Managing as an Architect

So now I have had the operation and am a manager I need a way of managing my time and also of giving direction to the people who work for me. As I have said before in my blog I have a very poor memory and attention span (typically 3 items and 30 seconds.. just like a goldfish!) so I have had to come up with a way which fits in with the way I think and the limitations I have. Needless to say I used an architectural approach and started off by saying that there are 3 generic things I need to cover:

· Strategic things

· Tactical things

· Innovative things

So for this particular job I have three strategic things I want to do:

· Work with communities of people

· Work with Architects

· Generate an online presence

And three tactical things I have to do:

· People Management

· Presentations and events

· Reporting

Finally I want to focus on innovation and leadership in each area whilst ensuring the basic elements of the job are met. I call this “the line”. Things below the line are activities I and my team have to do and I only want to know about if things are going wrong. Things above the line are new, innovative, leadership things which I want to know about always.

This gives me a three dimensional cube which allows me to prioritise things (and decide when not to do things!):

The third dimension is “the line” e.g. innovative or day to day stuff. So typically I like to get all the tactical stuff done in the morning and then do strategic stuff in the afternoon.

Well it works for me anyway!