You will be able to write a one-page charter that says what your team is for and how you will spend your time as its manager.
Wei Ling has just been made manager of a customer operations team, with five direct reports who look after 40 business clients. Like most new managers, she has no ready answer to three plain questions.
Ask a new manager what their team is for, and you usually get a long pause or a list of everything the team does. Ask what success looks like in three months, and the answer is "keep things running". Ask how they will spend their own week, and most of them laugh.
You can close that gap with one page that answers all three questions, followed by a check with the person you report to. Writing the page takes about half an hour. You need two things from earlier: the calendar audit from Lesson 1.1, "Your output is now your team's output", and the keep and hand-over list from Lesson 1.2, "What to keep doing yourself and what to let go".
A charter is a one-page document in four parts: the team's purpose, three outcomes for the next 90 days, a target time split, and how you will work. Your manager reviews it. Keep each part short enough that the whole thing fits on a single page. You write it in five steps, one for each part and then the conversation with your manager.
Step 1 is the purpose: one sentence a new hire could repeat after their first week. It names who the team serves and what the team does for them, and it is specific enough to rule some things out.
Wei Ling's first attempt was "We provide excellent customer service to our clients." Every customer team could say that, so it rules nothing out. Her second attempt was "We make sure our 40 business clients always know where their shipments are and get problems fixed within one working day." It uses her team's real numbers, and a new hire could repeat it.
The most common mistake at this step is a purpose that sounds like a company slogan. If your sentence would fit any team in any company, rewrite it with your team's real clients or users in it, and take out any jargon.
Step 2 is picking the three results that would make the next 90 days a success. An outcome is a result you can check as done or not done. An activity is something the team performs. "Run weekly check-ins" is an activity. "Every client gets their weekly report by Monday 6pm, every week" is an outcome.
Three is a deliberate number, because with five or six, nothing is a priority. To choose them, start from what is going wrong, what your manager has asked for, and what your team keeps raising. Each outcome has to be something you and your boss could look at after 90 days and agree was done or not done.
Choose results your team's work moves directly. "Increase company revenue" may matter, but a customer operations team does not control it, so it does not belong on the page. Outcomes the team cannot affect are the second common mistake.
Wei Ling chose three: client reports on time every week for the quarter; Arjun, one of her team, 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.
Step 3 is your time split: the weekly hours you plan for hands-on work versus managing, plus a line on what managing includes for you. Start from your calendar audit.
Wei Ling's audit showed about 31 hours doing and 9 hours managing in a 40-hour week, roughly 78 percent doing (an example figure). She set a target of 16 hours doing and 24 managing, 40 percent and 60 percent, to reach by the end of the 90 days. Those figures suit her team only.
The right split depends on your situation. A manager of three people in a technical role might sensibly keep half the week hands-on, while a manager of eight probably cannot keep more than a few hours hands-on. Pick a number you could defend, then write down what you will hand over to reach it, using your Lesson 1.2 list. Use real hours, since "more time managing" is too vague to check later.
Step 4 is how you will work: when you hold one-on-ones, how the team should reach you, and one thing you will stop doing. Wei Ling holds weekly 30-minute one-on-ones with each of her five people. Urgent questions go on the team chat and everything else goes in the shared tracker. She will stop rewriting other people's client emails late at night and will give them feedback on the emails instead.
Step 5 is sharing it. Send the page to your manager and ask for fifteen minutes to talk it through. Ask three questions: does the purpose match how they see the team, are these the right three outcomes, and is anything coming in the next 90 days that would change them. Write down their comments and the changes you make in response.
Wei Ling sent hers to her manager, Daniel. He made one change: a new client is being onboarded in month two, and he asked her to add it as an outcome. She did not want four outcomes, so she merged the onboarding into the escalations outcome. From the conversation she learned what Daniel was worried about, and he saw that she had a plan. A conversation like this can be worth more than any edit it produces.
Skipping this step is the third common mistake. A charter your manager has never seen is a private wish list. Once your manager has read and commented on it, it becomes an agreement you can point back to when priorities collide.
A finished charter passes these checks:
It fits on one page. The purpose has no jargon. Each outcome can be checked as done or not done. The time split uses real hours. It carries your manager's comments and any changes you made in response.
You will come back to the charter 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.
Fill in the one-page charter template and send it to your manager, asking for fifteen minutes of feedback.
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