out the running of the engine and balance it against the other cylinders. This was why I didn’t notice a running issue when driving the vehicle, as the management system was compensating for it constantly.
Smooth running correction
For smooth running correction, the engine control unit measures the speed of the crankshaft by the crankshaft position sensor on each firing stroke and in relation to each other. To prove whether it was an injector or mechanical fault, I then carried out a relative compression test with an oscilloscope. If there was a lack of compression on cylinder 2 this would be detected by the crankshaft sensor. This would then induce the control unit to inject more or less fuel on multiple injectors, depending on the engine arrangement and firing configuration in an attempt to make the crankshaft speed change to match the other cylinders. This is because one cylinder has a knock-on effect on the next cylinder in the firing order. However, all was well so the fault must lay in the injectors. I expected this to be a nozzle or delivery problem especially given the fact the engine had done 150,000 miles and looked to still be on the original injectors.
At this point, I decided to clear the faults and road test the vehicle again. I still had time left for the initial assessment, so I wanted to see if I could find what happened when the fault code logged for the actuator before being stuck on the ramp. All tested ok and freeze frame data revealed no clues either. Before I contacted the customer, I wanted to try and have a prognosis for both faults the car was logging or a path I wanted to take if more time needed to be authorised.
Driving the car again, the same symptoms were present, but this time the boost value was far lower than I expected. However, no faults returned when checking afterwards, which was very surprising as I drove it low on boost for several miles and no under-boost faults were stored. With my initial assessment time nearly up, I decided to recommend the injector on cylinder 2 was replaced and the engine control unit software was checked and updated. I suspected some fault codes had been deleted from the vehicle by manipulation of the software. Also, if this had been done there was a possibility that the turbo boost control software had been altered and was also incorrect, and was causing the symptoms being experienced. Speaking to the customer, they were happy to arrange getting the vehicle to a garage with the Mercedes Benz factory scan tool first to flash the software, then afterwards to replace the injector. The vehicle was then taken away and the customer would report back if the software corrected the boost problems.
Re-flashed, re-scanned and re-checked
A few days later the customer phoned to say the software had been re-flashed. Unfortunately, upon leaving the garage and driving home, the engine management light illuminated and the vehicle still had the same lack of power. So, it was brought back for me to take another look with more diagnostic time authorised. On arrival and following re-scanning for fault codes, we now had a P0299 under-boost fault stored alongside the same fault as before for the injector on cylinder 2. Please refer to Fig.2. However, the actuator blocked fault had not returned. This told me that the software had indeed been altered but with the car still under-boosting, the vehicle still had an issue that I needed to find. I could now proceed knowing the software was standard, and remove that from the list of possible causes.
Re-checking everything, the only fault I could find was the amount of travel the turbo actuator made, from 5% to 90%. I actuated it with a scan tool, but I could not prove whether it was correct or not. Luckily, speaking to a good friend about the problem, they said they had a Mercedes in with the same engine for service. My friend was able to film a good test of the actuator and send me the video to compare. It was at this point I knew this was my problem as the video showed the actuator not only moving further but also much faster. Testing the wiring to the actuator proved it to be good, and checking fitting instructions showed no adaption resets. Checking on multiple scan tools showed no resets, so I was happy to call out the actuator as being faulty. The customer was contacted with prices and was happy to proceed with a new actuator and injector.
Once both components were replaced, I carried out the same test with the scan tool forcing the actuator from 5% to 90%, but to my horror the travel was identical. At this point, I was a little lost as I felt I had covered all bases but was no further forward with fixing the fault. It felt like the unit needed to be learned by the control unit. However, using Autologic, which is Mercedes-based, it did not list a re-set, and double-checking fitting instructions showed no mention of re-setting anything. Afterwards though, I decided to try some aftermarket scan tools for an option and the first two showed nothing. Plugging in Autel and going deep into the menus showed a boost pressure positioner teach in process. Before running the procedure, I decided to plug back in the old turbo actuator, as I am not one to fit parts which are not needed, and if the old unit could be relearned, the new part would not be required. Sadly, the procedure kept failing, so I plugged the new unit in and re-tried and the procedure completed successfully. Attempting the same actuation test as before now showed the actuator arm to match the known good video in terms of speed and travel.
Adjustment range
The old unit for some reason had gone faulty, but had defaulted to a state of not being adapted to the control unit and randomly logged a stuck closed fault. Even though, for the most part it didn’t operate, it worked enough to allow the turbo to create boost, albeit slower than normal.
As can be seen in Fig.3, the procedure on Autel lists that when successful, the adjustment range should change within 150ms however when not taught, it would be one second which matched my fault. I just wish I had found this option earlier but was happy to have finally found and rectified the issue. As you can see in Fig.4 and Fig.5, the difference in arm travel is visibly noticeable. Confident the fault was fixed, I then road-tested the car again and the vehicle now drove like a different car, with strong acceleration and boost more like what you would expect from an AMG Mercedes. Upon returning to the workshop and checking for fault codes, I now had no fault codes stored so was happy the vehicle was finally repaired. The customer reported after a few days the car was like a new Mercedes as it drove so well. Once again, like my other articles, this job shows the importance of a solid test plan and system knowledge to find the cause of seemingly insurmountable problems.
