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Why I discovered today that I am a natural manager (of tech things, at least):
- I can easily model systems in my head. This is a bad description of my talent. It is the talent to be able to listen to people talking about a thing they are building and then be able to answer someone's questions on how the system works. It is the talent of being able to put together all of the small parts of a system and hav a good overview.
- I can answer questions fluently. I do not need to stop and think if I am even slightly prepared on a subject. This way I am always confident, and also generally correct. I also know when my knowledge of a subject stops and I should ask someone else to carry on, or give a reason for my team not having thoroughly investigated that subject yet.
- I can work out what people are competant at, even if they claim to be competant at something different. I know that the art of management is to let people manage themselves as far as possible but also to know how to step in when necessary and how to spot when productive dialog has ceased and a meeting is just thrashing, and how to get it back on topic.
- I understand delegation and division of labour. I can keep a good, useful overview in my head without having to know implementation details, and answer almost any question from the overview, and know who to defer to if the question is too deep into one part or other. I can use other people to do research and to implement things and do not need to know every detail of what they are doing to be sure it continues to fit in.
These are the things I am good at. I am passable at a wide range of other things, but these are the things which I am *better than other people* at.
- I can easily model systems in my head. This is a bad description of my talent. It is the talent to be able to listen to people talking about a thing they are building and then be able to answer someone's questions on how the system works. It is the talent of being able to put together all of the small parts of a system and hav a good overview.
- I can answer questions fluently. I do not need to stop and think if I am even slightly prepared on a subject. This way I am always confident, and also generally correct. I also know when my knowledge of a subject stops and I should ask someone else to carry on, or give a reason for my team not having thoroughly investigated that subject yet.
- I can work out what people are competant at, even if they claim to be competant at something different. I know that the art of management is to let people manage themselves as far as possible but also to know how to step in when necessary and how to spot when productive dialog has ceased and a meeting is just thrashing, and how to get it back on topic.
- I understand delegation and division of labour. I can keep a good, useful overview in my head without having to know implementation details, and answer almost any question from the overview, and know who to defer to if the question is too deep into one part or other. I can use other people to do research and to implement things and do not need to know every detail of what they are doing to be sure it continues to fit in.
These are the things I am good at. I am passable at a wide range of other things, but these are the things which I am *better than other people* at.
