# Your output is now the team's output > Where a new lead's time goes and what to stop doing yourself. - Course: [From Specialist to Manager: Your First Year Leading a Team](https://productovi.com/courses/from-specialist-to-manager.md) - Module: The shift: from doing to leading - Lesson 1/32, ~26 min - Source: https://productovi.com/courses/from-specialist-to-manager/your-output-is-the-teams ## Where you work **Alex Tutor:** Welcome to the course. **Klasna** is an online tutoring school from Kyiv: families in Ukraine and the EU buy prepaid packages of English, exam maths and programming lessons. Its Support team, four coordinators working remotely, answers their questions. The spring exam season is coming, and with it far more tickets. **Alex Tutor:** Until December you were a senior coordinator on that team. Since January you lead it and report to Iryna, head of operations. In this course you'll live through your first eight months as lead: talk, delegate, decide and grow people. Today: where your first month really went. ## Where January went **Sofia:** January flew by. I close tickets all day and still finish late. But the queue looks fine, so I guess it works? **Alex Tutor:** Before we check the log, one question about the job itself: what is a lead judged by? > **Exercise:** In January you closed 176 tickets, 13.60% of all tickets the team closed. What is a team lead **mainly judged by**? **Alex Tutor:** Let's check instead of guessing. You logged every January hour by category. Here's the log. **Dataset (CSV):** [Your calendar audit, January 2027](https://productovi.com/datasets/from-specialist-to-manager/your-output-is-the-teams/klasna-lead-calendar-january.csv) Hours per week and category, as you logged them. Weeks start on Monday; the week of 25 January is the first one after you looked at the log. - `week_start`: Monday of the week - `category`: own_tickets, escalations, team_questions, one_to_ones_and_team_meetings, planning or admin_and_tools - `kind`: doing, enabling or overhead - `hours`: Hours spent that week **Alex Tutor:** **Doing**: own tickets and escalations, work a coordinator could do. **Enabling**: team questions, one-to-ones and meetings, planning. **Overhead**: admin and tools. **Alex Tutor:** Start with the biggest line: own tickets as a share of all your hours. > **Exercise:** Use your calendar audit. What **share of all the hours** you logged in January went to **own tickets**? Round to two decimals. ## Doing, enabling, overhead **Sofia:** 84 of 186 hours on my own tickets. And 186 is 26 hours more than four 40-hour weeks. **Alex Tutor:** By kind: doing 117 hours (62.90%), enabling 51 (27.42%), overhead 18 (9.68%). Almost two-thirds went to work a coordinator could do. **Alex Tutor:** That's the heart of the **team lead role**: you're judged by what the whole team delivers. Your 176 January tickets were 13.60% of all tickets closed. The other 86% depend on the four of them. **Sofia:** But I'm good at tickets. Shouldn't I keep doing what I do best? **Alex Tutor:** An hour on tickets closes about two. An hour that unblocks four people, or teaches one of them a hard case, pays back every week after. > **Exercise:** Which of these calendar categories are **enabling** work, the time that makes the team better rather than closing tickets yourself? **Alex Tutor:** One more check on that idea of an hour that pays back. > **Exercise:** Why does an hour spent teaching a coordinator a hard case usually beat an hour on your own tickets? ## When the fastest person is the lead **Alex Tutor:** Now look at who solved the **hardest tickets**, like a refund dispute or a lesson lost to a video failure. December, before your promotion, next to January: > **Hardest tickets: December vs January** > > | | December | January | > |---|---|---| > | Hardest tickets solved by you | 33 | 52 | > | Hardest tickets solved by the four coordinators | 36 | 17 | > | Your share of the hardest tickets | 47.83% | 75.36% | > | Tickets the coordinators handed up | 42 | 101 | > | Your first-reply time (mean of weekly medians) | 11.75 min | 21.5 min | > > Four weeks in each month; 69 hardest tickets in each month. **Sofia:** So the hard tickets came to me, the team solved fewer and passed up more. And my own