Management Principles #9: Technical Competence and Credibility
The bottom line is simple: you must be both competent and credible to be doing whatever it is you are doing. I do not mean you must be the smartest, or you must always be right—you just need to know how to get the right answer. I do mean that you must have some credibility or else no one will put much energy into your ideas, your work, or even worse, without credibility, you will not be the successful leader your position may require. What I believe is this: if you are competent enough to know how to get the right answer, and you have the credibility that drives others to believe you did your homework prior to coming up with a solution, idea, etc, then you can succeed.
Let’s put this to the test: You are asked to come up with a plan to complete a complex task. First and foremost you must come up with the technically correct solution. This is vital. “What is the 100% answer”? It goes back to my earlier writings about integrity and origami. You must present the right answer even if it is the most difficult. That is the integrity part. You must know the right answer before you start to stray from it. That is the origami part. NEVER LET SCHEDULE OR COST INFLUENCE THE 100% ANSWER. Once you have the 100% solution then, and only then, you can start weighing the risks of cost and schedule and how it alters your 100% solution. This is where the rubber meets the road. The company will need to decide if taking the less than optimum path in order to meet cost or schedule is the right choice when presented with the impact to the 100% solution. That compromise must be a conscious decision, and any decision made will come with consequences that need to be understood and accepted.
Your job as a leader is to instill this in your people. Those coming to you with an answer need to not be fearful of being reprimanded for bringing what may be the hard solution. Instead, they should have pride in knowing they presented the perfect solution and they trust their management to base the final decision from it. To take it a step further and to be the better leader, you must also allow the person or group that came up with the original plan to be involved with the final decision. They are after all the ones who know the most from the research they performed, and they will know how cost and schedule will impact that plan. It also lets them see a glimpse into the struggle a boardroom may have when weighing the risks associated with the final decision. This is a win for the right answer and the development of our people.
As a manager/leader this is what you are looking for in your team—competence and credibility. However, if your team is newly created, or you inherited a team not quite there yet, it then becomes your responsibility to develop your people into being both competent and credible. This is very achievable but you must not give up on your team. I believe that as you help them gain there technical knowledge and their credibility, it may in fact be you that has learned the most.
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