Read an Excerpt
Leadership Navigation
For New Managers Faced with a step change?
By Phindile Mooketse Partridge Africa
Copyright © 2015 Phindile Mooketse
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4828-0464-5
CHAPTER 1
The author's note to the reader
Congratulations on your promotion! You are now changing from being an expert in your trade to being a generalist accountable for the output of others. Is that not daunting?
In this role, if things go wrong, you take all the blame, and if they go well, you share in the glory. That is the reality of your role. When you take the blame and know exactly how to turn the situation around, you exhibit one of the characteristics of a leader. Similar as when you share the glory, you reflect acknowledgement of your team and that demonstrates true leadership. Leadership and management will be covered briefly in chapter three; for now, we talk about you and your new position.
An offer of promotion is mostly accepted with excitement, celebrated for the status and extra perks. Possibly, even the power that comes with it! It is rare that we converge to talk about the level of responsibility that one signs up for.
We never talk about the diverse areas of accountability compared to when you were practicing your profession or trade. People are often promoted to a managerial position due to being good technically. Your technical expertise could be coupled with a natural flair of leadership. However, you are now responsible for a wider scope, and you are accountable for your team's outputs and outcomes.
Our ego, or rather confidence, normally tells us that we can do it. Sometimes there is that inner voice that says, 'You will make it, you are a born leader.' The reality is that we become vulnerable, hoping for someone to sit us down and take us from A to Z of management and yet no one does. No one takes the time to meticulously induct you into the facts and figures of your key focus areas. Needless to say, the responsibility of a manager is not on facts and figures but how to achieve them.
Ask any manager or supervisor if there was any introduction that made them aware of what they were signing up for? They are rare if at all none.
Reflecting back to my first day as a new line manager; it was the most daunting day in my life. When I got home that night, I was tired and exhausted. It was like I had done more work while all I did was to entertain people who came in the office to congratulate me. I was also flooded with congratulatory emails to which I kept myself busy responding to. The euphoria of responding to people slowly turned to an overwhelming question; 'what now?'
I had thirty-eight people waiting to take a lead from me. It dawned on me that being a manager is not about my trade or knowing the business. Neither is it about the natural flair or charisma of taking a lead in any team.
We may attend courses on general topics of management and acquire formal qualifications. However, what we learn in these courses is theory, models and frameworks on specific topics. Such courses may shape your thinking, but when promoted the question -'what now?'- remains a gap.
When I moved from line manager to middle manager, I had the same hunch; 'what now?' My line manager experience felt like mediocre as I thought that I am expected to do more. It was even worse that I got into a business structure in which nothing existed. That was when I engrossed my thoughts into what a manager should do. I reflected on what makes up an exceptional manager.
* Why Leadership Navigation?
Years later into my leadership role, I found myself helping Human Resources compile slides to induct new managers. In the midst of it, I felt it unjustifiable to put together a few slides on what I had learnt over years. I then ditched the slides and started writing. I wrote with excitement thinking that I have an opportunity to equip novices with what I did not have when I was in that position.
I wrote to close the gap of my key question –'what now?' - My human resources business partner encouraged me to publish this write up as a book. I was not sure if it would be relevant for publication. I thought that everyone out there knows better, and that the gap of this key question –'what now?' - could only be in my industry.
I then engaged friends and associates in technical leadership position, asking them if they knew what to do when they started as managers. Their answers were all the same, coupled with a sigh of saying it was confusing and somewhat embarrassing to say 'what now?' openly.
I also engaged a dear friend who works as a human resource practitioner in one of the highly technical companies. I asked her a question: 'Tell me, when you promote your process engineers to management positions, what does your company do after they are appointed?'
She asked for clarity as my question was vague. I did not know how to rephrase but continued questioning: 'Do you train them?' Her response was short and direct. 'Train them for what?' she asked.
I started to feel like I should have not asked this question because it felt so wrong to insinuate that people do not know what to manage. I felt like; that new manager trying to determine what a manager should do, and to make matters worse, I still had no way to make my question clearer.
To cut a long story short, ultimately her answer was 'Normally, our process engineers grow through the ranks.'
