Archives for the 'Management for Geeks' Category
Debugging Communication Errors
I couldn’t sleep all night, thinking that on the last company meeting, when one of my employees complained that he can’t finish his tasks because of personal issues that he has with other employees, I basically told him and the rest of the team to help each other and be a team, I […]
Getting the Boss to get Rid of Himself
Here is a short discussion I had with a Typemock employee a few weeks ago.
Employee: “Phew, We managed to purchase the last available ticket ” Me: “That’s great…” after a pause “… Why do we keep on missing the early-bird discounts?”* Employee: “That’s because you didn’t […]
Managing Rookie Managers
Rookie managers have a incomplete perception of management and hold on to the idea that they are still reviewed by their personal performance and that there job is to keep things running.
Quite the opposite, it is a mangers job to make change, it is their job to search for problems and opportunities and manage […]
Never promote to a management role
This post is to remind myself what to do what promoting first time managers, based on the final tip in the Myth and Realty Check Post.
Eli, Remember to Delay the Promotion
Here is why. When promoting a manager, I normally promote a high performance employees. These employees are excellent at doing their job well. They […]
Rookie Manager #3: Myth vs Reality
Rookie Managers, including myself, often fail in their new role. Now looking back at my first managerial job (10 years ago) I think that the reason for this was misconceptions and myths that I believed in as a new manager that lead to neglecting key responsibilities.
Myth #1: Authority. I used to believe […]
Rookie Manager #2: Problem Solving vs Problem Finding
There is a big difference between problem solving and problem finding. This is one of the differences that a Rookie Manager must learn quickly. A Rookie manager that has been promoted from the firing lines, from software development is trained to solve problems. Normally the best problem solver who is promoted to the team-leader […]
#1 tip: What I expect from managers and team leaders
It is very natural for new Managers and Team leaders seem to think that once they are given the responsibility over a group they have to ‘Claim their territory’ and guard it with all their might.
Things that can really tick off new managers are others telling specific team members what to do or how to […]
Manager – Shut Up
One of the hardest things for me to do as a manager is to shut up!
When I see a flaw in our product or web site or in a plan session, I have to give my thoughts and ideas in order to make the best product.
Although I am making the product better, I […]
Things they don’t tell you about management – part II
In my previous post, I talked about our web site team problem and the solution that we reached. I though that we solved the web issue, I only managed to make things worse…
The following day, I was talking to my managers about the difference between Victim and Responsibility and about discussing this in our […]
Things they don’t tell you about management – part I
Here is a story of a situation that we had to solve back in February. The background of this is our web site and our web site developer. Our web site developer was frustrated that he didn’t have a complete upfront design but the management take is that we have to be agile, get […]