Weekly Review
I took a vacation two weeks ago and I did not have time to write weekly review. This entry will be for the last two weeks but I will keep to only three things as always.
Get frustrated when my team member asked for more people
A couple weeks ago, my team member told me that he needed more people in his project. I said no the first time, he asked me again, and I said no again. He then escalated it to my manager which he said no, and again after that, escalate things further to more people.
Putting his poor judgement aside, his escalation style is annoying as freak. He escalated his needs without having a deep discussion whether we could adjust the project timeline and what not.
I was angry that he only focused on his project and not the company. He was working on a low profile project (for the right reason) and he wanted to take everything from other teams including high profile projects to ensure his team meets the goals.
There are three things that I took notes from this event
- He kept asking the same shit over and over again
- He did not look at a bigger picture
- I did not spend time to think about his request and I did not have a good argument to say no
Looking back, I felt that his request made sense on the surface. However, deep down, it does not make sense that he needs specific people to be on his project.
This is a skill gap problem where we have people with narrow skills in our team. We keep them to focus on a specific area in the project, which is the first red flag and at the same time, don’t train new people, which is a second red flag.
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As a leader, I should have done two things. First, train more people on these skills. Second, train people with narrow skills to broaden their skills.
I cannot do the training myself so I will talk with a few of my guys so they can train at least five more people on these skills. At the same time, people with narrow skills need to learn and expand their knowledge. Otherwise, we can’t work together.
Not aware of critical problems. Don’t own the product after release. (Only work on execution + release but don’t care about the results)
This is 150% my fault where I mainly (or only?) focus on execution and my definition of execution is to create and launch new products. Building and launching new products is only the starting point, I need to collect and analyze the data then learn from it.
The problem is, if I only focus on the execution, I will not have time for data analysis and deep thinking.
I should have broaden my responsibility from only focusing on the execution to end to end ownership. My responsibility should start from initiate new ideas to improve business, build and ship the product, gathering and analyzing the data, then iterate.
Do not have high performing teams
One of the reasons I have to do a lot of things by myself is that I don’t have high-performing teams. My people are good at what they do but they won’t level up the teams with what they have.
The thing is I don’t know what I need in my team and I have not put time and efforts into figuring this out. I really need to get my shit together and start putting what I need. The first thing is a few people who I can trust to manage a project — one person per project.
I have these people. I also need to have clear expectation and goals for them, which again, I do not have that.
To conclude, I need two things. First, people that I can trust and they have to be willing to step up. Second, I need to set clear expectations and work from there.
I will start with two people running two small teams. I will work from there
