Automate As Much As You Can [Rino Jose]

Automation is the ultimate delegation

One of the classic traits of an effective leader and manager is that they delegate work. They find ways to offload work to others so that they can focus on activities that have higher value to the organization. If the work that's delegated is challenging because it requires intelligence and insight, then this provides junior executives and managers with an opportunity to develop their skills. If, on the other hand, the work is doesn't require insight and thought, it becomes a distraction that prevents people from working on things that matter more. When this happens, the work should be delegated further.

Of course, the ultimate delegation is to simply automate the work. If you can automate any of your work, you should. Having people do work that can be done for them is a waste of time, effort, and money..

Capture what you've learned

Automation enables you to capture and use what you've learned. It's a way of documenting the lessons your team and organization have learned over time. It lets you leverage your project retrospectives, postmortems, and brainstorming meetings. It helps puts into practice what you've decided to do.

People are overloaded today. It's hard to find anyone who has the spare time to shepherd change through an organization. If, however, change can be automated -- at least in part -- the effort of realizing change can be greatly reduced.

Don't keep reinventing the wheel

If you haven't automated how you do typical tasks or how you collect status or how you manage projects, then your organization will reinvent these things differently each time. If you have multiple teams within your organization, each team will develop their own way of doing things. There won't be consistency in how anything is done.

Not only will people be wasting their time reinventing new ways for doing the same thing, but they will multiply the effort it takes you to understand the status of anything. You won't know where your team is at any given time. You won't have a clear view of where projects will land or where the bottlenecks are. Some people will give you spreadsheets. Some people will give you subjective reports with lots of handwaving. You'll have information fragments that don't fit together. When things go wrong, you'll be surprised. When you ask why, people will externalize blame. It might not be anyone's fault -- lacking consistency is really to blame.

Automate to get into a rhythm

Stop doing things differently each time. Use templates for your meetings. Document your workflows (more in an upcoming post). Use tools to automate as much as you can.

Automation helps you get into a rhythm. It provides the infrastructure for your work. It enables you to apply your skills and insight directly to your problems instead of wasting effort on figuring out how to apply them.

When you automate things, people know what to expect. Each time you perform a certain type of work, it becomes easier to do. Every team starts executing consistently. Your teams will find their rhythm and their pace. Your teams will develop organizational momentum.

Keep questioning what you automate

Building organizational momentum is great. Teams are more effective. People have greater impact. Everything runs better. However, don't forget to question what you automate.

When we learn new lessons or when the environment in which we work changes, we need to ask if we're still automating the right things. If something is no longer necessary, we should drop it. If we're missing something, we should add it. If what we're automating isn't working, we need to fix it.

We automate to make ourselves more effective, not to stop thinking. It's ok to create and use cogs to make our jobs easier; it's not ok to become one.

(originally posted on Management Revolution)

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Rino Jose is the principal co-founder of Lakeway Technologies, a startup that develops web apps for automating engineering and project management. He has developed software and managed software teams professionally for over 15 years. As a manager and management consultant, he has led turnarounds for multiple engineering teams. Rino holds a B.S. from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania with cross-disciplinary focus between Engineering, Computer Science, and the Wharton Business School.