Double Journey

It is amazing to me how much some managers need to be managed.  I am not sure why this is. After all, the ability is built into the job title.

I have worked with numerous managers in the past who for the life of them cannot even remember the simplest things that they need to do.  If you do not constantly remind them to do things it might never get done.  I often joke with people that Program Managers should have almost nothing to do.  If everyone just did their job and made sure the people who work for them do their job, then high level Program Management would almost be unnecessary.

But the ironic thing is that almost everywhere I have worked has a strong need to have someone coordinating the work of others.  Not just other individual contributors, other managers.  But why is that?  My thought is that managers have not actually learned how to be managers.  Most managers are just thrown into the job because they were very strong individual contributors.  This of course is the exact wrong way to pick who should become a manager.  We have a work society where your next promotion is almost exclusively determined if you did your current job well.  But that is a little silly if you think about it.  Just because I write solid code does not mean I have the people skills to be a good manager.  In fact, it might almost exclude me from it

But in all seriousness, I think it is astonishing how much time and effort is wasted in managing managers.  Perhaps if they were just given a little more training on how to be effective in this area it would not be such a problem.  At the very least, their bosses need to be very clear what a manager is expected to do and what they are expected not to do.  This is what I do.  I give my managers tremendous freedom on how they need to accomplish their job but at the same time I make it very clear that their main concern is the proper functioning of their team and responsibilities.  They should not rely on others, either myself or my Program Manager, to constantly remind them to do the things that are core to their job.

What have your experiences been like?  Have you worked with a lot of mangers that need managing?  Have you done anything to try and address this issue?

Only a quick post tonight because I’m busy doing what I’m about to blog about, setting goals for my team and for myself.

It is an odd to set goals for your team and to watch other set goals for their teams.  I believe in setting SMART goals.  For those that don’t know SMART goals are

• S pecific
• M easurable
• A ttainable
• R elevant
• T imely

This simple thing is actually quite important because I am a strong believer in you have to do what you say you are going to do. Setting goals is just that, you should be sure that they are clear and that you can achieve them.  Other people just do not seem to get that and it amazes me.

Now to be fair to others, this is the first time my current company is really having everyone do goals.  This is a huge change than in years prior where nobody really had goals and everyone just went around to do their job without having any clue about how their performance would be measured.  Now, I do not believe you should go overboard with goal setting.  I have seen it go too much the other way, especially when I was at Microsoft.   But in general, I think it is important for employees to know what is expected to them and how they can demonstrate it.

But as I look over the goals of others, so many of them are extremely vague or completely unobtainable by that employee.  I have seen goals like, “Make people better”.  What does that mean and how do you achieve that?  I see several people with revenue goals for the company but these people have no real way to affect that number.  I know it is important that the company meets their financial targets but why should an employee have a goal which they have no way to influence?

My goals are by no means perfect, but they generally follow the SMART guidelines.  How about you, have you ever had to set goals or had goals set for you that were completely unrealistic?