I have one friend who is fond of a rather strange occupation: he writes texts for managers and employees of his company. I don't know how to properly classify them - neither a training manual, nor a guide to action, nor an instruction, nor a process. Just text, in short.
He took the idea, oddly enough, from Boris Berezovsky. Somewhere, sometime, he read that Berezovsky, while still working in Russia, wrote a training manual for employees of his company. Well, I decided to give it a try.
He argues that these texts bring tangible benefits to the company. Mainly because they are not written formally and out of context. Just about the reality that surrounds them every day. And through the texts, he teaches employees how to deal with this reality.
I do not presume to judge whether he is right or not, so I submit the texts to your judgment. He gave me two short chapters to publish, explaining two principles of management. Do not pay attention to the manner of presentation - I did not redo it so as not to lose color.
Your opinion about the text and about the genre is interesting - the transcription of book truths into a specific context.
Controlling
The most important principle of operational management that is worth mastering, learning and applying is controlling. Everything else is auxiliary methods to improve the efficiency of controlling.
I’ll note in a separate line: it doesn’t matter if you manage a team or yourself. Only the number of control objects changes, but the essence remains. Do you understand that in any company you are 90 percent your own manager?
Controlling is management based on numbers.
Imagine that the control is carried out by an automatic device. For example, climate control in a car. It works simply. The purpose of the device is to maintain a certain temperature in the cabin, for example, 20 degrees Celsius. The temperature in the cabin is affected by many factors - the sun, the temperature outside, the number of people in the car, the cleanliness of the filters, the efficiency of the air conditioner, the engine operation mode (including - the engine can be turned off).
Climate control has two main tools: a stove and an air conditioner with different modes of operation, including the direction of airflow. For example, when cooling, he tries to blow into the upper deflectors, while heating - into the lower ones, which are under his feet.
This is where management begins. Climate control measures the temperature in the cabin - i.e. receives a figure reflecting the real state of affairs. Compares the real figure with the target (20 degrees), and decides what to do.
If it is +40 in the cabin, then the climate control turns on the air conditioner to the maximum, incl. closes the damper to eliminate the influence of the external environment. If the cabin is -20, then the climate control turns on the stove to the maximum in order to quickly achieve the goal.
Climate control deals with controlling - management based on numbers. This is its direct, main and almost only purpose. But the most interesting begins further.
Climate control constantly monitors the result, and changes the strength, and sometimes the structure of the control action. He can increase the intensity of the cooling, if he understands that a damn thing is not working. Can open the damper to let fresh air in if the target is close. May turn on heating instead of cooling if it starts to rain and the temperature drops sharply.
In fact, climate control monitors both the achievement of the goal and the effectiveness of its control actions. He manages both the entrusted system and himself. Self-management based on numbers is commonly called self-controlling.
Now imagine that climate control, as a control element, lacks some controlling element.
For example, there is no temperature sensor, which means there are no numbers. Since there are no figures, then it is not clear what to do. It's impossible to manage. There are two options - or do nothing at all, i.e. not turn on either the stove or the air conditioner, or turn everything on to the fullest, preferably at the same time, so that everyone thinks that the climate control is working and controlling the situation. Sometimes it is called IBD - imitation of violent activity.
A similar situation will arise if the temperature sensor works, but the climate control does not use its readings. The numbers say you need to cool, and the climate control turns the stove on full. If he were a man, he would add “I know better, I have my own methods!”.
An interesting option is when the temperature sensor works, it gives out numbers, but rarely. Once every half an hour, for example. You got into the car, determined the climate control - yeah, you need to cool it, and urgently. He turns on the conder to the fullest, and sits down, folding his arms, waiting for the next communication session with the temperature sensor. It’s already 15 degrees in the cabin, you’re freezing, there’s nothing to breathe, because the damper is closed, but - pf ... Climate control receives data every half hour, and cannot exert control more often.
By the time the climate control receives the data and realizes that it has been doing wrong and wrong for the last twenty minutes, it will be too late. You have already arrived where you wanted to, and in a disgusting mood, scolding this moronic automation, you went to work. The climate control manager in such a situation is complete garbage.
Had climate control been conscious, lacking timely numbers, it would have operated like most human managers - on the basis of indirect information.
For example, focusing not on the degree of achievement of the goal, but on the mood of the customer. In the car, you are the customer. There are at least two customers at work - a client and your boss. Climate control could, for example, look at the color of your face. If the face is red, it is necessary to cool. If it's blue, it's probably time to turn up the heat. If you, as a customer, do not pay attention to the temperature at all - for example, you are carried away by communicating with passengers, then the climate control sighs with relief and does nothing at all.
Now apply the climate control example to your work.
First, do you have a goal? Usually yes. For example, a plan for solving problems or sales.
Second, do you have figures showing the real state of affairs at the moment? Well, not a fact. Something is hammered into the accounting system, something is in the head, something is in the WIP, something is forgotten.
Thirdly, what is the frequency of updating these figures? A banal example - you have a task for 40 hours. Let's say you don't make any progress until you complete the task to the end. So, for a week you will live without actual numbers. This means that you will not manage your activities for a week, because. you will not clearly understand your position relative to the goal.
Fourth, do you manage by numbers? Those. do you manage at all? Or, like climate control, do you take into account only the mood of the authorities?
