Over the course of my career I've been fortunate to have able to develop as an engineer and sysadmin, and did very well at tackling the projects and tasks that came with those roles. With success in those roles, I found pleasure in managing people and technology, and worked to get promoted to manager, and later director and VP roles in my organizations. The challenge I have faced the further up in the org I go is in changing my work style, tactics and approaches to be more effective. I often find myself overwhelmed with tasks, while projects also need attention. The question for HN is: How do senior level technology managers, directors and VP's manage their time, projects and tasks to be effective at those levels?
Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
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Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#2You can’t directly manage more than a half dozen people, up or down. If you’re in a place with heavy management, that’s something you need to work with.
Your key objective is to get people in place to operate independently. You need empower your people so they are managing the projects.
If you’re doing a lot of heroic tasks, especially in a bigger org, you’re approaching the ceiling in terms of advancement and ultimately doing a disservice to your people.
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#3Cool question.
Basically, you don't manage your time. You use it. What are you trying to accomplish, how many resources do you have?
There are goals, you set, and there are bottom-up driven innovations.
The feeling of being overwhelmed is a good one as long as drowning in ideas not trouble. ;)
I try to have a decent team around me to help me get my goals done. The rest is hard work, there is no happy path to leadership/management. Dealing with VUCA is the price you pay. This is part of accepting being a manager. I read a lot of good business books, talk to trusted colleagues and set timt to focus on strategic topics.
Enjoy your career, learn and have fun with the people!
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#4Are the people who work for you busy as well? I'm great at taking in all the extra work and not delegating. Often its because the people under me dont know how to do something - they should be able to figure it out, I'm just not good at forcing them do it.
If they are busy you should focus on getting more resources - as well as improving the productivity of the team.
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#5That's a conundrum that most developers who climb the chain face and the best article I've read so far that comes close to answer it is this one:
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Probably posted a billion times here since y combinator is just one of the things that derived form the work of the master Paul Graham.
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#6I’ve watched many people in these roles, and had them at various times.
One of my takeaways was this. Everybody has a system, but it’s not that important what the system is. What is telling is what happens in a “challenging situation”. Is your system what you rely on to get you through it, or is it what you abandon when the chips are down - only to pick up again when things cool down? In my experience, the people in the former category perform much better, with fewer surprises. If that isn’t you, ask why.
I’ve seen people do this well using everything from a fully manual system (engineering notebook/journal) to total commitment to something like omnifocus to a sort of personal wiki to one based on emacs .org mode. I think the key is to find (and customize) a system that is comfortable for you and you trust - and make it very easy to use. Simpler is probably better.
Another thing to note, the first time you have an EA you’ll have to adjust your patterns to make both of your time more effective.
One last thing - how effective do you feel you are at delegating? The bigger the group under you, the more you have to let go of details to keep your focus where it matters. Communication trumps almost everything else.
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#7This is not about time management at all. Many new execs mess this up -- it's not that you need to get more organized (or mostly not); you need to build a system that doesn't require you to intervene all the time.
What this requires is
- people you can trust
- you actually trusting them
- being able to identify relatively self-contained tasks you can delegate
- being able to accept that you'll get less competent in things you're delegating
Ofc. there's much more to this, there are plenty of books, courses, schools about leadership and management, but I think the core issue is that you should concentrate of make yourself not required.
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#8You need to stop doing your old job and start doing your new job. That sounds obvious, but I see a lot of people get promoted and keep doing their old job, the one that they were so good at it and came so naturally. Even if the new person in your old job is only 25% as good as you are at, let/make them do it.
Related, if you can see a better way to do it, strongly consider keeping your mouth shut if that way is only 5% better. If you improve the project by a few percent and sap your report's motivation and confidence by 50%, you're probably not making things better for your company. Save your insights for times where you think your way is 50+% better.
In short, if you are overwhelmed, make sure you're doing your executive job. If you're not, consider still spending more time on reading and thinking rather than defaulting to pitching in on a project deliverable if it isn't written in English prose (feel free to work on a project high level summary, objectives, and key results document).
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#9You need to stop doing your old job and start doing your new job. That sounds obvious, but I see a lot of people get promoted and keep doing their old job, the one that they were so good at it and came so naturally. Even if the new person in your old job is only 25% as good as you are at, let/make them do it. Related, if you can see a better way to do it, strongly consider keeping your mouth shut if that way is only…
This is exactly the problem I see with my division's supervisor. He was a developer, and is now a program manager, but he wants to directly influence every single project instead of delegating. What is an effective way to encourage him to do his new job?
This is impacting the team b/c he takes away lower level decision making responsibility, while not spending the time he needs to spend planning out and setting top level vision.
Re: Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?
#10I highly recommend reading "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier. It's a great overview of the different things to consider while working your way up the ladder (specifically in engineering management).