As a manager you provide the resources to the makers and assign the overall goal, then step back and let them do their job. If you can minimize disruptions you will have happier more productive makers.

Now I’ve been both a maker and a manager and throughout most of my working life I’ve been both at the same time. I can see a clearer delineation if you work in an office within a corporate structure as I have. However if you work in the field you often wear both hats.

Repair and maintenance work for example often involves meetings and time management. There are customers to meet with and jobs to schedule. You’re definitely a manager in this respect. Now when it comes down to the actual task at hand you’re a maker. You may be making an unclogged drain, mowed lawn, leak patch in a HVAC unit, painted wall, part replacement, equipment installation, clean window, carpet or toilet. Regardless the goal for the manager of these hybrid maker/ managers is the same, provide the resources, assign the overall goal then let them do their job.

Makers and managers are actually two legs of a three legged stool the last being the “producers” or salespeople and sometimes you are all three a maker/manager/producer. But that’s another story.

In reference to the article I will point out that janitors in the truest sense are makers. As a janitor you are making a toilet clean not having a meeting with it.

Frankly our managers and our makers are both in short supply and we operate on crisis most days. Throw in some metrics and govt regulation and, well, I can’t imagine this business environment ever being calm and productive or conforming to any productivity improvement efforts–though we do try. We are constantly preached at to be transformative and agile, but some days there just aren’t enough hours to get it all done, no matter your work philosophy/style.

I like the theory but haven’t found it to mesh w/reality very often.

#1 Shannon: I must respectfully disagree with you; this post was exactly as long as it needed to be to get all the relevant points across. Just look at the appreciative comments that follow.

It isn’t that one is better than the other, but that they’re different functions, each being productive in it’s own way. Getting into your groove, to the degree it might be possible, could reduce a lot of stress and improve your performance.

Also, I do think age plays a part here. Multi tasking is easier when you’re young (generally) but as you get older you begin to realize the value of concentration.

I’m seeing myself as more of a maker/reluctant manager, and it should help sort things out going forward.

Where I work, we have been using a lot of the philosophy from Toyota (The Toyota Way, you can read about it on Wikipedia or pick up a book) applied to software development. When a defect is found, the source of the defect is tracked down and eliminated — meaning not only the code itself is modified, the process that allowed such a defect to get introduced is eliminated, as well.

We have been working on this program for a few years now, and the results are simply stunning. We have something like 80-90% of our development teams working with zero bug counts, and the remaining 10% are rapidly approaching zero. New features introduce far fewer bugs than before, since we spend more time on requirements and design work and less time on coding. We also do far more comprehensive testing.

This process does, of course, require buy-in from management (not to mention the ability to stay the course), but from our situation, it’s been great. Releases go out on time with ever-increasing quality, features are delivered on time and the overall stress level is consistently lower in the organization. Also, customers know the product is a quality product — so they still purchase it, even in difficult economic times.

Oh well. Coulda…woulda…shoulda. Now I stay home and write blog replies at six in the morning because I can’t sleep even though I’ve been awake for 20 hours. Then in a few days, I’ll probably crash and sleep for 20 hours in a row. Folks with mental health don’t know how good they’ve got it. Anything you can do to reduce stress,increase productivity and keep plugging along at work is worth trying. Trent, you may have saved someone’s job by sharing this concept.

Seriously, being available for interruptions is often a huge part of a path to success. Developing a reputation as helpful and knowledgeable means interrupting your own work to answer coworker questions. Being a mentor also requires being accessible and interruptible. Dealing calmly with crises, responding to changing priorities, serving clients (internal or external), managing up…all of these work best when you can be responsive, and all of these are part of being a leader – at any level.

Two things I’ve learned are crucial. First, there’s no reason you can’t handle a few minute interruption without losing the zone. For me, this is something that just took practice, but now I can put that mental state on hold for a couple of minutes to answer a coworker question, have a quick IM conversation, or fire off an urgent email response, so long as it’s relatively brainless.

