Bigger Problems to Solve

“It’s new,” said Jeremy. “My role is different. I never thought there was this much difference between being a supervisor and being a manager.”

“What is the biggest change?” I asked.

“I used to have a team of technicians. Now that I am a manager, I have a team of supervisors, each with their own team of technicians. I am no longer coaching technicians on solving problems about production, I am coaching supervisors on the best way to coordinate resources, schedule personnel, order raw material, schedule machines for up-time. I even have to create an annual budget.”

“What else is different?”

“It has to do with time,” Jeremy continued. “I used to think about my team getting the production work done today, or this week. Now, I have to think further into the future, use my imagination to picture what has to happen to get production work done this month, this year, even next year. There are bigger problems I have to solve.”

“And that is why you are no longer a supervisor. Now you are a manager.”
_____

Orientation is over. Next week, we start full bore on Hiring Talent, session one. Still time to sign up. For more information and registration, follow this link, Hiring Talent-2013.

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About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.
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