Ground Rules
When a person joins my team as a direct report, I inform them of some ground rules that we will follow. These are good principles and their application has been helpful towards creating a favourable image for me and my team in the organization. I accumulated them over the years. Hope you find them useful. I have also given the sources where I picked them from. The list may not be accurate and I will keep updating to make it complete over a period of time.
(Image Courtesy: New Life Office)
MH Office Rules
1) When a new member joins the team, please bring him / her and meet me. I will have a small welcome chat for about 10 minutes.
2) Continuously think about redundancy and train people as backups for others. Never come to me and say a particular associate is critical, and we can’t lose him or her.
3) Communication should be precise and backed up with data, test reports, research papers, guidelines etc. Don’t round off response time of 1.2 seconds to 2 seconds or say we will roll back a product version, without thinking through.
4) Be a part of the solution; never be a part of the problem. On any issue, get back to your manager with: “This is the problem, this is my solution. What do you think or what are your suggestions or inputs?” Never go to your superior and say, what should I do?
5) 80% delegation, 20% hands-on. There should be always projects or tasks that you should do or handle yourself without delegating.
6) Never hide information from your boss. Make your boss look good, s/he will make you look good.
7) Disagree, but Execute. Don’t go back and forth with your boss on the same topic. Make your opinion clear, but remember - the leader takes the call. Once the decision is taken, just implement it.
8) Praise publicly, criticize privately. Never ever raise your voice in the office.
9) Work is what we do to provide a product or a service or information to a customer. Through our work we should add value to an internal or external customer.
10) Don’t ask annual rewards / hikes for hard work and commitment. Hard work and commitment are given as available to the company and you get your salary for these attributes. Hikes, rewards, and promotions are for successful outcomes. We measure success by outcomes that add value to internal customers or external customers and which are quantifiable.
11) Send your weekly report by 5 pm every Friday.
12) Leaders groom leaders. You should mentor key team members to follow all the above rules.
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Sources
1) My rule.
2) General organizational principle. Wording mine.
3) My rule.
4) Looks like the original quote is by Sydney Harris: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. I added the second line to make it implementable in daily work.
5) Principle and wording is mine. Often people lose interest and ability of doing things themselves.
6) McKinsey.
7) General principle I picked up in my career. Disagree, but execute is the most concise wording I could do.
8) Theme I picked in FedEx. The phrase I coined - Praise publicly, criticize privately - is one I like so much that I often felt I should copyright it.
9) Lean Management.
10) Message I repeatedly gave to people reporting to me during the last few years.
11) My rule.
12) Theme in the book ‘Leadership Pipeline’. Added the second sentence.