Management Bugs

Learn how to take feedback and improve the process of your management.

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Problems with your process

Here’s a neat idea that you can begin within your team but can potentially radiate out to the whole department. We’ve just looked at what happens when there are problems with your software. However, what should you do when there are problems with the process? Perhaps, your team is finding it difficult to find documentation for the platform’s architecture or any guidance on best practices for how to create new services. These are concerns that are wider than just the team and may be difficult to find answers. These sorts of concerns also begin to hamper morale. How can people affect change when it’s out of their control?

Suggestion box

You could try a management bugs initiative. When eBay went through rapid expansionKim Scott. Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY, 2017., leadership became increasingly distant from the staff on the ground. A small, nimble culture was rapidly becoming corporate. The CEO wanted to rectify this problem and, therefore, installed a suggestion box in a busy area of the office. Anyone could drop a note into the box, and at the all-hands meeting, the box would be emptied. All questions and suggestions would be read out and answered in front of the whole company. This was a neat way of breaking down the typical barrier to leadership. All input was treated equally, no matter who it was from.

This initial implementation is good, but it has some problems:

  • Box location: A physical suggestion box doesn’t work well for geographically distributed companies.

  • Presence at the meeting: If answers are read out at a meeting, it’s likely that not everyone will be able to attend, and this adds overhead to recording and distributing the talk.

  • Tracking issues: Not all of the issues raised are going to be solved instantly. Some may require a lot of discussions or may spin off into a working group before a solution is found. How can staff know the ongoing status of everything that’s been raised?

Suggestion box implemented in your ticket-tracking system

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