What did you learn today?

Management is defined in many different ways. Old school (and dying off for very good reasons) is that the manager makes decisions from the mountain top and directs those under them on what to do and how to do it. This is the original definition of management.

It is also defined by many as a "coach" (I dislike that word because it is more than that). And in this case you are trying to get people to do the best they can in the job they have. This can ran the gamut from mere facilitator to hard-ass guidance.

There are numerous other definitions but they all have one thing in common, the manager is working to get the people under them to be as effective as possible. And that misses a gigantic part of the job.

What did you learn today? What did you learn that makes you more effective at your job? Because if you're not learning, then you aren't going to get much better at your job. And if you aren't learning, then you are not going to be able to continuously improve the performance of those that work for you and work with you.

You also need to be learning daily. Managing people is a very difficult job to do well. Very very difficult. If you learn only at a couple of conferences a year - how much can you improve things a year? If you learn something new every couple of weeks, that's what - 20 items/year?

It's an incredibly competitive rapidly evolving world out there now. The companies you compete against do have people working to improve things every day. And you won't be able to discover much totally on your own as opposed to what is out there to learn.

Easy to say. The trick is in how to pull it off. There are many ways, here are a couple I use:

1. When we have something go wrong, I pull the people involved together and we discuss what we should have done different so that we did not hit this problem. This is not what we could have done better to fix it. This is not assigning blame. This is figuring out how to avoid a repeat. What is interesting about this is that usually the trick is not the big problem that occurred, but a smaller issue that led to the big problem - and something much easier to fix.
2. Lunch. I try to meet someone new for lunch once a week to pick their brain. And some of the most interesting conversations are with people who have no expertise in the high-tech industry. It's that very different view that brings up some very different ideas.
3. Ask your manager and peers for feedback and suggestions. Most people are afraid to do this because they don't want to be criticized. But you will find if you do this regularly it becomes a support system.

Read books, talk to your kids, attend meetings with interesting discussions, discuss issues in blogs, ... the list goes on and on. And in all these cases, view all of these people as a resource where you learn something new. Where you learn many things new. And from that you never know what will turn out to be helpful in your job.

Plus it makes life a lot more interesting for you.