12 Practical tips for the (promoted) manager

Recently, I had the opportunity to take part in a panel for newly promoted managers. The goal was to get them with a panel of senior managers from different levels so they can ask questions and get advice to better understand what is expected from them as well as what should they focus through their daily job.

I have to admit I was very excited (especially, as one of the managers which I have mentored for years has been promoted and was one of the audience) and when I was asked: how is it different now? and how do I manage to preserve the balance between “staying in the details” when needed and scaling up and delegating my direct's tasks…” I was a bit overwhelmed, I had so much to say, so much advice and so many concerns that I was afraid that the message was not fully transferred….

After that meeting I was thinking to myself and eventually came to the conclusion that a panel can be a good start but it wouldn’t be enough. So, I decided to write a set of practical tips and matching examples that I have learned during my professional career to help clear the doubt around what is expected from recently promoted managers.

Here is the mail I sent… I changed it a bit to be more general so it can benefit larger audience and can be a good refresher for all of us!

Enjoy!

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“Congratulations on your recent promotion! I wish you all the best in your role and career path! 

Since it's not trivial to explain the differences and expectations from you on your new level, I would like to take this opportunity to summarize some practical tips which I have “gathered” during my career and use on my daily work.

I believe that these guidelines and examples can lead you to a better understanding what is expected from you as well as give you focus where you need to invest your energy.

As you are all experienced, there is a good chance that you are already using some of these tips so feel free to skip to the next one:

1.      Role model – ALWAYS keep in mind that people (both inside and outside your organization) look at what you do and how you act ALL THE TIME (during meetings, company events and in the kitchen while you are drinking your morning coffee… ), so every interaction counts and impacts employees: Your actions and words you use, the emails you write and even your facial expressions during specific situations. That’s why you should always be conscious, and remember to role model the company values, consider aspects of I&D and work life balances, etc.

For example:

·        Be careful answering emails/slack out of working hours, as it might transmit the message that you expect employees to be always available.

·        Although people want to hear your voice (and don’t get me wrong: it needs to be heard), but you must make sure to avoid being too vocal and give opportunities for other employees (in a technical meeting for example) to present, ask questions and make decisions. Eventually this is the way for you to scale.

·        Don’t lose it when times are bad – although there is tremendous pressure on you during crises, you can be demanding but still self-control & transmit the message: “we will win. Everything is going to be fine” … consider that when you apply employees repeatedly to understand the progress it doesn’t necessarily do the job.

2.      Build the organization’s vision, strategy and tactics – it’s not an easy task (it’s a bit easier when it's dictated top down but this is not always the case) and you cannot delegate it to one of your staff members.

Building a vision, goals and strategy requires your deep product understanding and your area of expertise as well as zooming out from your day-2-day work and “thinking big”. Having a clear vision and goals will make sure that you and your organization are in sync with what you are doing every day (and why) as well as where you want to get in the future.

After you approve your strategy and high level goals with the relevant stake holders, you need to make sure to invest in communication, track the progress and tune as needed.

3.      Build a strong team – As your area of responsibility is growing … you might not be the most professional person in your team in all aspects: there might be (and hopefully will be…) areas that some of your staff members will be more skilled than you are. That is fine as long as you make sure you follow some ground rules:

a.      You should be professional enough to ask the right questions and make the right decisions when things are escalated to you.

b.      You trust each person in your staff and they are super professional in their area of responsibility as well as appreciated managers (keep in mind that there is no tolerance for “needs improvements” in your staff).

c.      Each staff member brings something different to the steam’s table. Remember, diversity of opinions is strength!

You, as the team's manager, should be able to orchestrate this, come with the right strategy and make the right decision when needed.

4.      “Always Hire” mode – use networking and keep your eyes open even if there are no open positions in your organization. The talent market is incredibly competitive, and waiting until you have a position open to recruit will be too late. Keep in mind that there are positions that you can create as part of the vision and strategy you build. In addition, you should keep raising the bar in your organization.

5.      Know the customers, know the competitors, know the market – it doesn’t matter which department you’re in… the more you are growing in your career and your area of responsibility is expanding… the more there is the need to understand the overall market of the product you are working on, the customers’ needs, what the competitors do, and (of course) how can we create a disruption and bypass them.

How can you do it?

Well… the answer is not always trivial.

In some roles the interaction with customers and market research are part of the daily job, but in most of the roles (for example: in the engineering department), you will need to be proactive. For example: join customer visits/calls with Systems Engineers – you can be the guiding authority to answer deep technical questions, and attend conferences (internal like sales kickoff as well as external conferences) to learn about the market/customers/competitors. Invest time to research the above and try to find creative ways for these important interactions.

