Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (Pragmatic Programmers)
Use this to start a discussion about how your group adds value in the organization and what they think the most important deliverables are. Make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the goal you are mutually accountable for. Clear a wall in a conference room, and using the list of work you created last week, block out the work, week by week.
Ask what skills they'd like to work on and whether they want to continue developing their skills in the same job. Be open to people who want to perform different work. Look for ways to support the shift within your group. If someone does want to transfer from your group, analyze the job so you can hire the appropriate replacement. Week 3 -Assess your group meetings.
Are your meetings providing a relevant exchange of information between all the participants? Do your meetings have action-oriented outcomes? Give feedback on something that's going well. If you see a problem, use the one-on-one to provide information on what needs to change. If so, what's preventing you from providing feedback? Week 4 -Look for opportunities in your one-on-ones to work with each person to improve their capabilities. Define career goals once a quarter or so; discuss progress toward career goals every week. Now make a separate list of the people on whom your success depends.
Wherever the list does not overlap is an opportunity to build a relationship, before you desperately need it. Are you using gestures or language that reduce your effectiveness? You may want to ask a trusted colleague for help. Eliminate any demeaning or degrading language. Try stating how you feel, rather than acting it out. Week 5 -Make a list of your group's problems. Identify any that can be solved within your group, and choose one of them as the topic for your next group meeting. The problems you can't solve alone are candidates to work on with your management peers.
An out-of-date project portfolio is a useless project portfolio. Week 6 -Pry your fingers loose from some task you know you need to give up - and delegate it. Find something to notice and appreciate about each person each week. Week 7 -Review the practices you've adopted. See whether you can detect any changes in your work and your group's work. Consider how these practices might change the work you and your group achieve.
What's preventing you from adopting these practices? Look for trends or evidence that you are accomplishing more of the important work and reducing the amount of effort expended on low-priority work in your group. Check to see whether you're surprised by work. If you're still surprised by work or still performing work that should be on your not-to-do list, influence your peers to arrive at common goals. What's different in each situation? Guidelines for Effective Coaching Unless you can answer "yes" to all these questions, refrain from inflicting help: People usually choose the best alternative they know - but may have a limited repertoire.
Coaching helps increase the range of effective options from which to choose. We have found questions like these help people generate options: Don't lead to a particular outcome; instead, encourage exploration of each option from the perspective of the person you are coaching. Share your perspective but allow the person you are coaching to select the option that best suits his or her needs. Analyze less successful attempts at trying new skills and behaviors.
Look for ways to refine and enhance what did work and correct what didn't. Setup for Successful Delegation -Choose your delegatee wisely. Select someone who wants to take on more responsibility and who has identified areas of career development where this work would fit. Don't select someone who is not interested in the work you want to delegate. If you've delegated a decision, recognize that a decision has at least two parts: Clarify which part s you are delegating, and be explicit if you really want a checkpoint between the two parts.
Questions to Ask Yourself -Is it a discrete chunk of work? Facilitation Essentials for Managers -Make sure the meeting has a goal. Ask for at least ten ideas. Have each pair identify their best ideas and transfer them to large index cards. Do the math so that you end up with about thirty-five ideas; e. There will be duplicates and that's okay. Continue asking the question and moving the cards until all the cards are in clusters. The names of the clusters represent the consensus of the group around a particular idea.
Can we concentrate on prioritizing the remaining items since we can probably only finish two? Do I have it about right? Do we need to reopen that, or can we move back to Topic Y? Telling a person "This report is exceptional" doesn't help the person understand what was exceptional.
Behind Closed Doors
Waiting until a year-end review is not helpful. Even waiting until a quarter-end is not helpful. So instead of saying "Your work is sloppy," say "I noticed the last set of release notes contained typing and spelling errors. Instead of "You never test your code," say "When you checked these last three changes in, you didn't test the changes. When the feedback recipient doesn't agree with your data, he or she will check out of the conversation and certainly won't change behavior.
Six-Step Process for Feedback 1 Check whether this is a necessary item for feedback: Does it affect the work? Does it affect working relationships? If not, don't bother with feedback. Gather specific examples of recent instances of the problem. Focus on behavior or results. Be ready to give corrective feedback or coaching. Deliver "normal" feedback appreciations, corrective or coaching feedback in one-on-ones. When someone is close to losing his or her job, call a separate meeting so the person understands the gravity of the situation.
If you're open to a range of possible solutions, engage in joint problem solving. Individual goals are complementary to the group goals and are tied to the group's mission.
In addition, individual goals address each person's specific issues and may include career development goals. Let them know that you'll be asking them questions. Aim for once or twice a week. Daily is great, but we've never met a manager who had the time every day to wander.
How long you spend mingling depends. Five minutes is probably not enough.
Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby
An hour is probably too much. This works for other people as well as for you. As you circulate, people will ask you questions. Record action items, and let people know when you'll have an update. Be careful about walking around silently taking notes. That looks like spying. Their questions are a clue about their concerns. It shows you areas where people don't know how to obtain information for themselves or where your communication may be weak. Run Effective Meetings Meetings create value when people do the following: Using a five-point scale, ask people to report how much value they received for the time they invested in the meeting.
Post the ratings on a flip chart, and poll the group. Create a histogram that shows the results. Then ask for information about what made the meeting worthwhile or not. Ask the people who rated the meeting a 2 or above what specifically they received for investing their time in the meeting.
Ask people who voted 1 or 0 what they wanted but didn't receive for their investment.
