and willingness to investigate and just let things be has served me best lately. Before I officially became the “manager” I had grandiose ideas of what I’d accomplish “I’ll get everyone training, and special (fun) projects to work on and we’ll do brown-bag sessions with other teams to learn about application structure and and and….” It takes much longer than I realized to reach a team goal – and not everyone wants the same things. I’m also getting better at asking questions: what kind of DBA support do you need? What’s the nature of the problem you’re troubleshooting? Do you need a DBA to monitor this load test or can you call (or IM) someone when you need DBA input? Often asking just one question significantly changes the “ask” to the benefit of our team. 11 months ago
The first week I was officially manager (my new title is Technical Director, sounds pretty slick huh) I freaked out a little. It was a huge change to go from being busy all the time with analysis, troubleshooting, coding etc (all the technical stuff I did as a DBA) to attending meetings and (really the best use of my time) meeting with the team and finding out what they liked about their jobs, what they felt could be improved, what projects they were interested in taking on etc. The book “First 90 Days” had some great info, I also got some great guidance from several colleagues which also helped! Then the best thing of all happened: I went on vacation for a week. And of course everything went fine with me gone. I am in a better groove now. 12 months ago
A book recommended by a good friend who’s also an excellent life-coach! It should come today or tomorrow – can’t wait to get started reading it! 14 months ago
from my current manager. He’s reviewing the big projects with me a little at at time so I’m able to absorb without being overwhelmed. I’ve transferred my reminders (in both Outlook and on my Franklin) onto post-its and formed a “kanban”. Four columns so far: “placeholders” projects or tasks that need doing but that don’t have fleshed-out requirements yet, “to be done” projects/tasks with solid requirements that need to get worked, “in progress” projects/tasks currently being worked and “completed”. I want to further sub-divide the pending stuff so I am keeping track of timelines (projects/tasks with hard dependencies that have milestones to meet) and a way to identify which tasks/projects belong to the three major areas I want to focus on: sustainment (getting everything back into ship-shape), future technology and design/collaboration. 15 months ago
our group’s current manager is leaving at the end of March. I was approached to take over his position. After some serious thought and discussion with Paco, I accepted. The company I work for has a lot of online leadership courses I can take for free. I took a 2 hour web-seminar on the characteristics of being an extraordinary leader. I really liked the presentation and it’s given me some new things to think about, in addition to the nuts-and-bolts of what I need to do to keep the day-to-day things running. I’ve had two phenomenal managers in my life. What a huge difference it makes to work for someone inspiring! 16 months ago
