Leadership | Management | Work

If You Want a Path in Management, You Need to Improve These

The six imperative skills.

To design a growing engineering organization, it is desirable to have educational content and guidelines defined according to engineers' layers and career paths. Although I am still a beginner as a manager, I wrote this article based on my experience and knowledge.

I will categorize and explain the following six topics. These are the basic abilities commonly required to perform various management tasks such as {product, project, and people} management.

It’s a decent volume, but I think it’s okay to start from a place that’s easy to get to. I am working on my daily work to improve each ability.

1. Improving information processing ability and information gathering ability

Information processing ability

As work responsibilities increase, the number of people and organizations you interact with will only increase. Naturally, the amount of information we handle continues to grow. It is always necessary to properly organize and prioritize this information. Daily capacity will also expand if the speed at which data is processed increases. Scheduling with appropriate priorities in mind is also essential for interruptions and troubles.

Information gathering ability

You need to collect a lot of information when managing something. Information on technology, external implementation and operation examples, internal organizational management information, etc. By gathering information both inside and outside the organization, you can prevent problems that may occur in the future and use it to confirm that you are heading in the right direction.

What you can do in your daily work

This is just what I know or can think of, but I hope it’s helpful.

1. Don’t leave unread messages on Teams, Slack, or emails. Not leaving unread messages on Teams, Slack, or emails is a methodology; the purpose is to understand and organize all the information around you. To practice efficiently, it is essential to classify and prioritize various types of information. In other words, if you can optimize classification and prioritization, you can easily organize information.
2. Use various calendars and to-do apps to manage your schedule and tasks thoroughly. If you cannot manage yourself, you cannot properly manage anything other than yourself. As a fundamental premise, you should manage the tasks you are in charge of or will be in charge of and your daily and weekly schedule without error. You can improve your productivity by simply checking the day’s calendar and to-do list at the beginning of the work day and checking the next day’s calendar and to-do list before the end.
3. Make time to gather information. I recommend gathering information regularly. If you are not used to it, it may be a good idea to incorporate it into your schedule and aim to make it a habit. It would also be better if you increased the collection routes.
4. Get into the habit of sharing necessary information within your organization. Information can generate new knowledge (such as transfer to another field or improved accuracy) by combining the knowledge of multiple people. It is possible to enhance the scope of sharing and the validity of shared content through daily work.

2. Expand your horizons/enhance your perspective

Field of view

It’s important to know what people are thinking and what kind of work they’re doing about members who are close to you regarding position and layer. Even within the same organization, it is likely that several tasks are running concurrently. Looking beyond your responsibilities will improve your ability to grasp the organization's condition.

Perspective

It is also important to change positions and layer heights and learn (infer) what the superiors, management team, and stakeholders think. If you are in charge of development work, you will have a deeper understanding of the background of “why” you are in charge. If you are in charge of management, this will help you deepen your knowledge of the expected results and outlook and also help you notice if there are any gaps with the development side.

What you can do in your daily work

1. The first step to broadening your horizons is to understand the work that people around you are in charge of, using daily scrums (morning meetings), regular progress meetings, and review meetings. Through various MTGs, let’s pay attention to the daily report contents, assigned tasks, and outputs such as codes and documents. (You should be able to check the output of other members if you have free time, even if you are not MTG)
2. Take advantage of 1on1 meetings with your superiors. It is essential to hear your superiors’ thoughts and viewpoints directly in order to improve your perspective. However, it may be not easy to understand people's thoughts with different layers at once. If you can speak with your superiors regularly, such as in 1-on-1 sessions, listen to them repeatedly to improve your understanding. The ideal situation is to be able to trace your thoughts.
3. Look through the company’s IR materials and press releases. You may have yet to have the opportunity to speak to someone in the first place, such as with management above your direct superior or someone from outside the company. In such cases, we recommend reading materials that contain management ideas, such as IR materials and press releases. Although it is less accurate than speaking directly, it is possible to get a sense of their thoughts and viewpoints to some extent.

3. Never stop updating your technological capabilities

As long as you manage an engineering organization, the technical elements and design philosophy handled by the organization will become a common language with the members. I don’t have to worry about it while I’m mainly in charge of development work. Still, when management becomes my primary responsibility, I find it harder to find time for development than I expected. With limited resources, you will need to update your technological capabilities.

