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26th March 2009

I was reading a polemic if entrepreneurs should, or not, get an MBA and I would like to put forth my idea about the matter.

We are always learning and will continue until dead. There is always something that could be improved and, to figure out, knowledge will facilitate the process.

I agree that many entrepreneurs develop their business skills with blood, sweat and tears, as I did. I co-founded two high tech start-ups and, after 25 years of “bloody times” and two companies, I decided to get my MBA.

In theory, having a couple decades of experience in running a business, I should already know almost everything about business management and development. But, actually, getting the MBA, I learned, rooted and improved a lot of processes and knowledge that I was already using, and also, I learned a lot of new things (state-of-the-art techniques, theories, new writers, new strategies, new “gurus”, and so on). I learned all that, even being a compulsive reader of everything about management, strategy, globalization and entrepreneurship, and had read hundreds of books about the matter, before deciding to return to school. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Berkun, June 1, 2006

In part one, I covered getting started, why managers are different and other essentials. Here in part 2 we get into tactics you need for the first few weeks.

Getting acclimated

Survival training of any kind teaches you one thing: before you act, know where you are. Say, for example, I dumped you, blindfolded and dehydrated, in the Swiss Alps. Your first move wouldn’t be to run around, tripping over stones, yelling orders at sheep. Instead you’d be best be served by figuring out how to remove that blindfold and get your bearings. Only then could you possibly find the direction most likely to provide you with shelter and drinking water (or at least some Swiss chocolate. Yum).

When you become a manager, even in an organization you’ve worked in for years, the landscape changes because of your new managerial status. Before you throw orders around and correct the mistakes of manager’s past, stop, look and listen. Observe what is happening today, right now. Talk to the people you’re working with and ask them what they see happening that you should be working on in your first weeks, especially the most experienced and respected people on your team. See what concerns or ideas they have that perhaps went unheard before. If nothing else, start building relationships from day one with those that work with and for you. Watch the clock in these meetings: make sure you spend more time listening to them than talking. If they ramble, ask them for recommendations. If they have nothing to say, invite them to follow up if they wish, but move on: there’s a lot to do. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Berkun, January 25, 2006

The central mistake new managers make is egoism. On the surface, the change is all about you: you’ve been promoted, you have a new job title, you have a new office. Perhaps you’ve been waiting for this change for some time, while watching peers or friends get promotions, and now finally you feel you’ve received the respect you’ve earned. Congratulations! But be warned: how or why you became a manager has little to do with doing the job well. The sooner you recognize how different success as a manager is from success as worker, the better off you’ll be. Good managers are rare (how many have you had?): so if you’re new to the game, and would like to be a good one, this essay is for you.

Why managers are different

On the day your job title includes “manager” others depend on you. They will look to you for leadership, guidance, or advice. They may rely on you for career direction and job security. You have more influence on their happiness, and success than most people in their lives. All this is what makes the transition to management a challenge: even if you are currently the most important programmer, marketer, or designer in an organization, there are new stresses and responsibilities you’ve never faced. The psychology and responsibility of managing others is complex and should be taken seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

As a positive counterpoint to my list of why managers become assholes, and as a counterbalance to my tendency to write cynically,  here’s a list of why people become great at managing others, trying as much as possible not to just do the stupid thing and invert my other list.

