Manager Fundamentals
The curriculum.
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- Curriculum
Eight live 45-minute sessions for frontline managers, one a week, each paired with about thirty minutes of homework on the manager's own team. Every session ends with an artifact the manager keeps and uses, from a manager charter in week one to an interview kit and a career path by week eight.
Session by session
What each session covers, and what managers leave with.
Session 01
The Job Is Different Now.
The job people sell you is the engine rebuild. Most of it is oil changes. Session 01 starts with the output swap: before, your output was tickets closed, first response time, renewal rate, quota. After, it's what your team produced.
It names the four thoughts every new manager has ("I was busy all day and I can’t point to anything I did" is one of them), separates management from leadership, and introduces Keep The SCORE, Earn The TRUST. Then it gets specific about what you own now, what you decide alone and what you escalate, including the three things that change when you manage people you used to sit next to.
Walks away with: A Manager Charter covering what you own, what you decide and what you escalate, plus a baseline time audit.
Session 02
The Job Description Is The Spine.
Johnny, a Junior IT Support Technician, closed 20 tickets last week. His teammates closed 45, 44 and 41. Should Johnny be worried? Nobody can answer, because nobody wrote down what good looks like.
Session 02 fixes that with the ten-part role doc: the posting is the skin, the role doc is the spine. Managers pair every volume metric with a quality metric, apply the ninety-day test for required versus preferred, build the ramp, and use an AI prompt to draft the first version fast. Then Johnny comes back: same chart, different answer.
Walks away with: A ten-part role doc, an outcome-based job description, and an AI prompt that drafts the first version.
Session 03
Accountability And Operational Efficiency.
Walks away with: A one-page team scorecard and a queue review agenda.
Session 04
The Team Priority Matrix.
Walks away with: Every person on the team placed on the matrix, with a thirty-day plan for each.
Session 05
Delegation And Capacity.
Walks away with: An SOP library and a delegation register, plus the 70-20-10 capacity framework.
Session 06
The Conversations Managers Avoid.
Walks away with: A structured one-on-one log and feedback drafts in the SBI format, plus a short script for questions about pay.
Session 07
Hiring And Interviewing.
Walks away with: A complete interview kit, built from the Session 02 role doc.
Session 08
Performance Management And Separations.
Walks away with: A performance improvement plan template, an offboarding checklist and a career path that ties back to the Session 02 ramp.
Queue metrics run through Sessions 01, 03 and 05 on purpose, because a healthy queue is one of the program's goals. Johnny, the Junior IT Support Technician, is the running example throughout.
In every session
Built to be used the same week.
- A copy-paste AI prompt that produces that week's artifact.
- Standing Orders: a system prompt managers paste at the start of every AI session, setting the AI's role, limits and operating rules.
- A handout, such as a finished sample job posting for the IT support role in Session 02.
- About thirty minutes of homework, done on the manager's own team.
- The data rule, in every prompt that touches people: company-approved tools, placeholder names, and performance, pay and separation through HR.