If you’re running a tech startup, you may struggle with managing your team. Is management more difficult than technical development? Chances are you lack training because your major is not management.
Management work is like driving a car. The person should be trained before they take a management position. Otherwise, they may run into many problems. This may cause big economic losses and miss many opportunities as well. Because of the working relationship, we often work with the bosses of technology-based start-up companies. The below training should be done before you take the management position.
1, The definition of management is getting others to do the job for you
As long as there are more than two people in the company, getting the other people to work efficiently is the first priority of the manager. Managers should not start their own specific work before they are sure their team members have worked efficiently. But the reality is that the managers only focus on their own work, and just hope that others follow up automatically. This does not work in most cases. You have to switch from focus on work to focus on people.
We also like to mention that leadership skills are more important than management skills for most tech startup CEOs. We will discuss the differences between management and leadership separately.
- Set goals, follow the process, and get the results
The process of managing a team is to set goals, follow the processes, and get the results. As situations change all the time, it is hard to set a long term goal for small tech startups. Please consider the OKR management system instead of the KPI management system. The OKR management system can help to adjust and focus in the right direction and with the ultimate speed.
Only the right goal and right process can lead you to the right results. If you only focus on the results without looking at the process, the results will hardly meet the expectations.
- Meeting management
Conduct meetings are a technical activity as well. Skills such as meeting preparation, process, results, and tracking results are all very important. The most successful meeting in history should belong to the 127-day U.S. Constitutional Convention. Meeting rules should be formulated before the meeting to ensure the completion of the meeting. The book “Robert’s Rules of Order” has done a very detailed study on how to manage successful meetings.
- Effective communication skills
You may often find that the results which your team members give you are far from the one you are asking for. And it is hard to understand and agree with each other. Most of these kinds of questions are caused by lack of effective communication skills. Everyone must feel ridiculous when they hear that they have to explain the work five times when they assign a work to others in Japanese companies. But if you think about it carefully, it often saves hours and even days to fix the problems later.
Therefore, it is very important to make sure that you explain the tasks and purpose clearly to the person, let him/her repeat the work and purpose of the tasks, set the follow up points, let them know which decisions they can make and which decision they should ask you and ask if they have suggestions can get the tasks done better
5, Team building
Remember, every team member works for themselves, not for the company. Team building is simply selecting those members whose personal goals are likely to merge with the company’s goals. Then the managers should design a system that aligns the two goals. Let them help the company achieve the company’s goals while achieving their personal goals at the same time. This is how a Win-Win situation is built. Most managers just consider the company’s goals and ignore the personal goals of the team members. Most likely this will lead to the Win-Lose situations and the company is most likely the loser party.
Technical development should focus on problems, you have to fix all the problems before you develop a great product. But in management you should think differently, you should focus on using people’s strengths instead of changing their weaknesses. People’s strengths and weaknesses are the two sides of the coin, if a person’s weaknesses are removed, their strengths may disappear as well.
If the manager is not familiar with the above training, it is like driving a car without having a driver license. Please do not learn how to manage a team in real management activities because it is very costly.
Please contact us to discuss and exchange ideas about management!
