During my early career, at least half of my new hires were senior managers. Three months after they started, I sat them down and gave them a piece of paper. On it, I wrote down my expectations of their performance, and how I liked them judged by their peers. I sat there for about five minutes, then waited, shortly before I had to sit my PRINCE2 Qualification belfast.
I knew this would be difficult. They were new, and I didn’t trust them with any responsibility. You see these managers, remember? I’ll show you where I was going with this.
When I stood up to introduce myself, I only had minutes and the bulk of my new hires’ time had not been up yet. I offered them the piece of paper and my job. They now had the responsibility to do something that created a great impact on the company. It was not going to be too hard, but there would be a price to pay.
Well, the same thing happened. In fact, it got worse. Now these managers had to run an entire company, and they knew better than to waste time doing nothing effective. So they started doing everything instead of what I told them to do.
Another thing happened within a two hour period. Junior managers took over some of the responsibility for my initiatives, and I found myself micromanaging more. This was unacceptable. I’ve used the word micromanage before, because I didn’t allow them to outsource anything.
At this point the ship was running aground and no one understood what they were doing. I couldn’t wipe out the project group, because it was too much work for one person to handle. I was telling people to do something very different, which they were struggling to understand.
Oops! I didn’t have a clue. As this team showed no functioning management style, I Activities shifted to the Team. I was so excited that it was going to change everything. It wasn’t.
I naturally wanted to reduce my own workload, so I made a plan to delegate it out. I was doing great at letting people know how I wanted things done! Gone were the management and the micromanagement. I lost control of the ship!
Enter the SWW. I would help a team of managers who had great organizational and team skills, but had never had the experience of a project. They weren’t as great individually, but the team and the synergy of their skills was immense. I built this team, and, more than likely, we were not successful at accomplishing our goals. However, it was a great “learning experience” for those playing on it.
When I got back to work, I made my revised list of expectations. A few thousand of the managers on the team couldn’t understand what the previous management group had done. It was so hard because they told me they didn’t have the ability. I just knew my new guys could. Note: I was very wrong about this.
I had the SWW. The team was great! The results were extraordinary.
I got back to my “fantastic” job. I told members of the team to stay together and get more work done together. The team did. We did great!
I went home and we finished up our management lessons. I was surprised how hard I congress calling by telephone, and I just wanted to sit back and relax. I can still picture me. The SWW gave me back my sanity. I just knew it was time to level up.
I was under the impression that a manager’s job was to effectively supervise operations. Well, that’s not always true. For those of us in the operations department, a manager’s job is to influence operations. It’s about the process – planning, directing, coordinating, etc. An effective and caring manager will teach, direct, and influence operations.