A hard lesson in management

For 12 years I was a programmer; crunch mode was a natural part of my life as was working long hours to make sure code was ready to go.

Last Wednesday I put my development team into crunch mode – they had until Monday morning at 10 am to get a mission critical app up and running and completely functional so Paul could pitch it to a group of VCs – Failure was NOT an option. So things were a little hectic, but going very well. The team came together nicely and everything was getting done. Then came Friday night.

I was at a movie with Adria – I hadn’t seen her most of the week and she was pretty unhappy about it. We were about 30 minutes into the show when my phone rang – the new servers we had just gotten in were not booting, the indexes we were building for them were having some problems, search results were not coming in as expected…………….. PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I told Dave that I would be in shortly and to call Blake, the Project Manager, and tell him I said to get in the office. I went back into the theater and told Adria I needed to leave and head back into the office and that I would probably be there most of the night. She was mad (duh). I took off and headed to the car, jumped in and headed for the office. I called Blake, he was on the way. I told him I was on my way as well – he said “I got this, go back to your movie”.

“No, No, I’m coming in to help make sure it gets fixed” I replied.

“Dude, trust me, I got it.”

“Blake, I HAVE to come in to make sure it gets fixed, failure is not an option here”

“All right man, I’ll see you in a few” and we hung up.

Then it hit me – I’m not a programmer anymore. I have a development team and a Project Manager who are competent and capable of handling it – I’m just the boss. (This is actually what Adria said to me, but I had just now processed it). So, I pulled over and thought about it for a minute and let the panic mode subside. I realized that I was reacting habitually to stimuli I had received repeatedly over the last 12 years – I had to assimilate new behaviour in crunch mode or I would actually end up hurting the team. I remembered times in the past when the boss had stuck around while we were working on problems – frikin’ annoying. What purpose would my going in serve? None.

So, I called Blake back and told him “I trust you to take care of this, get’er done. Call me if you need anything and give me regular updates”

Then I headed back to the theatre to finish my date with my wife.

She was gone.

In the end, the team pulled through and got everything going. Actually, in the end Paul had no internet connection at the pitch and couldn’t show the site anyway – but he told them all about it and they surely hit it later. Adria was very upset with me but when I explained my thought process and apologized she kind of forgave me – or at least she took the knife off my throat.

I learned a valuable lesson here and was reminded of E-Myth. I was about to approach this problem with a Technicians lens. I needed to switch it out with a Managers lens. By stepping back I allowed the team to come together and bond and solve the problems together and report to me. I managed it from afar, making decisions and letting the team carry them out. If I had gone in, the solutions to the problems would have been the same but the team would not have bound together as well – or bound to me as a fellow Technician. This was a rough experience for me personally, it’s hard to let go of being hands on and fixing the problems. I think it’s more difficult to sit back and wait for the results to roll in though.