This answer gave me the confirmation to go ahead and publish this navigator because it was specifically to address just that: supporting those that have grown through the ranks in any field.
* Why do managers fail?
When people are promoted, they are trusted, believing that they will hold the leadership position. Why then do we continue to see people fail down the line? The recruitment and selection process is relatively similar across industries and is authentic. Yet some people still fail following appointment, why? Two reasons come to mind.
Firstly, people who grew through the ranks, focus on mastering the day to day activities without insight of the management role. Secondly, new managers spend too much time reflecting on the weaknesses of their previous managers. This is done with the aim of avoiding such mistakes and proving to previous peers that they are better. In essence, we miss the point, and thus never get to practice the full scope of management.
This book intends to navigate you towards the full scope of management. No theories! No models! No leadership style! Only the what, the why, ... and the most important part that you will never find in any online search engine, training intervention or any other management book, or publication, is the specifics to the. ... HOW?
Grab a pen, to note your aha moments and scribble insights as you step into exceptional leadership!
Regards,
Phindile M Mooketse,
–Ekseptionel-
CHAPTER 2
Promoted, What now?
As new managers, the first thing we think of doing, is solving problems and make rules. We respond to daily demands in order to meet targets such as production rates, sales or pass rates. We get fascinated by killing fires; we hit the ground running. Such euphoria is fulfilling at first. Yet in hindsight, it narrows your focus to the busyness of problem solving and adherence to our own rules rather than exceptional leadership.
To avoid this euphoria of busyness, force yourself to think. Discern your role and understand how diverse it is. The first diversity level within your role is that you have an operational side and a strategic side to manage. The operational side is what we see, work on, and report on daily. It keeps us going in that first year of our appointment. We fit in, we know the daily business and to some extent, we like the sound of our own voice.
Mastering the operational side gives us the confidence that we know our processes; we know the lingo, office politics and grapevine. Two or three years down the line, things fall apart due to a lack of being strategic. You need to appreciate that the order and strength of your operational side is dependent on your strategic flair.
The strategic side is what we cannot easily measure and we are often taught about it but rarely introduced to it in practice. You find aspirant managers attending strategic management courses and get a hype of an assignment. Coming back to work, the schedule goes on as usual. Actually, do we apply strategic management or do we define clever people as strategic?
Moving forward, we will not attempt to define strategy, rather we will navigate to the how of being strategic. Irrespective of your preferred interpretation, you need to acknowledge that strategy is a high level plan. The most important part of the how is to note that within the leadership navigation context we put emphasis on the loop that starts from understanding, planning and managing your areas to yield expected output. This loop is what makes you strategic and an exceptional leader, as it does not start and end with that high level plan or strategy. It starts from understanding your core management areas. This will enable you to lead your strategic planning sessions towards a holistic view of your core areas.
Understanding should not be confused with knowing, you may know but lack intrinsic insight. You gain such insight by answering critical questions, ensuring that you apply meaningful answers and consulting as much as you can to get different views. Understanding also includes having acumen on how you invest time in each of these core management areas.
Following your understanding is planning whereby you take your team along to converge and align. It is important to converge in a form of thoughts about how the department can meet and exceed targets. Let me elaborate this further:
As a manager you are not accountable to design a plan and impose it, but to create an environment for your team to design with you. You may be a visionary and want your views to stand but acknowledge that we are, because of the other. Let your team voice out their thoughts on how they would want to see their department going forward. Your views are always shaped by others, and in this case, they are shaped by your team.
To allay fears of not exercising your power, it is worth noting that you have the leverage to set the tone. You can sell your views but you need to be brilliant about it; ensure that the best views that you converge, align to the best common view. The how to converge and align is covered in chapter three.
Being strategic, which is what you are navigated to, does not end with a strategic plan. It is a loop that goes into managing your strategy. It serves no purpose to set a strategy and not drive it as part of your daily operation. This means that your strategic actions should be imbedded in your reporting structures in which it can be tracked Monthly or quarterly.
