Jul/090
Virtual Management
Great article at GameDev about virtual management:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/business/features/virtualOffice/
The programmer in me says: Yes, this is the future and the way I always loved to do it.
The management guy in me says: I would love to try this as it really puts the meaning of sharing the responsibility and trusting to others people in to trial – this is how it should be in the real office too, but many cases it is not. I think this is the future.
Why I love doing work at home or anywhere else than office is because:
- I can choose the environment. I know where I like to work at. This is the same thing as not trying to force processes to people. Don’t force people to work at some place.
- Power. Responsibility. No one is watching after me all the time. I can answer to the phone or respond to e-mails when I’m ready to do that, this means I do not get interrupted so easily, when again in office people tend to wonder around chatting or quickly popping up to ask questions. No one cares when I do the work as long as I get it done on time.
This is why people want to be entrepreneurs, the freedom to work anywhere they feel like being most effective doing the thing they love to do.
ps. If you happen to have a small project using virtual management and you are in a need of a project manager, please, let me know. I’m more than happy to spent my spare hours helping you guys out and learning at the same time – that is a win-win situation.
Jul/090
Challenging The Way To Manage
And so I continue my journey in the land of writing.
After learning a heck of a lot about writing since my last eBook I wanted to see how much better I could do this time. At the same time I changed the topic from programming to management tips & tricks as I currently work as a manager. This time I used a lot more time for writing than the last time, and I’m happy with the end result!
My new eBook, as the topic says, contains tips & tricks that will continuously challenge the ways of management, and some other good practices. Currently many organization is going through huge changes and have to learn to learn – when did we lose that again? Most of my tips are aimed for building an open learning environment which will help your organization to get through changes by adapting and learning, by challenging the existing status.
Enough of talk, here are the links you want to click:
Jul/091
Training Leaders
I thought I should release one sample chapter from my up coming eBook. So here it goes, I hope you enjoy.
Overview
Let’s first go through a one fact: no one is born as a leader. It is ridiculous to think that somebody is born with some skill set, no they aren’t. Being a leader is a profession as all others, you’ll need to learn the tips & tricks of the trade before you are a good one.
Now, the problem in training leaders is that there really isn’t any very well defined process to do that, and it would be really hard to do that, because organizations are different – or more to the point, people are different. And, different people require different leadership skills.
My Short Story
From my experience training a leader requires throwing the person in to the ‘flames’, in middle of the action. Over a year ago I had to go this through. I was given a responsibility to lead a team that had loads of problems: communication didn’t work out, processes lacked… all the classic symptoms of a start-up team. But, let’s not go deeper in to what caused those problems.
I didn’t really know much about leading a team nor anything else related to management. It was really scary time as I did not have any support from anybody. I didn’t have the trust or respect of the team. Now this is about as hard as it gets to start: no support, no experience. But, I started executing: trying new processes and ways to do things, at the same time trying to take the team more and more in to the process of creating new ways to do things.
During the process I basically threw everything old away. What happened was that I understood what good was in the old ways as the team was complaining that we were missing some things that worked before. So I continued trying new processes and adopting the ones that worked, but at the same time I reflected against the past to understand what good ways had already been in place. It took about a year to gain the trust and respect of the team.
Points To Learn From My Short Story
- Throw the leader in middle of the action
- Give him the responsibility and power to change things. He must learn that all of his actions have consequences. This helps him to at least learn change management, people management, and communication skills.
- Upper management support
- Someone must be regularly supporting new leader and challenging his actions. I didn’t have anyone to challenge me so I had to throw everything away and learn from the hard way. If someone is challenging and teaching the new leader you are able to avoid some of the problems during the transition. Remember that upper management is there to only support him, not to make the real actions for him.
Conclusion
And in the end, everything comes down to point that people only learn by doing, but also with the help of other people. You might have heard about team learning, well, that is exactly what the support in this case is all about, it is a team: the new leader and the upper management.
Jul/090
Great Tip For Life
I forgot to post this great quote that I found from Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” – Uknown
This is the way I do it. Don’t worry about the failing, it is the best way to learn.
Jul/090
Must Read Books For Management
I have read dozens of management books, but only a few of them really standout. Here are the ones that I recommend for anyone who works in a management position:
Also check other books I recommend from Books To Read – page.
Jul/090
Site Update
I finally decided to update WordPress to the latest version. At the same time I updated the theme to get a more professional and smoother look & feel.
