No time for meaningful work?
Once upon a time, in a tech org not far away, there was a leader…
A CEO and a CTO were discussing a potential leadership training with Petya and me. The CEO explained how the CTO is about to burn out if nothing changes.
For an hour, they were sharing their frustrations with the 9 team leaders in their company. They were annoyed that the leaders constantly ran to the CTO for operational stuff. For stuff they can handle on their own.
The CEO looked worried.
The CTO looked exhausted.
Hi 🙂 Hari here.
/* It’s 5:22 AM. It’s dark, but I know I can’t sleep more. I went to bed early and wasn’t able to finish an episode of Slow Horses. My 2 kids are sleeping. So is my partner… I hope Although the squeaky sound of the floor when I got up did not help. Oh, how I love changing the clock to winter time… */
Today’s tale focuses on how to manage too much transactional work and move to more meaningful work. This topic came from an ALTer after I asked you all what’s your biggest leadership issue.
The modern manager is exhausted
Today’s tale happened 7 years ago.
Things have become worse for managers since then.
When we do leadership training for managers or team coaching sessions with tech teams, I see the pattern.
Engineering managers who have back-to-back meetings with no break.
Engineering managers who skip lunches.
Engineering managers who gain excessive weight.
Engineering managers who miss events with their loved ones.
They know this.
And they hate this.
And I’ve seen too many managers burn out because of this.
Too many managers who worsen their health because of this.
Hell, I’ve been like that 10 years ago.
I remember reading the book The One Minute Manager where the manager had it all figured out and had time for everything… and I felt ashamed that I hadn’t found a solution for me.
Waiting for better days won’t work – here’s an alternative
Waiting for things to get better won’t work.
Personal time management will do the trick for prioritizing stuff.
But it won’t really remove the workload.
Delegating to people will ease the load.
But it’s usually a short-term solution.
/* If you need more on delegation – we chatted on the topic with Rado, the CEO of HackSoft, on this episode (Bulgarian audio) of our soft skills podcast for tech people */
Quitting will pause the issue for a while.
It works, but again temporarily.
There’s another option we’ve applied over and over again.
Building a strong team.
That’s what we did with the CTO:
1) we set clear expectations on the team’s goal
2) we removed any ambiguities between the leaders and the CTO
3) we gave more autonomy to the leaders (without the CTO intervening)
4) we transformed the team leaders from a group of people to a strong team
Your team is strong = you have more time
We did a total of 8 training sessions with the CTO and his leads.
A total of 24 hours training in 2 batches with 3 months break in the middle.
What I love about the process with this CTO and these leaders was the end result.
The leaders were happy. They had clear boundaries and knew where they have full autonomy.
And the CTO?
We chatted with him 1 month after the training.
He looked fresh.
“This is the first month in years that I can actually work on the things I want!” – he said with a big big smile.
2 tools we used to help the CTO
What we applied in this context was our team coaching approach.
It’s a unique combination of helping the team become stronger + the people on the team to improve their soft skills.
2 training sessions to lay the foundation and assess the team.
2 training sessions focused on improving the skills.
4 training sessions, a set of workshops, focused on resolving the issue of the CTO being a bottleneck.
The goal was to remove the CTO from the day-to-day activities that were not necessary.
One tool we used (and I often talk about) regarding setting clear expectations and boundaries is The Gray Area tool.
Another tool that we didn’t have back then, but I would use now, is the TReE Team Scan tool. It replicates core elements of our approach in the first 2 training sessions. It gives you an in-depth assessment of the team and it enables you to have an open conversation on the team issues.
How to move from transactional work
to meaningful work
(summary)
- Accept reality on the workload. Most modern engineering managers have too much work to do.
- Don’t ignore the issue. Otherwise, your health will suffer.
- Prioritize and delegate. Apply all the time management techniques you can think of to manage the current load. But keep in mind this is a temporary solution.
- Make your team strong. If you want repeated success on this issue, having a strong team will do the trick. It will leave you more time to do the meaningful work you’re missing.
… and the team lived happily ever after.
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