Another example: There are Quality departments that initiate a VIP plan for customers in which customers would ask us to test special use cases they have or use data that fits their needs (testing with customers’ DBs). Quality owners would get the chance to interact with them, understand their needs and concerns with the product and also focus the quality tests with relevant use cases. 

6.      Think big… think organization… think company… – try to zoom out from your specific goals and areas of responsibility and understand how other groups/leaders in the company can benefit from it.

For example: if you are developing a new automation infra or adapting a new process (like working in Agile) try to see if there are other groups that already did it (and you can learn from them), want to do the same (and you can help them) or can cooperate with you to achieve a mutual goal.

This also leads me to the need of Networking – as a senior manager it is getting more important to understand what’s going on in other groups: make sure to interact with other relevant leads in the company, understand their organization’s goals and strategy, learn from them and adapt relevant aspects into your organization as well as collaborate with them if you have similar needs. 

7.      Delegation of authority – we have 2 hands, 2 legs and hopefully 1 brain??….this brings us to the obvious conclusion that a manager alone (especially in the higher levels) cannot perform all the tasks assigned to the group under their responsibility alone. In order to meet your targets, you have to delegate authority… there is no way to get away from it. In some parts of your job delegation is trivial and easy, but please keep in mind that as you are being promoted, there might be tasks that you did so far (which you LOVED and did perfectly) that you need to entrust someone else to do them in order to scale and meet your goals - and that isn't always easy.

8.    “No meetings” time – As a growing organization, with growing number of products and growing number of integrations - the number of meetings are growing as well…

If you feel that the number of meetings impacts employees and their productivity – try to set specific times when there are no meetings: for example, invite your group on Tuesdays to an 8 hours “no meeting time” meeting, in which the interactions are only informal and the time is allocated specifically to work.

For the meetings you do have, you need some ground rules: arrive on time, invite only the needed people, invites should include Agenda, and sending relevant preparation documents in advance.

9.  Quality time – although your directs’ number is limited and they give you most of the important updates /statuses /input /concerns etc, it is super important to get this input also from the rest of the people in your organization.

For example: There are managers who allocate 1 hour on a weekly basis in to have 1:1 session with one of the group’s employees. During the 1:1 session, the manger asks them about a project they working on/concerns/getting feedback/career aspirations etc. Employees appreciate and get excited during these meetings, so please keep in mind to send agenda in advance and make sure not to cancel/postpone them as much as possible.

Another example is "manage by walking": this refers to a style of management which involves managers wandering around on regular basis, to check with employees on the status of ongoing work. You could virtually, walk, too, for those organizations not all sitting in one place. Make sure you frequent virtual areas where your employees and organizations are present. 

10.      Management routines – It is important that you decide and follow management routines (group meetings, staff meetings, 1:1 with directs, quality time, etc). You should make sure that these routines don’t impact productivity and tune them according to your team’s need. Please make sure not to cancel/postpone them (especially not in the last minute) as it can lead to a bad perception of you as a manager and people can get disappointed. 

11.      Getting feedback – this is a super important tool to improve yourself as well as your organization. As a manager, it is important that you understand that the days of getting feedback only from your boss during performance reviews are over and you have to find creative ways to get it from other sources constantly. How? There are several ways:

a.      Ask for it! especially if you feel that there is an issue with someone you are responsible for. You can ask for it during 1:1s with your manager, peers & directs or any other stake holder.

This is also a great approach to build technical and managerial credibility with other teams and colleagues from the company. 

b.      Ask for 360 feedback (also known as multi-source feedback) – this is a process through which feedback from your subordinates, colleagues, and supervisor(s), as well as your self-evaluation is gathered. It is anonymous so you should assume that the feedback is candid. 

You will be amazed of the gaps that can be found with how you perceive yourself and what others think of you!

c.      Round table – these are informal meetings to brainstorm, get inputs and feedback for a specific subject.

For example: an organization that moved to Agile can have an “Agile round table” on a monthly basis to get feedback on that process.  

12.  Debrief – Always strive to improve and raise up the bar: doing mistakes is fine as long as you learn out of them. This should be a mantra which is well communicated and implemented in your organization and I believe it is good that it will be communicated and acted upon top down so people won’t be afraid to fail – they should understand that they can either win or learn!

For example: As part of working in Agile, each scrum team is having a debrief session after every sprint (every 2 weeks) to understand how they can improve for the next sprint and be faster/increase their velocity and commit to more content next time/deliver with higher quality etc .

It is a good idea to have a dedicated debrief session after crisis to understand what happened. Why? And how we can prevent it for next time (fix the issue? Better monitoring & alerting? change/improve a process etc).

Hope that this read was helpful for you! I am here for any questions. ??

Thanks, and good luck!

Cohavit”