Behind Closed Doors - Secrets of Great Management

Don’t waste your time reading this book: Behind Closed Doors - Secrets of Great Management. Reading these following notes and the Appendix is good enough. To me, it’s not an interesting book in management. “Peopleware” or “The One Minute Manager” are the better.

 

1. Week One: Learning about the People

+ Great management is about leading and developing people and managing tasks.
+ You need to learn three things when you enter a new organization or job:
    • Who the people are—their strengths and interests—and what they are working on
    • The stated mission of the group and how the group provides value
    • How your group fits into the larger organization
--> one-on-one meeting, used open-ended questions
+ Walking Around and Listening (MBWAL) A half hour to walk around the department, even though had a “getting to know you” pizza lunch scheduled
+ Don’t offer help if you can’t deliver it
+ Multitasking: Wasting Mental Cycles
    • Working on two tasks (not projects or teams) can improve productivity because when a person is stuck on one task, they can switch to the other.
    • Productivity may increase when a person has two related tasks, but it plummets as the number of projects increases.
+ Gather Data about Current Work: Understand all the work that they do: project work, ad hoc work, periodic work, ongoing work, and management work

2. Week Two: Bringing Order to the Chaos

+ Redirect people to more important, focus on the funded work.
+ Create the Project Portfolio: Match the Work to the Goals
+ Categorize all the projects
+ Management isn’t for everyone:
    • If you find it’s not for you, or it’s not for you yet, it’s okay to step back into a technical role.
    • The best managers practice management and practice technical leadership, moving between both types of jobs before they decide to focus on one or the other.
+ Stepping Back from Management:
    • Do I want to control more of the technical decisions?
    • Am I more interested in fixing technical problems than people problems?
If you answer "yes" to both questions
+ If you think management might be for you, ask yourself:
    • Do I like working with people?
    • Do I like coaching and mentoring people?
    • Am I willing to learn how to provide feedback and have difficult conversations with people when I need to?
+ Matching the Roles with the People
+ Poor performance might be the result of insufficient skills. But it might be something else:
    • Performance also depends on the environment
    • Quality of management.
+ Hire the best:
    • Analyze the job
    • Source candidates  
    • Winnow the candidates  
    • Develop behavior description questions: Behavior description questions such as “Tell me about a time when. . . ” help candidates explain how  they’ve worked in the past rather than how they wish they work
    • Phone screen before in-person interviewing
    • Develop an audition
    • Interview candidates with an interview team
    • Involve as many people as possible when selecting new team members and team leaders
    • Listen to the interview team’s assessment
+ Plan to Integrate New Team Members
    • Create and use a checklist for new hires.
    • Spend time setting the context on the first day
    • Assign a buddy
    • Expect to re-form teams.
+ Big Visible Charts (BVCs): People know what to do and do it when managers use techniques that help people see the status of the work, planned, in progress, and completed.
+ Managing the Project Portfolio
    • Prioritize the work
    • Staff the most important work
    • Assign people to one project at a time
    • Plan to replan

3. Week Three: Build the team

+ How Is a Group Different from a Team?
It’s great to be a team, but not every workgroup needs to function as a team. The difference is in six characteristics.[5]
Teams:
    • are usually small—they have five to ten members.
    • are committed to a common purpose or goal.
    • have an agreed-upon approach to the work.
    • have complementary skills.
    • have interrelated or interdependent interim goals.
    • make commitments about tasks to each other.
+ Here’s the agenda for our first meeting:
    • Rumors, Gossip, News (5 minutes)
    • Issues of the day (the problem we’ll be working on this week)
    • Set our goals as a management team (50 minutes)
    • Action items from previous weeks (we won’t have any this first time)
+ Failure to Give Feedback: Costs More than Money
    Managers who fail to give feedback lose trust and productivity. When managers fail to give feedback, problems fester and resentment builds.
    • Loss of trust: Surprising a team member with a long list of performance complaints at a performance review isn’t helpful.
    • Loss of productivity: Most people want to do a good job.
    • Simmering resentment: People who work closely together know who is doing a good job and which team members are skating by.   
+ Provide Timely Feedback:
    People need information to know what they’re doing well and what they are doing that just isn’t working. Your feedback will help them tune their work
    • Provide feedback as close to the event as possible
    • Deliver feedback in private
    • Describe the behavior or result
    • Evaluations are different from feedback
    • Listen to what the other person has to say
    • Keep notes of feedback conversations
+ When Feedback Doesn’t Correct the Situation
    • Start with a verbal warning
    • Deliver a written warning
    • Implement a get-well plan: A get-well plan is a short period (four to five weeks) where the employee must show evidence that he is meeting acceptable standards.
    • Don’t underestimate the impact of poor performance

