You’re respected by people inside and outside of your group. When there are hard problems to be resolved, you’re the person who makes things work on time and under budget. More than once, you’ve pulled a complete miracle out of your hat. And when the team needs a new manager or team lead, you’re the person at the top of the list.

Unfortunately, the skills that make a good technical staff member do not always translate well to management. How do you make the leap?

There are a lot of pitfalls for people making the leap from technician to manager or team lead. A typical scenario is the IT hero syndrome:

• You know that you can do things better, so you do them yourself.
• You get frustrated with your team members because they aren’t pulling their weight.
• The situation deteriorates as you assign yourself more and more of the difficult work.
• You spend so much time solving technical problems, you fail to provide leadership to your team.
• You make yourself the indispensable person—right up until the moment you burn out.

It is one of the ironies of life that just as you really get good at a job, you are promoted to a new level of responsibility requiring skills that you may or may not have developed. Most companies do not have a new manager training program to teach you how to step up to the next level, and experienced managers may not remember how difficult it is to make the transition.

In this book I will share some of the tips and skills that I have learned the hard way, by transitioning from a solid performer to a team manager. There are a lot of resources available to help you make the transition. Your entire world has changed. You are no longer judged by how elegantly you can resolve a technical puzzle. Now you are judged by how effectively your team can make the environment work to the benefit of the whole organization.

This book is all about proving that you are an exception to the Peter Principle.

Right from the Start

Today’s tech world is more fast-paced than at any other time in history. You should know; you have been part of what keeps that world humming. The rule of thumb is that you have 90 days to define how your term as a manager will evolve. During this time, you set a tone and communicate expectations to your team and to your superiors. You can fix mistakes later, but it is much harder, and there will be a tendency to backslide into the rut established in the first 90 days.

The first 90 days of your new job are a project. Approach this project with a plan. You don’t have a plan if you just have a vague idea of how you want things to be. You have a plan when you have written down specific goals and timelines. Then you make yourself accountable for carrying out your plan by presenting it to your manager.

This is scary stuff, especially for a new manager.

Every team and every situation is different, but they tend to fall into a few larger categories:

• Your team is a successful team with a history and established procedures. Your role is envisioned as continuing the successful policies of the past. Any stumble or bobble will be viewed as a sign of weakness in the new manager.
• Your team has had problems in the past. There may be interpersonal tensions, and you may be replacing someone who was fired. Maybe the team is doing something well, but it is not aligned with the rest of the organization. Your role is to turn the team around, and the clock is ticking.
• Your team is new, either in a new organization or filling a new role in an existing organization. Your role may not be entirely defined, and there may not be any procedures in place for even the simplest functions. You’ll have a brief honeymoon period, but then you will face divergent expectations by different stakeholders, who will want you to fix their most pressing problem. Now.

Teams all require similar things, but there is no way to put them all in place at the same time. You only have 24 hours in your day, and you should not use them all at work. You have to prioritize your goals. What does your team needs most?

Just to emphasize: you have to prioritize what your team needs. Not what you feel most comfortable with. Not your greatest technical strength. Not the most interesting technical project. What your team needs.

Characteristics of a Good Leader

There may be several of your team members who saw themselves in the team manager role. They may resent that you were given the job instead—regardless of whether you came from outside or were promoted from within.

The hard part is that you have to earn your team’s respect. What makes this even harder is that this type of interpersonal dynamic does not come naturally to many skilled technical people.

There is no easy way to get peoples’ respect. But there are some characteristics that go a long way toward earning it:

• Be fair-minded. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Try to understand how things look from the other side of the fence. You don’t have to give in to their demands, and you don’t have to adopt their world view, just understand and respect it. This applies to your subordinates, your management, and your customers.
• Be honest This includes telling people what you intend to do, setting reasonable expectations, and coming clean when you mess up or when you are not going to be able to deliver as promised.
• Be ethical There will be many opportunities to take advantage of your employer or your subordinates. Don’t. You have an internal compass; you know what is right and what is not. Do the right thing. Even if it makes people mad at you, they will respect you for sticking to your guns.
• Be approachable Your subordinates and customers are going to see problems before you do. How are you going to find out about these problems if you don’t make yourself available, physically and emotionally, for them to talk to you?
• Have clear expectations Your team is made of professionals who want to make things work the right way. The manager’s job is to provide a clear set of expectations that your technical staff can meet.
• Recognize achievement How will your team understand what you want, if you don’t point it out when they do it?
• Identify and resolve failures Problems don’t just disappear; they fester. Take them on, find a resolution, and fix them.

Being the boss is different from being a good team member. You are not just another teammate any more. It is your job to set the direction, strategy, and tone for the team. If you aren’t willing to make the tough decisions, they aren’t going to be made. If you don’t keep your team’s respect, they will fight against the decisions you have to make. But if you don’t trust your team members, you will not inspire them to reach their potential.

Analysis Paralysis

Many decisions that you will face as a manager have to be made quickly, in the heat of the moment. You may not have all the information you want before you have to make a decision.

Weak leaders wait until they have every last bit of information before proceeding on anything. Unfortunately, by the time they have the information they need, the opportunity has passed by.

There will be times when you have to make a decision without having enough information. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to focus your thinking before making a decision.

Is there more relevant information that can be obtained quickly? You will never have all the information, and you will only rarely have the optimal amount of information to make the best possible decision.

What are the downside risks of the different options? If the risks are too great, you may need to decide to delay your final decision. ( Just remember that deciding to delay is itself a decision that has its own set of downside risks.)

