The saying “We have everything from a pin to an anchor” has never been more apt in describing a place than it is in describing De Jamaican Shop. The store has in 25 years woven itself into the fabric of the Jamaican, and by extension the Caribbean community in Lauderhill. The take out restaurant and grocery store, located on the corner of State Road 7 and NW 12^th Street, stocks everything from coal pots, canned Jamaican goods and blue bummer cake soap to CD’s, DVD’s and tonics and serves up authentic Jamaican food.

As we interviewed proprietor Bryan Forsythe, customers were filing in to order from his take-out menu, which includes jerk pork, jerk chicken, curry goat and fried fish. Bryan says the shop has been a part of the community for the past 25 years and has survived the many changes the community and the society have seen. Bryan’s parents moved from Jamaica in 1978 and settled in Boston. A few years later, they relocated to Florida and by 1981 they bought the store. According to Bryan, the store was smaller in the beginning and they expanded over the years to meet the growing need for things Jamaican. Then, Roger, Bryan’s brother who is now deceased, was the front man for the shop, while Bryan stayed behind the scenes.

This article is the final of three articles focusing on factors required to make more effective managers of businesses, or departments in businesses. The former articles dealt with the factors of arrogance and negative communication. This focuses on the qualities of integrity and knowledge.

Integrity. It is mandatory that every manager manages with integrity. Integrity is the core of professionalism. There are specific morals by which a good manager should abide. These include honesty, truthfulness, not being promiscuous, deceptive or ruthless. It is the responsibility of managers to lead by positive example, leading so others will want to follow. Unfortunately, the news is full of stories of managers who have performed without integrity. Apparently, it’s becoming “fashionable” for the executive management and leaders of traditional organizations to either act dishonestly or promiscuously. These well-reported incidents of the absolute lack of integrity are poor lessons for others in management, and those who aspire for careers in management. A manager should try as best as he can to always act with integrity. However, some managers are overly consumed with the profitability of their organizations and will do anything, including “fixing” accounting records, to reveal a profit. Others are so consumed by their own basic needs that they are blinded by the inevitable consequences to themselves and the organization they manage. 

In this fast-paced world, we have come to anticipate the intrusion of change in our lives.

Decades ago, it was typical for people to work at the same company for 10 plus years.

Now, people are accustomed to having to move from job to job and company to company every 2 or 3 years. We have abandoned the comfort of stability for an ever-evolving lifestyle.

Several years ago, an author named Spencer Johnson wrote a book called “Who Moved My Cheese?” Two mice awoke one day surprised to see that the spot where they usually found their cheese was empty. The book went on to explain how the mice wasted time trying to explain, rationalize and understand this change. The craft allegory clearly explained the perils of a slow and ineffective response to change. In the late 1990’s, the book was widely used to train business executives on how to quickly and effectively adapt to change. Today, however, it is not enough to be quick and responsive. If you are going to stay ahead, you must be an agent of change; you must move your own cheese.

If you seek significant growth and improvement, then you do not want to keep up, you want to lead. Great improvements of mankind have typically come through disruption, pain, crisis and trouble. It is in the ruptures and discontinuities of life that opportunities are found. In order to help you create these opportunities, I suggest the following three strategies:

Last week, we mentioned that there are four factors managers need to be mindful of in order not to weaken their ability to effectively manage and motivate their staff. These factors are arrogance, communication, integrity and knowledge. We also focused on the negatives of arrogance, and this week we will look at the implications of communicating negatively.

Poor communication is a trait of the arrogant manager, having no idea how to communicate effectively with his people. He prefers to communicate by terse memorandums, and when he does communicate verbally he tends to talk down to employees rather than to them. Nothing demotivates employees as much as a manager who “doesn’t know how to talk to people.” There are many phrases used routinely by managers that tend to alienate them from their employees, weaken their leadership and the productivity that they are seeking from them. From a survey that we conducted, and from our own observation, the following are some of the common phrases used by managers that demotivate people, which should be avoided.

Management is a profession that involves an increasingly expansive array of criteria in order to ensure the effectiveness of a manager’s ability to lead a group of people assigned to him/her to be effective and productive performers in the organization that they work.

Some of the basic criteria include: the manager having the vision to lead; understanding the mission of the organization in which he is a manager; knowledge of and understanding of the people he manages; a demeanor which pulls respect and the ability to be a mentor, a counselor and of course a strong motivator.

Perhaps it is the ability to motivate which is the jost important criteria, because if the manager is unable to successfully motivate the people he manages, the likelihood of achieving success will be greatly compromised. However, there are many factors that the manager must be mindful of, in order not to weaken his ability to motivate his staff. These include the factors of arrogance, communication, integrity and knowledge.