When the above three steps are done –understanding, planning, and managing- you achieve set targets and exceed them. Below is a diagrammatic summary of the Navigator's Strategy Loop.
º Practical Implementation of the Navigator's Strategy Loop
Now we understand that strategy is not only about the definition and cognitive ability but a continuous loop. It is important that we focus on implementing this loop in your own area. On implementation, you start with step 1: understanding.
This step entails insight to the core management areas and acumen to how your time is spent through the navigator's time allocation matrix.
The core management areas involve understanding your role specific to your area, which is the mystery of most new managers. Appreciate that the core of any manager is in managing the holistic view from resources to safety. In this navigation, we refer to this holistic view as the five core management areas. They are; (i) resources, (ii) core business, (iii) safety, (iv) stakeholder & (v) finance. Your intrinsic insight of each of these core management areas is the basis of exceptional leadership.
Build insight to enable your mind-set to appreciate and execute your plans within a set structure thereby eliminating busyness by default. Do not take it at face value that you know or have a clue of what each of these core management areas are. The leadership navigator will give you an in-depth understanding of what each area entail.
Below are critical questions that will assist you to start building insight. Apply critical thinking under each core management area –resources, core business, safety, stakeholders and finance-. Your pen can come handy here as you are encouraged to scribble as you think.
* Why must this core area be managed?
* What is expected as an excellent result in this area?
* How can you achieve this result?
* What can fail prior to this result failing? Leading Indicator
* Who can help me achieve these results within my team?
* Who is my service provider in this area?
* Who is my customer/recipient in this area?
* When do I report on this?
* When do I update myself on this independent of reporting?
* When do I align my team?
* How do I equip myself and my team to understand this area?
* How do I improve our performance on this?
* How do I make my team excited about this?
Now that you completed answering your questions, did you learn anything through thinking and scribbling? Thinking is part of a manager's job! We feel like we are not working when we sit and think, yet our role is just that, to think.
Some managers are highly commended for being capable of killing fires -busyness-. We should change that belief and start commending thinkers who proactively kill fires by default.
Interesting though, that thinkers with no proper time allocation into what they focus on, may end up being in the space of procrastination. Spend your time wisely, as you may have insight but if your time is not well spent on each, you risk collapse or frustration. Put your thoughts into how you intend to spend each day, week or Month.
The most important thing is to understand the impact of your time allocation or focus. There are fail points in how and where you spend time as a manager. If your focus is high on resources, i.e. people-orientated, you stand a chance of failing dismally on all other core areas. Though it is important to put emphasis on people, keep in mind that you need to strike a balance. Happy people that are unproductive may end up miserable if not well led.
When your focus is high on core business, i.e. production line dominated, you surely will achieve set targets but may burn out. There is also a great possibility that people can be paralysed and look up to you to always take the first step or give instructions. It is also not ideal to spend your time on all core areas equally.
Knowing each core management area equally well yet spending time on each wisely is fundamental to exceptional leadership. It may not be practical to follow an exact time allocation that you set for yourself. However, it is important to know that there are specific traps under each core management area.
These traps are reflected in the navigator's time allocation matrix. You can plot your estimated time spent on each core area and keep in mind that your total time spent on all areas should sum up to 100%.
This time allocation matrix checks how further you are from specific traps within each core management area. The more or less time you spend far off the ideal line, the closer you get to the stipulated traps highlighted in the top and bottom of the matrix. When you spend more or less time on people as part of resources, you risk being overbearing or make your people feel neglected respectively.
If you fail to strike a balance between your role in the core business and that of your team, you risk being overbearing or neglect. Either of the two may result in an ultimate collapse. This collapse could be you as an individual drained out or even worse, collapse of your overall team and overall performance.
Likewise, if you spend less or more time on your core business, you risk over reliance on your team or burnout. This may lead to negligence caused by a lack of oversight.
High focus on stakeholder could be due to a need to maintain relationships resulting in being too social. This can make or break you because you can be favoured over others which boarders on personal favours and that might be risky and requires maturity.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Leadership Navigation by Phindile Mooketse. Copyright © 2015 Phindile Mooketse. Excerpted by permission of Partridge Africa.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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