This is the second article of a three-part series.

More than 95 percent of businesses have fewer than 100 employees. Within those companies, it is inevitable that many employees will wear many hats. We looked at the issue from the employee perspective last week and will focus on those of you who manage departments of one this week.

As common as common sense

Just like it is challenging for an individual contributor to stay focused let alone ahead of the game when running multiple functions, it can be even more difficult to manage employees in such roles. For example, an operations manager I worked with supervised a team of three, which does not sound so bad until you look at what those three did.

The accountant was the sole person in the finance/accounting department and was responsible for everything other than what the outsourced CPA did. The office manager did all things HR and payroll, plus supplies and facilities. And the receptionist, who doubled as the CEO's assistant, made all the travel plans for the office and ran everyone's calendars.

The good news was the operations manager had access to and control over all the things necessary to ensure the organization was running smoothly. On the flip side, of course, he was managing a small team of multitaskers who could easily get overwhelmed or off track causing a chain reaction of delays, inefficiencies and more stress to the rest of the team. To minimize the chances of that happening, he implemented a three-pronged approach.

The good, the bad and the ugly

To help keep everyone happy and thus motivated and productive, the operations manager made sure to start and end the week with a positive focus — systemize consistent communication and quickly acknowledge failure.

He held a daily scrum (which he religiously guarded as a stand-up, less-than-five-minutes meeting) to ensure everyone stayed on the same page. He also held brief team meetings on Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon to review the accomplishments of the week and ways they would exceed expectations in the coming week.

Finally, he created an atmosphere that encouraged the team to acknowledge and address failures, weaknesses or other less than stellar happenings quickly and openly. This one took some time but grew naturally as he consistently encouraged and supported the team with positive reinforcement and clear communication.

Next steps

One size does not fit all, but the solution the operations manager came up with was born out of a process that does apply in almost every situation. He started with the business needs and opportunities for his team's work to positively and negatively impact the bottom line.

Based on his assessment, he created three areas to concentrate on: efficiency, focus and accuracy. With those in mind, he looked at the responsibilities of his team and created realistic expectations of what they could accomplish — managing both his expectations and theirs — and made those expectations clear to the CEO. He then created a simple and speedy feedback loop to ensure his team did not fall behind.

He worked consistently to positively reinforce the good and move quickly through and past anything less. Keeping the environment positive, fair and consistent, he built a loyal team that could identify distractions and issues safely and were acknowledged for doing so just as positively as they were for making deadlines.

If you are your own department or manage several different departments of one person each, feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and challenges.