On becoming "the boss" « PierG (aka Piergiorgio Grossi)

On becoming "the boss"

18Apr07

One of the most difficult career improvement is when you move from being an individual contributor to a boss.

You were good in doing something by yourself and your company promoted you. So you change role trying to keep doing what you used to do for at least two very good reasons:

because it’s your job: you have always done it, you know how to do it
because you are VERY GOOD at doing it: in fact your company as promoted you!

Unfortunately, things start going not as good as you thought: you have MUCH less time than before. Too much time in explaining to you directs how to do stuff and so you fall into two classical errors:

you start doing yourself as much as you can (the ‘not invented here syndrome‘)
you start to micromanage (do this, do that, change this, change that)

So what you have to do to succeed?? A single DIFFICULT thing: you have to stop doing what you like more! This is the only way to start learning the new stuff you need to become a good boss.

What’s your idea about it?

PierG

Filed under: Management |

5 Responses to “On becoming "the boss"”

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1 Luca Minudel on April 18, 2007 said:

In an XP team the Coach usually help team members on applying team best practices, on making design and architectural decision, on making technology decision, on dalpoy on time and with customer sodisfaction.

The Coach do this by example, so sometime he still have to be “part-time” developer.

It still make sense from an XP point of view that to became an XP Coach you need to completely stop your fingers dancing on the keyboard in front of a source code editor?
2 PierG on April 18, 2007 said:

A coach isn’t necessarily a boss.

PierG
3 Mark Horstman on April 23, 2007 said:

My idea is that most managers who say they don’t have time to be managers because “I am a WORKING manager” don’t realize that they’re WRONG.

Yes, they are working managers…but this is not a new phenomenon. ALL managers have always been working managers. But today, particularly among IT, they think of themselves as WORKING managers, rather than working MANAGERS.

You’re right, PierG. Managers need to recognize that the work needn’t be done by the BEST person, but rather the one with the best VALUE PROPOSITION. That means delegating!

Mark
4 Anonymous on June 17, 2007 said:

May I suggest: The Leadership Pipeline
written by Charam