Surprise One: You Can't Run Everything, in Detail
As a new manager, you first need to realize that you can't be directly involved in every detail of every project that your team is working on. Otherwise, work will bottleneck around you, you'll become exceptionally stressed, and your team's effectiveness will plummet.
So your perspective has to shift from getting things done yourself to getting things done through other people. (This sounds obvious - but many new managers struggle with this!)
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
- Learn how to delegate effectively.
- Only attend meetings that you really need to attend.
- Question whether you need to participate in tasks, or simply be informed of their outcomes.
- Be careful not to make too many decisions for people; when people come to you with a question, ask them what they recommend.
- Give people the guidance and resources that they need to do their jobs themselves. This frees you to do the job of managing and leading your team.
Surprise Two: Giving Orders is Costly
As a manager, you need to work towards a situation where you don't need to tell people what to do, and can, instead, trust them to make the right decisions.
Some people may doubt their ability to make decisions. When this happens, they're likely to come to you for approval of everything. This creates "manager dependency," and can make you a decision-making bottleneck, potentially stalling your team's progress.
In a similar way, overruling decisions or making last minute changes can waste a great deal of time and resource; and it can also undermine your people's confidence.
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
- Communicate your organization's vision and values, keep people informed, and train them so that they have the confidence to make decisions, based on what's best for the organization.
- Create systems and structures so that your people understand what needs to be done.
- Endorse robust decision making tools, and teach people how to use them.
- Let people know that mistakes are part of the development process, and that you'd rather they take some risks than be indecisive. (Clearly, this may not be suitable in all types of work, so use your best judgment.)
- Recognize how placing trust in people can improve your team's performance.
Surprise Three: It's Hard to Know What's Really Going On
No one wants to give his or her boss bad news. So, the reality is that by the time you get information, it won't necessarily be reliable.
However, you need accurate information to manage effectively, so you'll have to gather information from as many sources as possible.
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
- Use Management By Wandering Around. This keeps you in contact with your people, and allows you to see and hear what's going on first-hand.
- Talk to customers and suppliers on a regular basis, and build strong relationships with these people.
- Analyze all of your stakeholders, and communicate with them often to ensure that you know what they're thinking.
Surprise Four: You're Always Sending a Message
As a manager, your words and your actions hold a lot of weight. People may speculate about why you said or did something; and they'll try to interpret whether your words or actions contained any hidden messages. Your mood will also affect your team, and everything that you say will be analyzed.
Managers lead by example, whether they want to or not. You need to be careful about the example that you're setting, and be fully aware of the messages you're sending - deliberate or not.
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
- Use simple, clear language when you communicate with people.
- Double check that people understand your message, and don't assume that people have grasped the real meaning of what you're communicating.
- Think about your body language, and learn how to use it to convey the right message.
- Use storytelling to communicate the messages that you want people to hear.
- Be a good role model for your people, and lead by example.
Surprise Five: You Aren't Always the Boss
While you might be the boss of your team, you aren't the ultimate boss. (Even a business owner is accountable to his or her customers.) There will always be someone that you need to report to, so you can't allow yourself to get caught up in your own importance.
As a manager, you should know who you need to keep informed, and you should work hard to gain the support of people around you. You will also need to manage upward, and be aware of how you stand with the people you report to.
You also can't let the flow of information stop with you, just because you're the manager.
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
- Learn how to develop effective relationships with powerful people in your organization.
- Find ways to collaborate with people that you report to, and to gain their trust.
- Remember to share information and resources on a regular basis - both with your team, and with others.
Surprise Six: Pleasing Shareholders is not Always the Goal
Shareholders typically have a short-term perspective, and may be profit or performance oriented.
However, there are other longer-term considerations that can be more important than the goals of shareholders, and you need to be aware of these.
For instance, should company profits outweigh safety concerns? Should you push your team to finish a project unfeasibly early, because your boss is putting pressure on you? If an executive is behaving inappropriately with one of your people, when should you decide that enough is enough?
Making this type of decision requires knowing who you are ultimately accountable to.
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
- Take some time to understand your personal values, and how they fit with company values.
- Understand the vision of the company and what it stands for. Make decisions based on that vision and those values. Reward team behavior that promotes these values.
- Develop a clear strategy for your team, and ensure that it's aligned with corporate strategy.
- Attract and recruit people in your team who fit the vision and values of your organization.
- Understand Value-Based Management - the idea that you should be chasing the best long-term value of your business, not sacrificing the future just to boost this quarter's earnings.
Surprise Seven: You're Still Only Human
As a manager you must remember that your position doesn't make you better or more capable than anyone else. You'll continue to make mistakes, and people around you will still have opinions that are different from yours.
However, being a manager does make you more responsible, and you need to demonstrate this responsibility.
To avoid the problems associated with this surprise:
Key Points
The seven surprises for new CEOs were first identified by Michael Porter, Jay Lorsch, and Nitin Nohria. This article looks at how these apply to managers more generally, highlighting seven misconceptions that people have when they start out in a management or leadership role.
The seven surprises are:
- You can't run everything, in detail.
- Giving orders is costly.
- It's hard to know what's really going on.
- You're always sending a message.
- You aren't the boss.
- Pleasing shareholders is not always the goal.
- You're still only human.
The transition to manager can be a challenge. But by being aware of these common misconceptions and the issues associated with them, you'll increase your chances of being successful.
