Setting The Scene As The New 'Novice' Manager

Not all technical people aspire for roles of increase responsibilities but for those who dare, this is for you.

If you are promoted from within, the transition is usually smoother as you would be already indoctrinated in the 'cultured' ways and the operational function of the department. But if you are recruited from a below-manager position into a new organisation as the manager and this is your first time ever with this positional authoritative manager title (and its responsibilities and powers), then this will be a completely new and overwhelming experience altogether.

How then do you go about 'setting the scene', as l like to term it, in your new organisation?

Below slide is what I learnt moving from Mining in a junior position into a first time ever manager role in the Oil & Gas Industry and having to improvise from my Business Improvement experience to set the scene for the newly established 'Asset Integrity Department' in the 'Oil Refinery' that I was then task to set up. When I return to the Mining Industry with some management experience now under my belt, I used the same approach. It has and continues to serve me well so I am now sharing it here (in the hope that this will accelerate the learnings of you, our new aspiring leaders, in this profession)!

Step 1: Identify who are your in-house customers and their requirements.

Step 2: Go sit down and have a one-to-one discussion with them. Listen well in those conversations and don't be afraid to ask about their expectations of the function that you are heading. A job description is only a guide and may not reveal the often 'hidden and unspoken expectations' of your in-house customers.

Step 3: Ask to take notes during those initial visits to your in-house customers. Later you will then have to class their expectations according to your function's deliverables.

Step 4: You may need to re-organise your functional areas of delivery to meet your customer's expectations (and the 'big picture' business strategic objectives which you don't expect should be changing too frequently).

Step 5: Brainstorm with the 'Supervisory Management/Leaders' in your team on how to go about delivering on your customers' expectations. Take them away from work site (book a resort/hotel for the weekend out) and have those pathfinding brainstorming sessions there.

Step 6: Put your plans and actions into a RACI matrix...and there you have it, a plan for the year (and a template to use) which you can fine tune as you go along.

Summary

So to the new novice manager, yes there is a method to this madness after all and this is given in ISO9001 Quality Management Systems!

Hope that this shared toolkit and hack will help you as well as those who held aspirations for moving into roles of increase responsibilities in your professional career and growth aspirations.