Air Traffic Control
I’m really lucky to have some really great and smart people around me all the time. I have been since I got into the work force.
One lesson I learned this week? Effective management is about air traffic control.
Getting information in, devising what needs to be done, delegating, and then following-up. I’m not starting to realize this what all those books mean that effective managing is all about delegating. I just never thought about it this way.
This kinda ties back to my post a long while back about status reports & checking in using milestones as a gauge. Once some of the folks on my team are comfortable with the direction we are headed in, I want them to be able to set their own goals within the vision of what we’re doing.
Then, any inbound requests to me related to what’s going on are simply routed their way to be handled properly, and I can then provide any necessary communication or guidance on how it can be handled (if necessary or requested). I’d hate to turn into someone that was always saying, “this needs to be done, so go through steps 1, 2, 3″. I just want to say, “this needs to be done. I don’t care how you do it, I just care it gets completed and at a high quality. Ask me for help, and I’ll check in with you for a status at point X”.
It’s all very interesting. I love learning this stuff and then incorporating it into my behavior and how I work. It’s all a learning experience, and a damn good one.
