Management Bits and Tips

Customer Facing skills are important (bit). What equally important are Support Facing skills (tip).

Support facing skills are vital to get the best response from support and manage customer support expectations (what they expect from you, what you expect from them you already know). One way to learn support facing skills in relatively mild manner is by purchasing your company product while you are still employed (especially in support).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

A person or a company who makes a service request will feel the lack of attention to details and respect if you write a much shorter service response with less detail (bit). Spend or at least show that you spent equivalent amount of time and resources analyzing and answering a request. In some cases (technical support, for example) involving reciprocal request / response interactions you can explicitly promise to spend the same amount of time if you request a time consuming reproduction environment that helps you in troubleshooting or problem artifact analysis (tip).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Previously announced book (publication date is 1st of September, 2010) now got preliminary front and back covers.

Front cover:

Back cover:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Some embarrassing spelling errors come from resulting semantic metaphors (bit). Develop a habit of checking initial and last letters of typed words (tip).

For example, passthrough and look at your issue.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

“… those people who are really good at what they do and yet are at the bottom of a management hierarchy have a power that no one else in the hierarchy has. They can’t be demoted.” 

Robert Glass, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Understanding and overcoming resistance is one of the tasks of a manager. A public performance (transcript) of the manager is different from an inner transcript and the same can be said about transcripts of engineers. I now recall that in one of my previous companies I worked for, a senior engineer was telling one recently hired junior colleague in a private setting (canteen) to always tell VP of Engineering how he loves the work. I recently became interested in analysis of managerial domination and of various forms of hidden resistance and stage performances of subordinates and internal pressures they experience. Doing my research I stumbled across this book on Amazon and bought it:

Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts

The book is written in almost jargon free style and highly recommended as a stimulating and refreshing read to remind about additional perspectives on relations inside teams and engineering organizations, between customers and their relationship managers (inverse domination). 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

A definition: 

This is a people manager who abdicates and becomes one of former subordinates to increase customer satisfaction in crisis times when no head count is available.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

I found this book in a local bookshop a few months ago and now I recommend it to everyone dealing with customers, either internal or external:

Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, NOW!

Foreword was written by Gerald Weinberg.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -