Courageous Management

Courage in office and management, wtf do I want?

I normally imagine courage as being a fighter who charges first in the battle ground. Courage is very important in general and in our day to day job as well. In reality the definition is basic, and it goes something like this (I'm making it up): the ability to overcome some natural instinct in one’s behavior.

It takes courage to say No or Yes to certain people in certain situations. It takes courage to go against the current, to go against everybody else when you know you're right (aka self-conviction), to ignore peer pressure, and most importantly to do the right thing despite of all the other reasons. Sadly, in many cultures courage is not appreciated enough, because others have their own agenda and they want you to play accordingly. It takes courage to tell your bosses they're wrong openly (by Israeli standards that's perfectly alright, in America, you're a dead walking man afterwards). I'm okay with what's good for the company eventually, as long as it's done in a convenient way (cultures clash).

It takes courage to accept criticism even though we know it's right, in spite of hurting our egos. Be it a code review or a decision we took about the product or whatever our board directors dictated.

It takes courage to call BS to certain known acclamation proverbs such as:

1. "There's no bad publicity" - whoever came up with this stuff is surely a genius, but this is a total crap. In reality brands get hurt and what not, the Corona beer brand stopped producing them now, who knows till when.
2. "Don't come to me with problems if you don't have solutions" - The military attitude of commanders, that I see in the industry as well. Like seriously? Managers forget that their place is to keep a big list of problems and pursue them (as well as many other things, but this one is a huge task overlooked often). I know so many that try to hide this list (or, honestly, even ignore its mere existence) as if it won't happen if they ignore it. Great. My job as an employee is to raise issues that I encounter, your job as a manager is to fix it, kthxbye.
3. "Just sign here please" - in organizations sometimes you're asked to sign some check-points of some managerial processes so your approval is documented (or it could be to approve a chunk of code of a new feature); and some people in the organization might pursue you to sign it contrary to your agreement. Once you're becoming a rubber stamp, there's no way back. And you lose your integrity as well. I'm okay with losing my job rather than losing my integrity, but I understand it's not the situation for everybody. Anyway, if you can't afford that, at least try to add documentation with the reasons of why you don't believe something is fully approved, and once the shit hits the fan, at least they won't be able to blame you (oh yeah, in certain orgs that make you sign something against your will, they will blame people, instead of taking responsibility).
4. "Responsibility must be taken" - well it's true in most times, but good managers should create an environment and confidence in their employees to help them take the responsibility over a matter. Easier said than done.
5. "Common sense is common", oh yeah?

As a manager, your job is to question things and take the right decision, and justify your decision openly (I know some managers that think if they do that, they're weak, on the contrary!). If you take decisions without giving a reasoning, you're forcing people to work without transparency and it damages the trust between you and your employees. Managers have to call the decisions, but the decisions don't have to be their own. How many times did we see managers that, normally have big ego too, don't listen to people and they have the need to come with their own ideas, and not the best one in the room? Good managers listen to everybody else first and then take the best decision.

Borders are important for all of us, junior employees, seniors and even CEOs. A manager must enforce the borders of their sub-ordinates without being afraid it will make them bad. Everything comes with balance, and this requires some people-skills. But if you let your employees do whatever they want, a good company/product surely won't be the outcome (careful not to kill creativity on the other hand). If you're in the long run for the company you work for, you should understand that it's in the benefit of the company eventually. You're asked to do what's good for the company, and not for you (reminds me my post on professionalism), if the company succeeds, you're successful as well.

Do you have the courage to call the hard decisions? To tell the hard truth to your employees? And did you ever lay off employees before? It's like the life before and after of doing it for the first time, because it is a big deal, and we're talking about people's jobs and their way of making a living, alright. But managers who are afraid of doing it, eventually damage their own image and the company's they work for. A popular example is that there's person in the team that is taking down everybody's productivity because they're seriously lagging behind and they're not up to the task, and the manager knows it, and the other employees know it even more, but the manager won't lay off that person. This says more about the manager than anything else, now there are two rotten people in the team, that professionally weak person and the manager. Oi. I know I was afraid to fire some misbehaving people in my first position as a manager.

Being a manager is hard, being a good manager is harder, but it's more fun.

Strength and honor :P