How This BizDev Manager Turned Team Metrics into a Culture of High Standards
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Complete interview transcript below
INTERVIEWER
This whenever possible I I avoid using the name of the company that you are wanting to interview with, so I'm just going to say talk about the role broadly. I'm assuming based on the job descriptions you sent me that it's a manager level role where you're gonna be managing people. What wasn't clear to me was whether or not you had managed people in the past. I'm assuming you have, but I don't want to assume that. Is that you've assumed that you've managed people in the past?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, I, I, I manage.
INTERVIEWER
That's fine. I just didn't want to make that assumption. OK. Um, so since this is a manager level role or likely to be a manager level role, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how you manage your teams, right, um, and specifically how do you set targets for your team, uh, such that you are improving the critical areas of focus for your team, so that your team gets better as a result of you taking over.
CANDIDATE
Good. Sure. Um, The way that I do it is regarding this kind of metrics of ICARs as, as, as they call them, uh, I, I usually what I do is to, to, um, decide a couple of them, but, uh, it depends of the, of the role. The last team that I managed, well, my current team is just 33 people because it's business, but the largest team that I managed is, uh, about 20 people. It was about 20 people, and I had solutions architects and Um, Supporting engineers as well, uh, but those with a level of expertise, solution architects, they were made, uh, regarding technical stuff. They didn't have knowledgement and improvements and enhancements within the architecture and those ideas they, they needed to, to add to the company, to my, to my area, it was regarding innovation and cost optimization. So those sort of improvements, well, every single OR was measured about improvements within the solution architects. They need to enhance everything, the processes, the, the architecture in order to have a benefit, uh, a good outcome on, on cost impact and um they need to fix something. The support engineers, they have a different role and the support engineers, they needed to fix the process regarding the um Inferior, uh, engineers that, that, that make, that received the first call. They need to see the spikes uh of those tickets and attend the situation in order to fix them by the route, uh, they needed to identify the root cause in order to fix it. So what I did with them is, uh, identify the spikes, um, have some, how many. They need to deliver 24 training hours per month, uh, about a cloud topic that could be Amazon Esure so it was on training, it was on attending the technical tickets and it was on um. Having the proper badges regarding uh processes the the the internal ones so I did have uh but the first one I decide the the ORs I go and cross them with them with my boss because they those needed to be aligned with the business sometimes my my my my at that time my boss changing. And, and he removed a few um following tickets and, and improved more training regarding processes. It was important to him uh be focused on, on ET uh that kind of um processes in order to better um provide technical support.
INTERVIEWER
OK. Well, so how then do you handle situations where You've got, how to frame this, uh, when your team is repeatedly not quite measuring up to your expectations, right? How do you, how do you handle that, right? They're just not improving to your standard. Give me a specific example if you have one. Yeah, what happens when your team, you know, you set these OKRs if they're not hitting their goals and I assume you meet with them through some process, but if they're consistently not getting there, how do you handle that?
CANDIDATE
OK. Uh, first of all, what I do is, um, I see the difference between that guy, uh, if it's a team, if they, they are doing the same thing because there's a thing and, and everybody knows it. There's people, there's a process, and there could be a gap and that gap, as I call it, it could be something that, that, that people cannot do, cannot meet, it doesn't really matter because of that expertise. Uh, but first of all, the people, I do try to make sure if that people is working properly. If he has the training, if he has the background, if he's the right person to that position regarding the, the, the, a person, regarding the people, I do assess the people, uh, in order to, to, to identify if I have a, a, a people issue. And there's this process. They might have the expertise, they might have, they might have the background, they might have, they might have everything, but I might be doing something wrong regarding the process and, and, and, and asking them things in a wrong way, um. If I usually when I talk to process I go to the quality area which is the one that that writes the process along with the managers like me and I talk to them uh you know what I have this situation I'm not sure if the process is running the, the, the, the proper way so I, I need you to help me on this one. And, and if I identify that, that there's no issue regarding the people, there's no technical stuff, there's no communication issue, anything and there's, the process is, it might not be perfect but it works. There's a, a gap uh they Might not be delivering any good result because they might be focusing on, on, on something that actually, it doesn't really matter. The um a good situation is like, like a prison uh uh uh a prison that a guy that is trying to, to get out of jail and, and, is, is, is trying to smash that, that stone but it's not doing anything. Because to the business, it doesn't represent anything good. So, this is why where, where, if I identify that um in that regard, I go to my boss and try to change the IORs because something is, is, is not properly set. OK.