{"id":184,"date":"2019-10-11T02:12:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T02:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisharden.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2019-10-11T02:12:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T02:12:50","slug":"managerial-overlap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisharden.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/11\/managerial-overlap\/","title":{"rendered":"Managerial Overlap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWhen I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be\u2026\u201d \u2013 Paul McCartney<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Paul had been inspired by something I call Managerial Overlap, his song would have instead sang, \u201cWhen I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary, Jesus, God, and some of the Angels come to me, asking for my status, let me be\u2026\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after I joined an organization, I was having an introductory meeting to discuss cultural issues on the team. I mentioned my concerns around Managerial Debt<\/a> on the team, and that essentially there were not enough managers around to handle the number of people and needs in the organization. One of the people who left a month after I began gave a chuckled reply that surprised me just a bit. He said, \u201cActually I was thinking we had too many managers.\u201d And he wasn\u2019t being confrontational; he was a nice guy sharing some honest truth about his perception on the team\u2019s issues. But he did plant a seed with me. Why, when I could tell that there were so many things falling off the plate of the current management staff, was he under the impression that there were too many managers? We went on to discuss the purpose of the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months went by before I got the answer to my question. I did see inklings of the behavior occur from time to time, especially as we got closer to shipping our product. But one faithful day, I saw the activity that set the impression in stone for me. It also led me to understand why another individual, who was quite senior on the team, just had an open disgust for managers. This gentleman, with whom I am good friends and for whom I have a ton of respect, was burned out from years of his critical path role as a technical lead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As pressure increased, my friend became more and more openly vocal with his frustrations, and I could see why. One Saturday, we were doing overtime, trying to burn down the latest round of bugs from QA as we grinded towards a release. He was on my team, however under the pressure of the release, the standard management hierarchy of delegation and reporting had broken down. We needed to check status on a handful of critical bugs, a few of which he owned. In our cubical farm setup, I witnessed three managers ask him for status on a particular critical bug. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was first.  A short time later, I was preparing my status report to my manager, which would eventually go to my manager\u2019s manager. I heard my manager swing by his office and overheard the same question for status. As he was explaining his status, he mentioned that he had already spoken with my manager\u2019s manager about the issue a couple of hours before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How embarrassing. Three managers asked this same poor chap in the matter of a couple hours his status. This not only looks a bit \u201ckeystone cops\u201d from a communications standpoint, and makes 2 of the managers seem unnecessary, it also distracts this critical path technical lead for a wasted 20-30min of reporting time (assuming it took 10-15min each time).   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a diagram of the effects of Managerial Overlap:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, if my earlier teammate (the one who left) was experiencing anything like this during his tenure on the team, I certainly understand why he felt there were too many managers. The net effect is wasted time and frustrated employees. Is this a complex issue? Not really. But you know it is happening, if you feel management seems to be asking the same questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a manager, listen to your sense of the situation and discuss how to reduce the overlap with your colleagues. Identify who the management point of contact will be, agree on it, agree to support that moving forward, and communicate this to your teammate. Remind your colleagues, if they slip back into bad habits by breaking the delegation and reporting chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an individual on a team, if you are experiencing this, have a positive talk with your manager, provide the feedback, include how it is randomizing you, and ask for their help. Ask who your main point of contact should be, and then ask them to message to their colleagues your agreed upon approach moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might say this is obvious, and I would agree. But in times of high pressure, people forget best practices. All sorts of things that you wouldn\u2019t normally consider appropriate in leading a team can happen. Watch out for them, and reign them back in. Doing so can save you time (or money) and keep the team\u2019s respect for its leadership strong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be\u2026\u201d \u2013 Paul McCartney If Paul had been inspired by something I call Managerial Overlap, his song would have instead sang, \u201cWhen I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary, Jesus, God, and some of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discussion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t