Time to Reflect

Over the last three years I have been pulled away from the line functions of my company to manage the cleanup of the impacts of the Dieselgate Scandal in the United States. That is a topic for another day, or decade...

That work afforded me the opportunity to share a conference room table with some amazing people on all sides of the settlement and to lead one of the most laser focused team missions that I've ever seen our company undertake. It was truly an amazing experience that, even considering the 90 hour weeks, answering emails during the delivery of my son during the launch of the buyback program (thanks to my wife for understanding!), and a myriad of other challenges that I never thought I'd have to tackle (https://jalopnik.com/this-vw-diesel-owner-is-about-to-turn-in-a-completely-s-1790289804), I would not trade the time for any other professional opportunity I have been afforded yet in my career.

Now that period is coming to a close as we have completed one of the two settlements, have a clear path towards the end of the second, and the buyback inventory is selling back into the market at a great rate. Not knowing where my next act will be, I have been taking some time to look at some of the operational and management problems that I faced when I took this assignment, and see what I can bring back to the my "normal" job, wherever it may be.

There are so many operational challenges that take up 50+ hours per week to just keep the lights on. Some of these are caused by inefficient systems, some by management challenges, and some just by externalities. Teams inherently want to bring something more than just implementing a plan, whether it's a good plan or a bad plan, but they also want to be parents to their children, spouses to their loved ones, coaches to their basketball teams, shortstop on their softball team, etc. etc. To allow for those personal activities, and facilitate finding time for everyone to contribute beyond operational challenges and more to the direction of the ship, I hope to bring some management lessons I've learned from the time "away".

1. Employees are valuable resources, don't waste their time. A manager should always strive to more clearly define an employee's goals so that the time spent by your team on deliverables is spent on the right deliverables.
2. Management is most effective as a dialogue, not a monologue. Start with something simple like a weekly team stand up where you go through the pressing topics affecting everyone, and create a space for your team to simply interact all together. No agenda, everyone shares something, just a quick pulse check and a time to make sure that they know what your priorities are.
3. Apply a razor to yours and your teams repetitive activities. Inertia is your enemy in business processes. Too many hours are spent generating reports that were relevant in a phase of your business that ended a year ago, and even further hours are spent addressing questions that those reports generate. Measuring and reporting for their own sake are not value adding activities, and the responsible manager supports and challenges the team and the teams internal customers to constantly shed their old skins and focus on new growth.
4. Encourage risk taking within your team by being there to support them, and giving them room to fail from time to time. Whatever role someone plays in the company, creativity and room to experiment is key to an engaged employee and while there are certain areas where creativity should be restrained (Accounting!) most other areas benefit from a looser rein. My business has little to do with Pixar's, but I found this quote from Creativity Inc (https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012) to be relevant still the same. "...mangers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work woth and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear."
5. Related to point four; admit to yourself and to your team members that you don't have all of the answers. The immediate corollary of this is that (presumably) one of your team members either junior or senior to your role at the time, may have the answer and that will encourage fresh thoughts and perspectives.
6. If you have the right team members around you, they naturally seek out projects that are rewarding to themselves and to the company if they have the mental space to do them. With the first four things going smoothly, you and your team should find yourselves with time to spare from time to time. I've always been intrigued by the concept at Google of the alleged 20% of your time that could be devoted on personal projects. I never stopped to think of what the number of hours that 20% was multiplied against was... but safe to say it was not 8 hours of a 40 hour week. Seeing my team find a topic of marginal interest (e.g. identifying the financially optimal routing of vehicles from storage yards to scrap yards to optimize for lease terminations and incremental storage and transport costs) and being given a general direction and room to work, only to find them build an extremely complex and efficient automation protocol within excel that saved 20 hours per week of manual work. perpetually This was done after hours because they found the topic of learning macros personally interesting! This isn't quite the same as developing the Gmail product, or AdSense, but it helped the team, and it helped the team member.

I've rarely taken the time to reflect on the "how" and "why" when things have gone well or poorly in my career, but this feels like a good time to be more introspective and to share any nuggets of wisdom that I've learned along the way to anyone that cares to hear. Personally, I've learned that Management cannot be taught. It can be observed and absorbed, but cannot be found in a book beyond theory. Everyone will see different management styles either above or around them, the best we can hope to do is to develop our own style, that takes the best habits from each, and leaves the bad tendencies behind.

What are some examples of learnings that you've found when you took the time to step back and take some space to consider?