Management

I just realized that I have reached a milestone. It was 10 years ago that I was promoted to manager and allowed to hire 3 direct reports. Since then, I have developed a management style that can be summed up with a few management principals. Please indulge me by allowing a blog on the subject. My management principals are:

1. The team you are part of is more important than the team you lead. If you are not leading your team to deliver on your manager's objectives, your team is at risk. They will become irrelevant and broken up, reassigned, de-prioritized, or even laid off.


2. Your team should operate as well when you are gone as they do when you are in the office. If you are required to get a day or week's work accomplished, you team is not self-sufficient, empowered, or have a sense of ownership.


3. Managers should be evaluated by how few phone calls they get. A manager peer and friend once told me his goal is to avoid every phone call by either anticipating and satisfying the needs of his customers, or clearing defining, communicating and fostering a clear sense of ownership for every member of the team. He went further and said that he knows when his phone quits ringing, its time to look for a new job. He was one of the better managers I have known.


4. A manager's primary role is to ensure that everyone on his team is pulling in the same direction. A well articulated vision of team responsibility, goals, and tactics to achieve the goal will encourage self-sufficiency and unleash innovation. Every team member should understand how their role supports the team's objectives.


5. A manager should take credit for nothing and give credit for everything. A manager should not be receiving awards. If they do, they are either not leveraging their team or taking credit for the work of their team. A manager should make sure that every accomplishment is communicated upward and the responsible team member is clearly identified in the communications.


6. The manager serves the team, not the other way around. A manager's job is to enable their team. The best enabler of a team will solve the problems that create obstacles to their team's progress. A manager of 10 must enable his 10 team members to produce like 11 or more. If they do not, the manager is not earning their own wage.

There are 2 kinds of managers. I have had both, and been both. The first is the Expert Manager. This type of manager usually rises through the ranks as an expert in a certain discipline. Along the way, their leadership recognizes potential and promotes them to a manager position.

Expert managers tend to lead in a command and control style, much like the military. They dictate what should be done and become their team's primary problem solver. Self-sufficiency and innovation suffer. Individual development can also suffer as the team relies more and more on their manager to solve problems and provide the answers. Expert managers find they rapidly become overwhelmed. All of the team's workload is funnelled through them. The manager either does the work, or assigns each specific task to a subordinate. They sometime dictate to the team member how to perform the assignment. Team members do not develop a sense of empowerment or ownership. They simply wait for the next assignment with instructions.

The second type of manager is the Generalist Manager. The Generalist manager can lead virtually any team since their style does not require subject matter expertise, or a deep technical background. The Generalist starts his tenure of team leadership with a thorough inventory of the skill sets, strengths, weaknesses of each team member. He then couples that with the big picture vision his team plays within the larger organization. As requests come in, he develops a sense of ownership with the team member most suited to deliver. Elegant delegation is a key skill used to communicate the desired result and ancillary requirements without dictating the specific steps to follow. This gives the team member some latitude in developing their own solution that meets the desired result. Innovation, ownership and empowerment can be the product of such a style.

Both styles can be effective, and both can blow up in the manager's face. I have found that Generalist managers are usually the ones that go on to higher positions. Very few corporate officers can claim a deep technical knowledge in the area they lead. They must learn to rely on their subordinates to be the experts. A true and unfortunate fact is that Expert Managers can also become too valuable to promote out of their current position.

Generalist managers usually cannot perform the work conducted by their staff. For that reason, coverage and contingency planning can occupy much of the generalist time. A lazy generalist manager can be seen as incompetent. When they blow a project, the boom can be very loud.

I started my management career as an Expert Manager. I was good at identifying process issues and re-engineering processes to be more effective. I typically described what I wanted my team to do, and dictated how each person would support that end. I soon found that I was a very busy guy. I felt that I had to be at every project meeting. Soon I could take on nothing new. On an especially overwhelming day, I applied to move out of my comfort zone and into a new organization.

I got the job. I knew nothing of the world I was entering. The result was that I was no longer able to be an Expert Manager. I began to make the shift to Generalist. I began relying on my team. My role is to help them be effective at what they are already good at. Not only did I become more effective, the team did also.

I remain proud of the teams I have led. From that first team of 3 members to my largest team of 35, each have been innovative and highly productive. They remain productive whether I am in the office or not. I receive personal gratification when they succeed. I am also blessed with such a capable team. One advantage of yearly lay offs is that all the survivors are very capable. There isn't any dead wood left in the organization. Of my current staff of 29, 6 either have been managers or are capable of doing my job. The rest are subject matter experts in their field.

We are ready for whatever Ericsson has for us.