Let me preface this with a brief bit of history about myself: I’ve been dodging management roles for about five years. Starting back at my first tech support job, I have been offered roles as a team lead or supervisor on multiple occasions and always said no. It just didn’t appeal to me; I saw management as empty talkers and not doers. I wanted to think and to solve problems. So that’s what I stuck to through five years of technical support, provisioning, escalations, and general problem solving. And then I bumped into my old manager Ricky at my current job, and he told me that he’d get me to be a team lead this time. I didn’t think much of it, but as I worked in the new environment and saw the quality of the management team here, I decided to go for it.
So I’ve been in this management role for nearly a year now, and I’ve started to recognize pros and cons to the position that I’d never thought of or noticed before, largely thanks to the personal input and feedback from the management team in place above me. Having a management team that is this competent and also invested in their employees is incredibly rare and I consider myself blessed to be a part of the organization.
Now, as I stated above, I like problem solving. I see a problem, I fix it – or I try to figure out who can, and get them to do so. I value action and productivity – you may talk a good talk, but what have you actually done? Finding new, more efficient and effective ways to do things makes me feel like I have accomplished something. This is “tactical” thinking. It’s the process of executing the objectives set by the strategy.
Management, however, is not so much about tactical thinking. There is a large element of that, but what makes a good manager is the ability to work on a strategic level. Figuring out a problem exists, specifying a goal while not necessarily how to execute it, is the art of the manager. Trying to execute it on your own will be the quick undoing of you, and will as often as not result in the problem becoming worse, not fixed. This has been the single biggest change for me to adjust to.
Additionally, management problems are inherently people problems, rather than technical problems. With a router, you can reset it. With a computer, you can reboot it. With a person – well, you have to work with what you have. And you have to determine whether or not that person is capable of working within the role they’re assigned or if you have the wrong person for the task. Replacing a defective cable modem is one thing – replacing an incompetent worker is another. It’s a daunting thing having to tell someone they no longer have a job.
Do I like management? I think so, yeah. It’s quite a change of pace and it’s a constant challenge. It’s been a learning experience and a chance to grow. It’s certainly not been boring. And it’s not at all what I saw myself doing a few years ago.
Which, I think, is a good thing.