The Manager - Edition 34 - Build the team you'd like work in - Rob Lambert

Cultivated Management Newsletter

Hi,

Hope you've had a great weekend and are looking forward to the week ahead.

Two weeks ago I was in Poland for the Quality Excites event - very good. Supremely well organised, lots of interesting people and very positive feedback about my new talk - Thriving in your career. Lots of stuff to tweak in the talk and I need to add more actionable stuff to it. I'll be delivering a variant of it at Hustef later this year.

At Quality Excites a Development Manager asked me how I knew I'd built a great Development team. There are lots of variants to take in to account. Of course, delivering on business results is a good measure and one that most managers miss. People not leaving is also a good proxy, but not complete. You might actually want some people to leave!

But the one thing I come back to again, and one element that ensure it drives my behaviours in the right way, is to ask myself "Would this be the kind of team I'd like to work in?".

And the answer should be yes.

Would I enjoy working in this team, with these people, on this work, with this level of responsibility, with this pressure, with this product, with these tools, with these other departments, with work flowing in this way? Would I enjoy it? Would I like to be managed by me? Would I feel valued? Would I feel respected?

And if the answer is yes, I'm doing ok.

If the answer is no to any of these questions, what needs to change?

The measure of success for a manager, is to be the kind of manager you would wish to have.

Until next time.
Rob..

 

Stuff To Click On :

1 - Why privacy matters even if you have nothing to hide.

2 - Love this. If you're designing systems then these 15 principles of Service Design are useful.

3 - Your employees are looking for other jobs. Apparently.

4 - Work smarter, not harder. How to get ahead at work. Useful.

5 - 2 traits of the best problem solving teams.

6 - No need to be a jerk. It's entirely possible to be successful without being one.

7 - The power of a decision making journal.

8 - 12 signs you're dating a UX designer. Funny.

9 - Your company culture is who gets hired, fired and promoted. Not entirely true, it's the behaviours that these people exhibit that is your culture, but close. :)

10 - How to get your boss to listen to you.

11 - Healthy competition might not be so healthy.

12 - Why we ban cell phones from class - and the reason I ban them from meetings too.

Thanks for reading this week's edition of The Manager. 

Thanks
Rob..