Profession "Leader". Or "Leader"? Let's figure it out!

I do not like the format “Ntsat Reasons”, but posts about 13 reasons not to be a leader and about 5 reasons in favor of being a real motivator for this post. In it I will talk about what the profession of "leader" consists of, a little touch on management tools. Well, I’ll debunk a couple of myths, such as “only one who is very well versed in the subject area can manage”.

Management levels

To begin with, we will divide managers into levels according to what tasks they should solve.
management levels
Any organizational structure is quietly superimposed on these levels of management - I specifically showed the extreme organizational models for PMBook and the antithesis of "work for uncle." The leader of each level should have his own set of knowledge and skills.

The head is an administratively allocated position

The leader has formal authority. In any team there are “informal leaders” or “best among equals” - they are not leaders, despite the fact that they have a significant impact on the final result

Despite the difference in the goals of each level, the subject of control is a person

Even time management is not “time management”, but “management of the priorities of a particular person - including himself - to maximize the number of tasks performed in a given period of time." That’s why comparing a manager with a “car driver” is incorrect - replacing a person in a company is never equal to replacing a wheel (yes, yes, I know that, in theory, a clearly defined business process reduces risks when changing an employee and increases the speed of his entry into the active phase but life has not yet come close to ideal). The best analogy for the tasks of the leader are the tasks of parents who raise children. Notice, educate, not train.

If there is no leader, the result will still be obtained

The better the control system is built, the longer the "inertia movement" is maintained. Or vice versa - people organize themselves to achieve a specific goal without any formal management system. The top two management levels out of three are needed in order to ensure stability in the future (long and medium term), and the operational management level allows to reduce the cost and development risks. In order to do the same familiar work, a leader is not needed. Unfortunately, the lower the level of management, the more painful this fact is perceived by the leaders, up to complete nihilism. And then the pseudo-leader begins to close significant contacts, technologies, knowledge, so that he becomes irreplaceable. Otherwise, what else should he do?

The task of any leader is to create the conditions for the effective work of their own subordinates

In each case, a specific indicator should be selected for effectiveness: for one company at a given time it is important to keep a team, but not to be on time, and for another company at the same historical moment it is important to make a project on time and do not care what further. If the leader does the work for his subordinate, then this should be a force majeure situation that should not be repeated in the future. Even at the operational level of management, where most often the leaders are people who grow up “from below” (the head of the business analysis department must be a former business analyst who decides to change his profession), if the manager undertakes to solve “the most difficult tasks, because he knows everything best of all ”, then this is a one-way road. The most difficult tasks must be solved by the same informal leader,

Management tools should be chosen not only depending on the level, but also on the specific situation in the company

A serious misconception is the opinion that the toolkit of the leader does not become obsolete and is universal. This is about as “correct” as the statement that “in order to write most applications, you need to develop a data storage scheme (such as a database), write business rules and create a user interface”. It is difficult to find fault with the formal side, but in reality it is complete nonsense. So it is in the leadership profession. You cannot control a company of soldiers using agile techniques. You cannot master only one tool and then use it only (a classic example is a person who knows how to use only a hammer, sees nails in everything). For example, in the previous company it was necessary to unite good specialists into a team, to make you feel the significance of your own result. In this situation, the launch of a corporate newspaper, the publication of interviews with interesting specialists, the organization of the “analyst circle” and the “circle of architects” allowed us to achieve our goals. In the current company, on the contrary, there are a lot of leaders in the team and it is necessary to carefully divide the spheres of influence so that there is no rivalry and competition (we do not have a large number of specialists of the same type, so that internal competition can “carry” the best “up”).

Delegated, delegated, but not delegated

Delegation is the transfer of authority to accomplish a task with responsibility for the result immediately to those who delegated responsibility. In this definition, all the principles laid down in it are important:
  • Delegation is the transfer of responsibility precisely for the result, and not for the implementation of the “process of achieving the result" (responsibilities for performing certain processes are determined by the job description and cannot be changed by delegation)
  • Delegated authority must be at the level of the delegated task.
  • Responsibility for the implementation of the task is not removed from the person who delegated it - the situation is when Petya tells his boss: “I delegated this task to Vasya, but he didn’t complete it, so Vasya is to blame, not me” when delegating is impossible.

