Efficient Management

I want to talk about different management styles and work behavior in general. And before I do it, I will give as an example a fun story from the Russian internet:

My former director really annoyed me while he held that position. We worked like mules, there constantly were many problems to solve, but whenever you went to him, he was just lounging around relaxed. His workplace was always peaceful and quiet. He would sit there, doing nothing, openly watching a football (soccer) match. Seemed like completely useless to everyone. But the good thing was that he would sit still, available from one call to the next - always accessible, solving any issue within minutes.

I especially appreciated how easy it was to get approval for business trips. In another company, I had to gather 17(!) signatures and produce a stack of documents for that. Two weeks of hassle. But here it was like a fairy tale – a minute-long chat. I would explain my reasons, and he would fire back with two or three questions, precise as acupuncture. He was generally silent. He could have easily politely rejected the request after the conversation.

But when he would say "OK" and go back to watching the football match, the real magic would happen. I didn't need to submit a single piece of paper. Everything happened on its own. I would tell his secretary the day and time I needed to arrive and depart from a certain city, and from my words, out of nowhere, things would appear: a business trip order, an assignment, an application for an external service. Plane tickets were bought, a hotel was booked, transportation was arranged, conference fees were paid, visas and medical insurance – all of it without my involvement. They would ask me to choose from a couple of ready-made options and sign something.

This kind of service is currently only available in Russia for the presidents of major universities, at best. And I'm just a middle manager, essentially. Not a big shot. But people quickly get used to good things.

I realized who we lost with the departure of this manager who had a solid reputation for doing nothing, when he was removed and a new one was appointed. Young and enthusiastic. He dug into every detail, established exhaustive regulations. We spent three months writing them in an official directive, but nobody had the strength to read the output of the neighboring department.

Now he's history too – he was fired a long time ago, as well as the person who appointed him, and his boss, and his boss's boss. He's remembered for grinding his teeth and for me struggling to get into his office for urgent matters. There was always a queue of seven other department heads waiting there. I had to write the travel documentation myself and collect numerous visas. Oral debates on whether or not to go and why would stretch for an hour – it was clear he wasn't in the know and embraced it enthusiastically. Then the plastic cups in the cold and hot water dispenser ran out. Then the water itself. The color A3 printer cartridge went next. Soon, paper ran out, both regular and special. The network started to collapse. Half of the employees left. Five of them, the most attractive ones, went on maternity leave almost simultaneously. Two of them even gave birth on the same day. Throughout all these departures, the new boss seriously suspected a cunning conspiracy by the previous one.

You know, during my career experience I found that in many places people who make more noise are promoted and people who do the job quietly are forgotten. For example, I worked for a telecommunication company, and there was a one guy who was a bad developer. The only thing he developed and supported was a small service that called some company service and depending on the success of result moved a tiny piece of data from one table to another. That’s all. He did it for years: developed, fixed bugs again and again. We always heard that something was not working with the service. At the same time other developers created complicated important systems that worked properly without any problems and most people in the company were not even aware that these systems existed and how complicated they were. But management looked upon him as a valued technical expert.

I remember when after school I studied maintenance of technological equipment. Our teacher told us if a serviceman works hard and is always busy, he is a bad serviceman because it means that the technological equipment is not working. But when I came to the factory for practice, I found that servicemen there had a reputation for doing nothing.

Why am I giving all these examples? Because I want to talk about product management in modern circumstances. Nowadays the process of creating new products is different than it was a hundred or more years ago. Even organization of work on production lines of factories has changed. In the past different specialists like turners or millers worked on the same equipment for years without any change of equipment and with minimal maintenance time. Now we have CNC machines. In small factories maintenance and configuration time is much greater than production time.

This means that now you can’t measure effectiveness of a specialist just by monitoring effort and activity. The time he spent on work also is not a good measure of his work. Nowadays we should use other measurements to assess managers and organizations as a whole.

This changed environment requires new approaches to the process of product creation. As response to the situation agile methodologies of product development appeared.

I am going to discuss these new approaches in coming posts.