PM Marginalia

Do you remember when  you find yourself in the depth of chaos at work last time? It could be when you just jumped into the ongoing project, which was previously led by another manager or when disaster-like events happened. Do you remember this feeling of disorder, anxiety and stress? I guess that is the worst part of our profession. So here I want you to meet my list of hints on how not to get bogged down but keep moving forward.

1. Seek and destroy real blockers

The first thing we should check is what should be done but isn't. It is not only where the progress stopped, it is also what this stop affects. When defining blockers check if they are real. Not every stop may be caused by problems you cannot resolve on your own: for instance, if you can avoid interrupting the development process using rearrangements of works, it is not a blocker. Even if you found a truly creative or complicated solution for the situation it means it wasn’t a real blocker.
So you got your blockers. Let’s not pretend that almost always they can be resolved through escalating. Prepare a detailed description of situation, risks and proposal for variety of scenarios and be ready to roll according to the upper-level management decisions.

2. Check understanding

Knowing what to do is nearly 80% of success. If you want to get something you will get something, but the first something could be vastly different from the second one. Every moment of being in a manager role should be full of thorough understanding of what to do. Spread your understanding of what to do, of what your goal is onto every team member. Make sure that everyone gets the gist of your messages every time and don’t be shy to correct somebody when hearing distorted insights.

3. Set milestones

Life is cruel to upfront predictions: plans against reality is almost always like the first piglet’s house of straw against wolf's blowing. However reality is even more harsh. While building a good-quality bricked plan you have a great chance to be devoured by a wolf as he won’t wait until it is done. The last chance for a piglet is to run away. What I propose to do is to set milestones on the escape roadmap.
Three tips for this point

• Mind all the known risks while setting milestones. 
• Set responsible for every milestone. 
• Remember about the phenomenon of planning fallacy.

4. Control carefully

Checking how things are going is the most art-like manager skill. It doesn’t matter who you are: the X-model or the Y-model manager. The very first thing you should do is to define the progress controlling process for everyone you want control and to reach the agreement about it. It is just one of the rules of the game helping not only to make it clear but to avoid creating an additional emotional pressure or distracting colleagues. What should be defined here is up to the situation but commonly they are the interval (daily,weekly, monthly) and the format (from a structured report to a freeform spoken reply).

5. Stay neutral-positive

State of mind might be a decisive aspect of whatever you do. In spite of you might think of it is neither about positive thinking nor only about you. What I want to say here is the baseline of your vision should be about creating an atmosphere of reasonable confidence in the result achievability. Bad things can happen for sure, but they should not make you or any team member unstable. Be steady and radiate positive confidence.

6. Be ready to jump into pool of details to the depth of decision-making

Some managers think that technical details are only for experts. Typical misconception. Of course experts must be the most skilled and experienced team members in a specific area. Still managers as minimum should have a basic knowledge in a certain area of projects they manage and be well informed for making reasonable and safety decisions. Don’t be afraid to get into the technical details.
 
Instead of conclusion 

My path of managing began from the chaos and I acted like a headless chicken in the beginning. Next decade was about becoming more consistent and confident through collecting my chaos antidote checklist. Some cases can still take me by surprise. Yet deeply inside I feel that this list will help me in the next decade but it is going to be extended. Stay tuned and in 10 years you will get a brand-new post with next six tips.
 

In the previous post, I wrote about two different types of leadership: inborn leadership and technical leadership. I promised to consider the subject of applying technical leadership in terms of how you should not do. Watching for years how other leaders behave I found out that many of them make mistakes of the same types. So today, I want to write about them.

1. Leadership for the sake of leadership

As I said earlier, leadership is a skill. It requires appropriate and moderate application. However, there are managers who can do irrational things just because they think they should demonstrate their leadership non-stop. For example, when an urgent technical problem requiring quick solutions was occurred, one team member offers a good rational solution. The manager does not accept it, but either offers his/her own less successful solution, or adds confusion with some additional meetings to find alternative solutions. Here, as we see, the first aspect of the perverse understanding of leadership takes place. Many people think that the leader should always be the most active in the decision-making process. Nevertheless, this is not true. There is a huge number of situations where just to approve, to step aside and not to interfere - the best tactic of the leader. Think about it: don't you do too many unnecessary actions to just demonstrate your leadership?

2. Inconsistency

It is very important that the decisions made that affect other people be justified. It is highly desirable that your colleagues/team can see how you came to a definite decision. It is worth to forget solutions like «I want so!»

If your behavior is consistent and the chain of your actions and decisions on the way to the goal is traceable for others - you will not only strengthen your leadership positions, but will automatically nurture the confidence and motivation of people who you work with.

3. Irresponsibility

As you know, leadership is often associated with making decisions. In connection with the perverted perception of the concept of a leader, many believe that everything that leaders do is decision-making. That is, take full responsibility for when things went wrong - it's not for a leader. What do you think about the guide who led you to the completely wrong place and said: "Well, I have nothing to do with it" or even worse «It is your fault you followed me"? The true leader is always responsible for where he/she go to and where he/she will come to as a result. If you like, you can think of taking responsibility as a moral duty, which is a kind of payment for leadership benefits, but never forget about it.

4. Imitation

Some people try to be a leader using the method of imitation. It is especially unfortunate when trying to imitate inborn leadership type. It always looks unnatural, silly and funny and it's much easier to detect such behavior than it may seem. Do not pretend a leader: you get nothing except the rejection and loss of respect from colleagues / teams.

5. Confidence in a wrong decision made earlier

I'm not talking here about when you have problems you should immediately abandon the decision you made earlier. Problems arise all the time and we, as managers, understand this perfectly. Here I am talking about the case when there is all objective evidence that the decision was wrong. And here it is no longer necessary to resist. Some believe in the dogma that the leader is not mistaken, but it's absolutely wrong. All are mistaken. But as we found out earlier, due to the great responsibility the leader must acknowledge mistakes and correct the further way. Imagine the captain of a sinking ship who convinces everyone that there is no cause for concern and continuation of the designated course - the best thing we can do. It is a sad picture. However, I do not cease to be surprised by this naive feature of some managers.

6. Non-recognition of other's merits

The leader is responsible where he leads to. This postulate creates a false impression that in the case of local or global success, it is a merit of the leader. But this is not always the truth. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly understand what and who has done to achieve a common goal and to encourage it. It is important to do it systematically, fairly and publicly. If a leader does not recognize merits of others or appropriates their services to him/her, this is a bad leader.

7. Failure to lead by example

If you are a leader and you want to inculcate a certain pattern of behavior to your colleagues/team you should show a self example. Expecting or demanding a certain behavior that does not match yours is a losing strategy almost always, but for a long distance - definitely always. The effect in this case may be the opposite of what you planned. If your team sees the high quality of your work, your fidelity to the business, then each of its members will consciously or unconsciously aspire to be like you. The leader is one who leads, the leader is one followed by others.

I hope this short list will be a kind of reminder for self checking and, perhaps, can help to correct leaders behavior. After all, only the understanding of mistakes leads to their correction.