When confronted with a new role at work, I often review the existing instructions, procedures, and templates. Frequently, I have found them out-of-date and involving wasteful steps. To pass on things better than I found them, I try to leave an impact through making process improvements and updating those documents.

Collecting approvals and signatures is never fun, but in order to implement a large change in any organization, it needs people with authority to "buy in" to the change. In a large organization, that includes signatures and presentations; in a small business it might be pausing between bites of lunch to mention the change and see if the owner objects. Either way, if the people with the power to implement or stop a change aren't in favor, the change won't happen. One of my first tasks in 2023 upon assuming a new role was learning about a key initiative and pushing its approval through many layers of management.

This week's Economist includes a column "Are superstars as good when they move jobs?"  It highlighted findings that superstar employees aren't instantly superstars at new companies because that out-performance came from the superstar working with the support team they've built. Everyone needs a team!

As I've been looking for my next role, I've had to think about what my "ideal job" might look like. I've also had to think about what my "superpower" is: what I uniquely bring to a hiring organization. I don't know that I have a complete answer, but I reached a few conclusions recently. My ideal job is to take on a broken-but-fixable organization and bring it to where it doesn't need heroism to survive day-to-day. My superpower is to create the organizational bandwidth to make that happen.

The Economist's Boss Class podcast recently interviewed Robin Dunbar of "Dunbar's number" fame, which reminded me about some other reading I'd done about spans of control. How large can a team get before it becomes ineffective? Surprisingly small!

I've had direct reports temporarily assigned to me a few times.  Normally that meant that I didn't manage their "HR" tasks (e.g. time cards), but for whatever reason I needed to step in to help a team achieve a turnaround that was durable enough that the people could be "handed back" to their regular manager after only a few weeks or months and the benefits would continue. I understand management expectations, set team expectations, and manage the team while improving their processes and tools.

I recently read Kenn Ricci's Management by Trust (2006) . It's a quick read at only 140 pages (according to my e-reader) and a few points jumped out at me that would be fun to share. The thesis of the book is that managers perform better and get performance out of their teams when they are trusting and trustworthy rather than treating their employees transactionally. The money saved catching a few bad actors is far outweighed by the loss of energy and creativity by the part of the team that doesn't abuse their privileges. I'll start calling this a series of philosophy, having previously written about it here:  One-on-one meetings Outrage - uses and defuses Scar tissue Leader standard work Communications channels Remote work e-Commerce I made notes as I read through Management by Trust and I'll address what I highlighted as key points. Image from http://www.managementbytrust.com/  Self-consistency I knew that I could never be comfortable trying to be one person a...

I was reading through this week's Economist (4/21) magazine and saw the article " Unlike everyone else, Americans and Britons still shun the office ". As someone who worked remotely 1-2 days per week from the mid-2010s and was 100% remote starting in early 2020, I've got a perspective on working remotely. What caught my eye from the Economist was the penultimate paragraph because it hit home: Maybe, then, the problem with working from home is not its economic impact, but its social one. Put simply, Americans do not seem to be making the most of the time they are no longer spending on their commutes. Socialising and volunteering are both now less common than in 2019; meanwhile, people spend more time “relaxing” and playing video games. All told, the average American spends half an hour longer alone than pre-2020. Using the commute time I definitely experienced this issue when working remotely. My "no-longer-commute" time went to additional childcare in the...

Update schedule change: I'm dropping my Friday updates going forward: with my childcare duties and having burned through much of the backlog of items I wanted to blog about, I'll be updating only two days per week: Monday and Wednesday. All of us use our communication tools in different ways. Some people live and breathe their social media; I'm only on Facebook in case someone from high school wants to send out information about a reunion. I'm not judging. Assuming that your intent in communication is to communicate, then what matters more is matching the expectations of how and when to communicate with whomever you're talking to; let's call them your "partner" because communication is a group effort. Email is not urgent For some people it is, but for me if I need something urgently (or someone needs it from me), email is not the right tool. I check my email at least once per day, but sometimes only that often, and it might be a glance on my pho...

  In my time as a Program Manager / Value Stream Leader, I came to two realizations about outrage: the advantages of having someone in the organization be outraged, and the ways to defuse outrage by a customer. Using Outrage When I had been working for my company for around 10 years, a new-ish hire (MF) walked into my office and complained about how poor our on-time delivery was. Our process to get from a customer order to the part starting manufacturing (in-house or at a supplier) seemed to take forever, the lead times at the suppliers were long, or quality issues would crop up (introducing more rework time). And I realized that I didn't notice our on-time delivery anymore. When I first joined the company, I thought our lead times on a report were measured in days (because when I saw "40" for a part that seemed reasonable) and they were actually measured in weeks. When I started I thought that of course we should be able to hit our delivery commitments. After all m...

Since before I had direct reports, I've strongly believed in the power of the regularly-scheduled 1:1 meeting between an employee and their manager. I first experienced this when I was a Project Manager for "Manufacturing Integration Projects", which was the team assigned to close one factory, open two more, and expand a third. My boss Mike put a standing half-hour meeting on my calendar where we'd chat about what I'd done that week, what I was planning to do, and any obstacles in my way. Sometimes the meetings ran short, sometimes they ran long, but they were extremely helpful in ensuring that I knew what was expected of me, keeping Mike informed, and coaching me past the various issues. While still in that role, I followed Mike's example and set up regular meetings with select internal customers and team members. All of my assigned projects were able to start production at their new sites without significant issue. Once I moved into Program Management / ...