Next time you encounter a manager at a cocktail party, ask what they do for their team.
You might get a response like, “I’m a crap umbrella.”
Imagine crap falling from the sky and the heroic (in their minds) manager steps up with a giant umbrella to block it from falling on the team. A bad manager lets crap rain on their team. Or drip on them slowly.
Ew.
Crap is distractions preventing my team from getting their work done. Sometimes I get new directives from upper management which are well-meaning, but not well-defined for the team. My team can’t always react in a split second to these requests, so I’m there to slow things down and understand what’s really required.
When a new directive comes through like “Document all systems by tomorrow,” I have to think about my choices.
- Block.
- Let it through.
- Understand what is going on. Why do we suddenly need to do this?
Now that’s only from upper management.
How about from my own team?
There are always new requests for more resources, questions about more open reqs for hiring, equipment, and desire to work on other projects. Now my team pushing back at me.
How about my counterpart on the east coast? He’s going to be pushing me why bugs haven’t been fixed in months! And sorry I haven’t built out those widgets. Reality is not me “shielding” my team. They’re pushing back too. And other teams. I’m being inundated with crap from all sides. From above, from below, and sideways.
I need a zorb ball.
Here’s an example drawn from experience.
One day, I wake up to find the Elasticsearch cluster can’t serve requests, a client needs a report immediately or they won’t pay, a request to document our systems for an acquisition. Meanwhile, the team on the other coast is emailing members of my team because of new bugs in the system. They’re going to ping every engineer they can think of responsible. An engineer needs a new laptop because his old one is dying. Coffee beans ran out and the office manager realized our credit card expired.
Time stop!
How do I temper all the incoming requests? I know I cannot fulfill every request on the spot so I re-scope the requests and redirect back at the source.
- The engineers responsible for Elasticsearch need to restore the cluster so the east coast team can do their work. I don’t think we can get around this. Meanwhile can they work with a backup cluster? Do they need the real time data?
- Can business development or the account manager smooth things out with the client while we figure out the issue?
- How soon will the acquisition happen? I understand lawyers want things ASAP but are they okay with a preliminary draft?
- I can tell the manager on the other team to hold off because my team is aware of the bugs – they need to address the issue with Elasticsearch first because that blocks the entire system. He should route all problems to me right now.
- How bad is the laptop? Can he hang on for a few days? Is it stopping him from fixing the Elasticsearch fire? Can he use my laptop instead for now?
- We can get beans from the local coffee shop with cash (we can expense later) – the office manager can drive there.
I don’t jump on every issue because my team physically cannot do so. Each round trip of questions and answers adds a delay to when we need to truly act, gives the team time to think, and that’s how I slow down a barrage of requests.
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