1. Enjoy helping people grow.  Few things feel better than helping someone who is new to a role, or who has been struggling, into becoming a productive, confident person. There’s a kind of satisfaction in helping someone figure out how to be successful that doesn’t come from many other living experiences. Great mangers love seeing this happen on their teams.
2. Love creating positive environments. A great manager creates a team and and office environment that makes it easy for smart people to do good things. They love that moment when they wander the halls and see all sorts of amazing things happening all on their own, with passionate, motivated people doing good work without much involvement from the manager.
3. Want to correct mistakes inflicted on them. Some great managers are looking to undo the evil managers they had. Rather than take it out on their subordinates, they want to do a kind of pay it forward revenge: prove to themselves and the world that it can be better that what happened to them in the past. This can create the trap of fighting the last war: your team may not care at all about avoiding the mistakes of your previous manager. They want to avoid the mistakes you, and your blind spots, are probably making right now.
4. Care deeply about the success and well being of their team. Thoroughbred horses get well cared for. Their owners see them as an expensive asset and do whatever they can to optimize their health, performance, and longevity, even if their motivations are largely selfish. A great manager cares deeply about their staff, and goes out of his way to protect, train, care for, and reward their own team, even if their primary motivation is their own success.
5. Succession mentality.  A successful manager eventually realizes their own leadership will end one day, but if they teach and instill the right things into people who work for them, that philosophy can live on for a long time, long after the manager is gone. This can go horribly wrong (See, history of monarchies) but the desire to have a lasting impact generally helps people think on longer term cycles and pay attention to wider trends short term managers do not notice.
6. Long term sense of reward.  Many of the mistakes managers make involve reaping short term rewards at the expense of long term loyalty and morale. Any leader who inverts this philosophy, and makes short term sacrifices to provide long term gains, will generally be a much better manager. They recognize the value of taking the time to explain things, to build trust, to provide training, and to build relationships, all of which results in a kind of team performance and loyalty the short term manager never believes is possible.
7. Practice of the golden rule.  It’s funny how well known this little gem is, and rare in life people follow it. But I think anyone in power who believes in it, and treats all of their employees the same way they truly would want to be treated, or even better, treats employees as they actually want to be treated, will always be a decent, above average manager. A deeply moral person can’t help but do better than most people, as treating people with respect, honesty and trust are the 3 things I suspect most people wish they could get from their bosses.
8. Self aware, including weaknesses. This is the kicker. Great leaders know what they suck at, and either work on those skills or hire people they know make up for their own weaknesses, and empower them to do so. This tiny little bit of self-awareness makes them open to feedback and criticism to new areas they need to work on, and creates an example for movement in how people should be growing and learning about new things.
9. Sets tone of healthy debate and criticism. If the boss gives and takes feedback well, everyone else will too. If the boss is defensive, passive-aggressive, plays favorites, or does other things that work against the best idea winning, everyone else will play these destructive games. Only a boss who sees their own behavior as a model the rest of the organization will tend to follow can ever become a truly great manager. Without this, they will always wonder why the team behaves in certain unproductive ways that are strangely familiar.
10. Willing to fight, but picks their battles. Great managers are not cowards. They are willing to stake their reputation and make big bets now and then (I’d say at least once a year, as a totally random, put possibly useful stake in the ground). However they are not crazy either. They are good at doing political math and seeing which battle is worth the fight at a given time. A manager that never fights can never be great – they will never have enough skin in the game to earn the deepest level of respect of the people that work for them. But a manager that always fights is much worse. They continually put their own ego ahead of what their team is capable of.
11. (Bonus!) Instinctively corrects bad behavior within their team. True story:  on a new team I once saw a mid level manager make a personal attack of a junior employee in front of the VP. I looked at the VP, expecting him to jump in. He did nothing. Not a thing. Message to team? It’s ok to pick on people if you outrank them.  Micromanaging is never good, but correcting destructive behavior, is always appropriate even if you have to jump levels to do it (Sure, perhaps there was an offline conversation. But something like this was so egregious it should have been corrected on the spot). Nothing builds morale and respect faster than a manager who jumps in to the fray to defend someone who is being picked on by a bully, except perhaps a manager who gets rid of the bully altogether.

Also see: Advice for new managers (A popular essay)

What did I miss? Think of the last great manager you had and what traits you’d add to the above.

Source: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2009/top-ten-reasons-managers-become-great/

Original Article Here

September 05, 2008

To work in IT you have to have a tech background, right? Nope. With the right set of management skills, even a nontechnical person can make it as a successful manager. Sure, it helps to understand the bits and-bytes of each employee’s area of expertise. If nothing else, it means the manager can appreciate what the staff does right and recognize weaknesses. But how can managers accurately evaluate team performance or assign tasks when they know little or nothing about what the individual does? According to some technical employees, the answer is communication.

Making the Case for Tech Skills

That’s not to say you can be a bozo about the area you’re responsible for. People sometimes assume that a good manager can manage anyone. However, a case can easily be made that tech managers should have at least a rudimentary idea of what their teams do. To manage effectively, the manager needs to understand enough to allocate resources and to schedule reasonable time frames for project completion.

“A manager that knows less than the managed loses the respect of the team, unless (s)he is a really good professional that knows what to ask for, how to delegate, and can be supportive,” says a developer named Victor.” See Dilbert.”

That lack of respect frustrates employees, say tech staff members. It translates to miscommunication that negatively impacts productivity and the user experience across the business.

“The untechnical management I’ve had just wasn’t as effective in getting things done,” says Donna MacLeod, a systems analyst at a medical diagnostic company. “The lack of understanding for technical matters meant that a lot of projects which really, really needed funding never took off because there was no one both technical enough and business-savvy enough to sell it to the board. We were constantly lacking funding even though we were literally running ancient machines which were the backbone of the business and patching together those boxes with parts ordered off of eBay”and this was a nationwide business, not some mom-and-pop shop.”

