Have you heard of the term ‘fog of war’?
I was introduced to this concept playing Starcraft back in middle school. The entire screen is shrouded in darkness if I don’t have units in that region. I never got decent at the game so when I was having a hard time with the single-player campaign, I would look up cheat codes to help out. One of them was “Black Sheep Wall” which removed fog of war and revealed the entire map. I could see where the enemy bases were located and importantly, unit movement.
Because I saw everything, I could prepare the correct unit composition to handle the situation. I remembered this game when I was talking to a few friends who struggled to keep up with their engineering team. They didn’t like surprises and they wanted to know what their team was doing all the time.
When I first began managing, I experienced “fog of war.” My personal attention could only be directed at a few engineers, and the rest I had no idea what they were doing. They looked productive. I saw them come in every day, sit at the computer, and type. I needed my equivalent of ‘black sheep wall’, so in came frequent check-ins and meetings.
Which didn’t work.
I only got snapshots at certain points in time. What my team tells me can be a hazy picture of reality. In a game, yes I see exactly everything. In real life – I have to ask the right questions to get an idea what an engineer is working on.
If you haven’t played Starcraft maybe you’ve played another real-time strategy game like Age of Empires. If you don’t – I’ll try my best to explain. I send a group of my units in one direction. I know what the plan is and the objective is harassing the workers to disrupt my opponent’s economy. I’ll switch my attention to another sector of the map and focus on my infrastructure to create more units. Maybe a surprise attack will show up when my first team is on the way to the enemy base. They would raise an alarm on the map and poll me – and I would quickly decide what to do.
Management feels that way. I work with a team to ensure they’ve got what they need to create a web app for our analysts. Once they know what to do, I switch my attention to recruiting because I need to expand my team. The pacing isn’t as frenetic as in-game, but I still have to be able to context-switch. Thankfully I’m not judged based on actions per minute. Within 60 seconds, I don’t need make coffee, code, interview a candidate, and prepare slides for an acquisition.
And this is only internal work. Even if I could see everything my team was doing, I have to consider outside forces. I need to extend my sight towards technology and business trends. Are we building the right product? Do I need to buy more hard drive space?
I can’t know everything. Even if I could see everything, I’m bounded by my ability to come up with the correct strategy in time. Having perfect vision in the moment doesn’t imply foresight either. I can’t see how my actions will project into the future.
I can’t be everywhere. Accept the uncertainty. There’s no cheat code I know that allows me to see everything. For all new managers – be okay not knowing what everyone is up. You can’t control everything. You might not even understand how everything works. Set the direction by explaining to your team what the end result should look like. Plot the course by planning with your team how you might get there. And be there for your team when they call for help.
Leave a Reply