Some site statistics for this year:
Average Visits Per Month: +1000
Unique Visitors Per Month: ~500
I also added a better way to shop my eBook(s): Products Page – this way you will receive the purchased product right after successful checkout. And as I said, there is currently only one eBook available anymore, I removed the Testing eBook. But, I’m currently working on a Management Tips & Tricks eBook, which should be available soon.
Jun/090
Five Tips For Growing A Learning Organization
A while ago I posted a question “Your Top Five Tips For Growing A Learning Organization” to Learning Organization Practitioners’ Network – LinkedIn Group. Eight people were willing to share their tips. Now I have combined them to a one list of five tips.
- Integrity – Quote from John Fleming:
“Ensure that as a leader one lives the truth in their efforts to help the organization to be successful. There will be times when tough decisions have to be made and the team(s) need to trust that they are being made with the best interest of the whole and each of the pieces in mind. One has to be firm and fair with consideration for all the elements in the system of the business and the economic environment in which it operates.”
- Senior Management Support – upper management need to understand and support the change in order you to get enough resources and power. From my own experience I can tell that you can start without it, but it is a lot easier if you have this.
- Persistence – Quote from Calvin Coolidge:
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
- Shared Vision – a sense of mission, what do we do and why we do it.
- Communication -open and honest communication. People must be able to talk about both negative and positive things openly.
With these in place, you can begin the learning and changing the way your organization acts.
Jun/090
Team Management: Avoid External Tasks
One of the most toughest things to handle in management is to protect your team from external tasks. These requests usually come from marketing & sales guy who received them from the customers. In cases like these you must look it at from both business and management perspective: will accepting the request provide more money or prevent loss? How much will it affect to the team?
Understanding the team management perspective is usually forgotten. The case I usually come across is this: a marketing person comes with a request and asks how long will it take to do it. Now, these are usually small tasks, say 1-2 day tasks. When we tell them it takes 1-2 days they think that “that is close to nothing, let’s do it!”.
Let’s approach this with an example from ice hockey. You have a five players plus the goalkeeper, right? What happens if one of the players is away for 2 minutes due penalty? Here is a couple things that happen:
- The whole team goes in to defensive mode
- They are unable to perform a fully organized attack as one of their key players is missing
- Four of the players in the field has to now work harder
- Other side has a lot better chance to do a goal, which might lead to their victory
Now imagine one of your team members going to do some external task for two days. It will affect exactly the same way. The thing that must be understood is that when there is a team: team is constructed out of individuals, each bringing in their experience and time. When you take someone out of the team for two days recovering will take more than just the two freaking days! As in the hockey example, when you look at the big picture, you’ll have to understand that this will most likely affect to the end result. Also, for the two days other team members will suffer from this. Two days, “close to nothing”, might turn in to an effect that takes over week before the team is fully recovered.
May/090
Product Vision, Any Vision?
Organizations usually have a vision, but as you might already know, it does not motivate everybody.
In situation like this a product vision can come to help you out. A vision that has been created with the product team. If they truly believe in it, the team will feel like they are really creating something that matters, something great – and that is the whole point of a vision!
People have got stuck to the idea that organization vision is the only vision you can have!
Realize this and you can create visions that really matters: product vision, team vision… you name it. As long as the people are truly behind it, it is one of the most powerful tool you have ever known.
May/090
Characteristics of a good organization
For the past two years I’v been reading and researching to get an answer to what are characteristics of a really good organization. I admit, that is not a long time, some people have used tens of years studying what is a good organization. But, based on my experience a good organization has the following characteristics:
- Learning Organization
- All the five disciplines of it. We need to be able to learn all the time in rapidly changing world. Also we need to be able to cooperate with other people, to work as a team. Have a shared vision in everything we do.
- Direct Use Of Power
- Everybody today writes only about collaborative management, but come on, really, you can’t always satisfy everybody! And even if you could, you’d missed the right time to take the action.
- Not Direct Use Of Power
- The opposite the direct use of power, this is a pop nowadays. And yes, you’ll need a lot of this skill, but you should not forget the direct use either. You’ll need to find the right balance.. as we agile guys would say, find good-enough balance (nobody is perfect).
With this kind of features organization is able to a) act rapidly b) keep up their expertize c) have a common dream which motivates (almost) everybody d) come along with different people and cultures. Conclusion is, one word, leadership.