As a manager, what happens if you get hit by a bus?

We will all have to deal with bad things happening that we couldn’t plan for them. When these things happen, our organization or we have to continue to work with a somewhat level of success.

We have chaos engineering for distributed systems and micro-services that allow us to ensure that our system will perform if random components stopped working as planned or completely fail. Many organizations spend time setting up disaster recovery mechanisms that will help deal with an entire data center going down. Still, most don’t have anything in place if an employee is incapacitated.

Since I started my career, I became obsessed with the idea of putting in place processes for when I’m unable to show up. Consequentially, this has allowed me to accept promotions or new opportunities without worrying about my team’s fate.

They are some learning from disaster recovery plans that I use when planning for the bus factor, namely:

• Recovery Time Objective: How long it will take my team to start operating well without me.
• Recovery Point Objective: How often do I keep the team informed of what is happening to continue where I stopped quickly.
• Inventory of information and initiatives: I need to have an easy-to-access source(s) of knowledge of everything happening.
• Identify Personnel Roles: The people that will be capital to the success of a sudden succession plan.
• Run continuous practice Tests to ensure your plan is effective: How often you let other people take the control to get used to having the authority.

There are other things I left aside until I find a way to practice them in my everyday life.

Recovery Time Objective

How long it takes for your team to recover will depend on the organization you work in and how critical your role is, but you should aim for a short time. I have decided that one week is good enough for my teams to adapt to the new reality and for everyone involved to take over all my areas of responsibility.

It is vital for the people involved to know their roles, so they are not surprised and act naturally toward making the plan happen.

Recovery Point Objective

The people taking over from you need to know the state of your organization. They are certain things that are critical for them to know:

• The ongoing projects.
• The ongoing challenges.
• Some people related events, e.g., warning letters, future promotions, probations.
• Documentations.
• Upcoming meetings, milestones, and deadlines.

This information change regularly, and you need to make sure that the people involved in your recovery plan have an updated notion of the state of your organization.

Here, I have decided that the oldest information my collaborators should have is two weeks old. So I try to update them every week when things.

Inventory of information and initiatives

You need to hold, classify, and distribute information well and often make sure that people can continue to function when you are not there to answer questions. I usually distribute information as soon as I get it to the relevant parties, so there is always one more person than me who is aware of a given fact.

This point is one of the hardest because not all the people involved in your recovery plan are purview to the information you hold. That’s why you need to pick the people carefully and include your manager in this plan for the sensitive pieces of information.

Your manager is essential to this plan. I will explain how they are the key player in this plan and why you need to get them onboard fast and do it without sounding like you are suicidal.

(Suicide is a severe issue. My article isn’t about it, but if you find yourself having self-harming thoughts, please reach out to your region’s suicide hotline. Here is the U.A.E. Free hotline. Please take care of yourself. I love you dearly, fellow human.)

Identify Personnel Roles

Your recovery plan is about enabling the people that stay after you leave. Therefore people are the central part of your plan. I recommend that every manager out there finds these key players in their team:

• A successor or second in command.
• A technical advisor, aka “the future principal engineer.”
• Your manager.

Depending on the size of your organization, for example, if you lead multiple teams, you will need multiple people of each category.

I lead multiple teams at Talabat (July 2021) either directly or through another manager that reports to me. So I had to pick a second in command in each squad, two technical advisors, and onboard my manager to this plan.

second in command

This person will replace you forever or temporarily until a more seasoned manager is hired or reassigned. Therefore they need to be aware of what you are doing. They need to know the ongoing project, challenges, and upcoming meetings. You have to mentor them potentially more than the rest of the team because of the capital role in the plan.

Choosing a second in command doesn’t need you to promise them a promotion. Your second in command can be someone without managerial aspiration who needs to run a team for a while until a replacement arrives.

I recommend picking the person you would want to replace you should you get a promotion.

The technical advisor

This person has to be good at what they do and understand what other engineers (potentially from different skill sets) are doing.

This person will load from the second in command when they take control by taking care of the technical issues. At the same time, the second in command is busy getting used to the managerial burden.

The second in command will probably participate in many meetings to reassure the stakeholders. You need someone taking care of the quality of the code and the health of the services during that time.

You will use the tech advisor while you are still leading. Because even though you might be a seasoned manager who has everything in control, you need help running your team. So consider, you asking for the tech advisor’s support as training.

Your manager

Without your manager, this plan won’t work. Your manager needs to “activate” the second in command and tech advisor when you can’t be there anymore. They need to trust that your second in command and tech advisor can do the job well enough and let them take control.

Now you don’t have to tell your manager that you are putting a succession plan in place (although it won’t hurt, it might make them do the same). But what you need to do is tell your manager that you trust your second in command to take over. Regularly give them practical examples of why they are suitable for the job.

Please don’t lie, be honest about it, because the people you selected have to be good enough that you want to brag about them to your manager.

If you have multiple teams under your control, you need a second in command per team, and your manager must know them.

Run continuous practice Test to ensure your plan is effective

The best practice test for your plan is going on holiday 🏖️🏖️🏖️.

Yes, the holiday is a time where you can’t work (DON’T WORK DURING HOLIDAY.), and this gives your time the possibility to practices not having you;

During your holiday, don’t ask your team to slow down. Ensure your team understands that it is business as usual and that your second in command and tech advisor will take their respective responsibility.
Also, inform your manager to talk to your second in command and not to you if something goes wrong.

Another way of running this is to pick a week during the month when you run the one-on-ones and step back from daily operations. It might feel like you are wasting their time, but this is good training for everyone because this is a golden opportunity to upskill and potentially look for better roles.

It is also valuable for you because now you know if your team understands your philosophy. You can see if your team can work coherently with your short, mid, and long-term plan without you being in the room.

You will get answers to these questions while building a highly reliable organization.

Takeaways

You need to plant this correctly, but more importantly, you need to start practicing:

• Give away some responsibility to your team.
• Communicate often about what your priorities are.
• Make sure to have your manager on board.
• Mentor your second in command and tech adviser.

I believe that leaving an organization one day, knowing that they will be okay because you did a fantastic job training the succession, is fulfilling.

Also, you will become a much better manager doing this.

You can download a to-do list for your notion notebook here or you can download this PDF to-do list.

important notes:

• If you feel stuck in your career and you are not sure where to go from here. You can schedule a career coaching call with me; we will work together to ensure your career is a source of happiness, not stress.
• For those who live in Dubai or are planning to move to Dubai, you might be interested in the rental cost calculator that I created:

Find out how much it really cost to rent in Dubai

• And finally, if you want, you can buy me a coffee.

Originally published at https://www.fabricekabongo.com on July 15, 2021.