Jim, a relatively new manager said, “I don’t have nearly enough time. I’m in meetings all the time. And I still need to do some of my previous technical work. I feel stretched from one end of the work day to the other.” We spoke for a few minutes. I asked him to eyeball the […]
If we want more ease and better results, we need to be able to change when the world changes. Yet, we don’t always notice these changes, so we don’t create options and experiment. Too often, we feel as if the world drags us down. We double-down on what we’ve been doing. Instead, we need to
I started this series by realizing managers have (too) many decisions to make. The longer it takes managers to make any single decision, the longer it might take to make all the decisions. That’s Little’s Law, applied to decisions. In Part 1, I recommended that managers start with their oldest possible decision and decide what
Many managers feel pressure to deliver finished work. They plan and replan—and ask the teams to plan and replan. They plan to be able to predict the future. But there are several problems with all this planning: These plans require prediction at all levels, from strategy to product to what the team delivers. That’s a
I don’t know of anyone who likes layoffs. However, they are one tool in your management toolbox. But so many layoffs don’t return the results the managers expect. Worse, the layoffs alienate the previous employees and the survivors. And the customers? If your customers can tell you laid people off, you won’t get the business
Any time we mess with people’s money, status, or ability to work, we create emotions—for ourselves and the other person. As managers, when we offer a job or a promotion, those emotions tend to be happy. But layoffs? Those emotions are rarely happy—for anyone. If we try to bury those feelings, we might appear as
Do you know what to say when it’s time to lay people off? The first time I had to lay someone off, I had no idea what to say. However, if you have a reasonable context, you (or HR and you) can create a script you can use to make a layoff a respectful and
Your company is planning a layoff, and you’re one of the managers who has to decide and deliver the bad news. What do you say? What do you do? Almost everyone I know who has to do the laying-off feels terrible about that. But you can create a congruent environment and make it possible for
Most managers I see feel a ton of pressure for delivery. The managers need to “deliver” more projects, products, and features. That pressure rolls down to the teams. Too often, the team hears, “Can you just do a little more?” That often leads to the so-called “quiet quitting” problem. The problem isn’t quiet quitting. The
The news is full of this idea of “quiet quitting.” That’s where people do just what the job requires and not more. Well, I have a contrarian view: Why do managers think it’s okay to ask people to do more? What is it about “more” that managers want? In Practical Ways to Lead and Serve