If youâre doing what you loved in your old job, then youâre probably doing the wrong thing. You now lead a team of people doing what you used to be good at. So at least 85 percent of
your time should be spent managing. If itâs not, then you arenât doing it right. Managing is the job. And managing is hard.
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When youâre a manager, youâre no longer just responsible for the work. Youâre responsible for human beings. And while that seems obviousâyes, thatâs the whole point of the jobâitâs a difficult thing to grapple with when all of a sudden eighty people are looking at you, expecting you to know how to lead them.
As a manager, you are judged on your teamâs outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your time training or hiring. If someone is creating problems for others, then you need to get him to stop. If people donât know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. A lot of this work is unglamorous. But because itâs important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you.
This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. As your team changesâwhether itâs goals shifting, people joining or leaving, or processes evolvingâwhat you do every day will also change.
A useful exercise to go through at the beginning of your transition is to sit down and make a list of all the things that are awesome about the current state of the world. Does everyone get along? Are your processes efficient? Is your team known for rigorous and high-quality work?
Now, next to that, create a list of all the things that could be better. Is your team cagey about deadlines? Does it seem like priorities are always shifting? Is there that one really long weekly meeting nobody wants to attend?
These two lists give you the start of a plan for what you should and shouldnât change. You donât need to fix what isnât broken, but neither should you feel like youâre stuck in a time machine of this is how it was always done. After all, thatâs why you got the job! Taking the time to reflect on the biggest opportunities for improvement helps you understand how to best act as a multiplier for your team.
I finally realized that I had to give up wanting to be both a design manager and a designer, because in attempting to do both, I was doing neither well. Donât learn this the hard wayâat the point in which your team becomes four or five people, you should have a plan for how to scale back your individual contributor responsibilities so that you can be the best manager for your people.
Letâs face it, no one, regardless of how experienced or talented, is equally adept at every aspect of a job. In any case, as Immelt points out, even if you are above average across the board, no leader has the time to concentrate on every aspect of the job, especially in the earliest days of a new position. Think about where your personal involvement will yield the most leverage and where someone else might do an even better job.