I'm A New Supervisor

Off Topic
21

[quote]Kuz wrote:
hspder wrote:
hedo wrote:
Set clear objectives and goals for your folks and manage consistently towards them. Whether it is productivity or revenue objectives make sure you communicate those goals and manage towards them on a consistent basis.

This is good advice, but be VERY careful in certain areas (you haven’t mentioned what line of business you’re in).

I obviously have contact with managers that are mostly with high-tech companies (this is called the Silicon Valley for a reason…) and they quickly found out that measuring things like productivity and contribution to revenue is immensely difficult. In fact, my wife and I have worked on several projects that involved finding ways to measure these for high-tech employees and she had to work up some pretty sophisticated models to get something resembling useful measurements.

Two examples:

  1. Tech support workers were measured for many years based on the number of calls/incidents they close. Tech support managers quickly found out that is a HORRIBLE measurement, because workers started focusing on closing as many cases as possible, rather than focusing on helping customers through; so then came customer satisfaction surveys but that is not a good measure too because only about 10-15% of customers respond to those and most of the time the ones that do are the ones that were either royally pissed off or extremely happy – so instead of getting a Normal Distribution (as you should) you get a “valley” (peaks on the extremes of the spectrum).
    And if that wasn’t enough, e-mail made things worse because now since e-mails go to queues, techs could cherry-pick the cases that were easier and leave the harder ones for the poor bastards that came in on later shifts.

  2. Software Engineers were measured for many years (and still are) by # of lines of code produced. However, how any GOOD Software Engineer will tell you, good code is efficient and clean code, hence guys that produced small, efficient software by giving some thought to each line were in disadvantage to crappy programmers that just type away line after line and create bloated pieces of crap…

Basically, all of this to exemplify the old story of quality vs. quantity…

So, yes, goals and objectives are essential, but be VERY careful on what you measure and set… it’s much harder than what it seems.

It’s funny you mentioning the measurement examples since we have our own version of a quality system in place for the entire global company, so that part is pretty much taken care of (whether that is a good thing or not I leave up to debate). But we measure the ever living hell out of seemingly everything… and I truly wonder how much of it gets to quality vs. quantity or just doing things to satisfy a metric vs. creating an actual, long-lasting, meaningful improvement.[/quote]

Kuz and Hspder

I own a company that does marine services and contracting in NY and NJ and selected other cities. My wife owns a travel company.

Our measurments are fairly easy to set and manage towards. Productivity and production with regards to sales being the most important.

I’ll agree with hspder that the high tech side is harder to track and define. Perhaps that’s a good lesson for a new manager. Make sure your folks know how you are going to judge them. Additionally make sure you know what metrics your being evaluated on.

It’s a challenge but a lot of fun.

22

Oh and one last thing…

LEAD

show them where you want to go and help them get there. Even if that means you get out there and get greasy doing some of the work. Unless you have complete Ludites, it will go a long way.

Don’t pass the buck, if someone on your team screws up, take responsibility for it yourself. Later, privately, address the issue with the individual who jacked up. That person may not appreciate it, but others will and they are the ones that will help get others in line for/with you.

I supervise 53 people in corrections. One time, I had two staff confiscate some material from an inmate who filed a grievance against them. The heat started to come down from Admin about taking art work. I took responsibility for it (the confiscation) by saying I told the staff to do it. Wound up in a personnel hearing and pointed out that the material taken was on the list of material that sex offender’s were not to have, that the inmate was a sex offender, and regardless of the outcome of the hearing, I would do it again.
I gained the respect of my staff. They knew I would go to bat for them if they were right.
To me that is LEADERSHIP. People respond to that by being willing to go to hell with you if that is where you decide you need to go.

23

Well where do we start! I currently supervise 160 staff mostly women, Firstly let them know where they stand and draw a clear line in the sand.
Second always stand by your word and treat everybody the same.
Third don’t try and be everybodies friend…because at the end of the day they would drop you in the shit at the drop of a hat!
Strict but fair! thats the key.

24

Okay, some more serious thoughts…

I don’t know the nature of your company or the positions in it, but I’d suggest you “grow your people”.

The fastest way to success is (often) for you not to guard your position, but to make sure you cultivate excellent people who can replace you.

Now, I realize there are some crappy companies out there where this may not be true, but generally if you make a team of happy successful people with growing talents, then up you go.

Another thought, you have some additional authority, not much, but a little bit. If you can be seen to be using that to help your group get their jobs done, that will be appreciated.

This is related to the fact that your authority has been granted to you to help the company succeed, not to stroke your ego and give you command. You are the steward of that authority on behalf of those under you who don’t have it.

Use it, but don’t let your feet leave the ground just because most of the world will turn into “yes men” and “yes woman” whenever you speak.

25

< Come to my workplace
< Observe
< Do the exact opposite of what they do

< You’ll do just fine

|/ 3Toes

26

[quote]David Barr wrote:
Listen “Kuz”, if that IS your real name, no one wants to hear you bragging about your job.

Really, congratulations! You’re a not completely incompetent guy and may have actually deserved the success.

Can I be your assistant now?[/quote]

just because you worked for NASA does not make you qualified to be Kuz’s assistent, even though you can eat a dozen poptarts in 10 minutes.

respec

27

Work on making everyone who works under you sucessful. If they are a success, so will you…