Chapter 2: Becoming Elite Manager with Crossover RemoteCamp for Managers
Intro
As presented in the 1st chapter, I’m a student at Crossover RemoteCamp for Managers (Read Chapter 1), in short, a 4-week program design for a new management paradigm, where one has to learn and master new management frameworks in order to be successful with Crossover.
The cool thing about the training program is that all the frameworks have to be applied towards a real team, with real professionals. You get real business problems to solve, things that are happening now and you have to learn quick everything about the assigned team.
2nd week, new frameworks: Rank and Review, Shrink to Grow
The 2nd week of the this exciting journey unveiled new powerful management frameworks: Rank and Review and Shrink to Grow.
After 2 weeks of doing daily checking chats with the Customer Support Level 2 team that I’m shadowing during the program, I thought I know everything concerning individual performance of my team members.
Actually, you know many things about their performance, but you cannot say ot for sure who is top performer and who is bottom performer. And it’s difficult to achieve this if you don’t compare each individual performance against the same reference. Therefore, I created a very objective Quality Bar for my team to measure the quality of the resolved support tickets. The goal set was 100% of my team resolved support tickets to meet the Quality Bar before being delivered to the customer (including the SLA as a component of the Quality Bar). Indeed, this is aggressive, but the program is everything about Quality and so it’s my goal.
So, I went into details, making sure the Quality Bar components support the business needs and are easily measurable. Once done, doing the team ranking was quite an easy task. However, I wasn’t creating the ranking just to understand who’s the top and the bottom performer, but to discover all the coaching details my team members need. My personal goal was to narrow down the differences between team members by providing tailored and valuable coaching to everyone. I’d like to reach a stage where the team encompasses just top performers. That’s the beauty of the rank and review challenge.
Happy with my insights discovered during Rank and Review, I immersed into Shrink to Grow paradoxical truth: the best way to grow, or to improve quality, is actually to first get smaller and fix the quality issues your team may have.
I wanted to coach all my team members, but I discovered there is not enough time to spend for the whole team. Based on my mathematical calculations I observed that I can improve even more the quality if I send 3 team members to dedicated and specialised training in order to close their knowledge gap which prevents them of being top performers, too. Win, win, isn’t it? :)
Moving forward
Now I look forward to facing the next challenges next week, more frameworks to be discovered, more fun to experience!
As I told you on my 1st chapter, I was late with my deliverables for the 1st week. Actually, this is normal, 1st week is mainly dedicated for interacting with the team members you are shadowing, you really need almost whole week to dedicate it for daily checking chats with them.
But by organising better my calendar (another challenge during the program!), I’m back on track. Even more, I really enjoyed the RemoteCamp so far, even though I must confess the program is really intense, but equally rewarding!
Q&A
I tried to imagine some questions you may have about the program. Please let me know if you have other questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
- How difficult is this program? How risky is to leave my actual job and to join thev Crossover RemoteCamp Program?
Crossover is without any doubt an extremely challenging workplace with a very aggressive culture and goals towards performance and business goals.
RemoteCamp it’s a 2-way benefit program, both parties (Crossover and the students) have 4 weeks to discover if they fit together. On top, Crossover pays you the 4 weeks full-time training program at the same level as the job’s hourly rate. It’s a chance you shouldn’t miss!
2. How was your experience with the RemoteCamp coaches?
The program’s content is great, also the structure is well design. On top, you interact with amazing coaches, they are always supportive and their precious guidance is always helpful to deliver on time at the right quality.
