Your Success
Formula for your success
This is the third part of Engineering Manager’s Starter Kit. To read from the first part, check it out here:
What is success for you as an engineering manager? - It is timely delivering value and impact on what matters the most for your business, while maintaining your engineering team happy, productive and high performing. Yes it’s like walking a tightrope. You might fall but you have to get up and retry the balancing act. The more you do, the better you will get at it.
Will a business owner say, “We’ve achieved our target and I’ve earned money for my lifetime, let's shut down the company”? - Nope. Success isn’t an end state. A business doesn’t settle if they achieve success. Rather they look to continuously thrive by setting new targets. You play a crucial role in your organization’s success and to continuously thrive by evolving your team, processes and technology to enable them to re-assess and achieve their targets to ultimately embrace the inevitable - the change. Your organization’s success is your success.
Maybe, I got a bit carried away associating it only to your organization's. You can’t succeed yourself as an engineering manager. That’s why you’re given a team to succeed. An entire team. Let’s reframe by bringing your team into the equation: Delivering success to your organization through your team. Much better, isn’t it?
In the process of making your organization successful, you can’t leave out your people’s success. With millions of jobs available in the market, why did they choose to join your organization? - because they believe that they can learn, contribute, grow and succeed in their own career, together with your organization. As a manager, it’s your role to set them up for success and show them how they can contribute better to your team and organization. Your people’s success is your success.
Your Success = Success to your business delivered through your team + Success of your people
It will take time to taste success as a first time EM. Define what success means for you with your manager and be clear about success metrics.
Quick Wins
Hear out your team's current challenges and understand what matters the most for your team at that moment. Those are your quick wins to gain the trust and confidence of your team and of your manager. Here are some quick wins that you can go for:
Looking into a delivery concern that your team is struggling with in recent times.
Boosting your team’s motivation and engagement who are feeling hopeless and disinterested after the last reorganization happened.
Addressing unproductive situations that your team is suffering from.
Listen and help out an underperforming engineer in your team with a clear plan on areas of improvement, actionable feedback and get them the right projects to prove their mettle.
Success Criteria
Let’s take a look at some of the important success criteria for engineering managers:
It's essential for you to align these success criteria with the goals and values of the organization. Regular self-assessment, feedback from team members, and collaboration with other leaders can help you continuously improve and demonstrate success in your role.
That’s all for now - Next up let’s see how to write your manual - ‘Manual of Me’ as part of the Starter Kit.
