Before I started my management career, I was self-employed. I had to be very good at execution because my income depended entirely on my results. The main questions for me at that time were, “What should I really do to earn efficiently, and how do I avoid being bored to death?”. If I could solve these problems, execution would not be an issue at all.
So, it’s not surprising that when I started my management career, I thought all I had to do was find answers to the same questions, but this time for my team.
I believed that being a boss required only ensuring that:
- a) my team deeply understood their objectives and how to deal with them, and
- b) my team was motivated.
Obviously, this was a naive way of thinking, so very soon I added the third element: assisting the team in execution.
But only recently have I understood that this help can be significantly different for different people. And my success as a manager heavily depends on estimating how much and in which ways I should assist.
The third element is the trickiest because of the long feedback loop. If you fail in ensuring the right target or motivation, you will know about it very soon. It is pretty straightforward, you get feedback quickly.
However, it’s hard to tell whether you’re effectively helping with execution or not. Maybe you control too much, or perhaps you give too much slack. Maybe your team needs more precise standards, or maybe you’re suppressing initiative. How to know? Eventually you will find out, but it might be too late.
So, what should we do?
First, we should eagerly seek feedback from our team.
Second, we should pay attention to small, short-term projects. They might seem unimportant for the bottom line, but they bring invaluable information. By assessing small wins and failures, we quickly understand how our team performs and which managerial actions boost their performance.
