The decision-maker/team-lead

There is little in life, as an employee, that is more frustrating than management indecision. Have you ever posed one of the following interrogatives? "Why can't the team make decisions and why is my boss not making hard choices?" "We know what has to be done; why can't we get started?"

Making decisions about team direction is never trivial, but it can be made a lot easier by sticking to a few simple principles. When you set up a 'framework' for decision-making and team path discussions, you eliminate most of the possibility of postponement, indecision, and general lack of direction.

Postholes
Our first topic is approval. Getting management approval for your team's activities can be a pain and extrememly time-consuming. Rather than asking about everything that you do and receiving approval on every hour spent and every dollar spent, try to obtain generic approval. Approach your upper management and agree upon the three or four basics for things that are the responsibility for your team. You should be clear about what your team should be doing, but also you should make these definitions as broad as your manager will let you. Be careful taking on too much responsibility.

Once you have this in hand, then you don't need to go to your manager for every task or project than you need to tackle. Don't rely on your manager to set this list of responsibilities for you because he will make them as narrow as possible if you let him. You probably want enough responsibilities to keep you challenged but not be overwhelmed. Your boss, on the other hand, is probably only considering you for a narrow set of responsibilities. Push yourself a little and obtain permission to stretch a little.

Fenceposts
Our second topic is specialization. Why are you on a team and why does that team exist? What differentiates your team from all of the others? What is you team's raison d'etre. Once you have a clear picture of that, making decisions becomes easier. Very few teams exist for one reason so make sure that you have a complete list. If you have more than five or six, you may need to found a new team.

Some suggested specializations could be:

1. Deliver tools to the rendering team.
2. Setup and maintain a pipeline for game assets.
3. Build good repore with all clients.
4. Follow up with all clients on software delivery.
5. Automate everything that interferes with artist workflow.
   

From a list like this, you can easily set priorities, tasks, and decide what comes first. It also makes clear that any extra tasks that are unrelated, but that are requested, are unlikely to be fulfilled.

Slats
Our next topic is ownership. How do you involve people on the team in such a way that promotes high quality, dedication, and ownership? This is very basic: using the principle of specialization (above), hold quarterly meetings with your team to focus on what your team should be doing. Make a whiteboard list and treat this like a brainstorming session. Once you have spent 45 minutes to an hour, start pruning that list with your team right there with you.

You are asking for their involvement and effectively obtaining their permission. You want your team to succeed, so don't take on massive projects. If they are very large, then break those into smaller projects and deliver pieces. This makes it easy to show progress and prove out whatever you are delivering.

Once you have a clear picture of what needs to be done, you should talk it over with your boss to be sure tht these are reasonable goals or if s/he has some surprise project that needs to be done instead or on top of your list.

Nails
Pulling together all of this and making the final choices is your next piece. This involves stewardship. You want the team to succeed. You have all of the people you need supporting you and the last piece of the equation is making choices. The major part of this decision making process is being flexible.

• When starting on a team or at a company, focus on quick wins. This also works well for problem employees.
• Focus on testable or provable deliverables. Being halfway done never counts for anything.
  
• Break all tasks into smaller tasks until you can deliver something in two weeks.
• If a task is taking too long, ask your employee to deliver something smaller.
  
• Be flexible enough to recognize when someone is floundering and help him/her, either directly, or by having that person work with someone else. If it is still not working, give that person a related task to help him/her "work it out" in his/her head.

Stewardship also means following all tasks to completion. You can't just leave things unfinished. Quality is another issue in stewardship, so making sure that the thing delivered is above normal company-quality helps.

Paint
The promotion of your tasks and the accomplishments of the team are the last piece. This is a bit of politicking, but mostly involves promoting the team's accomplishments. There are only a few things to keep in mind when doing this.

• Don't over-promote. When describing accomplishments, avoid words like 'incredible', 'amazing', and 'unbelievable' which undermine the perception of your judgement.
• Don't take credit for other people's work done. This is usually trransparent and pisses off your employees and your bosses. It never does you any credit. You are managing the team's success which is more than enough.
• Eliminate too much detail and simplify any progress report to bullet-points. Only provide detail when requested. I suggest preparing a full report, and then preparing a bullet-point list to match that. The full report is for you; the bullet-point list is for your boss.

Summary
The decision making process can be hard, or it can be easy. By following this methodology, you can ensure that your team succeeds, that your people are happy, that your boss is happy, and that your team is perceived as successful.