Management without control - part 1

Having made a small translation of an interesting article. Let's first dismiss all managers! I realized that there is a great demand in the field of management and management approaches. In this post, I want to open a series of publications on the topic of company management, government, delegation, etc. Each subsequent post will answer questions asked or topics discussed previous. Thus, I want my work to be as useful as possible for a wide range of people.

So, having 10 years of experience in IT, and going through many roles: tester, designer, programmer, lead programmer, head: group, department, division, Internet project department, development director and finally director.

I do not pretend to authorship - rather, it is folk art: “the words are folk, the music is folk, the author performs”.
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Go!


So, for a start, you should understand that if you only want to become a manager or a manager, then it obliges people to operate (in a good way) and be prepared for the fact that there are no ready-made solutions on how to proceed in a particular case.

A good and professional manager manages the result:

1. Result orientation

- it does not matter how many works were performed, it does not matter with what schedule the person worked. It does not matter whether the developer or sales person. It does not matter that the contractor prevents to complete the task on time - he must possess self-management and pro-activity.

2. Always set the time when the result should be presented.

This rule is also important, since even very good ideas will not be realized, do not have time limits for their implementation. And you need not just lower the deadline from the top - the performer should ideally offer the desired term to the manager. So you need to manage it, how? Right - not controlling, i.e. without imposing your deadline on top. The manager has a huge variety of tools for this, the algorithm is as follows:

1. ask the expert to state the task in your own words and to give the fullest possible decomposition of the work on the task with your own assessment
2. if something was not correctly understood - it is necessary to clarify this, since often the performer is laid in the plus for the “foggy setting”
3. if everything is clear, you can divide the tasks into parts, the part that needs to be done to the desired date with the necessary functionality, and then the rest
4. You can change the priority of performing tasks at the contractor.

The goal is to get an unequivocal confirmation of the task and taking responsibility for it, i.e. The solution must be recorded somewhere, even if it is personally written in the manager’s notebook, or as a commentary on the problem in any project management software or bug tracker.

What you need to pay attention to are the words: I will try, maybe, most likely, etc. Those. the performer immediately disclaims responsibility for the result.

3. Any question outside the competence of the contractor should be escalated upwards within an hour.

What is meant here, let us take, for example, a developer, he had some problem with an algorithm that he can solve on his own, while this was not planned and he would have to stay at work for an hour today - it means he is independently delayed.

If during the assignment he had a design question, he can solve it directly with the designer.

If a problem has arisen in the fact that some requirement cannot be made as described or incomprehensible, then this problem should already be escalated upwards to the manager, since it is within his competence to resolve such issues.

Accordingly, we get rid of micromanagement - if an employee silently works, then everything goes according to plan, if he runs after you, then something needs to be solved - and the manager will know about it right away, without kicking (every 10 minutes, asking is all right). The employee does not lose the thought at work, knowing that they can be pulled at any moment. Accordingly, with the manager he has only pleasant associations in the form of a solver to his problem and an improvement of the workflow.

By the way, do not forget about cookies and buns - everyone loves it, in any form

4. Debriefing - it is not the fault that is discussed, but the reason.

The most important thing is not to say criticism of the individual, even if you are 120% right (which is very doubtful), a person will never agree with you and will be very offended. Need to discuss actions.

Errors always arise, without it anywhere - so we save the energy of the company, solving the problems that arise and reducing the possibility of risks.

What you need to do with an error is to find out the root of the problem, why it arose. The one who made it must himself (we remember that this needs to be managed so that the person himself comes to the solution we need) to reach the solution of this problem, to propose it, to make the necessary actions and henceforth, undertakes to not do this again.

Here standards, instructions, business processes that the contractor himself has created for himself or can influence them work well. It is important that the same problem for the same person does not occur twice, and even more than three times. Here it is necessary to solve the issue of motivation - I will tell you about this in other parts.

5. Lifetime hiring

I think that there will be the most unambiguous opinions :), but so much the better. The idea is that you agree that you will never dismiss a person yourself, at least not for his personal opinion, but only because of gross violations of discipline and the TC. But at the same time, the employee himself can quit at any time.

What gives us this is an honest opinion of us, a person will not be afraid that he will be fired for his opinion. Only for his shoals he can perform no longer prestigious work, for example, for a developer - this is editing of bugs.

Here you yourself must determine the degree of non-punishability for acts, but if something is allowed, then this level cannot be reduced. And the higher this level is, the more accurate the feedback will be.

And one more thing, in order not to pay a loafer like a timlid, for the work of a juner on bugs - make tight control so that people come promising and grow better for themselves. This practice can be introduced gradually.

6. Continuous quality improvement.

Here we intersect with the buzzword of corporate Crowdsourcing, whatever a brilliant boss, his orders will be executed much better if they are written by those who will execute them.

Here again, management without management is included - if you like the received instruction, then accept it, if not - explain why you don’t like it, for what purpose, and what it will give to the employee or what she will demand from the employee. And with such iterations, you get what you need from the document.

From practice: it is difficult only at the beginning, that it is necessary to explain everything to everyone, but it turns out that:
everyone knows who / what and why.

Then, you will soon see that people are no less worried about the result and are ready to unite in quality circles, move ideas themselves, and how strangely they toughen standards, and the most interesting thing is that such a system begins to multiply the correct behavior of all employees, and especially new without your participation.

I can say that this works or is even recommended in conditions when the development is geographically distributed.

The source of this was the book "Alternative management" and Deming's theory, which formed the basis of the management system of Toyota. There it works on an industrial scale :), and your humble servant ventured to create such a system in Russia in web development and what is most remarkable - it turned out!
If details are interesting - I will describe in the following parts.

7. Feedback

Most interesting, I left the law of the genre at the end. There are many methodologies, clever books and works on how to manage projects, graphics, statistics and mathematics - but you can look at them with the result, not the process.

For example, when we drive a car, we do not think that we need to squeeze the gas pedal 3 cm, or move the clutch halfway smoothly. We start the movement and get feedback on how the car reacts to our changes. This is the feedback we need.

It is very important that when managing the feedback be direct - always be open to the views of any employee, build a system where each employee can express his idea for improvement, and let the rest have the opportunity to vote for it.

The peculiarity that you need only a positive response, or no one at all - we need to get feedback, and not to destroy the initiative. Want a separate post about positive management?

8. Summary - Reminder

1. only the result is important, not the reason
2. everything should have a deadline
3. escalation of problems up
4. do the debriefing immediately after the completion of the task / project
5. lifelong hire
6. Feedback

It is important to always know if you are on the right track or not. Ask yourself this question every day!
For me, the measure is - if there is time to drink coffee and nobody yells that something is not working, it is broken, we do not have time (cross out the unnecessary one) - then YES, I'm on the right track!



And in conclusion, for those who read to the end - I will give valuable advice:
Want a quick and successful career? I think it’s very important for a manager to take responsibility and achieve results.