All, all?
All your problems as a manager
As a manager, all (saying “all” is a bit bold, but I need a hook to grab your attention 😉) the problems you face can be classified into three areas:
- Non-existent or incorrect processes in the organization.
- Problems related to people
- Your own incompetence
1) PROCESSES
In my experience, most of the friction that arises between people at work can be summed up as a lack of processes or incorrect processes.
It is quite common in organizations that have been doing things by inertia or solving situations as they arise for friction to arise between people about who should do new things or how they should be done as the organization grows. In these situations, certain frictions can become entangled with personal emotions, when in reality it is the lack of processes that is causing the friction.
When I worked at a startup, this was what I thought about almost every problem I saw in the team. People tried to solve problems on their own quickly (that’s one of the advantages of startups), but the problem was much bigger than one person could solve and involved several departments that were not coordinated.
The first person saw the problem from their point of view and had a solution from their point of view. They tried to implement their solution, and since others didn’t see it the same way, or it negatively affected them, friction was created.
In large organizations, it is also quite common for the company to have been doing things the same way for a long time and for those old processes not to adapt well to new technologies, the new direction of the company, or new developments that arise. In the end, the problem is left unresolved because it is not the way things are done in that company.
In large organizations, I have seen the opposite of the start-up approach here. Instead of trying to solve the problem on their own, when people see that the problem is too big for them and requires the involvement of other departments (or worse, the typical thinking that they are not paid to do this, so someone else will solve it), they do nothing or complain at the coffee machine about how things work.
In any case, whether it’s the start-up approach (doing it on my own, but without getting acceptance from others) or the big dinosaur approach (it’s not my responsibility, someone else will take care of it), the lack of processes or the incorrectness of those processes usually ranks high on my list of problems that don’t work in companies.
Here, the manager plays a very important role. Being able to identify the problem, identify the parties affected by the problem (this is relatively easy in a start-up and can be extremely complex in large organizations), understand the politics involved in that potential process, and get buy-in from the right people in the organization is what makes a manager contribute positively to an organization.
It is worth noting that a process can sometimes be very difficult to change in an organization for several reasons:
– People don’t want to change.
– The higher up you are in organizations, the more ego can prevail over logic.
– The organization will require a complete reorganization of the culture to really change some processes, and this is far beyond your reach as a manager.
– It may take a lot of stamina, and not everyone is up for the task.
If you are a middle manager in an organization where you cannot change processes, even if they are wrong (I am surprised how many companies face this situation), I believe you have two options: accept or leave.
That said, as a middle manager, you should be able (more than you think) to influence or change certain processes that can help optimize workflow and solve some of the organization’s problems.
One example of incorrect processes is the responsibilities of the People Department (as I mentioned in another post, the misnamed Human Resources Department) in the hiring process in many companies.
I had a situation where a team member came to me with an offer from another company, the Human Resources Department told me we couldn’t match that salary, and the person left. I had to wait more than six months for a new hire, following the company process, which involved several forms, some external people doing the headhunting, several interviews, tests… and in the end, we paid the new hire more than the person who left was asking for. Who paid the bill? The team, who was stressed out because they didn’t have enough people to do the work; the department, which was behind on some deliverables; and the organization.
Looking back, who was primarily responsible for this? Me. First of all, I wasn’t able to argue that the market price for that position was much higher than what we were paying and I lost a good member of the team. After the person left, I was responsible for hiring and accepted the hiring process I was given. I let the process drag on longer than necessary. I could have shortened the process, reduced the number of interviews, and focused more on getting that hire in faster.
If you asked me now, I would say that the company’s processes were flawed and I wasn’t even aware of it. I accepted the status quo. Salaries should have been adjusted to reflect the reality of the market, and as a manager, I should have taken responsibility for ensuring that the team was paid what they were owed and that hiring was controlled by me, the hiring manager, rather than just doing what I was told.
I could give several examples like this in other areas… It’s easy to write this in hindsight, but learning to be a manager comes at a price…