4. Week Four:  Managing Day by Day

+ Career Development: both the manager and the staffer are responsible
    • The manager initiates the career development in one-on-ones periodically. We recommend quarterly.
    • Both people verify the career development goals are still valid.
    • Both people monitor progress against goals.
    • The manager looks for opportunities to advance the team member’s career.
+ Create Individual Goals for Each Person
    Goals don’t have to address the entire year. In fact, it’s more effective to have a series of short-term goals
+ Coaching for Success
    • Coaching is a kind of helping: Coaching helps the other person see more options and choose from them.
    • Generate options: generate at least three reasonable options for solving any problem. Rather than offer options on a silver plate, collaboratively generate and discuss options with the employee.
    • Walk through implications
    • Develop an action plan: Options without actions don’t happen.
    • Follow up on progress during one-on-ones
    • Coaching goes only so far: When you find yourself coaching someone about the same issues over and over, decide whether the person
has the ability to learn from your coaching. The failure may be due to your coaching or the other person’s abilities. You may be missing an underlying issue. It’s also possible that the person is in the wrong job.
    -> If you believe someone needs coaching to be successful, and he or she isn’t interested, don’t coach. Move into corrective feedback and possibly a get-well plan.
+ Rule of Three: is a guideline for making better decisions
    • One alternative is a trap. There’s only one solution, and if it doesn’t work, you’re out of luck and out of options.
    • Two alternatives is a dilemma. Two alternatives is false choice: there’s only this or that.
    • Three alternatives provide a real choice. With three alternatives you can make a real choice
    Nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it's the only one you have. (Emil-Auguste Chartier, Propos sur la religion, 1938)
+ Learning to Influence
    • Emphasize mutual benefit: participate in your urgent project will benefit them, not just you
    • Appeal to greater goals: Enlist support by emphasizing the greater good.
    • Horse trade: Maybe you are in a position to help another manager with an issue she is facing. You may have machines, lab time, skills, or some other resource that she needs. Offer a straight-up trade.
    • Reciprocate: Next time around, you may be the one who has resources to help someone else.

5. Week Five:  Discovering Lurking Problems

+ Sustainable Pace
    • They’re burnt-out people: They’re on a short fuse, and they make stupid mistakes. Sometimes their decisions are not just suspect, they appear downright wrong.
    • Working at a sustainable pace of 40 hours a week isn’t molly-coddling. It’s a smart business decision, and it’s your
job to make it happen.
+ Solving Problems as a Management Team
    • Engage group creativity
    • Describe the problem
    • Collect data
    • Write it down
    • Brainstorm possible solutions
    • Document the decision
    • Look for areas where you can act: Even when a full solution involves areas outside your control, don’t rely on others to start working on the issue
    • Develop an action plan: People don’t implement solutions that don’t have action plans.

6. Week Six:   Building Capability
+ You have an obligation to provide feedback—it’s information your employees need to be successful in their jobs.
Coaching is a choice; sometimes yours, and sometimes the employee’s.
+ You always have the option not to coach. You can choose to give your team member feedback (information about the past), without providing advice on options for future behavior.
+ Once you have four people or more in your group, you can’t perform technical work and still be a great manager.
+ Learning to Delegate
    • Managers need to focus on managerial work.
    • Decide what you can delegate: decide which tasks are strategic and which are tactical, tactical work is ripe for delegation.
    • Understand who has the skills to do the work.
    • Consider delegating an investment
    • Consider the specific results you want: Communicate the task parameters including time and quality to the person to whom you’re delegating. + Focus on the results rather than methods. How-to direction is micromanagement.
    • Decide how the two of you will monitor progress. Establish periodic checks on progress.
+ Notice and Appreciate Changes and Contributions
    • Notice people doing something right: Look for opportunities to comment on what people are doing well.
    • Appreciate, don’t thank.
    • Choose your venue: When you appreciate someone, decide whether you will appreciate privately or publicly.
+ How Many People Can You Manage?
    • We strongly recommend managers avoid technical work that’s on the critical path—it’s a nowin situation.
+ Building Self-awareness:
    • Managers need to be aware of their own emotional state and how their words and behavior affect other people.
    • It’s perfectly normal to become frustrated or upset with issues at work. It’s not okay to yell, scream, swear, rant, rave, or threaten (despite some high-profile examples of this behavior).
    • Even facial expressions can have unintended consequences.
    • We don’t advocate keeping a poker face at all times. People expect managers to have emotions. But let the messenger
know you’re upset about the news, not at them.
-> When managers are self-aware, they can respond to events rather than react in emotional outbursts.
+ Manage Yourself
    • Physical displays, especially around subordinates, scare people: people not to bring you any news, especially bad news.
    • Awareness is the first step
    • Notice triggers
    • Choose your response
    • Manage your emotions: People who cannot or will not manage themselves should not manage other people.[
    • Obtain feedback about how you appear to others.  
+ Develop the People in Your Group Every Week
Great managers help each person develop his or her career. Supporting people to build their careers, lets them know you care about them, not just what they produce.
    • Understand what people want. Ask people about their career goals in one-on-ones. Not everyone wants to progress up the hierarchical ladder.
    • Create an action plan and follow it
    • Look for opportunities to practice new skills
    • Don’t hold people back: Sometimes career development means helping someone find a new position. Holding someone back to make your job easier backfires in the long term.
    • Create a transition plan.
    • Separate career development from evaluation: Career development benefits the individual and the organization. But it shouldn’t be part of an individual’s yearly evaluation or rating.
    • Career development is different from remedial development.

7. Week Seven:  Dealing with Corporate Realities without Rolling Over

+ Digging Yourself into a Hole
Sometimes we make our own problems. We don’t want to ruffle the bosses’ feathers, and we shrink from saying “no” directly. When you hear yourself saying these words, you know you are digging yourself a hole that will be hard to climb out of:
    • We’ll try.
    • We should be able to do that.
    • Let’s hope for the best.
    • We’ll just do. . . .
    • We’ll have to make. . . .
    • We’ll multitask.
    • We’ll find resources somewhere.
--> I will work with my team to see what we can achieve. DO NOT promise anything before talking with your team
+ Manage Your Boss, Stand Up for Your Team
    • Understand the other person’s context: don’t blame the other person (in this case, a senior manager) for wanting what they want.
    • Avoid premature decisions: be firm, stating that you can’t commit until you discuss what is possible with your team.
+ Leading Your Team Through A Change In Priorities
    • Replace rumors with facts
    • Set your team’s expectations about how you will respond to the change
    • Replan with your team

Notes:
+ Make goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
    • Here’s an example of a goal that isn’t SMART: “Improve product quality.” 
    • Here’s a SMART version of that goal: “Decrease the total number of released defects in the next release by 10%.”