A new manager is sent to save a project which is showing red in all its SLAs and KPIs , team is all burnt up taking heat from Customer , client and top management , people are working overt time but something has gone out of hand , may be some wrong decisions , may be a heavy work inflow because of some upgrade / roll out which has lead to mounting backlog and a tired and
demoralised team . Management is keen on getting things back on track , they are looking for a super hero to save the project , they do a head hunting and bring a "Manager" who has proven his worth in the past ( well at least in his resume) , all eyes are set on him and he is feeling trapped under pressure cooker .
If I am that manager , what would I not do
1) Don't ask for too many new dash board / Reports : I may have a way in which I understand things , I may have learnt and built priorities in my previous projects to resolve such situations . So when I come to this land where existing reports , terms , KPIs are nothing but Greek and Latin to me . I may not understand the reports , I may not find the data which I am looking for and I immediate temptation is to walk in to the team leads , module leads and tell them to create some more dashboards , which I think is relevant and flash necessary information . Now imagine this is a team which is already slogging and I may have added to their frustration . More reports mean taking away a little more productive time from their schedule and filling little more dissatisfaction .
2) Don't jump into decision : Just after my arrival , I start making decisions , changing team structure , setting new target for people . Its not that I am doing it out of my random thought . I have good experience in such projects and some of these things have worked in past for me so I think it will work here too . A team hates manager who takes decision without getting
himself involved in the situation , all projects have different grounds and so different ground realities . My past experience can be perfectly the right thinkg to do but it will be much better to apply it after knowledge of environment and context , the biggest factor ignored most of the time is the ecosystem of team . I am desperate to get results but then it is not a war front .
3) Build consensus rather then imposing decisions : Before I enter into team , the team is already under leadership of some one else . Existing organizations may have ways to take decisions , it may be a good possibility that previous manager made decision on his own but if a new manager does it , that may slightly difficult for team . The best way is to have consensus driven decision making , If I have valuable inputs , I am sure team will understand provided I have supporting arguments to convince
