Career Goals

I've been asked several times what I want to do in 5 years. Do I want to be a Director, a Vice President, or what?

My answer is that my life goals are not work focused. Yes I want to do a good job and contribute to the best of my ability where I am employeed. No my life does not revolve around work. Unfortunately lately it has because the job has been very demanding and needs more balance and I'm hoping to be able to do that soon.

This is a question that you have to ask yourself. How do you want to balance your work and your life. Is your job more important to you than your family, your spouse, your children, your close friends? Would you rather be in a meeting or on the side lines supporting your child at a sporting event in which he/she is participating in? How many times will your child take his/her first step, first home run, first summersault? How many meetings will you be in (more than you probably would like)?

Something to think about.

The Platinum Rule

We've all heard about the Golden Rule - "Treat others the way you would like to be treated". I just learned about the Platinum Rule by Dr. Tony Alessandra which says "Treat others they way they would like to be treated". You can find out more about it here:

http://www.alessandra.com/about_platinumrule/index.asp

IMHO understanding this will make a manager a better manager in their relationships with their staff, with their peers, and with those higher up the organizational food chain.

Your Most Important Asset

Many companies will tell you that their people are their most important asset and then they will proceed to disprove that in the way they treat their people. If the staff, including management, were important to an organization then the senior leaders in an organization would treat their people with respect. Respect includes realizing that a work/life balance means having adequate staff to allow people to take vacations and around holidays to allow more than 1 or 2 to be off.

My Philosophy of Management

1. Availability and Customer service come first.

2. Problems will be resolved as quickly and accurately as possible.

3. We will not place blame, we will solve problems together.

4. My team must be successful for me to be successful.

5. I will do what I can to make my team successful, including education and opportunities for promotion.

6. I will respect my team as I expect respect in return.

7. I will always be honest with my team and I expect honesty in return.

8. I will set clear priorities.

9. I will always be available to my team, and when I’m otherwise occupied I will make every effort to get back to my team as soon as is possible.

10. I will reward my team when appropriate in public, and will correct when appropriate in private.

11. I expect to be notified of any problems reaching severity 2 or severity 1 status as soon as possible and to be kept informed of the progress in problem identification and resolution.

12. I expect to be notified of any severity 3 or 4 problems that have the potential to reach severity 2 or 1 level as soon as possible.

13. I expect my team to make appropriate recommendations for additional resources to resolve problems. When in doubt – escalate.

14. I will be open to suggestions and criticisms from my peers and my team, as the only way to improve is to know what needs improving. In return I will provide the same feedback to my team in a private and respectful manner.

15. My team knows their job and I will not micro manage them. I expect my team to let me know when they need additional skill training and/or resources to do their job.

16. My team should enjoy what they are doing and if they are not then I will work with them to change things where pOssible. This may include additional training or more challenging job assignments that might lead to a promotion or a position in another group.

More on Work/Life Balance

People work so that they can enjoy life, not the other way around. This is something that some in management positions forget. These managers require their staff to work long hours and will even threaten the withholding of permission to take vacations until a project that is behind schedule through no fault of the staff is handled. They will do this and then provide no positive reinforcement when the staff performs the 'miracle', instead they denigrate the staff for not doing that work sooner. A manager's job is to manage their staff and that includes managing the projects of their staff which includes factoring in reality. True miracles can occur but they are rare and those that do happen are because of extra effort by the staff who gave up some of their precious personal time.

Granted there are times in any organization where there are urgent projects that require overtime, sometimes for an extended period of time. When this happens it is managements job to realize this and provide relief for the staff by bringing in temporary help from other teams or from outside the company. Any extended period where the staff is working extended hours drains the energy, morale, and quality of work of the staff that will hurt in the long run if not resolved.

When your staff's work/life balance is out of balance because of the requirements of the job it is your job to resolve this. Typically it means that there is a failure somewhere in the management planning process. In my case this was a failure of several years of attempting to get by with the bare minimum investment in the infrastructure, not adding the necessary staff as the number of users of the infrastructure grew, and then not accepting that this could not be resolved by forcing the staff to work 'smarter'. The challenge of making this case to your management is not to be underestimated as they may be those who made the decisions or are being directed (indirectly or indirectly) to improve things within the constraints of the current budget and in some cases within the constraints of a budget that has been reduced to meet some unrealistic target (e.g. 10% less than the prior year). When this happens it is your job to make your management aware and if they don't provide any relief your challenge is to try to run interference between upper managements expectations and the health and wellbeing of your staff.

First Thoughts - Three Responsibilities of a Manager

Whether you're new to management, I've been in the role for 14 months, or if you've been doing it for years and years you are faced with three responsibilities that you have to balance:

First is your responsibility to your employers to do the job that you've been hired to do. This may be the easiest of the three.

Second is your responsibility to your staff to see that they do their job and are able to grow and excel. When this happens you will be successful simply because this is the key to your first responsibility.

Third is your responsibility to yourself to see that you grow and excel.

Can all three be done - without a doubt. But in doing so you have to take into consideration a lot of different things.

One of the first things to consider is the work/life balance that is important for you and for your staff to maintain a healthly life. Your staff, as well as yourself and those above you in the organization, work so that you can enjoy life. While there are rare instances (more so the higher in the organization one gets it seems) of those who live to work and believe that others should have that same goal, you should never let this happen. The moment you start down this path you and your staff will be working 10, 12, 14+ hour days and 6 or 7 days per week along with most holidays. That is not healthy. You (hopefully) and your staff have families and friends and outside interests that need time.

Another thing to remember is that your staff are just as important to the organization, if not more so, as your stockholders. They have made a commitment to work for your organization and most want to do their best.