replies got slower on top of it. **Alex Tutor:** In December Olha solved 14 hard tickets; in January, 6. She didn't get worse. Hard tickets simply reached you first, and everyone learned that passing up is the quickest route. **Iryna:** I'll be direct. In March the exam peak starts and two seasonal coordinators join. If every hard ticket still goes through you, we hit a wall. By the end of February: the team solves the hard tickets, not you. > **Exercise:** From December to January your share of the hardest tickets rose from 47.83% to 75.36%, the coordinators' hard tickets fell from 36 to 17, and hand-ups rose from 42 to 101. What is the best reading? ## What changed in week 4 **Sofia:** After week 3 I looked at the log and moved some hours. Did it help? **Alex Tutor:** Own tickets fell from 23 hours to 15, enabling rose from 11 to 19. And for the first time the coordinators solved more hard tickets than you: 9 against 8. **Alex Tutor:** Escalations didn't move: 9 hours. Habits change more slowly than calendars. **Alex Tutor:** In week 1, own tickets took 48.89% of your hours. Work out the same share for week 4. > **Exercise:** In week 4 (25 January), what **share of that week's hours** went to own tickets? Round to two decimals. ## What to stop doing yourself **Sofia:** So I stop taking hard tickets? Then customers wait while someone learns. **Alex Tutor:** Not to zero. A realistic target week: own tickets 8 hours, escalations 5, team questions 10, one-to-ones and meetings 6, planning 6, admin 5. Doing 32.5%, enabling 55%. **Alex Tutor:** From week 4 that's 7 more hours out of own tickets and 3 more for enabling. Hand over in steps: together first, then they solve and you check, then alone. **Alex Tutor:** Drop three habits: grabbing hard tickets before anyone else sees them, answering a question when a question back would do, and taking every hand-up yourself. **Alex Tutor:** In a remote team this matters more: if the lead answers every chat message in minutes, people stop trying first. Ask "what would you do?" and agree the next step. > **Exercise:** **True or false:** in the target week the lead closes no tickets at all and hands all doing work to the coordinators. **Alex Tutor:** Last one: put the hand-over steps in order. > **Exercise:** Put the steps of handing a hard ticket type to a coordinator in order. ## Your turn: two hand-overs **Iryna:** Send me two lines by Friday: the first two things you hand over, and to whom. Nothing longer. **Sofia:** Olha used to solve the most hard tickets. And Taras passes up more than anyone, 39 in January. **Alex Tutor:** Good starting points. For each: what moves, to whom and why, and the first step that keeps customers safe while they learn. **Alex Tutor:** Your January numbers: 75.36% of the hard tickets, 101 hand-ups. A good plan changes both. > **Exercise:** Iryna wants two lines by Friday: **the first two things you hand over, and to whom**. For each, say what moves, to whom and why that person, and the first step that keeps customers safe while they learn. Use at least one number from the calendar audit or the hardest-tickets table. > **Key ideas** > > - In the **team lead role** you're judged by what the team delivers. In January your 176 tickets were 13.60% of all tickets closed. > - Sort your hours into **doing**, **enabling** and **overhead**. January: 117 / 51 / 18 hours, or 62.90% / 27.42% / 9.68% of 186. > - **The promoted star stalls the team:** your share of the hardest tickets rose from 47.83% to 75.36%, hand-ups from 42 to 101, and your own replies slowed from 11.75 to 21.5 minutes. > - Moving hours works: in week 4 own tickets fell to 31.91% and the coordinators solved more hard tickets than you (9 vs 8). Habits like escalating change more slowly. > - Aim for a realistic week, not zero tickets: 8 hours of own tickets, 22 hours of enabling. Hand over in steps: together, they solve and you check, then alone. **Alex Tutor:** Next time: your first 30 days. Before you change how the team works, listen to the people in it. - Next lesson: [The first 30 days: listen, set expectations, agree how we work](https://productovi.com/courses/from-specialist-to-manager/the-first-30-days.md) --- Productovi Learning. Free, no sign-up needed to read.