What are /r/AskManagement's favorite Products & Services?

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1) The first thing I tell my people when they start managing people or releases or anything else, Read Who Moved My Cheese. The change in outlook helped me keep things in perspective a lot when I started managing people.

Second. Use your calendar. Book a conference room if you need to. But block out time to do the tasks that you need to do.

Lastly. Encourage your people to go to each other first with problems before coming to you. If they can teach each other how to do things it will make them more confident in their abilities and more self sufficient. I do this but I also have time booked into each day to touch base with my people 2-3 times a day depending on how much they need. My senior people it's a five minute chat, sometimes with the entire group, first thing in the morning. My junior people it's five minutes when they get in to see what's going on, five to ten minutes around lunch, and then if they're struggling still they can come find me or send me a message and I'll help them get things sorted out. That little extra time can be used as learning moments, a sounding board, or even just to give feedback. Use 1-1's for things that you think they need a little more enforcement on.

Most importantly though. Believe in yourself. You've got this. As long as you are confident that you can do what you need to, everything else will come together.

I really liked The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman. It essentially goes over the first steps of becoming a manager to give you a solid foundation. In addition to that, check out https://github.com/VGraupera/manager-resources, it has a list of books and tools that may help as well. Good luck! Congratulations on the promotion.

I'd tell your soon-to-be-managers this:

That asking/telling somebody to do something doesn't mean that it will always get done, and that asking the person to put a date on the deliverable (and then tracking that) was the best way to make sure it gets done. I just started using WorkFront (web based project management) to track everything and am loving it. Pick a tool and use it! Have weekly one-on-ones with your staff - even if its 30 minutes. I run mine with a scrum-like philosophy: use workfront as a shared project management tool and as a on-off item tracker. If the date says X and today is X, then I'm going to assume you completed the task. Put the ownership on the employee - you have too many people to keep chasing them around for shit. Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goals and then get out of the way. Just be there as a (similar to scrum) problem solver, getting obstacles out of the way of your team getting their work done. Don't fall back into rolling up your sleeves and doing your old work. DELEGATE. Once your top individuals get promoted their former-peers are going to look at them differently. Embrace and acknowledge this.

Are you team engineers? If so there a books dedicated to this topic. If nothing else I'd recommend The 360 Degree Leader, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 5 Disfunctions of a team, Influence, Getting to Yes, etc.

Heh, yes. There's ample out-of-the-box functionality, but we have disciplined SP admins that oversee implementation & customization. Our intranet merged with all our project sites to form a massive SP Cthulu now.

As much as the MS tax is inescapable, you can't get away from having to configure any solution. Obviously the more robust & extensible, the more impact to you.

MS tools have been readily available to me my entire career, so I'm biased. There are some other relatively low-scale neat products out there. Though it's not a "social" platform in the terms we're talking about here, Trello comes to mind. I use it personally for task management/sharing. Dig around a bit and you may find something suitable enough with limited implementation cost.

Here's one dice thingy:

https://timeular.com/?v=7516fd43adaa

Here's the one I was thinking of:

http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/gear/gadgets/zei-time-task-tracking-dice.asp

This is an expense out of pocket though :\

I would recommend reading Basecamp's approach to this, which is free - https://basecamp.com/shapeup

This is not a management problem per se, so much as it is a product development approach problem.

It sounds like as a team lead, you are not given enough ownership over shaping what task completion looks like.

The business should absolutely drive strategy and help guide teams as to what is important and what is not. However, teams should take more ownership over the what and how. It sounds like you've no control over the what which means you lack context, and is also the core reason as to why the people that report to you are not motivated.

Ultimately, if you can't make those changes, you are in a catch-22 position. That would be a cultural problem and mindset that is very difficult to change. If you believe in what you read in Shape Up, my suggestion would be to try convince your immediate manager of the approach and grow from there.

Zapier has a Guide on Remote Management, but much of the information is applicable to all types of management. I especially like this format for one-on-one meetings:

• one thing you're excited about
  
• one thing you're worried about
  
• one thing I can do better to help him with your job
  
• one thing you can do better to improve at your job
  

There's a book called The First Time Manager which you might find very useful. I did. It's a relatively short read and very insightful.

Hi, sorry to interrupt your conversation, you might find inspiration on how to cope by realising that multitasking is inefficient. Source: The Myth of Multi-tasking

Edit: Try out different strategies and figure out what works for you.

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Change-World-Nonprofit-Managers/dp/1118137612/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503537038&sr=8-1&keywords=managing+to+save+the+world

This book is amazing. While it is geared towards the non-profit sector, it is absolutely helpful for managers in all fields.

I'm partial to the way the Gallup Organization thinks about management. They advocate identifying the individual strengths of people on your team—and encouraging them. Don't try to put in what isn't already there. This also means treating everyone on your team differently (even though our instinct is to be impartial and fair).

This was one of the first mistakes I made when I started leading a team. I tried to encourage the weak performers on my team and ended up leaving the high-performers alone, assuming they didn't need my help. But according to Gallup's research, this just sends the wrong message. The high performers need more attention, and will thrive more. The low-performers just need to find their strength. This is the book Gallup wrote on the subject. It's full of fascinating insights.

First break all the rules

Also, below is a blog post our company put out on the subject. Forgive the self-promotion, but there are some great quotes by real managers in it. Hope this helps.

Advice for first time managers