Second, where and how you leave off can make a huge difference for getting back into the zone. I find that just after a natural stopping point is best. So if you’re writing, and have just finished a document section, write the first paragraph of the next section and then take a break. When you come back, there’s a bit of information to get you back in your mindset, but not enough to be overwhelming. As a result, I can be virtually as productive in two hourlong intervals as in one two hour interval.

Finally, as someone who is both a maker and manager, changing my productivity schedule was huge. I used to plan my major work for late morning and mid afternoon – early mornings were for waking up, lunch was for socializing, and late afternoon was for planning the evening.

Now, I know that late morning and mid-afternoon are also when I’m most likely to get questions, emergencies, meetings…interruptions in short… because that’s when everyone else is cranking, so I try to sit down and make myself do one important piece of work first thing in the morning before I catch up on blogs, respond to my email, find out what my coworkers did last night, and so on, and a second late in the afternoon when most people are starting to wind down. I’m an evening person, so I usually try to get in an uninterrupted hour in the morning, and two or three in the evening for my “making”. The other stuff still happens…it just happens at different times.

Now that I manage people as well…on the one hand, I’m sympathetic to the challenges of getting into the zone, but on the other…the reality of business is interruptions, and I think many people on at least some occasions use them as an excuse for not putting forth their best effort.

Time spent “in the zone”, I think that’s a lost realization in business. Does anyone agree that we’ve seen a dulling of the lines between management and staff (including makers)?

Management has a crisis, and it’s everone’s crisis–”stop what ever else you’re working on!” (Which itself then ironically is the beginning of the next crisis!)

I think this is largely caused by the slavish devotion to real time delivery. You can and should have that in some businesses, but it’s being attempted in areas where it really isn’t doable, but the public has come to expect it.

Real time may be great for us as consumers, but as workers, it’s keeping our backs against the wall, and we’re often working off balance. Not many people can thrive in that environment, not for long at any rate.

I maintain an open issue list and assign each issue an estimated duration, or how long it should take. Being a developer myself, I have insight into defining these estimates which a non-developer manager might not. And you know what? Some things really should take no more than an hour, even factoring in wind-up time and accounting for the occasional bump in the road. Not every bit of work is like writing the Next Great Application, requiring weeks or months of intense concentration.

When my people spend “units of half a day at least” on small bug fixes or modifications (and it does happen), I get very frustrated. I don’t like to micromanage, but when our rolling backlog of “estimated time to complete everything” averages around 30 days per developer, we don’t have that kind time to waste.

Amen, you hit the nail on the head. If managers really did their jobs, which, to me, is creating and maintaining a workplace that allows people to work easily and without interference to finish assigned and agree upon tasks/deliverables, work would really BE about work. Not politics, personalities and popularity.

But managers for the most part focus primarily on THEIR deliverables to THEIR bosses. Most do not care about their own workforce and do harm by dictating how staff should work, when, etc. instead of focusing on creating an environment where people, who are competent and professional, can be left to do the work needed to meet their deliverables, on deadline.

Good managers don’t allow their people to be forced into unrealistic situations (impossible deadlines, those that negatively impact product/service quality and can ultimately fail customers’ needs, expectations)or to be expected to perform in unhealthy (literally), toxic and demeaning environments. They don’t “play” people against each other and departments against each other to curry favor with the big bosses.

Of course, if you had a company that was structured so that people knew their responsibilities, were left alone to do them, got the resources and cooperation from fellow staffers they needed, they WOULD NOT NEED so many managers, if any at all. So it’s counter-productive for managers to create an environment that could run, essentially, without so many managers, if any at all.

it’s like companies that have offices all around the world and whose staff, for the most part, could telecommute. But since the managers have to be on site, they make sure that their staff is on site too. Even if the staff could be more productive working from home or somewhere else.

You can’t be a manager if all your people telecommute and don’t need you standing over top of them every day to “ensure” their productivity. No wonder so many places, including IT-based, still discourage telecommuting, subtly or otherwise.

This was an intriguing article and shows that you may want to seriously consider expanding beyond your base of writing just on money/frugality/food.

FYI: A janitor isn’t a manager, he/she creates and maintains a clean space. A janitor is also a maker.

And if a manager is good, he/she is also a creator and maker: of a productive and healthy workforce and environment.