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What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

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Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#111

Post by IgorPartola »

ddebernardy wrote: post #91
IgorPartola wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned in another reply, this particular data entry job involved doing math at about college linear algebra level and writing SQL among other things. We got to this point by relying on one of the founders to do all the data entry. Suddenly three things happened: our system got more complex so the old tools no longer helped, we signed on a lot more customers, and the founder stepped away for a well deserved br…

Stepping in and highlighting the problem before it happens come to mind. If you anticipated that such complexity was involved in data entry at any point, putting upper management in front of their responsibility might have helped, i.e. "how do you think dev morale will look like if they need to do data entry for weeks just so we can make a few more quick sales?"

I think this was my biggest mistake. I underestimated the problem and while I explained it to the upper management I did not push it hard enough for them to make it a number one priority.

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#114

Post by michaelochurch »

sheepmullet wrote: post #10

Problems I found with the top answer: Performance management: It is highly unlikely as somebody new to the team, and brand new to management, that you can work out who the high performers are and who the under performers are within the first few weeks. If you get it wrong then by making it official and documenting by email you will get the entire teams backs up. Not explicitly managing resources: Really bad advice. H…

If you get it wrong then by making it official and documenting by email you will get the entire teams backs up.

Yep. Much of management theory assumes that employees are passive, like cattle, and that the employee will cluelessly make nothing of the manager who's "documenting". In reality, that puts the person into war mode.

The old phrase about never pulling a gun unless you intend to kill someone? It also applies to HR practices and "documenting". You only do that if you're sure you're going to fire someone as quickly as you can, because there's absolutely no way to turn back once down that road. The best route is to fire same-day with a generous severance, but most middle-managers don't have that leeway (either to fire quickly or to give severances). Which gets to the crux of why being a middle manager sucks so hard. You have major responsibilities (hiring, firing, defining and canceling projects) but none of the power to do them properly. You often get stuck between self-serving, arrogant executives (MacLeod Sociopaths) and checked-out minimum-effort players (MacLeod Losers) and can very easily be cleaning up the messes of both.

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#115

Post by netcan »

IgorPartola wrote: post #27

So at one point I took on a management job, stepping up from a (lead) developer. I felt like the whole thing was kind of a train wreck and I am still slowly analyzing the black box recordings from it. This was my first time having direct reports that were not one or two interns and managing a team of seven other highly intelligent people was quite a chore in itself. What bugged me is that I could never tell if the pr…

It's a long read, so of it doesn't grab you don't read it. This might explain everything you experienced: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#116

Post by gleenn »

nitrogen wrote: post #95
IgorPartola wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the route we went eventually, but inputting geographic data directly into MySQL is not something that temps could handle. We needed the time to create the tools to be able to hire temps. In the meantime cash flow depended on the data being there.

Sounds like the perfect situation for a small business loan to cover the temps' wages.

Sounds like it wasn't money, but time they needed. Money can eventually save you time, but not immediately.

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#117

Post by marrs »

kevingadd wrote: post #61
rpwilcox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common is 600% turnover in management? I know turnover in engineering is usually high (if people are moving around every 18 months to 2 years)... but 600%?

I've seen turnover that bad at past employers. In some cases it continued for years after I left. I think it depends on the company, not necessarily averages.

Ditto for a place where I used to work. Unfortunately for me and my colleagues, the reason for the high turnover was that they kept hiring good dev managers who all quickly identified the projects' major problems and set about trying to solve them. This had the unfortunate side effect of revealing the incompetence of the TD, so they had to go quickly.

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#118

Post by Amezarak »

IgorPartola wrote: post #70
hluska wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know your side of the story, so I know this assessment won't be entirely accurate. However, based on what you have written, it sounds like you were a pretty good manager who just got caught between your employees and your bosses. I especially like how you recognize your team members' intelligence, and tried to advocate for them with senior management. You likely made some mistakes along the way, but every mana…

One thing I realized later that I did wrong was pushing back on the upper management too much. For example I said I did not want my team working weekends on regular basis as had been the practice up to that point. We ended up not having to anyways but it painted the team in a bad light. Really this translated into me taking a long time to understand what the priorities of the business were vs the development prioriti…

If by working the weekends you mean seven-day work weeks on a regular basis, I strongly believe you were doing the right thing.

The health of your employees is a much bigger priority than business or development. They're not human resources, they're people with families and loved ones and the need to have a day off. Unless you were on the verge of curing cancer, there is no reason to work people like that.

You were in a bad situation - it sounds like there were huge problems with upper management - and you did the right thing. Unfortunately doing the right thing doesn't guarantee success. No doubt you made a lot of mistakes too - I've been there and it hurts - but that doesn't sound like one of them.

To me it's a sign in your favor that the team left after you did - if you were the problem, they would have left before you did. I don't think you can expect them to be happy when they're working weekends and (what sounds like professional developers) are doing manual data entry for weeks on end.

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#119

Post by iQuercus »

"Thinking too small - A successful leader is going to create growth and opportunity for their team. A leader who thinks small is unlikely to do either. Instead of planning how to grow your business 100%, plan how to grow it 10x or 100x."

This attitude could potentially backfire. It can lead to a closed-loop that eventually results in dishonesty to meet unattainable numbers. Better to plan growth empirically and adjusting for things like regression to the mean at the team and company level.

Re: What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make?

#120

Post by Radim »

mantrax5 wrote: post #84
IgorPartola wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reading Dune and this is very similar to the advice Leto gave to Paul. Which came first, I wonder?

Can you please quote which part you refer to?

On a related note, Herbert's "God Emperor of Dune" is an amazing book. Best in the series, in my opinion.

Pretty much every scene/dialogue in it is a worthwhile quote: on leadership, duty, love, humanity...

Check out some of the quotes here (but go read the book!): http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3634588-god-emperor-of-...

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