Friday January 06, 2006

Manager Bloggers? I wonder how many managers are out there Blogging at Sun? Mmm, perhaps I can take a tally by getting comments on my blog? Who knows?

Either way, managing at Sun is a pretty dynamic experience, with the business changing so fast, really passionate people (most of the time), and challenges gallore there is virtually never a quiet day. Except today perhaps.

I just spent 8 weeks integrating two previously separate teams together and have been through the process of dividing up the work, creating leads, setting goals for the coming year (if they last that long:-), and was sitting back with an empty calendar ahead of me when I realised I had nothing to do. I was done for the year of FY04. My team was off busy delivering on their work, supporting our production team through end of quarter (especially interesting in Q4), and I went 'WOW'! My team rocks! I then wrote them all an email about how well they were doing, how hard they had worked to consolidate two factories into one, how proud of them I was about how they delivered on many major projects in simply record time and without barely a hitch. I have done my job, I've allowed them to do theirs. Management can be so rewarding! The sense of accomplishment when your team can go forth without hinderance and succeed is something else. I hope other managers feel the same way.

I see very little written about management outside of the world of formal journals? I've seen very little in blogs! I mean, OK, I'm a front line manager, so I'm not an exec with bigger business initiatives on my mind (although I do have those too, I'm just no influential enough yet). I'm here because the poeple who work for me ge the work done. They're the ones saving the company money at the end of the day, because without them what would I have to do?

I had an experience this year with an employee that convinced me I was doing something useful and profound for the company. This chap was bored, demotivated, not delivering and generally getting himself a bad rep! So i decided I needed him on my team, as I knew from the past that he was a very capable chap, having integrated E10K into our California factory several years before. Anyway, I got a lot of feedback that I shouldn't bother, that he was a pain etc - I heard it all. I decided they had to be wrong. Withing two weeks of being on my team I received email praising his work, his enthusiasm, his motivation, his go get it attitude, his everything. What a turn around. I simply took the hardest project I had going at the time, made him the lead and told him to get his teeth stuck into it and gave him a couple of other guys to help him out! He recently completed that project and moved to another team where after only a few weeks I received feedback from the manager asking why I had let him go! Well he had found his path and so I let him go take it.

Well there you have it, that's my story, and that's why I like management, and that's why good management can make a difference at Sun. (2006-01-06 15:45:03.0) Permalink