Where Do I Start?
Every leader has been through this. You have lots of experience and knowledge. But once you start a new role, so many things come at you at once. So many that you cannot see the forest for the trees.
As a new manager, you might focus on the wrong things. Or you might keep doing what made you good in your old job. But now you are responsible for the results of a whole team, not just yourself.
Even if you have been at it for a while, your strengths can work against you without you knowing. After a few months you feel like you are barely making progress, even though you give 100 percent or more.
A while back I had a series of talks with a brand-new manager. Let me walk you through a few steps and tools that can bring you clarity and calm. You will use your own strengths to create direction and focus for your team. I write in the "you" form so you can step into the story. Feel free to replace with "they" where it fits.
The Situation
After about ten years of experience inside the company, you took the chance1 to move into your first management role. You were hired to be the manager of a team of forty people, working across different buildings and shifts.
In the past, the team's tasks were mostly hands-on. Because the company grew fast, there was one fire after another. Even with a lean background, it was hard to know what to work on in the first weeks: steering committees, escalations, questions from the leadership team, other stakeholders who needed something, figuring out IT priorities.
Step 1: Listen
You jump into action and look for three types of people to talk to:
- A sounding board: to brain-storm about the process and make sure your next steps stay clear
- Leaders in the organisation: how would you handle this? What are the strategic priorities for you?
- Members of your team: what do you do every day, and why do you do it?
The first person (or people) can help you stay on course in the wild river that the other two groups can create. They make sure you touch on these questions.
Step 2: Customers and Value
• Who is my customer?
• What does my customer care about?
Like any business, every story and every journey starts with understanding the customer. In the end, your job, product, or service exists to help other people solve a problem.
In this case there turned out to be two customers: an internal and an external customer (in this case: a transport company).
For both types of customers, make sure those stakeholders are on the list of people you need to talk to.2 For each customer, try to understand what matters to them.
It does not need to be a fancy formula or a super-sexy sentence. When your customer counts on you to have trucks or containers ready at the gate on time, that is your starting point: "Are the trucks at the gate on time?"
Step 3: Measure
It is time to understand where you are and where you need to go. You do this with numbers and insights.
After the customer talks, ask for numbers that can easily show if your team is successful. In the case of having trucks ready at the gate on time, it is simple:
• How many trucks need to be at the gate each day?
• How many of those were on time?
If you have no measurement, your first job is to set one up.
If your results are good, you can look for ways to improve (for example, lowering costs) and work on continuous improvement.
Step 4: Lead
By now a few things have become clear from the talks:
- How well do your people understand what success looks like?
- Which direction does the organisation want your department to move?
Based on this, you make a simple plan:
• Where do we need to be in three months (the result)?
• How will we measure that in advance ("leading indicator")?
Tell your team and stakeholders clearly what your mission is (help the customer), where you are working towards, how you will measure it, and how they can help you get there.
Show these results and actions. Follow up every day and every week: did it land? Is the indicator moving in the right direction? Adjust where needed.
When new questions come your way, you can now make a clear choice: does this help my goal? If yes, do I need to do this now or can it wait? If it does not help, explain that it can wait.
You might be afraid that this will not meet the expectations of the organisation or your own manager. The trick is to be open and fast about it. If you can explain who your customers are, where your results need to get better, and that you have a plan you can track, you keep control of your own path.
Most managers will give you room to follow this path. They will probably even try to help you get results instead of telling you what to do.
Is That It?
Yes and no. This will get you very far: you give a top-down strategy, you keep the overview for yourself (block a moment every Monday or Friday to go through the results), and you have brought your team along.
Another time we will talk about operational excellence and developing your people. Both can be linked to these strategic goals. While you wait for a new blog post, I invite you to follow the steps above first. Then, in a Friday session, think about how you can help your people grow in line with your strategy.
My colleague did not stop there either. It was only a starting point.
Footnotes
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A chance for promotion — like all good things in life — you create yourself. You do not just get it. The active form of the verb is not only right in the text, but also for you. ↩
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For external customers, you might need to sharpen your skills first and ask for help from people with experience. That way you can have an open and respectful talk, within the current context. Even though that was not the case here, it would not be the first time the relationship with a third party is under pressure and you cannot just start talks that could change agreements. ↩