While technical competency in the department’s area of expertise is an obvious asset, being tech-savvy doesn’t mean a manager has to be able to do the actual work step by step. Rather, an overall understanding of the technologies being used to meet business needs and how that ties into projects and department responsibilities is key.

“A technical manager should know enough to understand what the technologies we use do, to be able to participate intelligently in meetings,” says Jeanne Steinback, a software project manager for Redbox, a provider of automated DVD rental kiosks. She elaborates: “…where we are in the lifecycle of a technology, beta, new, used and ancient, just to be able to make sure we don’t stray too far onto the bleeding edge or the technical graveyard.”

Michael Roth, an IT manager with Complete Production Services, a provider of oil-field services, adds that a tech manager doesn’t need to be capable of doing every job within the IT department; however, the person “should be savvy enough not to be snowed in any area.”

Alex, a software quality-assurance analyst, adds, “A manager doesn’t have to know how to write code as long as he understands the methodology, processes and terminology around it as that’s sufficient for the manager to support it throughout the organization.”

People Skills Trump Tech Know-How

Yes, technical skills are important, and to be a successful manager, you should have at least a clue what your department is about. But when looking at a manager’s skill set, employees say basic people skills are much more important than being technically savvy.

“The principal role of a technical manager is to be able to manage people and the skill you need to do that is good communication,” says Pete Nairn, a test manager at a large IT solutions company in Europe, in another post to the Software QA forum.

Tom Jorgenson, a software architect at Tom Jorgenson Consulting, which provides C# development and architecture services, adds that trusting the technical competence of those being managed is critical. One of his favorite managers managed a joint team of software architects and Oracle database analysts. “He knew little about what we software architects did, so he simply said, ‘Go fix the problem/design/whatever. Make me look good. Don’t tell me about it.’ The team was very successful.”

Specifically, the four top skills cited for good managers”not just tech managers”include:

• Communication. Managers need listening skills and the ability to work successfully with other departments.
• Trust/Respect. Specifically, tech managers must respect the skills that employees bring to the table and trust them to do assigned tasks.
• Set and manage expectations. Help staffers prioritize projects and generally manage the competition for resources.
• Support. Advocate for their team. Represent the team interests to upper management, schedule realistic deadlines and obtain necessary resources.

While these skills may seem pretty straightforward, the combination would be a godsend—and employees know it.

“I think I am looking for a superhero manager,” says Bonnie, a software developer; “A good manager needs to understand the role of our software in the organization, understand the technical underpinnings in order to develop an overall vision of where we are going”and also needs to be able to communicate with the higher-ups. That is a pretty tall order.”

It’s All About Expectations

Tall order it may be, but let’s push this notion a bit further. In a service industry like IT, demands on staff are high. A good boss must know how to juggle the load to get things done without killing the staff to do it.

Bob Murphy, a senior software engineer at ACCESS Systems Americas, adds that a tech manager needs to be:

• Tech-savvy enough to know what’s realistic and what’s not, and powerful or gutsy enough to protect his staff from unrealistic demands.
• People-savvy enough to know who needs close managing and who can be given an assignment and cut loose.
• Able to help staff understand and meet the client’s needs, and network with people who can help them get the job done, both within and outside the company.

Hell, Do We Need Managers?

In these days of hectic work schedules and increasingly more responsibility, it seems many employees feel that managers aren’t there to manage them but rather to eliminate obstacles to getting the job done. A manager who can do that will be rewarded with grateful, productive employees.

“If my supervisor needs to manage me, then s/he needs to fire me,” says Gary Brown, extreme programming coach for Carfax. “I depend on my manager to be politically savvy, to understand technical issues at the been-there-done-that level and to remove barriers to progress.”

Frustration when dealing with other departments is often a point where a good manager can help smooth the way and eliminate problems.

Ken Boucher, a former Smalltalk developer for First Data Corporation, a provider of electronic commerce and payment processing services, writes in the Extreme Programming discussion list, “I’m confused. I thought my manager’s job was to manage issues, not me. I need a manager when there’s co-ordination with another department that requires intervention or when it’s unproductive to have me do it.”

“For example,” he adds, “I need a manager to handle all that HR stuff or find out why the DB2 department can’t run a simple table creation without six weeks advance notice. I need a manager who can explain to the Six Sigma folks what we do in their language and why it isn’t what they seem to think we do. I don’t need a manager to manage me. I need one to manage them.”