Welcome to the Driver’s Seat
Imagine this: You are sitting behind the wheel of a car in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing around but a maze of roads. You know there are hazards and treacherous terrains ahead, but you do not know where they are. There are no maps.
Fortunately, you are not alone. You have a few passengers with you, each with their own personality and tolerance level. Each person has a different view of the best road to take and feels very strongly about his or her opinion. There isn’t enough gas in the tank to take you the distance, but it is your duty to defy the odds.
Oh, and that car you’re in? It completely falls apart when it moves, unless everyone holds it together in perfect unison. If your group fails to reach safety by nightfall, the blame will be yours alone.
Sound familiar? This is what it’s like to be a manager, supervisor, or team leader. I honestly do not know why anyone would want to do this for a living. We must be a crazy bunch indeed.
Yes, I count myself as a battle-tested leader — and I have the scars to prove it. I’ve run projects of all sizes and complexities for internet startups, medium-sized companies, and one of the largest corporations in the world. Some involved only a handful of people and had a small impact in the scheme of things. Others affected tens of millions of customers and required close collaboration between geographically dispersed teams spanning multiple continents. I’ve had the plug pulled on a project or two after a long and tortuous road that took years off my life. There were times when I nearly suffocated under the weight of overbearing outside consultants and hands-on stakeholders.
I’ve also accomplished the seemingly impossible. I once turned around an entire department with many millions of dollars at stake. My reward? The privilege of managing more (and bigger) projects at once!
I think management is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. It’s no doubt one of the most gratifying, too. Companies everywhere owe a lot to their managers. Without managers, nothing substantial would ever get built. The world of business would come to a grinding halt. It’d be anarchy everywhere.
At least, that’s what I’ve often told myself at night so I could wake up the next day mentally prepared to face the certain chaos that awaited me at work.
I’ve taken the car many times to safety — mostly on time, but also a few metaphorical days later once in a while. I’ve also taken the wrong road more often than I care to remember. However, I’ve learned some very valuable lessons along the way. Not the kind you’ll find in a reference book, but those you can only learn through hard knocks. With each lesson, I’ve become a better manager. My title may have changed over the years, but one thing hasn’t: I still manage multiple projects at once, and I love every minute of it.
Do I still make mistakes? Absolutely! But the impacts of my mistakes are far less consequential than they used to be. I can also spot those mistakes more quickly than I used to. If I’m too late to prevent them from happening, I’m very efficient at fixing them. Realistically speaking, that’s the best a manager can hope for.
Many of my anecdotes and tips are straightforward no-brainers, but it’s surprising how many managers get caught in common pitfalls. Certain mistakes will doom your project from the start. Watch out for those! In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, costly errors can deal a severe blow to your reputation and career growth. I hope this Substack helps you avoid at least one of them.