Moving into management

I remember the event as if it was yesterday, but I cannot remember when it occurred; at least 12 years ago, though. But it was one of the defining moments in my career, and to this day I still look back on that day, and wonder....

I had spent many months pondering my career path. In terms of my grade, there was little left on the ladder I was on. I was a Senior Systems Analyst or some other meaningless title, and there was now little chance of promotion. In addition, there was little of any substance left to learn in the job I had been doing for a number of years.

I finally decided that a move into management was the answer.

So one day, during a relative lull in activity, I left my little cube and walked into my manager's office.

"Vijay, I have decided to go into management," I told him.

He smiled and looked across his desk, on which were strewn small piles of papers. Even as he spoke, his desktop printer spewed still more pages of colourful spreadsheets. "Why would you want to do that?" he asked.

I briefly explained my situation. Then he sat back and sighed.

"You think I am a manager?" he asked rhetorically. "I am nothing but an administrator, a bureaucrat, a paper-pusher. I am not really managing anything".

Vijay went on to explain that he was accountable for all the work that his team did, but felt that he had no control over it. He was constantly asked by his boss for reports about project progress, budgets, plans for the next year, appraisals... the list went on and on. None of it did he find enjoyable.

As he spoke, I grew more and more disheartened. Was this all there was left for me? Where could I go now? What would I do?

Any of you who are already managers will recognise that either Vijay's view of his job was blinkered, or he was doing the wrong things.

I decided to put my technical skills to use in the contract market. I spent some time in the USA, then Portugal, before settling here in the UK, where a dozen years after that conversation in my manager's office, I had a similar conversation that proceeded somewhat differently.

"Q, Steve is leaving us," said my boss, John.

Steve was a project manager, to whom John assigned larger projects that needed dedicated management. Most of the work we did involved small tasks that the team leaders like myself could run.

"I want you to take over his position."

I was shocked. Firstly, there were more senior people than me on the team, to whom he could have offered the post. Secondly, I was a contractor, and favouring contractors over permanent staff was just not done. But, it turned out, he had already offered the job to the only permanent person who he felt might want it, and she turned it down. I accepted on the spot.

And there began my management career. I will never forget John for that offer - he could just as easily have got someone else in to do the job. But he gave me the oppotunity I needed to get my foot on that first rung of the ladder.

Vijay, I realise now, was doing the wrong things. He failed to recognise what management was all about - and it's not paperwork and writing reports.

John recognised that it's about people. About making a diverse group of people into a team, even if it's a temporary one, in order to achieve something bigger than any one of them individually, perhaps greater than the sum of all of them.

Management, done properly (can one do management?), can bring enormous rewards. There are various styles of management, and you will naturally fall into one, but consider this: management is about achieving things through others. It's about people. Never forget that.