Traits of an effective manager

Effective Managers are those that can leverage the strength of their teams and achieve their goals. But to be able to do this they need to posses and showcase some important traits 

1. Effective Managers are not focused only on short term wins. They have a growth mindset that focuses on the goal. 
2. They are able to work through the difficult challenges and keep their cool. The task of solving the problem or achieving the goal is never easy and they are able to weather the storms by keeping theirs and their teams focus. 
3. An effective manager has a curious mind, they are always thinking of different possibilities on either solving problems or possible paths to achieve the goal.
4. An effective manager is able to make tough decisions and they are ready to face the consequences. Quick informed decisions are important to be made in order to move the team forward. 
5. A good and strong manager should be able to inspire their team. They are effective communicators that can communicate clearly and can articulate the tasks the team needs to accomplish to achieve the goal.  
6. An effective manager gets a deep understanding of the problem they are trying to solve. By ensuring this deep understanding, they are able to provide the necessary direction and guidance to the team and are also able to cancel out all the negativity around them by having laser sharp focus. 
7. Effective managers manage by taking into consideration the needs of the stakeholders. Its important to have empathy. They should have an open mind and listen to their stakeholders and work towards meeting their needs. 
8. They see the bigger picture when it is fuzzy and hazy to everyone else and they strive and lead everyone towards that bigger picture. They are focused on the long term even though they suffer short term struggles.
9. Strong Effective Managers show trust in their team and do not micro manage their team. They know how to break down the tasks and give it to the team and believe in their team to deliver on them. 
10. They always protect their team. They share the successes with the team and absorb the failures. They do not call out or embarrass team members in front of outsiders and expose the weaknesses of the team. 

Distributed Teams - Team Timings

Usually when we work in the office there is usually a check-in time and a check-out time and break out meeting times, so the whole team is together at the same time and working together and interacting and sharing and contributing.

When working at home or at a remote location, we do not take timings seriously. What happens is that each one in the team starts to work at their own timing taking mostly family into account and chores to do and just being lethargic in the morning. We get into the mode of saying if I eventually put in 8 hours that would be enough.

The truth is this destroys the rhythm of the team. One might be a morning person, another a night person, another likes to work in bursts and so on. This makes people waiting on each other endless and delays tasks getting done leading to frustration and doubts if the person is actually working.

Set a timing for the team, connect over a group conversation where everyone checks in and then work through the day being connected with each other and then break off at a set time.

Distributed Teams - Reporting Status

When working in distributed teams one must remember that each one cannot see the other, so there is always that lingering thought that people are not working. When in the office one sees the person at the desk and hence assumes that the person is working. Secondly when working together, you always overhear conversations so you get a sense of what is happening.

Hence it is very important for everyone to share the status of what they are working on along with any dependencies and challenges they are facing with everyone else. Any changes to the task timelines also need to be communicated so that everyone is on the same page. Over time you will notice members of the team getting comfortable and candid in their status as long as an open communication without prejudice is maintained.

It is also very important to respond as soon as it is done to inform everyone else that it is done. Do not wait until the end of the day to inform other members of the team. This way it becomes clear to all the progress being made in the project.

Some teams maintain shared excel sheets, others use tools like Trello, Microsoft Teams, Bitrix, etc. What ever it is, encourage all to update it freely and openly.

Do not ever try to get everyone to send the status to one person, that person filters, collates and then distributes it.  This will give you the status of the tasks through the lens of one person, which need not necessarily be the exact status of the project depending on the persons view of the project.

Distributed Teams - Vision and Tasks

In these challenging times, almost a third of the world is not working together in an office. This is not new, the tools and methods have been developed almost from the time the internet started becoming mainstream. With outsourcing the remote working concept had really developed into a way of life for many especially in the information technology industry.

I would like to look at different aspects of remote working that have helped me through my career of working with remote teams for over 20 years.

Vision is very important. The team should have a vision of what they need to achieve. Vision could be to develop a new process, a new product, achieve 99% up-time, response rates, etc. The team should have a goal to work towards, a north star. This helps the team to stay focused and on track even when not together.

Once the team has a vision, it is very important to break this vision down into tasks. Tasks should have a clear definition (set of steps), a defined outcome, an estimate and a deadline. Yes, there might be times one can't define any of these but the important thing is to note down the task with the information that one has at the moment and then as one works through the task, you can add more tasks or modify the one you are working on to add more clarity. Do not wait to get complete clarity on a task as you would get it only when the task is done. Which would be too late as there would be no reason to define the task any more as it is already done.

Last but not least, meet often for a short quick meeting with the entire team to discuss challenges, progress and  clarifications. There are many free and paid online collaboration tools that can help one with the vision, the tasks tracking and the online meetings. Use them if you have a team !

Composing a Masterpiece

In an orchestra there are many individual great and very accomplished players of various instruments. Yet when they all play to the same composition together they bring out something special that they could never bring out when they play individually. And if they all play their own tune it never sounds great. Sounds more like noise.

Its the same with any team or a startup, there are many accomplished members of the staff but unless they all play to the same composition they will not produce the music of success. And if they all play their own music it never sounds good and it feels like the team is pulling in different directions.

That's where a composer plays a very crucial role, to write the music the way they envision it and then get everyone on the team to play to that composition.

This needs to be fine tuned everyday so that the orchestra plays in tune and is able to adjust to the everyday changes that are bound to occur.

Who is the composer in your team? Who writes the music for your team? Is your team ready to write the next masterpiece?

Monkey on your back

Ever feel like you are being weighed down by a ton of monkeys on your back. Well if you do, then you allowed those monkeys to be put on your back.

Lets step back a bit and understand what is a monkey? A monkey is a task you gave a team member to work on and you expect them to take care in doing it to completion, but instead of completing it they bring it back undone to ask you expecting an input or a decision from you to move ahead.

The moment you take it upon yourself to give them an answer you have successfully taken over charge of that monkey and now it is stuck with you until you give an answer. Now think about  it, if you start accumulating monkeys like this what would happen.

You would have to figure out how to make time to handle these monkeys as they get brought back to you to firmly take them and put them back on your team members back.

Remember that if you do not get rid of these monkeys they end up one on top of the other and the longer you keep them the more of a stink they create.

Task Execution Vs Task Leadership

Ever been in this situation, you give a task to a member of your team and every few minutes the person would come back to you and ask you for feedback or queries and then you feel you are going nowhere with the task (as many a time you do not know the answers and would have to research) and the person feels that they have put in a lot of effort. 

Alternatively you have the situation where you give a task to the member of your team, they understand what is the end goal of the task, they take all the inputs from you that you have to offer, go back to their desk and do all the research needed to execute, come back with a plan, resources needed and an activity list to execute the task and on approval sets about silently executing the task and only providing you periodic updates on the progress. 

Which of these two team members would you prefer to work with? The answer is quite obvious and this is task execution vs task leadership. Its easy to find people who can execute tasks, but that leaves you to do all the thinking and making the plan. This slows down execution and can leave a lot of things on your desk waiting to be completed. 

Find team members who can show leadership in understanding of what needs to be done and then doing whatever it takes to get it done rather than team members who can only execute what you give them to do. This is what differentiates a great team member from a good team member.