© Dmitry Artyukhin, 2015

© Vera Filatova, cover design, 2015

Created with Ridero

1. Introduction

I am managing the team…. For those of you who have had experience to do that it is evident that we are speaking about hard job. Every day you have to deal with people. People makes the difference. We have heard this phrase many times but each manager treats it differently. I strongly believe that each team I worked for helped me to be successful. Their success and their stories changed me, my behavior and companies we worked for.

Let me start with introduction. I have got scientific background and PhD in Physics and Mathematics. I also had a chance to get MBA and it helped me to learn classic models around people management, finance, business environment analysis etc. If someone asks me if I believe that MBA is the key step to be successful manager the answer would be definitely “NOT”. The reason behind that is very simple. It is very useful and beneficial and I do appreciate MBA education. It gives you extremely useful tools and models but it doesn’t guarantee that you will be able to use these tools appropriately. Simple example of that might be a craft of cooking. Every person can read how to cook a cake but someone does it extremely well and others produce terrible things.

My experience of being a manager is about 15 years. I am not saying that I am an expert in that. At the same time I have gone thru some challenges already and have established several teams who are still being very successful. I had a chance to work with very talented managers. They helped me to learn by giving specific examples or advising some non-standard methods. So, at some point of time I realized that taking notes for such cases would be quite beneficial for me. Also I started to keep my own examples where specific models or behavior helped me to resolve issues or address different challenges. Finally I have got a lot of material that I would like to share with my colleagues and counterparts.

For this book I focus only on first-line management experience. So strongly speaking I share examples for first-line manager (FLM) work. The reason behind that is very simple. I think that first-line manager is very critical role within any organization. When we start our career we usually deal with team managers. We rely on their experience and skills to help us to be successful. Very often you start building your vision about the company based on your first team experience. So, for you as an employee the first-line manager is someone who makes your development, your success and your experience of work within organization. For a company it is also very crucial to get on board experienced first-line managers. These people drive small units within big mechanism that we call a company. So FLM plays the key role in sustaining this mechanism in healthy state.

And finally I am not saying I have one unified recipe for complex situations. My intension is to share my own experience and my own ideas that may help you to avoid specific issues or to find alternative solution in challenging environment we all operate.

And finally all thoughts and ideas below are solely my personal opinion based on my personal experience.

2. Why people is so critical asset

Many papers contain standard phrase that is saying: “people are the most critical asset of the organization”. Why it is so important. The easiest answer would be because people and only people invent new mechanisms, only people manage tough situations and bring new ideas, only because of new ideas the company or organization becomes successful on the market. If you get talented people on board it gives you huge benefit comparing to others who don’t have them. Simple example might be – just recall how many times you go to specific car service because you know someone there who can really repair your car. Try to review your cell phone directory where you keep people who can help as great layers or excellent teachers or perfect coaches. This is all about people and their skills. It is evident that without these people you can’t be successful enough or do your business. The same situation is with your team or company. If you have such people you are successful and ready for market changes, you have excellent work environment and you trust and rely on these individuals.

3. First day with a new team

I am staying in front of the team and just about to introduce myself… not an easy task. I used to be in two different situations while working for different organizations.

Scenario #1:

Probably the most challenging for me. I worked with these folks just a week ago and we were peers. Right now I am expected to be their manager. Did you have such situation in your life? You are working as an engineer and your manager comes to you saying: “I believe you are a great person with good management skills and I am looking for a person to manage the team. Would you be interested in this role?”

So, you are staying in front of your colleagues and you need to find some words to introduce you as a manager. When I faced such situation first time in my life I had very experienced manager next to me as a coach. He told me the day before introduction:

“Don’t try to apologize because you got that role. If you start doing that you will be in a very poor position. Don’t shine as the team wants to see the person who can resolve tough cases. Don’t speak too much trying to explain how you are going to change the strategy for next 1–2 years. You don’t have the answer for that yet. You will need some time to align your vision with environment etc. Don’t try to create a vision that they should expect positive changes with you as some team members (if not all) don’t think this is the case. But do speak honestly. Be open, and encourage people to give you feedback in upcoming discussions and give them some sense that you know what to do next.”

