Performance: The Test of Management

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.

Action point is to identify which of my management practices have yielded good results and which practices should I abandon now. Feedback has produced good results. So, has communication especially during this pandemic. I setup standup to go through what was accomplished yesterday and what’s being worked on today. I also try to call my people once a day if I don’t see them in another meeting.

Feedback has produced positive results especially when I focus on the good things being done. Those seem to be enhanced. The problem is that I’m not giving enough of it and need to do more of it. I’d also say deadlines and tracking of deadlines is something I’ve struggled with and want to improve upon.

Circumstances Have No Care For Our Feelings

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

Circumstances don’t care for our feelings. Getting angry about something doesn’t usually produce positive results. This is something I continue to work on. I still get angry. I still get upset. It’s less but it still happens and I have to remind myself that the anger isn’t producing anything positive. Practicing does tend to ware me down and at some point I feel like I explode. I guess that’s similar to practicing a sport where we do repitions and at the end we’re exhausted.

Controlled Experiment of Mismanagement

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.

The action point is to list three things my organization can do for more profitability by encouraging employees to take on more responsibility. I’ll stick to my team. I’m working with them on reporting and delegating tasks I no longer have time for. Another thing I’d like to implement is deadlines. For reporting I have a daily standup and coach the team on the use of our Kanban board. For delegation, I’m learning to hand off more responsibility. Deadlines I think will improve productivity. It’s difficult to implement with the team because I haven’t done a good job of following up and providing feedback as a manager on missed deadlines.

What's Better Left Unsaid

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

Being aware of my actions is something I am working on. I’m doing this now in the evenings. When it’s time to go to bed and call it a night. I often want to keep going. I’ve started to pause and think before making those decisions. I still end up doing them more times than not but I still am starting to do them. It’s tough because there’s this inner battle and I feel like fighting it too much can have more ramifications later.

The Discipline of Management

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.

The action point asks if my management practices are ad hoc or systematic. Mine is definitely systematic. I’ve always used the internet to research things and better understand the best way of doing things. I have my own takeaways from what I read. In regards to management I discovered Manager Tools several years ago. At one point I knew I wanted to get into management, so I started reading or in this case listening up on it. I’m a big podcast listener. I like using my commute time to listen to podcasts that will teach me things.

Manager Tools has thousands of hours of podcast content. I simply started listening to the weekly episodes. As I’ve gotten into management I’ve found myself listening back to previous podcasts on things I want to tackle in management. Right now I’m going through a hiring process. I’ve leaned heavily on the guidance from Manager Tools to accomplish that. I use a lot of their guidance in managing the people under me.

My experiences working for managers in IT haven’t been great. Some better than others. I wanted to change that and make sure I wasn’t doing things that the people under me hate. I’m sure I still have my cruxes but I try to minimize those and be the best manager I can be. It’s much more stressful than I thought. I’ve always like a good challenge. Doing it systematically has helped tremendously.