Freedom Preetham’s Post

MIDDLE MANAGERS CAN SUCCEED BY SIMPLIFYING THE ROLE 🎯 The middle manager role has been set up for failure, and this needs to change❗️ #McKinsey research has found that 44% of #middle_managers see ❌️organizational #bureaucracy as the main cause of negative experiences in the role❗️ 🚦Unclear decision rights, ⛔️ lack of empowerment, and ⏰️ overwhelming administrative work are part of middle managers’ day to day. What managers can do❓️🤔 🔎Try asking yourself: 🔘 1. How can I make time spent on strategizing more productive? 🔹️✂️Reduce the number of meetings, emails, and presentations with #unclear_objectives. 🔹️🪜Consider translating strategic plans into monthly, weekly, and daily priorities that have clear owners. Make a “don’t do list” for anything that does not align with these #priorities. 🔘 2. How can I focus more on people development and coaching? 🔹️🩺#Coach direct reports to execute tasks by providing actionable #feedback and #celebrating_accomplishments. Use regular feedback to drive clarity around what is going well and what can be improved. 🔹️💡Hold #career_conversations with team members. These conversations can be more meaningful by understanding individuals’ goals and strengths. 🔹️🫂Feel empowered to create an environment of #trust where team members are encouraged to take calculated risks, learn, and improve. 🔘 3. How can I simplify or eliminate administrative tasks and transactional individual contributor work? 🔹️Push to eliminate work related to transactional tasks. 🔹️Automate tasks by leveraging #technology. Coordinate with other departments to automatically approve expenses within set thresholds or automate #dashboards for reports. 🔹️Delegate work to other team members to lighten the load while contributing to their development. 🎯This will require action by both #managers and #senior_leaders❗️ So what senior leaders can do❓️ You can read the whole article here👇 https://lnkd.in/d344bD_s

First Time Manager Myth #8: "The Best Technical Experts Make the Best Managers" 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵: There's a common assumption that the most technically proficient member of a team naturally makes the best manager. This belief stems from the idea that technical expertise directly correlates with leadership ability. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Excelling in a technical role doesn't automatically equip someone with effective people management skills. Leadership requires a different set of skills, including communication, empathy, delegation, and conflict resolution. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀: 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀: Effective management is heavily reliant on the ability to connect with, motivate, and understand team members. 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴: Great leaders need to see the bigger picture and guide their teams towards long-term goals, beyond technical tasks. 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: Transitioning from a technical expert to a manager often requires developing new skills and adapting to different roles. Remember, stepping into management is about expanding your skill set beyond technical expertise. It's a journey of personal and professional growth, where developing strong interpersonal and leadership skills is key. ----------------------------------- If you enjoy these management tips, make sure to hit the 🔔 to catch all my latest posts. And do repost if you have first time managers in your network who would find it useful ♻️

Why the Right Manager is Key to a Happy Tech Job 💻 Have you ever noticed some people always seem happier at work? A lot of times, it's because they have a great manager. From my own experience in leading and being led, here's what I've learned about what makes managers so important: 💪 They Support Your Growth: Great managers don't just oversee; they push for your promotions and ensure you're fairly paid. 📈 They Help You Grow: They encourage you to learn new skills at a comfortable pace. 🤝 They Build Strong Teams: Great managers attract skilled people and keep everyone motivated. What makes a manager really stand out? Honesty: They keep you in the loop so you always know your standing. Understanding: They know life can be unpredictable and offer flexible hours when needed. Skill Building: They help you improve on your weak spots and build on your strengths. Vision and People Skills: They ensure you work on meaningful projects and maintain a happy team environment. Having such a manager can change your whole career for the better. I've been fortunate to work with some amazing leaders. What do you look for in a manager? Imagine being a software engineer who's thriving, relaxed, and fulfilled. With the right manager, that could be you. #Leadership #TechCareers #ProfessionalDevelopment

7 Steps of Effective Decision Making: 💎 Thoroughly delineate the problem, desired outcome, and decision framework, ensuring clarity on the rationale behind decisions. 💎 Foster active involvement by welcoming diverse viewpoints through brainstorming and feedback channels. 💎 Transparently share relevant data and options, keeping everyone abreast of developments. 💎 Promote joint responsibility and task delegation to nurture a collective commitment to the decision. 💎 Acknowledge concerns and validate differing perspectives, culminating in effective communication of the final decision's rationale. 💎 Encourage feedback loops for continuous improvement, leveraging collaborative tools such as shared documents and communication platforms to streamline engagement. 💎 Bonus TIP : Utilize collaborative tools like shared documents, communication platforms, and voting systems to streamline information flow and engagement.

