I’ve been rather busy week this past week, in part due to the fact that I was preparing for a week off. There is nothing like taking time off to add to your work load! This prompted me to write a blog entry a little off-topic from software development. Thos blog will focus on the large volume of issues that managers face in their day-to-day lives.
When if first started my career (as a non-manager), my own direct observation of managers led me to believe they had attention-deficit disorder, similar to the official ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) medical disorder – which incidentally has no cure, just treatment. I always felt that managers never seemed to be able to focus on anything longer than five minutes, making it extraordinarily difficult to make the “right” decision (in my humble opinion), given the little time they had to devote to an issue.
Now that I’m in management myself (presently I am the Director of Software Development here at AMS Services in Portland, Maine) and have been for a while now, what do I have to say in response to this observation? Do managers have attention deficit disorder?
As a developer, I always viewed concentration time as absolutely essential to productivity. (Actually, I still maintain this opinion.) From my standpoint, designing and writing concise, clear, logical code to solve a business problem is a highly intellectual and demanding exercise – one that requires complete attention. If you are interrupted, you need time to get back into the flow, and this alone is a productivity hit. And with constant interruptions, you are also likely to produce poor, buggy code that will need refactoring later.
As a manager, my day is nothing but one continuous string of “interruptions.” This is because my responsibilities involve overseeing a variety of people and a portfolio of projects. When I walk into the office in the morning, I find that people need to talk to me now about issues and roadblocks – so that I can clear the path for them. I also need to provide guidance, performance planning, periodic reviews (quarterly and annually), and regular one-on-ones with the people that report to me, activities that require various degrees of preparation time and typically some type of follow-up as a result.
As I look ahead at future iterations of current projects or the needs of future projects, I strive to anticipate issues and move to address them to ensure continued productivity. This includes things like evaluating the needs of planned projects, determining the necessary staffing and skill levels, identifying gaps and initiating action to address those gaps. In short, my day is a blend of short-term and long-term needs, of unplanned and anticipated issues and events, and of meetings to discuss where we are now and where we are headed.
In answer to the main question at hand: Yes, the sheer number of issues and duties as they relate to the number of people that report to you does indeed make it appear that a manager has attention-deficit disorder, but that is the nature of the job and nothing more.
What about making the “right” decision? Since so little time is dedicated to considering an issue or problem, won’t a manager get it wrong?
In reality, I find that managers do spend a lot of time on the critical decisions that are essential to the operation of the company or department. It doesn’t always seem to be the case, but I find that when I need to really wrestle with an issue, I either disconnect from the day-to-day noise by taking a walk or even a run at lunch to clear my head and focus my attention on a given subject. Many managers also mention (all too often) that they were thinking about some issue “while they were in the shower.” In staff meetings, we’ve often asked each other, “What keeps you up at night?” in reference to what each of us considers the single most important issue that we should be dealing with at that point in time.
Of course, sometimes the “right” decisions are not quite as good as they could be. Let’s face it, decisions are only as good as your judgment and the information that you have at hand. And more often than not, you will find yourself working with less than complete information. If you have a good staff, they will supply you with the key, critical elements when they are asking you to make a decision; but ultimately you have to determine when you have enough information to work with. And sometimes you need the discipline to defer on making a decision – despite urgent demands that you make a call – until you do have enough information.
In answer to the original question: “Do managers have attention deficit disorder?” – I believe not. The demands of the job only make it appear that way.