With over 20 years of experience as a supervisor in various industries that include both startup and Fortune 500 environments, I have learned many lessons to help create great employee-supervisor relationships, increase productivity and naturally encourage employee retention.

Below, I have put together 10 management principles that help me make solid business decisions, provide fair treatment of subordinates and retain top employees.

Management Principle 1: Identify the “work smart and hard” employees

I have found that the most effective employees tend to be keen and clever individuals that prioritize their workload and pace themselves throughout the workday. They investigate projects thoroughly, complete assignments efficiently, and tend to propose new or innovative solutions.

These types of employees are invaluable, and it is important for any supervisor to identify them in the staff they manage. To keep these employees thriving and motivated, supervisors can provide them with new and leading edge assignments.

Management Principle 2: Plan for the worst and hope for the best

When delegating assignments among your team members, always plan for delays from unexpected or unforeseen circumstances that can postpone the delivery date. This principle comes from Murphy’s Law “If anything can go wrong — it will.”

Typically, a practical buffer is 20% to plan for any potential delays that may arise, but a good supervisor will adjust based on his or her team’s actual past performance results.

For example, if a staff member estimates that it will take 40 hours to complete an activity, the supervisor would allow 48 hours on the master schedule to upper management. Not only will this help to avoid delays and create realistic expectations on deliverables, it may also result in an activity being completed ahead of schedule.

Management Principle 3: Combat insanity through measured change

A well-known definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A variation of that definition is following a similar approach over and over again and expecting a better result. Instead, two simple techniques can provide an unbiased analysis that can measure change and break repeatable poor outcomes: Success Factors and Post-Mortem Reviews.

Success Factors identify the likely expected benefits of a successful implementation of change. This involves identifying both the existing problems and collecting the resulting outcomes once the activity or assignment is completed over time.

The Post-Mortem Reviews are used to evaluate and analyze the results. This involves collecting both successes and failures, and determining optimization opportunities. There are both positive and negative elements to be collected since there are always opportunities for improvement.

Management Principle 4: You can’t please everyone all the time

Managers, supervisors and superiors are usually liked by others but not respected, or they are respected by others but not well liked. Rarely is a supervisor known as a respected, well-liked leader. However, it does happen and should be your goal as a manager.

A respected, well-liked manager motivates, involves, and promotes organizational and employee success. Yet, it is impossible that every employee will be inspired, encouraged and compliant all the time. That is, you can’t be liked at every moment by everyone. Therefore, don’t focus on trying to please all of your employees. Instead, have confidence in yourself and do what’s best to complete your objectives while acting as a thoughtful, caring and personal manager to your staff and peers.

Management Principle 5: The Pareto Principle and Law of Averages

There are two statistical standards that are an effective way to help manage your team, group or organization: the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) and the Law of Averages (i.e., the statistical distribution of outcomes among a small sample size reflects the results across a larger group).

The 80/20 rule is an effective planning tool that can be used for teams of any size. The general idea is that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the team (i.e., team members contribute different amounts for any given project). While this is not always the case, it is a useful way to help plan and get the most from your staff. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for a manager to invest in their staff and help make each of them as successful as possible.

Management Principle 6: Utilize your strengths and develop your weaknesses

Maximize the team’s performance, results and contributions by leveraging each staff member’s strengths, but also allow staff to develop their weaknesses when time permits. Supervisors can obtain better results by understanding each person’s strengths, passions and interests and distributing assignments that align with their abilities, skills and prior experience.

However, it is also important to permit team members to develop any weaknesses or new skills through education, training, and related work assignments and activities. Promoting teammates to tackle new assignments with frequent interactive checkpoints and/or status updates improves employee retention, increases the team’s overall capabilities, removes single points of failure, creates personnel back-up, and is a form of reward and recognition.

Management Principle 7: The best time to share bad news is as soon as possible

Often times, problematic issues or delays can creep into the set plan and are not reported. This is usually due to the hopeful intent that the setback can be rectified without being identified. However, what usually happens is that the issues compound and escalate into an irreversible and unrecoverable situation that ends up costing more time and effort than if the problem was noted earlier.

Therefore, identify known delays, issues and troubles as soon as possible that include proposed corrective actions. A supervisor should not be discourage by bad news and should not create an environment where employees are afraid of identifying problems that occur. To avoid future problems, utilize Management Principle 3 to create measured change and prevent repeated failures.

Management Principle 8: Trust your instinct and collect factual information to support it

Experience develops your ability to know if an approach, technique or method will likely work or fail. In order to communicate and demonstrate that your rationale is true, you need to try and substantiate it with concrete factual evidence to make it apparent. This follows the concept of seeing is believing.

Therefore, identify prior work situations, current workplace practices, projects and activities that others can easily understand and relate to your theory in order to generate support. And whenever possible, have data available to support your idea since a test is worth a thousand opinions.

Management Principle 9: Know your staff and their behaviors

It is imperative that supervisors are familiar with their staff and each person’s demeanor, manners and competencies. This is built on trust and open communication. This can be done by way of periodic meetings with the team and individual staff. (e.g., weekly team meetings and monthly individual meetings).

Creating a concise profile sheet on each staff may be helpful in noting different team member’s personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. You may also include other notations and interests like rewards and recognition, hobbies and family.

Understanding the activities, technologies, skills and functions of your employees and how they interact with others is a big part of your team’s success. Sometimes your staff will have cultural influences that should be understood and considered as a supervisor. The better a supervisor understands his or her staff, the better they can position them – and the team – for success.

Management Principle 10: If you don’t like something, you have three choices

Managers should encourage their subordinates to bring problems to their attention. These can be personnel issues, policies, work assignments, etc. Once the problem is understood and limitations are known, a supervisor must evaluate the three available options for the employee: change it, accept it or leave it.

Change it: Suggests that a supervisor can make a change to the situation. If this requires policies to be re-written, changes to personnel or reassigned tasks, etc., then a supervisor needs to take the necessary steps and/or delegate tasks to appropriate staff to incite the required changes.

Accept it: Suggests that changes cannot be made due to various reasons (e.g., legal matters, personnel issues, etc.). The employee will need to allow the situation to continue; however, supervisors should try to work with staff to create a better work environment.

Leave it: Suggests that there is no resolution to the situation and the employee is not willing to continue their involvement. This may result in an employee moving to another team or resigning from the company. It is vital that the manager behaves in a neutral supportive role if they are in this situation.

For example, if the employee decides that he/she would like to change teams, then the supervisor could assist with the process. If the employee decides to leave the company, then perhaps they can be involved in assisting in the process to hire a replacement. This can be beneficial to both the employee and the manager such that the employee has some time to document their roles and responsibilities, creates a transition plan, look for future employment outside the company, train his/her replacement, etc. Likewise, the manager has a smooth transition of personnel, can re-balance the load of activities and cross train, if necessary, and reduces chaos, confusion and rumors.

Ultimately, supervisors can increase workplace productivity, employee retention and improve the office atmosphere with these 10 management principles. By incorporating these principles into their managerial practice, supervisors can create a better and more productive workplace environment and stand out as a key leader among the organization.