brief guide to resource management - kylecoberly/knowledge GitHub Wiki

Allocation

Assignment by comparative advantage

Opportunity Cost

The loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen

Comparative advantage

Someone with the lowest absolute cost has absolute advantage. Someone with the lowest opportunity cost has comparative advantage.

Using it for allocation

Start with your most junior people and maximize their contributions. Other people are likely to have absolute advantage over them, but unlikely to have comparative advantage over them. Part of the goal is to keep everyone (including yourself) in the ZPD. This allows the work to get done, and everyone to grow and improve.

The most important thing is to not try to do all of the work and all of the management yourself- you'll be bad at both and then you'll burn out. Every lecture you give is an opportunity to get better that you took away from your staff. You always need to do some work on the ground- you need to model your expected behavior and performance and see firsthand what the conditions in the field are. If you've allocated bottom-up, you should availability to do this and function more strategically.

All other things being equal, favor autonomy. Override sparingly, and only with reason.

Align to people's personal goals- why are they are here? What are they trying to do?

Accountability

When allocating, you need to allocate time for follow-up, check-ins, and redirections.

Letting go

Not everything will get done. They weren't important enough. Move on.

Win/win/wins

Every time a process goes well on a team, the team also gets a little stronger.

Sustainability

Factor in: * Vacations * Sick time * Professional development * A reasonable workload You need to be adequately staffed to fit all of these things in. Otherwise, you'll lose people over time through burnout.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

  • Extrinsic: Motivated by reward or punishment, some external factor
    • Effectiveness of rewards and punishments diminishes over time
  • Intrinsic: Personally rewarding
    • Can be extinguished if conflated with extrinsic motivation

2 Factor Theory

Motivators: * Challenging work * Recognition for one's achievement * Responsibility * Opportunity to do something meaningful * Involvement in decision making * Sense of importance to an organization) that give positive satisfaction arising from intrinsic conditions of the job itself such as recognition, achievement, personal growth Hygeine Factors: * Status * Job security * Salary * Fringe benefits * Work conditions * Good pay * Paid insurance * Vacations

Working with non-direct reports

4 Sources of Power

  1. Positional
  2. Knowledge
  3. Relational
  4. Personal

Personal power comes from personal mastery (Senge). Build relational power regularly.

  • Talk to people in the organization often
  • Find out what their strengths are and how you can help them
  • It's fun AND it's part of the job
  • Aggressively prioritize work and favors
  • Be wary of standing appointments
  • Be clear on what your goals are- it's easy to get distracted
  • Learn and respond to personalities