Management myth 23: how many people you can manage

Original article Johanna Rothman

"Cindy, I want to add three more people to your team ." Patrick (the company's CTO) was leaning at the door, and as soon as his voice fell, he turned and wanted to leave.

"Wait ...... We will discuss this. You can't leave the bomb like this. Why do you want me to recruit more people ?" Cindy looks very complicated.

"I'm not asking you to recruit new people," Patrick said. "I want to transfer people from Tranh's team to you. He cannot bring them well. You are good at bringing teams. He cannot. I want you to manage them ."

"If you give me three more people, I will not be able to take them with me. I don't have time !" Cindy replied, "You won't let me build a team lead, and I don't understand this. My team is about to become 12 people, too many people! I don't want so many people! You can give it to others, or let me manage the team in the way I want ."

Patrick walked into Cindy's room and sat down. "What do you mean? Manage in the way you want? I didn't interfere with you !"

Cindy snorted and replied, "of course you have interfered with me! You have made various rules: I cannot set up a team lead; I have to manage at least three people; no matter how many people I manage or do anything else for you, I must keep writing code ."

"In an agile organization, your rules are meaningless. They do not help me manage projects, nor help me provide guidance to my team, plan career development, and provide valuable feedback. They do not help me assist product owners or project managers. They do not help me make disruptive decisions for the product direction-although I only play a facilitating role in those decision-making processes ."

"My team and I can only have one-on-one conversations every two weeks. I don't have time to do it more frequently. I have no time to do more management work. You don't have time to talk to me. You have successively canceled one-on-one talks between us. But when you are free, I am not ."

"My team is not a strict team either. They are actually two teams with different functions. I need both test and development. I don't know how to better guide my work. Therefore, I want to say no to you. Please, don't give me more people !" Cindy concluded, "I am very busy. If you do not remove some of your rules, it is difficult to give me more people. I don't want to worry about more people. You can give them to others ."

What is the role of a frontline manager?

I hope to have a consistent answer to this question. Unfortunately, the positions of these people are still different. Some frontline managers are called "managers", while others are called "supervisors ". Even in an agile environment, if they are functional managers of development or test teams, some of them are still writing code or doing specific testing work.

For some teams, they all learn how to behave from their respective managers. They don't know. In fact, it is equally effective for colleagues to work in pairs or to program together (if not more effective than the manager's personal guidance ). Why? Because the manager came here. The manager, that is, the current director or senior manager, is promoted because they were once the best technical personnel. (Understand how these myths spread themselves, right ?)

It is not a valid working state to keep frontline managers busy all day. If you want to know whether a person is willing to work, the best way is to check the relationship between the person and his frontline manager. If a front-line manager is busy with specific tasks, how can he delegate his work and responsibilities to others?

How many talents are reasonable?

For an interesting question like this, the answer is usually "depends on the situation ". This depends on the manager's maturity and the team's maturity. If a front-line manager is still on his way to becoming a manager, he needs fewer people to exercise. Why? Because managers need to learn to avoid interference. If the team only has 3 ~ It's hard enough for four people. If a new manager wants to manage more people, it is almost impossible for him to do so, because the temptation to block all decisions is hard to resist.

If you have been doing management for a while, and you know how to guide others, you can manage it as a manager ~ 9 people. Once you try to manage more than 9 people, you will begin to worry about one-on-one conversations with everyone. You have to do more authorization in the team. You can still cope with it, but both you and the team will feel more pressure.

In my opinion, it is time for more people to look at the team structure and ask themselves: Should I make some adjustments? It is time to assign more responsibilities to others.

Everyone wants to learn

I have met many people looking for new jobs. Many of them are quite young. A considerable number of people said to me, "I am ready to take on more responsibilities. I need more challenges. However, I have no place to play. My manager does not give me the opportunity to study. ."

For managers who need to learn to authorize, some of the problems may come from their superiors who think that their managers need to manage a lot of people and they still need to maintain technical competence.

Whether you manage 3 or 33 people, remember that everyone should have the opportunity to grow and learn. As a manager, one of your responsibilities is to promote their learning.

You are not the only source of knowledge

Many front-line managers regard themselves as experts and are the only source for the team to acquire knowledge. You may have been an expert at first. However, when you become a manager, you should leave the expert's position, and you should not let others sit in that position.

Spread your expertise. Let everyone work together. This is very easy for an agile team, because you may be paired with each other or multiple people participate in function development. If you have not set up an agile team, ask who is interested in learning new knowledge. Remember, unless your environment is poisonous, people generally want to learn new skills. If no one wants to learn from you, you need to pay attention to this signal. It may be because your professional knowledge is outdated, or you have hostility in the workplace, or you are already looking for other jobs. You need to talk one-on-one to find out what the situation is.

Establish a trust relationship with the team

Your management location (whether or not it is on the front line) requires you to establish a trust relationship. If you manage more than 9 people, you are at risk and cannot establish that relationship.

Although this has a greater impact on Frontline managers (compared with senior managers), it is a common management problem. It tests problem solving and leadership. That is the value of management, right?

Management myth 23: how many people you can manage