Fair distribution ..

When a big org and set of new tasks up from grab, there is a lot of attentions from all managers to own the big chunk and take the proven good employees

in their team.

Big chunk should include sexy chunks also. All task is important to business, thats why they are there. But certain sexy works, will need less work for the managers keep the employees motivated.

So the wish list - big chunk of org in terms on employee number, good work and best of best employees !

Now, how would the entire org function this way :)

All the top 2nd lines, setting up 1;1s to put hand kerchiefs, reserve the right chunk for them.

And as a new comer - I only know each employees by name. Not by their true desirability (read a performance and alignment to business).

So, to solve the complex request for all the 2nd lines, devised a new plan !

Told, currently no one owns any of the new pieces. List all the employees, their experience level, their performance rating, their expertise and best fit across all the dozens of managers in the org.

Broken all the new tasks to related 4 major buckets.

Then took the org experience and perfomanace ratio and told the 2nd lines to devide in to those four buckets !

Ground rules -

1. The org experience and performance ratio to be same across all 4 BIG buckets

2. Dont think who is the current manager

3. And none of they know which big bucket they will OWN after this exercise - THIS is the key part

Then I let them lose on allocation and distribution of engineers in to buckets.

Now, because no one knows which bucket they would end up owning, they have all been fair. Say they desperately like few folks. But once in a bucket, they dont know if they would get the bucket.

This seemed to work like a charm. Every bucket for a fair distribution and every task is well funded. Nothing more that required in any bucket !

Its so easy now to go ahead tell who gets which bucket :) My inherent weakness of not knowing each ones capability in the new team is mitigated by combined efforts of my 2nd lines.