Digital Practitioner to Digital Manager - Herdy Ramanuj

What are the biggest changes you have experienced in becoming a manager from working on your own digital actions?
One of the biggest changes you face is that you no longer see yourself as one entity. The minute you start to manage other people, you see yourself as more than just an individual delivering campaigns, you see yourself as a collective. You are responsible for the team and everyone in it, productivity, output, culture and even wellness; these are all aspects that make up the multi pillared manager you've become! Another change is you start to feel the weight of the organisation more heavily. You begin to look holistically at the impact of the actions of your team and yourself, but prior the only impact one could control was the performance of our campaigns, but now our actions directly lead to the commercial wellbeing of the agency! 

Have you made any sacrifices?
Sacrifices? Well, it depends on what type of leader/manager you want to be. We all sacrifice one thing or another but the difference has to be that the sacrifice is worth it. I'm a naturally social person, in fact, I could go as far as to say that I crave social situations. However, I learnt from my mentor, that to lead effectivity there must be a boundary between the manager and those that are being managed. I rarely socialise with my team outside of work, barring organisation events. To some, this may seem extreme, but again I ask, what type of leader do you want to be? Another worthy sacrifice is time. You sacrifice a lot of it, to get you and the team, to where it needs to be. However, that should come as no surprise. 

What have been the challenges?
All roles are challenging, without challenge, there is no growth. Initially, composure was a big development opportunity for me. More specifically, keeping composure when things go wrong or when disciplining team members, I stride ahead of where I use to be but there is always room for improvement. One thing that is overlooked, when managing, is that often people assume that as you step up you no longer have to deal with the day-to-day management of accounts. Yes, you no longer sit in campaigns and optimise, however, your responsibility now falls across the entire client portfolio ensuring the team adheres to best practice, KPIs are met, clients are happy and performance is strong. Whilst also keeping your delivery skills one step ahead of the team. Remember, just because you may not be delivering channel activity as much as you were, if something goes wrong, you will be first in the firing line.