Success After Graduation
How to be Successful after Graduating Manager Bootcamp
The Answer to this Question is 4 words:
1. Do
2. Manager
3. RemoteU
4. Again
_____________________________________________________________________
If You Need More Detail
To be successful after graduating Manager RemoteCamp, you simply need to aggressively apply what you learned. That’s it.
The easiest way to be successful after graduating is to make a blank copy of your Manager RemoteCamp deliverable deck and ‘do’ the program again in this order:
Step 1: Enforce Quality Bar
Step 2: Rank and Review
Step 3: Daily Check-In Chats
Step 4: Gemba Walks
Step 5: Create Calendars
Step 6: Shrink to Grow
You may be tempted to start working on the ‘bigger problems’ with your team but there is no faster way to deliver business value than doing the program over again.
Of course, there will be other problems you need to solve but attacking the problems with the WSPro frameworks is the fastest and surest way to be successful.
If you’re not convinced, consider this: everyone will be evaluating graduates on how well they execute the frameworks.
If after graduating, you drift back to your previous management modus operandi and discard the WSPro frameworks, (you should not have graduated in the first place and there’s something broken with the program) you’re on your own.
Can managers be successful in the central factory without the WSPro frameworks? Sure - it’s possible but if you aspire to take on more responsibility and be promoted, it’s not possible.
After graduation, managers are tempted to complicate the frameworks and skills. You should avoid this temptation and stick with simplicity. The power of these frameworks is in simplicity, aggressively applied.
Others will try to convince you that complexity is the key to being a sophisticated and successful manager.
Simplicity - simply applying the WSPro frameworks - is the key to being a sophisticated and successful manager in your new position.
Own Your Productivity (your coach will not be there to own it for you)
When you are in MRU, your coach will be driving you towards the goal and you will get feedback on how you are doing with respect to that goal daily. Whenever you are below the goal, your coach sets a priority calendar for you, and you follow that one to get back on track. That will not happen in the factory, especially if you are at VP level and above. Higher level management (your manager) may not have time to do daily checkin chats with you. They will expect you to own your productivity and push yourself towards the goal.
In such situations, in order to ensure you are aggressive enough for reaching the goal, you should apply this priority calendar.
Priority Calendar for ad-hoc assignments
Document the goal and the deadline given to you. You need to have an objective goal that is written so that you can track your progress. Even if your manager didn't give you the goal in written form, you can write it down as meeting notes, and send it to your manager for confirmation.
Create weekly milestones for reaching the goal. You should always have milestones that are measurable weekly (if not daily) to ensure you can act on time when you deviate from the goal.
Create a strategy for reaching each milestone. Write down each individual action for reaching the milestones (i.e. daily implementation plan). When the plan is created, seek approval/coaching from your manager where possible.
Execute actions. Execute your actions but don't stop on the first blocker you face. Push it harder and harder, go deeper to ensure you are not blocking yourself redundantly.
Measure the results after each week and if milestone goal is not reached (binary decision: you reach the goal or not. No if's..) go back to step 2 above immediately.
A special note on the goal: Please note that when you have an objective goal, whether the goal is reached or not will be a binary decision. You will either Pass or Fail. For instance, if the goal is improving productivity of your team room by 60%, and you improve it by 55%, it will be a Fail, simple because 55 is less than 60. Listing improvements you introduced as an excuse for not reaching the goal is also considered a failure. You shouldn't negotiate or try to set lower goals for yourself. That would be a recipe for failure. Instead, you should set a higher goal and always deliver the results.
How not to be successful after graduating
Studying how not to do something can help you learn how to do something so let’s look at a real example. This is a real story with the specific names removed:
Person A graduates manager RemoteCamp
Person A receives several interview requests but is assigned a high priority task
Person A begins managing team x, reporting to Person B (VP) who reports to Person C (SVP)
Person A does not ‘Do Manager RemoteCamp Again’ starting day 1
Person C (SVP) elaborates:
Whenever a manager is able to graduate from Manager RemoteCamp, VPs and SVPs are eager to hire them on their toughest problems.
VPs and SVPs also expect graduates to be experts at aggressively implementing the WSPro frameworks and implement them from day 1.
Resources
Videos
📺 SVP Interview: How to be successful after you graduate
Last updated