What you can do in your daily work

1. Understand the background behind the technical elements and design philosophy adopted in the work you are responsible for. There must be a reason why a particular technical element or design philosophy is adopted. Those are foundational ideas. Knowing the foundation will make it easier to follow future technological updates.
2. If you are a reviewer who utilizes code reviews and DR, you can understand the background of the implementation and design while making points based on the review perspective. If you are a reviewer, you should be prepared to explain the implementation and design intent in writing or verbally.
3. 1on1s that utilize communication and information gathering with development members are effective with superiors and between members. It is possible to continue to catch up on technology through 1on1 and the information gathering described above.
4. As a manager, you may be assigned development work that is low volume or high priority. It depends on the situation of the organization. Still, if you are in a position where you can manage the tasks, you can adjust the allocation of your resources to development.

4. Deepen your knowledge of business (domain area)

Managers are required to play the role of linking the inside and outside of the organization. Furthermore, whether it is a project or a product if the direction in which the management target is not in line with the company’s business, achieving the expected results will not be possible.

What you can do in your daily work

1. Know what kind of business model the system or product you are developing is incorporated into. There are always costs involved in creating something. The first step is to know how costs related to development, operation, and maintenance are recovered. Contracted development can be a little complicated, but knowing how the development target will make a profit is good.
2. If you have users, know about them. Every system or product has a target user. You can deepen your understanding of the domain by learning what users expect, how they use it, and the environment and by knowing what kind of work has been done under what rules when a system or product does not exist.

5. Deepen your thinking and make decisions habitually

As work responsibilities increase, the weight of decision-making also increases. To make decisions, we need a basis for making decisions and a basis for thinking. By making small decisions daily, you can train yourself to prepare for big decisions later on.

If you can think deeply about a specific area or perspective, you will see things more three-dimensionally from the perspectives covered by your field of view and perspective.

What you can do in your daily work

1. In the case of development work, think about the specific basis for the design and implementation you did. If your thinking stops at “according to specifications” or “instructions from the leader,” you will not be able to reach concrete grounds. By thinking about and knowing the background and intentions, you can demonstrate concrete evidence to those around you.
2. Obtain feedback (FB) regularly. Results and evaluations of decisions often arrive after a delay. Obtaining feedback regularly (observing results and situations, hearing from people, etc.) improves the quality of decision-making.

6. Understanding and improving EQ and soft skills

Modern managers and leaders need to understand and control the various emotions of people involved in their work, including themselves. By understanding the existence of EQ and soft skills and putting them into practice, you can improve the quality of 1-on-1 interactions and enable smooth organizational management. This is not a story with an absolute answer, so some problematic aspects exist.

What you can do in your daily work

1. The goal is to control your emotions by stopping behaving based on your feelings and taking a breather in your actions, words, and deeds. It‘s a good idea to take a step back from subjectivity and think about whether the actions you’re about to take are right for your organization. If you can control your emotions well, it will improve your motivation.
2. Be considerate of the emotional needs of others. Although we cannot fully understand others, we can read the underlying emotions in their behavior. (Although the results may be off the mark) Especially when it comes to negative emotions, there are times when some request is hidden behind them. Knowing the requirements, you should take approaches to help others grow and increase their engagement.
3. The purpose is to improve writing skills by writing sentences, according to TPO. I don’t think many people compare Slack chat channels and GitHub development issues and write in the same tone. If you can widen the range of writing from hard to soft sentences, the range of communication will expand.
4. The purpose is to improve your proposal (presentation) skills by taking advantage of opportunities to explain and propose to others. Managers have every chance to present themselves to others, including accountability. Through daily reviews and reports, you should create explanations and materials that are easy to understand for others.
5. Increase your knowledge. The nature of business communication is different from the communication you have in your private life. There are plenty of explanations in books and articles, so you can improve your skills by increasing your knowledge.

In conclusion

To achieve our current mission and great results as an organization, both people and the organization need to continue growing. I hope this article contains the essence of what will become the foundation for growth.