My Management philosophy - I

I've a management philosophy. Well, it's not really mine, but the wisdom that had been passed on for ages and most recently to me, by some of my own managers, and of course through my own learnings and experiences.

I'd been manager for about a year and half during my previous job. It was not a very fruitful job for me, and in fact a burden most of the times. I'd gone through certain most difficult times and absolute pains during this period. I soon realized I didn't have enough orientation to people, and particularly used to get most uncomfortable and impatient when working with people, just the opposite of what you want to see in a manager. I'd advices from various segments of people, some said straight to me that I'm no good at it, go and look at yourself in the mirror and decide if I want to take this up; some others were even harsher and said don't turn and look this side, you're a hard-core technocrat and understand only binaries and logic. There were a few, though, that said "Don't worrry, this is just a starting point. Relax..." and all those beautiful words. Quite a few of my friends told me, "Hey, why do you worry? This is the way it works. You got to be a manager at some point in your career, else you can't survive".

Different opinions left me obviously confused. I started to feel like the father in the story about how he and his son tried to carry a donkey across the river, when he paid attention to and acted based on opinions from the onlookers, unable to make a decision himself and finally ended up losing his son.

My thoughts were already wavering, when I started to get advices on where my career is going? I started to feel that those who opposed the management culture and the need for it are right, and for a long time believed that human minds behaved in too many illogical ways for anybody to comprehend. Having working with pure logic for the past entire decade on engineering software, how can somebody suddently switch to reading people's minds?
Impossible? Unfortunately enough, I still don't know the answer. I am searching for it...

But, now I appreciate the need for good team management for realizing success, more than before. I've worked with teams, which had arguably some of the best and technically bright minds, but had failed miserably to achieve what they envisaged. Not once, but many times. I'd seen people and the teams they were part of, falling apart due to minor misunderstanding between each other or the top management and unable to tune into the organizational goals and focus. I'd seen the team morale taking a dip due to reasons that seemed unknown and incomprehensible to common people. I myself have undergone all these different facets of "mis-management" in my career. It was the most common and the easiest blame game. Whenever we don't see anything working to our satisfaction, we easily blame it on management. But, do we really understand what exactly the failure is? Most of us don't really know, but still prefer to blame the management for all bad things that happened to them, and even their neighbours!

So, I decided to take a break from my 'management career' and pursue some more of that 'technical' bliss, while I spent lots of time learning from many managers in my organization. Not necessarily through 1-1 discussions with managers, but through silent observations. Although I had gone through similar exercises in the past, this one was different because I'd a goal. I'd to decide between technical/management career paths. Following were my key observations...

1. Most of the issues, that decide success/failure of the project, starts from within the team. If suppressed, they can grow to unimaginable proportions and eat up everything precious to you and the team - time, peace of mind and succcess, of course. Surprisingly, if left alone, most of such issues are solved automatically.

2. If you want to taste success, behave yourselves! Remember, there are two ends to a stick; when you're picking up one end, you're picking up the other too. Don't overreact and spoil a 'good' environment, although it's highly tempting to do so! If the envrironment is already tensed up, try not to worsen the situation at the least, if not improve it.

3. People want to be respected. When they feel the lack of it, that is when the problems really start.

4. Managers who are smart enough to understand the team and are good at the management of skills, will end up victorious.

5. Managers need to be technically strong to command respect from his/her people, but it is foolish to imagine that this alone will help.

6. There are not enough 'good' managers around! Perhaps, just a handful. Sad news, but then we've many truly aspring and prospective managers in the future.

There are plenty more smaller observations and conclusions, but the above mentioned pointers essentially constitute the basis for my philosophy about management. We will discuss more about it in the subsequent posts...