Traits of Project/Program Management

1. ORGANIZATION'S FUNDAMENTAL EXPECTATION OF A MANAGER:
Understand the expectation of the organization  of a manager. Every organization would have this documented. From my knowledge, the basic expectation that any organization would have, of a Manager is to manage the following four crucial parameters - SCOPE, COST, TIME AND QUALITY
As PMP guide says and I have realized it, over years is that - these are like four corners of a table. You touch one, the other three shake.
The biggest challenge is to manage all the four effectively in a well balanced manner that the stakeholders are satisfied.

2. THE POWER OF BEING A MANAGER:
Along with power comes great responsibility.
It is very easy to abuse power. The ratings you give for your team, is almost final, unless until, it is very evident that you have given an extremely bad rating to a very good candidate.
Hence it becomes important for the manager to gauge the strength weaknesses of the candidate before giving an opinion about a candidate to HR/Program Manager. It is crucial for the manager - not to be prejudiced/biased towards a specific team member.

3. REWARD/PUNISHING:
Reward the people, who have done the work for you. Be ready to punish the SAME people, if they refuse to work. When rewarding, distinguish between high performers and medium performers.
Be aware that - you would be setting a trend in the team - about 'High performer'. If you reward a medium-medium person as HIGH, remember - you would not get a higher performing candidate since, since mediocrity is rated HIGH.Hence the decision what to rate HIGH, is completely in your hands. Remember - HR, Program/Dept Heads, VPs can only guide you. It is finally your call, as to what you would term as HIGH.

4. THERE IS NO SHORTCUT TO SUCCESS:
As each one of us would have realized, there is no shortcut to success. Every person would have loads of stories of hardships he would have gone through, before being considered as valuable to the organization. Discipline and consistency
is the key factor that drives the person towards success. Success does not come to you, if you show flashes of brilliance(Remember Vinod Kambli?)
You have got be consistently brilliant and ought to have think different. There are no fixed strategies in this dynamic world.
You could read hundreds of books about management(including this one), but they can only act as guideline. It is of utmost importance to understand the pain areas of the organization. Every CxO would love to have employee think of the problem and his perspective and provide solution. Similarly every customer or stake holder would like the manager to think from his perspective and provide solution. Hence a manager ought to play a balancing role between all of his stakeholders.

5. DIPLOMACY/POLITICAL RACE:

At any organization, there would always be people, who are at a position higher up than you and you would feel very strong about - You doing the job better than him. Never get into criticizing such folks. Remember - They have the power.
Do not spend efforts/time trying to prove yourself, onto such people. You would realize that the amount of energy it takes is vast and your creativity gets killed, in the process.
You have a choice - Either to get into the diplomacy line and get into the rat race, or create your own way of management. There are no predefined ways of successful management. There are only pointers.

Being involved in politics at office is your choice. Understanding office politics is a must.
You need to understand office politics to stay away from it.

6. TECHNICAL ROLE:
As a manager - you have a choice - To what level you would want to be involved from a technical perspective. I believe it is a personal choice. If technology excites you, I suggest be involved at-least to the extent of understanding what's going on. The biggest advantage of being involved in technical aspects is that - you would prove your worth to the team - in turn, you get respect.
But, get the right balance, don't be involved, to the extent that - you would starting solving all the team members problems. It is like making people run on the treadmill. You cannot run for them.
It is good to be involved in problem solving, but make sure that you are not the bottleneck in the process.

7. ROLE MODELS:
It becomes extremely important to have a couple of role models in your organization. It would help you as a developer/manager. You could have multiple role models for a specific job function, or vice verse. BUT - HAVE ONE.


8. APPRAISALS:
This is one of the most important aspects that depicts your management capabilities. On one side, you would have the Senior Management(may be you belong there), and on other side, there are your team members who would always want - MORE(They probably would not know, how much they want/deserve and WHY, but certainly would have a number in mind, which would invariably HIGHER, than your budget considerations)

Unfortunately, the decision on whether to promote a candidate, whether to give a significant raise to a specific candidate lies squarely on his/her manager. Hence it is very important to learn the art of SELLING your candidates to your boss, be it, within the organization or outside.

9. DONT HOLD ON TO RESOURCES:
While it is of utmost importance for the manager to deliver on time with promised quality, it is equally important to cater to individual needs and aspirations. If you have a high performing individual in your team, and that if he wants to move on to another assignment, that interests him, let him go. Dont hold on to the resources. You could always train other people to do things for you. While is more easily said than done, trust me, make a sincere attempt the first few times, you would get the satisfaction of helping the employee play a better job elsewhere.

10. FEEDBACK
Take feedback from people regularly. Especially if you have your role models within the organization.
Do not forget to ask three questions to your boss:
a. What are my strengths?
b. What are my weaknesses?
c. Do you think, I make a difference to the organization?

Many a times, you could get very abstract and lengthy answers to these questions. Make sure that you don't get lost in the sugar coated messages. If you are not getting the gist of the feedback, ask him to summarize it in a very simple way.
I have had the luxury of taking feedback from many of my superiors in this industry which have helped me.
But make sure, that the feedback is genuine and is given from a person, who cares for your well being.