Continuing our series on management styles, we took on technical management last time, leaving us with the other extreme: The business manager, who rarely comes from within the company or even industry, and relies on an MBA to provide understanding and even authority.
What could possibly go wrong?
This week, rather than pound away at playing “good manager/bad manager,” I’d like to return to the idea of how American graduates relate to the corporate world. I received some good input on the subject since posting my original thoughts, and some comments are definitely worth sharing.
Especially interesting is that, outside of technology-driven fields, there’s a different stereotype at work (more…)
If you’re coming in late, last week, I suggested that management is harder than it should be because we consistently fill management positions with people who probably shouldn’t manage.
There are people who understand what their team does well enough to keep tabs and smart enough to manage rather than interrupt. If you have such a manager, ignore this post and do everything it takes to keep that job. The rest of us see our primary facilitator make our jobs more difficult. (more…)
If you’ve been following along here, you already know this article is the long-promised what makes a good manager story. It has been derailed several times, most prominently when Vineet Nayar spoke out on perceived deficiencies in American programmers a couple of weeks ago.
The article grew and I want to move towards smaller, more readable articles. So, the big article is now a series.
Before I get started, though, I definitely need to tip my imaginary hat to the fortieth anniversary of the Moon Landing. With few tools and less hard data than most of us take to the supermarket, plus more than a few wonderfully demented mishaps, a bunch of civilians and military men managed to organize themselves well enough to get human beings to the Moon and back, and invent a few great technologies along the way. Just…wow.
Here I was, all set to talk about what management really is (or should be, in my opinion), and the Microsoft’s Indian partner plops this in our collective laps: Most American Graduates are Unemployable. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait here.
Ready? Basically, since:
I might as well gripe, too. At least admit that it’s better than another Michael Jackson tribute. (more…)
Before I get moving, I hope that everybody’s Father’s Day went well. Mother’s Day happens to have the more interesting history (for which you’ll need to wait until next May), so there isn’t much to say past that.
Now, my original plan for this Monday was to talk about what managers actually do, and start some discussion over time about what distinguishes a good manager from a bad manager.
That piece wasn’t coming together and I was on the verge of scrapping it completely when somebody coincidentally reminded me of a favorite gem, Bill Swanson’s “Unwritten” Rules of Management at AllBusiness.
As we finish the overview of eManagr’s main ideas (teams here, estimates here), we come to the user profile.
Always remember, eManagr isn’t Facebook. (more…)
Last time, we kicked around eManagr’s “Hollywood”-style teams and why we suggest the plan. This week, we talk about the core of any project plan, work estimates.
Repeat after me: The quality of a project and its schedule are directly related to the quality of estimates.
Of course, there isn’t a problem with this. There are many problems with it. (more…)
Teams are important to eManagr, so much so that the project’s codename was “TeamrUp;” its job, after all, is to be a “teamer” for you. While the scope quickly expanded beyond a typical distributed spreadsheet (I’m looking at you, Team System), the teams have remained a core priority.
What’s the big deal? (more…)