What is driving a quicker decision? Are there real priorities being expressed or just a preference for action?

When you do make a decision, own it. Part of being a leader is accepting the consequences of your decisions.

After the decision is made and the impact of your decision is known, circle back to look at the decision itself and the process used to make it. Were there better options? What additional information would you have needed to choose the other option? Are there ways to make adjustments to improve the situation? Are there ways that you can start gathering information now to make other, similar decisions better in the future?

Modeling Behavior

Good leaders model the behavior they request from their team members. For example, if you ask for punctuality, be punctual. If you ask team members to deliver their commitments on time, deliver your commitments to them on time. If you ask for responsiveness, be responsive.

One of the quickest ways to lose your team’s respect is to be seen as a hypocrite. You are asking your team to work hard; work at least as hard. You are asking them to think outside the box; be innovative in helping your team accomplish its tasks.

You are a member of your team. Granted, you have a unique role within the team. But your team members will expect you to live up to the expectations that you set for other team members.

Enabling Your Team Members

One of the most useful things you can do as a manager is to clear roadblocks out of your team’s way. Find out what is keeping your team members from doing a better job, and help them fix it.

Help team members communicate tricks and tips among themselves. Recognize team members who enable their teammates to do a better job. Ask your team members to provide their best work, and recognize them when they do.

Problems Caused by Poor Leadership

A team is more than a group of talented people. A team is formed to work together to accomplish a goal. If the talented individuals do not have clear direction, each will make decisions based on what that particular person knows.

When a team has a weak leader, everyone only understands a small piece of the overall project or environment.

Here are some common reactions to weak leadership:

• Inaction. Someone may be afraid of doing the wrong thing, and do nothing at all while waiting for instructions. Progress grinds to a halt.
• Individual judgment. Someone may proceed based on an understanding of a small piece of the puzzle and cause problems elsewhere in the project.
• Conflicting priorities. Team members may work on tasks in an order that does not match the organization’s needs; this results in project delays or an unstable environment.

The leader’s responsibility is to help the team members to see how their particular part fits into the overall whole. A good leader helps his team understand the end goal, how every contribution is important to achieving the goal, and why the goal is important.

In short, a good leader inspires and organizes the team to work together to help the organization meet its overall goals.

The Core Challenges

You don’t have a lot of time to make the necessary changes. In most environments, you may have 90 days to get your team working toward a common plan and achieving real results. If you haven’t made measurable progress toward your end goals by then, you are in trouble.

Management guru Michael Watkins categorizes the key challenges facing a new manager as being the following.¹

• Promote yourself Your company has promoted you. Now you need to promote yourself. Break away from your old thought patterns. Make the transition to thinking like a manager. If you don’t do this in the beginning of your tenure, it will be increasingly difficult to do it later on.
• Learn fast and well Learn as much as possible about the organization as quickly as possible. This includes information about what the company does, and how the company does it. It also includes information about the company culture, and how it affects the overall company mission.
• Identify the right strategy Every job is different. Don’t stick slavishly to a plan, even one that worked somewhere else. Come up with a plan that will work here and now. If your initial plan is not going to work, change it so that the new plan has a ghost of a chance of working.
• Achieve early wins. Early wins build team momentum and credibility. You will need both to tackle your team’s challenges going forward.
• Negotiate success Manage your boss’s expectations. Present a 90-day plan to your boss, identify the early wins you expect to accomplish, and negotiate what success will mean for those early wins.
• Align Work with your boss, your peers, and your partners to make sure that your team is pulling in a direction that helps the overall company mission.
• Build your team Evaluate your team’s members. You have to pick the right structure for your team. And you have to select the right people for the right slots.
• Create coalitions Just as your team needs to work together to really get things done, your team needs to fit into the larger landscape for the company to move forward. Identify people whose support you need, and figure out how to work together with them.
• Keep your balance There is a lot to do, more than you actually can do. Prioritize. Keep your sense of perspective. And remember what your overall goals are.
• Transition others. The faster you can get your direct reports, your bosses, and your partners used to how things work now, the faster you can start to achieve the results you were hired to achieve.

We discussed the challenge of promoting yourself in the previous section. Keep the other challenges in mind while reading the rest of the book, especially when working on your 90-day plan.

Avoid mistakes by engaging your team and listening to them. Instill a sense of discipline about verifying and validating. Have the right information before you make a decision.

Summary

Technical managers seem to have a harder time transitioning to leadership than most other people. Part of this is that technical excellence comes from intense study, frequently alone. Part is that technical managers are frequently selected for their technical skills, not their leadership experience. But technical people are smart and motivated. With help and guidance, technical people can become some of your strongest leaders.

Discussion Questions

1. Who was a manager that you particularly admired? What did that manager do to earn your respect?
2. Put yourself in your new manager’s shoes. What are the biggest challenges on your manager’s plate?
3. What opportunities do you see for improvement in your environment? Which of them can your team achieve in 30 days?
4. What are the biggest challenges your subordinates face? How can you help them succeed?

Further Reading

Berkun, Scott. Making Things Happen. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2008.

Brill, Kenneth G. “It’s Management’s Fault,” Forbes, July 1, 2009. Available at: www.forbes.com/2009/07/01/management-catastrophic-failure-technology-cio-network-management.html.

Harvard Business Essentials. Manager’s Toolkit. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

Watkins, Michael. The First 90 Days. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003.

¹Michael Watkins, The First 90 Days (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

²Kenneth G. Brill, “It’s Management’s Fault,” Forbes, July 1, 2009.