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How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

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Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#101

Great for building a brand new team. Not so great for assuming leadership of an existing team/business. Also, very American. I just stopped being CEO of a SE Asian business, and this just doesn't apply globally. There are culture differences that make enormous differences in leadership styles and outcomes.

I was only kinda interested in this article, because I have worked enough years at enough different American places to know what good management looks like, and what bad American management looks like. But, I would really like to read an article on what good (and bad) SE Asian business management looks like.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#104
How many popups do I need to swat away in first minute of reading this post. Second one doesn’t even have a close button it just hovers over text on the bottom. How about letting users read the article before forcing them take make a decision to subscribe

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following the links, I stumbled upon this amazing seeming resource: http://leadership.au.af.mil/sls-skil.htm The military are really very very good at man-management ...

This seems to be the impression in the business world, which has what I can only describe as a fetish for stories about the military, but Marines in particular have a very tough time adapting to life and careers outside the military. It's fun to think of our businesses as just like a Seal team and try to glean lessons from stories of heroism, but the reality is if the military were in the business of making a profit,…

> the reality is if the military were in the business of making a profit, retaining employees, or pleasing customers, it would fail miserably.

Is that because of management issues or because of the intrinsic issues that come from being in the business of killing people to gain land, resources, power, or whatever?

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#106
post #81

A better title would be "How Management Works in 2018." Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product. The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. Both of those topics have been left out of this piece.

> Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product

This part has not been left out. All of the content about establishing culture, vision, expectations, responsibilities, and so on, is a direct part of managing others' behaviors to produce a great product. What am I missing?

> The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors.

The article talks about this too, especially the importance of communication, consistency, discipline, and process:

> [Communication] Communication may be the most important word in this guide. It is the key to making your team operate effectively. Failure to communicate is the #1 cause of people problems (...)

> [Consistency] If you are using metrics properly, you’ll be analyzing performance on a daily or weekly basis by consistently reviewing your metrics and measuring if objectives are being achieved. This typically happens in your weekly meetings and written updates. To help facilitate your planning, there are a couple of formal analysis activities to do:

> Quarterly Summary. Reflection is a healthy and beneficial process. At the end of every quarter, each functional leader should compile a summary of the objectives achieved. The summary should include metrics and descriptive analysis on where the team succeeded vs. struggled.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9-5 core hours is bullshit. The whole point of core hours is to be a window of time where you can guarantee a meeting can be scheduled with people across time zones. This doesn't mean you have 8 hours of core hours. That's literally insane.

Not to mention you can’t adjust your hours at all to avoid rush hour or cooperate with a spouse in day care management. 9-5 is necessary for banks, but not for software developers. Having a few core hours is necessary, but if it’s 8, you can no longer call them “core”.

seanmcdirmid, what country are you in? In the USA there are very few jobs that are strictly 40 hours. Part-time jobs are less than that, whereas full-time jobs are typically more than that.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the impression in the business world, which has what I can only describe as a fetish for stories about the military, but Marines in particular have a very tough time adapting to life and careers outside the military. It's fun to think of our businesses as just like a Seal team and try to glean lessons from stories of heroism, but the reality is if the military were in the business of making a profit,…

> the reality is if the military were in the business of making a profit, retaining employees, or pleasing customers, it would fail miserably. Is that because of management issues or because of the intrinsic issues that come from being in the business of killing people to gain land, resources, power, or whatever?

As a former Marine, I can say it's a bit of both.

Obviously, the job is stressful all in itself. While I did not go to combat myself, I have lost friends, I've delivered flags to families of Marines who fell in combat, and have also just had a lot of beers with friends who could not cope with some of the actions that they had to endure in combat.

Secondly, management is certainly an issue like any other company. I won't go in lots of details here, but for half of my enlistment, I loved my leadership as they pushed me hard and helped me grow. They very clearly wanted to make me a better Marine and person. They were as close as family to me. They were very balanced. They knew when to be be hard, and when not to be. On the other hand, for the second half, It was the complete opposite and my time was miserable.

I experienced similar things in the private industry, only with much less physical labor. :)

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#109

Having read through the piece, I'm a little confused about why "leader" and "manager" are being conflated. They're very different roles. The former is a navigational role and the latter is a facilitating role. Given the differing dominant archetypal personality traits required for those distinct modalities, it's unlikely they'd be strongly expressed in a singular person, and there's some reason to think they may be n…

Interesting. I see them as naturally linked. Many/most organizations combine the two functions. And I think there's a lot to be said for doing it.

If you try to lead, you will create activity that needs to be facilitated. The person who understands the goal naturally has information about what help the workers need in achieving it.

For example, suppose your main goal has three major pieces to it. As a leader, you define the goal and the pieces, and you inspire people to work toward that goal. But this naturally raises practical questions like the relative priorities of each piece at any given time. Nailing down actual the priorities is facilitation because it helps people be most effective at working toward the goal. And who can best understand those priorities? The person who has the vision of the goal in the first place.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#110
post #99
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Painfully obvious' can sometimes completely non-obvious when you're in an environment where bad habits, political bs, and other human weirdness dominate the patterns of interaction. This is true for most organizations.

Very true! It is difficult to understand what Good looks like until you experience it first-hand. Afterwards, Good is as obvious as water. Unfortunately, Good requires infrastructure, both physical and cultural, that most organizations lack. It is also exceedingly difficult to parachute into an organization and introduce Good, as that change threatens the balance of political power. People will strongly oppose Good b…

Absolutely all true.

> Afterwards, Good is as obvious as water.

I wish there were a magical way to give everyone a first job in a well-run org. I think the average corporate insanity quotient would noticeably drop if people knew what they were missing.

I found my first job at a well-run firm in my late 20s, and consider myself lucky. But I also spent a bunch of really crappy time putting up with things I didn't know I didn't have to put up with before that.

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