The best managers can communicate the mission clearly... The worst managers make this meal. Research by Anita Williams Wooley of Carnegie Mellon University found that effective groups have high collective intelligence(solve problems quickly) when they have alignment. Unfortunately, most managers don't take the time to make sure everyone knows where they are going. You can't travel as a team if you are going to different places, it is the manager's job to define a clear mission and get everyone aligned. If team members have different visions and goals you will end up with a franken-product or getting lost along the way. So here is what you do: 1. Make the Implicit Explicit: Don't assume that people know the goal, the customer, the audience, etc. Talk about it constantly and ask if what you are doing serves that goal. 2. Clarify Contributions: In every team meeting you need to be clear on how each person contributes to that goal. 3. Align Personal Goals: When you understand your team members' personal goals you can show them how they align with their team responsibilities. Now that you have alignment at all three levels team, individual, and personal, you will be able to reason effectively and have higher collective intelligence. For more behavioral science insights and opportunities to connect, join the thousands of readers of my monthly Newsletter https://lnkd.in/dnKE4zFj

The core role as a new executive is designing and building organizational capability for impact. And executives are often too busy to ever get to it. Most new executives experience this trap. Man, does being busy feel good, when you think you’ve made it. I’ve been there myself. It is a really validating feeling. We talk to a lot of Directors who look at their executive role models and question whether they really want it. “I’m not sure I want to be that busy; they work an awful lot.” we’ve heard often. What these Directors don’t realize is they’re often looking at executives who are themselves trapped. You can escape the trap, but the key to getting out of this trap isn’t thru productivity hacks or more "delegation." It’s about doing a part of the job, that most don’t even know they're ignoring. How do you make time to do it? How do you assess your org’s capability? How do you design new capability? How do you start? Join us and learn more: https://hubs.li/Q02n-cD20 P.S. What’s your experience with execs who were both ineffective and crazy busy?

As a result of meeting an number of C-Suite Executives this past month, there are two common themes emerging. 1) Organization readiness to hire 2) The desire to hire senior leaders with an enterprise mindset. I'll touch on organization readiness today. As you know, hiring the right talent is crucial for the success and growth of any organization. However, the process of bringing in new team members can sometimes be rushed and reactive. We spend a lot of time with our clients on discovery, alignment, workforce planning and then more realignment to ensure the leadership and organization is ready to welcome its new leader and enable them to assimilate into the culture and be impactful as early as possible. So, a few things to bear in mind. -         Assess current state of team and organization capability. -         Clearly define objectives of the new hire, desired outcome and impact if successful. -         Consider the impact on the existing culture of the team and organization. -         Consider investing in onboarding coaching to help accelerate the learning and engagement of the new hire. -         Invest in leadership team coaching too, especially when the new hire is a key Executive. Remember, team dynamics change with every addition and subtraction. -         Assess the financial plan which is particularly important for earlier stage companies. Hiring too heavy early on may result in an unsustainable cost base and when equity is offered. Also reducing the Options pool too early may impact the ability to attract other key leaders. -         Carefully plan the interview process and candidate experience. Perceptions of engagement and readiness start early for candidates. Partnering with a company like LEAD3R helps you to carefully evaluate hiring needs, resources, and organizational dynamics. Take the time to assess readiness and increase the likelihood of accelerated engagement, learning, impact, and value creation. What do you do to ensure your organization is ready to hire? Keep a look out for my post on Enterprise Mindset! #executivesearch #talentsolutions #readiness #LEAD3R

New Managers: What should you focus on in the beginning? I remember my first management job... I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I had been a good individual contributor, but management was something out of my experience. I wish I had been provided with some robust training but unfortunately like many managers, I was left to work it out on my own. If this sounds familiar and you're starting out in your first management position I'd recommend focusing on this acronym: H.O.U.R.S H - be Humble. It isn't a good look to start telling people what to do without listening to understand their roles first. And avoid being over confident. it's OK to say I don't know yet, so I'll find out. O - One to ones. Prioritise one to ones with each team member getting to know them, their needs and strengths, goals, and what they're working on. U - Understand processes and policy. Read through the objectives and strategic plans through the lens of management to help make sure you're all working towards them. R - Review what's working and what's not. Ask the team for their input on this first, and then add your ideas after observing for some time. S - Shadow - spend time learning your teams roles and how they go about doing them. If you get these elements right it will set you up well for the future. #management

One of the most important skills you can develop in your career is the ability to determine when you should absolutely not solve a problem locally. Problem solver mentality and high agency are touted often as key to success. This is true…. BUT: especially in a remote world, it’s far too easy for departments to climb all over each other’s responsibilities. A solution to enablement problems can live inside the org, inside of product, inside of sales leadership, inside of executive leadership, and inside of PMM. The question becomes, “where SHOULD it live?” I wish I could say this answer would always produce easy action, but of course it doesn’t. Usually you need a “right now” and a “when we fix it” answer. But whatever you decide, you can’t do this on accident if you want to stay above water long term. You have to know what jobs you’re doing that, in a properly constructed organization, would live elsewhere. The same goes for “delegation” to leadership. Sometimes people come to enablers (or really any leader) with problems that are caused by dissonance between leadership direction and operational ground truth. Nobody does this on purpose, and great leaders want to know when it’s happening so they can fit it. Just because things are a way now, doesn’t mean they have to live like that forever. Not all roadblocks are unmovable. If you find yourself solving problems that feel like they’re symptoms, rather than root causes, ask yourself a few questions: - even if I solve this the way I’ve laid out, will I actually proactively know to solve it? Or is the workflow triggered in another organization? If the answer is that you wouldn’t know to solve it, at least part of the solution probably lives in another org. - How does the ask tie all the way back to a customer, and who does it touch along the way? Who gets alerted, and how do they respond at each stage? Every problem eventually ties back to the customer, regardless of whether or not folks realize it. - does our answer require ignoring existing process or SOPs? Does it create a conflict between rules? You need to talk to leadership. - should the person asking for this actually be doing it? If not, who should be and why don’t they know that that is an expectation? - do I have the necessary inputs to create an output? If not, somebody is missing a trigger to help you.