Can you discuss a particularly challenging situation you faced as a manager and how you navigated it?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

I had 2 managers and a technical program manager reporting to me. The challenge
I faced is unclear definitions of roles and responsibilities across these
individuals and general blame game of the other party not doing their job. We
were trying to arrive at our milestone plan and deliverables through the next
year which was launch.
I talked to each of them individually and understood there was expectation
mismatch on who is accountable and responsible and hence general frustration all
around. I asked the TPM to come up with a RACI matrix which we will then review
with the group and talk about mechanisms to ensure these are being followed. I
did serveral revisions of this with the TPM and then brought the whole group
together.

Anonymous · Answer

Recently after RTO policy I had a lot good employee attrition in my org across
multiple team. Also lost a manager in the process. Which had a cascading impact
on the team workload as we had to still deliver on our committments and also
team morale was low as the operation load like oncall, etc went up. I worked
with the managers reporting to me to evaluate all the projects in flight and
worked in leadership and PM to prioritize the projects based on
customer/business needs and tradeoffs. Decided to push stall few projects and
opportunistically improve operational load till we hire and rampup new team
members. Also decided to do re-org within the team to co-locate manager with
employees between multiple locations. Setup a recruiting drive along with the
recruiting team to create interview PODs and weekly reviewing number of
resumes/PS/Onsite we were having per week to accelerate the hiring.

Anonymous · Answer

Discuss with the team about the situation and understand the needs and concerns
of the team. Ensure that needs and concerns are not conflicted. Motivate the
team with all possible ways.

Anonymous · Answer

1) if there are conflicting priorities , then identify the priorities which are
approved and funded in the organization AOP .
2) the One that is approved takes highest precedence, if there are multiple
priorities then the one which has significant legal impact takes precedence.
3) if there are no legal concerns then the one which has biggest customer impact
or the one which will realize lot of revenue for the org will take priority.

Can you discuss a particularly challenging situation you faced as a manager and how you navigated it?

Answers