Shifting responsibility is not delegation. Return responsibility or require authority to implement it. To determine what authority I have, I use my own method called “But I will take it and do it!”. It is very simple: the real responsibility is determined by those actions that the employee can carry out without approval "from above". For example, in order to understand whether I manage the project budget, I ask the question: “Can I spend some amount of the project budget without coordination at my discretion: give out a bonus to an employee who, in my opinion, excelled, buy more convenient means of labor, to organize training for team interaction, if I think there are problems? ” If the answer is “no” to this question, then I am not responsible for the budget. And you can be debased.

“Let's talk with you, I'm sorry I don’t know what’s your name” (c)

If the main tool of the programmer is the keyboard, analytics are the pen and paper, then the main tool of the head is the negotiating table. We control people, remember? Moreover, the leader does not indicate what needs to be done by subordinates, but creates the conditions for them to say: “Oh, I know what needs to be done” and popped up from the table with burning eyes. The situation when the boss does not know the name of his own subordinate indicates that the optimal number of control points has been exceeded. The “management point” is not equal to the “number of people in submission. More than 7 people can be managed quite effectively if no more than 7 control points can be distinguished among them. Or centers of influence. For example, in a previous job, I had more than 20 people in my department — analysts, architects, programmers, and specialists of the 2nd support line. I knew everyone by name. But if I needed to hold a workshop, it was enough for me to call one or two analysts, one or two architects, one or two programmers, and I knew for sure that the decisions made through them would reach everyone else. As a result, I justified the need for my own deputy, not in order to share functional responsibilities, but in order to move to the tactical level of management, leaving the operational level on it.

One among strangers, one among strangers

Yes, alienation from subordinates is not just there, it must be. This does not mean that joint informal events are taboo. In no case! It is absolutely normal for a corporate party to drink with subordinates and discuss a new accountant, but the leader should be the first to leave the party, avoiding private dancing. It is quite natural to be interested in the health of the wife of a subordinate and make a small gift for the birth of his child, but it is hardly worth accepting an invitation to the bride. Smoking room with subordinates is not the place of a leader. His place is a smoking room with other leaders.

The leader is always wrong. If the manager is right - see point one

The only way for the leader to develop is to answer the question “What have I done wrong?” Based on the results of the postanalysis all the time. This analysis should take place both on a regular basis (once a period to see if the goals of this period have been achieved, if they have been achieved, then at what cost and set goals for the next period), and after some force majeure. This is a serious test for the psyche, self-motivation and the sense of self as leaders, not many people cope with it. Very often, pseudo-leaders try to justify themselves even to themselves, try to find one situation out of a dozen possible in which their actions would be correct, and try to assure everyone that "he is right, the actions are right, this situation is to blame for everything." But if you grit your teeth and search for the answer to this question, then practice shows that first the avalanche of “well, I'm a fool” turns into a stream, then into a trickle, and then just does not go beyond the limits of risk errors. This is called “government experience” - a leader knowing what his actions may lead to “intuitively” selects the necessary scenario for the development of events (remember that managers are needed precisely for stable development?).

Who am I? Who are these people? Where are they taking me?

Do you want to become a leader? There are two ways - above and below. You can rise from the performer through the operational level to the tactical one, you can go down from the strategic level to the tactical one. The path “from the bottom to the top” or “from the top to the bottom” is also possible, but this is more an exception than practice. Most of the problems for managers are related to the fact that they jump over levels (well, or they are “jumped” by negligent managers of a higher level). He was a good programmer guy, he built excellent architectural solutions, everyone followed him - you, my friend, department (this is a tactical level), come on, what a fellow you are! And the young man is in the midst of compiling reports, developing a system of performance indicators, and controlling attendance. Or the head of the department copes with the department perfectly - people are happy with him, projects are underway. C'mon, man! And after three years, it turns out that the company has no effective programmers left, and those that remain are programmed using outdated technologies.

Only someone who is very knowledgeable in the subject area can manage - until the dude works as a cleaner, janitor, accountant, lawyer, programmer, tester, project manager, he should not occupy the position of general director of the company!

Hopefully now I don’t need to specifically debunk this enduring myth? The higher the level of management, the more risks, not specific tasks, fall into the objects of management. The top manager is, in fact, the best risk manager in the company, as he is responsible not only for internal risks (they can be influenced), but also for external ones. Unlike the operating room, which must have knowledge in order to perform a specific task itself, if his subordinate is sick and there is no one else to replace.

I offer a competition

Write in the comments what control problems you have, and I will try to determine the cause of the symptoms and give recommendations for correcting the situation. Perhaps then the leadership profession will receive its share of respect, and the leaders will cease to be called managers?

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