Mentor

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 10 min

Questions

• How can I help other people get ready to manage parts of this project?

Objectives

• Explain why unstructured groups actually aren’t and why that is a bad thing.

• Describe the four key elements of a productive performance review.

When life gives you lemons, think carefully if you want to tend a lemon tree garden forever.

• Daniel Schauenberg

• Managers make it possible for people to do things - leaders make them want to
  • Recalibrate your productivity sensors
• Most people welcome a performance review if you:
  • Evaluate against a standard
  • Focus on impact
  • Include the positive
  • Give reciprocal opportunities for feedback
• Crunch mode doesn’t work
  • Long-term useful output is maximized around a 5-day/40-hour workweek
  • Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime
  • Working over 21 hours at a stretch is equivalent to being legally drunk

Clarity of Control

1. Who decides what in your project?
2. How easy is it for a newcomer to discover this?

Feedback

1. How are your performance and progress evaluated?
2. How would you like them to be evaluated?

Overtime

1. How often do you work more than 40 hours a week?
2. Why do you do this despite a century of rigorous scientific study showing that it makes you less productive?

Key Points

• Power is always distributed unequally in groups - the only question is whether that’s explicit or not.

• Be clear about what you have delegated and what ‘done’ looks like.

• Make conditions and criteria for performance reviews explicit.

• Accept the same kind of feedback that you want to give.

• Crunch mode doesn’t work.