For example, you have a plan of 120 hours, it's the middle of the month, 20 is closed. What needs to be done? Logic dictates that we should speed up. Find a job and get it done fast. This is the control action that needs to be implemented.
Will you make it happen? Turn the conder and the stove? Or "and so it will do"?
Essentially, control is change. If everything goes according to plan, nothing needs to change. If the plan is completed in the middle of the month, you can make a change “so that’s it, I went home.” If the plan fails, you need to make a change "hell, everything, I sit down to work normally."
On the one hand, everything is very simple, agree. On the other hand, it is incredibly difficult. Controlling is a discipline. Management discipline.
Keeping numbers, looking at them every day, determining your position, inventing and implementing changes is very difficult.
It is much easier to engage in surrogate management, which I will discuss below.
Controlling has reasonable limits. You should not take several indicators into work at once - it is easy to get confused and start giving out conflicting effects. This is a different technique, flow management, a kind of controlling of controlling.
The main thing is the balance in the frequency of numbers and control. Usually the numbers come too infrequently.
There is a simple rule here: you cannot have a control action more often than you get numbers. This, of course, is about adequate influences, and not “hey, creatures, let's work normally!”.
If you know the numbers once a month, you manage once a month. Because we have a reporting period of a month, then in this state of affairs you are no longer a manager, but a pathologist. The month is over, nothing can be done, they brought you the body - the results of the work. Open and enjoy, nothing else remains.
If your programmers make progress to the system once a week, then you manage once a week. Roughly speaking, you are the captain of the ship, but you can only come to the helm 4 times a month.
There is another extreme - the overshoot of control, when you demand numbers every 5 minutes. At a nuclear power plant, or in the same climate control, this is justified, but you are just a person. You are not capable of issuing adequate commands every 5 minutes, so you should not torture people for the sake of your own ego.
To each according to his ability - get the numbers as often as you can manage. This is the job of managing. It must be done, it also has labor costs, complexity and quality.
Hope management
Imagine that you are in charge of intelligence on the front of the Great Patriotic War. You have several reconnaissance groups under your command. Your task is to send these fearless people behind the front lines to perform various tasks. In the yard, let's say, 1943. There are no mobile phones, e-mail and telegram. There are walkie-talkies, but no one drags them into reconnaissance - it's too hard.
How will management be structured? While the reconnaissance team is at the base, you carefully prepare the operation. Together with the guys, look at the map, discuss the best ways to get to the target and return back, pick up weapons and ammunition, agree on checkpoints, think about what could go wrong and how to deal with it. And then came the day and hour of the beginning of the operation.
The guys quietly crawled away through the front line, and you stayed. As a reminder, there is no connection. You can’t exert any control actions - except to organize a distracting shelling to make it easier for the reconnaissance group to get to the enemy’s rear.
Now you can only hope that everything will be fine. You can't do anything. Just wait and hope it works out. You worry about whether the operation was worked out in detail. Have you said everything you could, knew and wanted. Have you given enough ammo. Are those people you united in a group. Haven't missed something.
All you have is hope, and you live it. You rarely manage. Most of your time is filled with hope.
Now go back and imagine that you are the leader of something. Development groups, project, support department, department, office - it doesn't matter.
Your people don't go to reconnaissance. They don't disappear at all. They are almost always in touch, through several channels at the same time. including verbal. They sit next to each other, in short.
But you act like you're running reconnaissance teams.
You hand out tasks, assign deadlines, responsible persons and... You leave. An hour, two, a day, a second - and you're still gone. You sit somewhere and hope that everything will be fine, the tasks will be solved, we will meet the deadlines, people will not let you down.
You create development opportunities - grades, courses, tell everyone to learn frameworks, improve their skills and ... You leave. For months you are not interested in how it is moving there? You just sit and mind your own business and hope that people are only thinking how to fulfill your Message.
You tell the programmer - do this task, estimated at 40 hours, in 20 or 30. Do your best, there is nothing complicated there. And you leave again. You are not in the process. You just sit and hope that the programmer was imbued with your request.
You set a goal for the month - to increase production, or conversion, or something else. You give instructions, methods, examples and disappear again. You sit for a month and hope that everything will happen. And then you come, and you are convinced that you hoped in vain.
All this is the management of hope. Not management with hope, but management with hope. This I, of course, embellished.
Often there is no hope. The manager simply gave the order, left and forgot about it himself. He doesn't care if he succeeds or not. His job is to set a task and state whether it has been completed or not. All. But this, of course, is not about you. At least you hope.
As an unidentified source put it: Middle managers care about “has this been done before” and “what people think.” For the good, it is important that the problem is solved.
In order not to engage in the management of hope, one must engage in controlling - see the text above. Hope management is a surrogate. Not even management, to be honest.
My daughter is a hope manager. Once she asked why I earn so little (I was then an IT director). I say I don't know. She asked - what do you do at work? I answered - I write programs, letters, manage people. She did not understand everything - only that I was working at a computer.
And she gave out an excellent control action in the spirit of hope management: dad, you just knock on the buttons faster, and you will earn more.
It didn't help, alas. The opposite helped - to knock on buttons less, to communicate more with people, incl. - exercising control. But daughters, it probably doesn't matter. This is the management of hope.
Source: habr.com