To accept the work.
Truth is as hard as useful

Dear Managers!

I’ve been in team-leader position (manager, CEO)  for already 14 years. All that time I had a lot of things to do and to learn as a manager. Which of them seems the hardest today? Which one?

Creating a vision and making fantasies of future (business planning ) is very attractive. Wow – here we create the future! Regular uncertainties of business life come and go.  They are not permanent. Long hours – I forget about them because I love my job.   So which one is so unpleasant?

To accept the work of team.

Actually many years I used to avoid this part of my job, just asking to do, delegating and not accepting. Then in general getting angry for things not done. It was so natural – I expected and person did not deliver that!

Also those years I could accept only huge works – kind of projects, which never were specified what exactly should be done. We had only rough view in excel technology for project and task management .

So my and my team expectations always differed with effect of bad feeling for both.

Since 2008 companies I worked in (and keep working) started to use project, task and time management system. All work became measurable. All projects became more or less clearly described using tasks.

It was clearer what to accept, but also more things to accept. So task management created huge work of reviewing and did not put any motivation to do that.  Except the feeling that something is still wrong!

We didn’t stop. We developed special module “Goals” where manager can freeze plan that was agreed with employee and see what was planned and what was actually done.  How long it took, was it over budgeted. He can see even how many returns (things done incorrectly) are done by somebody.

Since then I do not have to remember promises nor mine, neither my team. My head is free for 1 thing I do now. I see all: over-budget, savings, returns, I can accept work using 1 click, but…

Today I have 3 tasks to accept work of my team of previous, before previous and before before previous weeks in my plan.

It it’s still so hard.  Not technically – but mentally.

Why is it so?

Is it because accepting the work is the moment of facing the truth of result achieved: my ability to delegate, my team ability to deliver and my ability to understand and accept?

Probably Yes.  Acceptance requires a lot of mental things to do:

• accept that some delegation was not right and correct.

• accept that people are different and always growing – but not the perfect. They did something and did not also for some reason.

• accept that I know many things, but still there are things I do not understand in business.  I literally face them today!

However it is not the end. Positive side is  more important!

Biggest discoveries I’ve ever made – I made through acceptance of work process. There I find:

• a reality of my experience and understanding of size of tasks and projects when forecasting future and ordering projects and works
• my ability to delegate in understood manner
• ACTUAL skills of my team even in task specific detail (which would never disclose any assessment technology)
• gaps of communication in processes between team members
• generosity and goodness of myself to understand personal mater of each team member
• skills I have to learn in business
• that company skills are growing only when I am accepting the work and results of their teams.
• all these findings are related not to general practices of the world but concretely to companies I manage.

Aren’t these things the most important? YES!
Truth is as hard as very beneficial.
Dear friends have strength and patience to accept it!

Rimas