Account Options
Ask what to keep, what to drop, and what to add for the next similar meeting. Run Effective Team Meetings Template: Once you are aware of the rumors and gossip, you can fill in the blanks with real information. Individual status is for one-on-ones. Asking for individual status in a group meeting wastes everyone's time. This is different from asking about status on action items that affect the group.
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If you're not sure what your group problems are, you can do the following: This will help your team form a rhythm of working together. For an interdependent team, using a fifteen-minute daily standup meeting can be very effective. In a daily stand-up, each team member answers three questions: This may seem like small talk. It is, and it helps you built rapport. This is where you find out what people accomplished over the last week, what they didn't accomplish that they'd planned to , and what their plans are for the next week.
Looking at one week in isolation doesn't give you the information you need to know whether the person is getting work done or struggling. When you track status and progress for several weeks in one-on-ones, you can begin to see whether people are having trouble planning, estimating, or accomplishing work. We ask for obstacles in one-on-ones. We find that if we don't, people suck it up, assume they must soldier on alone, and don't tell us.
Removing obstacles is part of a manager's job. So you need to know what the obstacles are. Always make a conscious decision about helping. Inflicting help where it isn't needed feels like micromanagement to the victim. Start by asking whether the person needs help. Help can come in the form of solving problems jointly, generating options, talking through alternatives, pointing to specific information, or simply listening. Help directly when asked or when department deliverables and goals are in jeopardy. Paying attention to your team member's career is another way to build relationships and trust.
It shows you are not just there to wring as much work out of him or her as possible - you care about his or her career and interests too. Paying attention to career development will help you keep the best employees. Leave room for topics your team members want to address. Nov 16, Sergey Teplyakov rated it it was amazing Shelves: The idea is not new. Tom DeMarco in his remarkable "Deadline: A Novel about Project Management" already tried this idea: Unlike "Deadline", "Behind Closed Doors" is a mix of fictional stories with some explanations, "Try this" and "Check this" sections.
And unlike "Deadline" this book tries to cover even smaller st "Behind Closed Doors" is a relatively small set of essays about project manager Sam and his team. And unlike "Deadline" this book tries to cover even smaller st of management-related missing some important once like compensation, working environment, "zone" and many others. It doesn't cover everything, but what it covers it covers amazingly good. The main idea behind all the stories is how not to be a jerk. This book teaches how not to forget that the main goal for every manager is to facilitate other's work.
This book teaches respect. Book shows why it is important to find right task for the right people without assuming that "good engineer can do every task I want". Book shows why many engineers hate all meetings so much and teaches how to make them as productive as possible. This book shows the value of one-on-one, timely feedback and value of coaching. This is very short, but very interesting book with tons of insights on many topics. Aug 13, Doug rated it really liked it. Pretty darn good, considering the astronomical aspirations of the authors.
The format is wisely chosen, swinging back and forth between a fictional narrative of a middle-manager and topic-oriented discourses.
Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
The problem is that most managers don't start in the middle, and by the time they get there, they've honed their chops as a lower-level manager, managing contributors directly. Most of the people reading the book, I imagine, are like me new managers of direct contributors, and many of the te Pretty darn good, considering the astronomical aspirations of the authors.
Most of the people reading the book, I imagine, are like me new managers of direct contributors, and many of the techniques such as high-level portfolio planning are difficult to torture into applicability when you're only managing a tiny number of engineers. But all in all, a leap above most "management secrets" books. Jul 16, Bodo Tasche rated it it was amazing Shelves: I would have loved to read that book two years ago.
I could have prevented so many mistakes. Jun 15, Elmo Ensio rated it it was amazing. I am not sure how much I can start using in my everyday job immediately as I am not in the similar position as examples used but this surely was informative and easy to read book. Highly recommended for new managers and everyone interested in knowing how management should be done. Mar 26, Anton Antonov rated it it was amazing. Regarded by many as the best book about being an efficient manager and understanding your managers if you aren't one yourself.
Johanna follows the story of Sam Morgan who has just taken the new position of Director of Development in a high-tech organization. Sam is experienced and wants to help his new colleagues. During the course of 'Behind Closed Doors' there are many scenarios where Sam interacts with his department's managers - Ginger, Kevin, Jason and Patty.
Each of them have their pros and Regarded by many as the best book about being an efficient manager and understanding your managers if you aren't one yourself. Each of them have their pros and cons. Sam serves as the textbook example of a perfect manager and his interactions with the managers and how he handles different situations are teaching us the right manager behavior.
However Ginger, Kevin, Jason and Patty each have personalities everyone can relate to and understand their judgement. They aren't bad people. They have the potential for growth and Sam helps them.. The last chapter - 'Techniques for Practicing Great Management' is a summary of the techniques Sam used in his department. If you're limited in time, this is the chapter where you would learn the most. Still I suggest reading the whole book when you have time.
It's really easy to read by non-managers. Apr 27, Sebastian Gebski rated it really liked it. How is that even possible? Dec 06, Alexander rated it liked it.
One Reply to “Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management”
This is a pretty good book for a new manager note, that this definitely should not be the only one - it just doesn't cover enough. In that capacity and at that level, the book is great. The examples are fine at this level, but hopelessly simplistic if you try to get just a bit deeper. She writes regular columns for stickyminds. Skip to main content. By professional developers for professional developers.
Description Resources Extracts Author. This website uses cookies for account and order processing. By using this site you understand and agree to our use of cookies, our Terms Of Use , and Privacy Policy. All the great stuff is here… Easy to read and understand. About this Title Pages: Delegating effectively Using feedback and goal-setting Developing influence Handling one-on-one meetings Coaching and mentoring Deciding what work to do-and what not to do You Might Also Like.
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