To be honest with you that was one of the worst meetings I ever had before. I saw my colleagues, some of them my friends and they knew me very well. They knew my character, my capabilities and my skills and they were trying to compare me with an ideal manager they wanted to see. Definitely not all aspect of my behavior and my skills satisfied them. And all these concerns reflected in their eyes.

After years I still have no clear path how to deal with such situation. The simple answer would be: each situation needs to be addressed case by case. How I would do it again if I faced such situation? Perhaps the first meeting I would do as a brief introduction of myself by expressing the willingness to make this team successful. Trying to break the ice. Usually it means for me to make team members to see that I become their advocate in the organization rather than the person who starts punishing them for missed deadlines. Actually you have much more power to manage. You have got amazing benefit in doing that – you know the team very well! You know what kind of problems you have, what you want to change and how you would like to organize the process. The key idea – don’t forget your experience of work as an individual contributor in the team. This part is very critical. I will be talking more about expectations from your team and your manager that may contra verse each other time to time but this part of your heart and your experience should be accessible in your memory.

Scenario #2:

Another common situation is when you are a new to this organization or the team at all. This particular case has both benefit and concern that you have to keep in mind. Let’s start with benefits that I see in this scenario.

First of all you are a new comer for this team which is good and bad simultaneously. You are a stranger and can change their life but nobody knows who you are. You are not friends, you don’t know their gaps and skills, you are not aware of any fault they have had before. It gives you flexibility to start with blank page. That means you can design relationships and your behavior in the way which is comfortable for you. You can position yourself whatever you want, it could be external expert with broad experience or smart manager that has excellent background in different business processes. Anyway you start all these things today, right now.

Concerns? Definitely YES and a lot! Just imagine situation when you get a new manager. You may have as many as possible facts about their great experience or how much they bring amazing things into your organization… but the first question you have in your mind… how many changes they are going to do? Whatever who is staying in front of you it’s all about what kind of changes they have in mind. You never know if they decide to run optimization or review organizational priorities and which projects go away after that. So you worry about your future and your role after all. Now you are in a position to deliver some message in your first meeting with the team. The problem here is that you also understand that you don’t know if any changes required into this team and how quick you will have to initiate them. So I would avoid promising that everything should stay unchanged. This is not true! And you can’t guarantee that everyone accepts new challenges. I try to be open here. The main word in my vocabulary in this section is BE OPEN with people you are going to manage.

I don’t have universal recipe for this situation as I said before but I have two examples from my experience. Both of them were about a situation when I was in the room with my colleagues listening our new manager’s introduction.

First speech: “Team, I have broad experience in managing such team in many other organizations. I see a lot of opportunities in developing your team and building alignment with your key stakeholders and business trends. Business is changing and we have to be aligned with that. It may require tough changes. We will have to adopt to these changes. Even more we will have to change ourselves to make sure we are successful organization. Over the next 2–3 weeks I will spend time by learning different aspects of business around this team and come out with strategic objectives and action plan what we are going to implement as a course of actions for the team”.

Second speech: “Team, I see interesting and challenging opportunity for me to work with you and try to be the driver of your success. I don’t know you but I’ll try to learn and understand your capabilities to make sure I will utilize them in right way. I will need to spend some time by learning who you are and what business challenges we face. I will rely on your help and support here. You know much better than I about processes within this team and I would appreciate if you could help me to understand more. At the same time I will bring skillset that I have got by working in different business environments and I strongly believe it should help us to build great synergy in the team. Next 2–3 weeks I will spend learning from you. I can’t say if it requires any changes into the team but I believe we will work together to make sure we manage these challenge in successful way”.

Tell me, which speech do you like more? In my view first one comes from a person who is more task oriented person. Second one is more about people oriented. Second manager is trying to build some trust or at least give some sense of taking care about people in the team. The funny thing is that when I show these speeches to my colleagues there are some people who like first one and some who like the second speech. Pessimists are saying: “I don’t believe both, this is bull shit anyway!” And in my opinion this split clearly shows real picture. You will be treated by some team members as promising person, others will strongly believe you are not a good fit and the rest will be saying they don’t care. This is the real environment you have to work with. Not a promising expectation…