You will write a one-page charter that states what your team is for and how you will spend your time as its manager.
Ask most new managers what their team is for, and you get either a long pause or a list of everything the team does. Ask what success looks like in three months, and the answer is usually "keep things running". Ask how they plan to spend their own week, and they laugh. That is the gap this exercise closes. In about half an hour you will write one page that answers all three questions, and then you will check it with the person you report to.
You will need your calendar audit from lesson 1.1, Your output is now your team's output, and your keep and hand-over list from lesson 1.2, What to keep doing yourself and what to let go.
The charter has four parts. Keep each one short enough that the whole thing fits on a single page.
The first is the team's purpose: one sentence a new hire could repeat after their first week. It names who the team serves and what it does for them. It should be specific enough to rule some things out.
Next come the three outcomes that would make the next 90 days a success. These are results, not activities. "Run weekly check-ins" is an activity. "Every client gets their weekly report by Monday 6pm, every week" is an outcome. Three is deliberate. With five or six, nothing is a priority.
The third part is your target time split: how many hours a week you plan to spend on hands-on work and how many on managing, with a line on what managing includes for you.
Last, a short section on how you will work: when you will hold one-on-ones, how the team should reach you, and one thing you will stop doing.
Step 1 is to write the purpose sentence. Wei Ling's first attempt was "We provide excellent customer service to our clients." Every customer team on earth could say that, so it rules nothing out. Her second attempt: "We make sure our 40 business clients always know where their shipments are and get problems fixed within one working day." The numbers are her team's own, and a new hire could repeat it.
Step 2 is to pick the three outcomes. Start from what is going wrong, what your manager has asked for, and what your team keeps raising. Wei Ling chose these: client reports on time every week for the quarter; Arjun running one of the two top-tier accounts on his own by the end of month two; and every escalation logged with a named owner, so nothing goes quiet for more than a day.
Each one is something she and her manager could look at in 90 days and agree was done or not done.
Step 3 is to set your time split. Use your calendar audit as the starting point. Wei Ling's audit showed about 31 hours of doing and 9 of managing in a 40-hour week. That is roughly 78 percent doing. She set a target of 16 hours doing and 24 managing, so 40 percent and 60 percent, to reach by the end of the 90 days. Those are her figures for her team, used here as an example. A manager of three people in a technical role might sensibly keep half their week hands-on. A manager of eight probably cannot keep more than a few hours. Pick a number you could defend, then write down what you will hand over to reach it, using your list from lesson 1.2.
Step 4 is to write how you will work. Wei Ling wrote: one-on-ones every week, 30 minutes, with each of her five people; urgent questions on the team chat, everything else in the shared tracker; and she will stop rewriting other people's client emails late at night and give feedback on them instead.
Step 5 is to share it with your manager and ask for comments. Send the page and ask for fifteen minutes to talk it through. Ask three things: does the purpose match how they see the team, are these the right three outcomes, and is there anything coming in the next 90 days that would change them?
A finished charter fits on one page and has no jargon in the purpose. Each outcome can be checked as done or not done. The time split uses real hours, not a vague "more time managing". It also carries your manager's comments, with any changes you made.
Wei Ling's manager, Daniel, made one change. He told her a new client was being onboarded in month two and asked her to add it as an outcome. She did not want four outcomes, so she merged it with the escalations goal. The conversation itself was worth more than the edit. She learned what he was worried about, and he saw she had a plan.
The most common mistake is writing a purpose that sounds like a company slogan. If the sentence would fit any team in any company, rewrite it with your team's real clients or users in it.
The second is choosing outcomes your team cannot affect. "Increase company revenue" may matter, but your customer operations team does not control it. Choose results your team's work moves directly.
The third is skipping step 5. A charter your manager has never seen is a private wish list. Once they have read and commented on it, it becomes an agreement you can point back to when priorities collide, and you will come back to it in module 8 when you write your 90-day management plan.
You have your audit, your list and the four parts. Write the page now, while your calendar audit is still fresh, and send it before you can talk yourself out of it.
Complete the one-page charter template and send it to your manager with a request for fifteen minutes of feedback.
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