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> "Can I ask 5 people what their perspective is? Sure. 15? It's getting tough, but maybe. 50? Not really." Don't make one person in charge of 50 people then (a

> "Can I ask 5 people what their perspective is? Sure. 15? It's getting tough, but maybe. 50? Not really." Don't make one person in charge of 50 people then (at least, not their direct line manager). Management where your only option is delegation is not very effective, in my experience. You have to be able to choose when to delegate and when to step in. The only way that works is when the teams are small enough that a single individual knows enough about what's going on to know when to change their leadership approach. Furthermore, of all the managers I've worked under, the most effective ones all have one thing in common... they're protective of their team. This protection only seems to work when a manager understands what their team is going through. Consider a scenario where a management meeting is taking place and a manager from another department is complaining about how long your team is taking to complete a task. If your manager doesn't understand what your team is going through, what's the best answer your manager can give? That they'll "look into it". That may sound reasonable, but it puts your team on the back foot from the start. Effective team protection brings a few key benefits... it builds loyalty, it reduces stress on team members, it focuses energy on key tasks rather than trying to do everything all at once. Managers who don't protect their teams may as well not turn up. If they're just another voice adding to the cacophony of demands, then they could be doing more harm than good.

groby_b 9y ago
> Don't make one person in charge of 50 people then (at least, not their direct line manager). Which is, literally, delegation. Yes, front-line managers should have some understanding of what their people go through, and have direct lines with all of them. But the article didn't refer to frontline managers only. In fact, the opening example was about a VP. (I'd argue that it's mostly not about frontline managers - the title is badly chosen) But even when you're a frontline manager, "step in" is not really a good option. Unless your team is tiny, inserting yourself into actual execution means you just created a huge schedule hazard for your team. For better or worse, as a manager, you work through others. Your direct impact is very limited - your main job is allowing others to have maximum impact. (Protecting your team falls under that rubric - shield people from administrative noise, so they can do their actual job)
- tensor 9y ago
  And in the end it really is "their job." It may not be helpful but it's reality. It's why your job is hard and it's something you need to accept and deal with in a way that doesn't demean, marginalize and slow down the people you serve.
  - groby_b 9y ago
    It is, if you look on externally. If you are the employee wondering "why don't they act on this", that's still not a helpful take. Neither for you - nothing will change - nor for the manager, who might miss out on critical info. Which is why good managers usually make sure that people are aware what the escalation paths are, and how to use them. And why they keep hammering on the point that "not my job" is not helpful - because they (should) know that they operate on necessarily incomplete information, and that they make mistakes they're not aware of that are immediately obvious to people on the front lines. The conundrum of management. It's your job, but you can't do it all by yourself.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "Which is, literally, delegation." Not quite. In the example given by GP, the idea was that understanding what 50 people were going through was not possible. However, it is possible for upper management to build an understanding of what people are going through if line managers are doing their job. Imagine a company structure where you have 10 teams with direct line managers, where each of the line managers has 9 people in their team. Next, imagine that there are 3 senior managers who the 10 line managers report into. Lastly, there is one CEO that the 3 senior managers report into. In total, excluding the CEO, there are 103 employees. How does the CEO get to understand the operational challenges involving 103 employees? It's simple, the line managers summarise the challenges in their team, the senior managers prioritise which of the challenges to discuss with the CEO. Even if the CEO is hands off in the whole process, it's still possible to understand the difficulties being faced by 103 employees, as not all of those 103 employees will face difficulties that senior management need to get involved in, and when they do each of the managers involved in the communication between the team members and the CEO has an understanding of the details, so can answer questions that the CEO has. Therefore, a manager in charge of 50 or more people can understand the operational challenges faced by those people. From the article... "For two years I worked on a project, and when it finally shipped, I can remember our VP talking about the launch. I had never had much exposure to him (I was new, a grad straight out of school), but I remember his speech about the launch clearly. He talked about some of the key features and mentioned a few of the people involved. At the time, I had the impression he was out of touch; the people he recognized weren't the ones who had contributed the most code, and the features he called out were important but not the ones that had been the major engineering challenges. I can remember thinking, "How can he not know what is going on in his team?"." Would you agree that it's possible for a VP to have better information (assuming the people reporting into him are doing their job properly)? Would you agree that they're likely to be a more effective VP if they did? > "Unless your team is tiny, inserting yourself into actual execution means you just created a huge schedule hazard for your team." How so?

groby_b 9y ago

> Don't make one person in charge of 50 people then (at least, not their direct line manager). Which is, literally, delegation. Yes, front-line managers should have some understanding of what their people go through, and have direct lines with all of them. But the article didn't refer to frontline managers only. In fact, the opening example was about a VP. (I'd argue that it's mostly not about frontline managers - the title is badly chosen) But even when you're a frontline manager, "step in" is not really a good option. Unless your team is tiny, inserting yourself into actual execution means you just created a huge schedule hazard for your team. For better or worse, as a manager, you work through others. Your direct impact is very limited - your main job is allowing others to have maximum impact. (Protecting your team falls under that rubric - shield people from administrative noise, so they can do their actual job)

tensor 9y ago
And in the end it really is "their job." It may not be helpful but it's reality. It's why your job is hard and it's something you need to accept and deal with in a way that doesn't demean, marginalize and slow down the people you serve.
- groby_b 9y ago
  It is, if you look on externally. If you are the employee wondering "why don't they act on this", that's still not a helpful take. Neither for you - nothing will change - nor for the manager, who might miss out on critical info. Which is why good managers usually make sure that people are aware what the escalation paths are, and how to use them. And why they keep hammering on the point that "not my job" is not helpful - because they (should) know that they operate on necessarily incomplete information, and that they make mistakes they're not aware of that are immediately obvious to people on the front lines. The conundrum of management. It's your job, but you can't do it all by yourself.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "Which is, literally, delegation." Not quite. In the example given by GP, the idea was that understanding what 50 people were going through was not possible. However, it is possible for upper management to build an understanding of what people are going through if line managers are doing their job. Imagine a company structure where you have 10 teams with direct line managers, where each of the line managers has 9 people in their team. Next, imagine that there are 3 senior managers who the 10 line managers report into. Lastly, there is one CEO that the 3 senior managers report into. In total, excluding the CEO, there are 103 employees. How does the CEO get to understand the operational challenges involving 103 employees? It's simple, the line managers summarise the challenges in their team, the senior managers prioritise which of the challenges to discuss with the CEO. Even if the CEO is hands off in the whole process, it's still possible to understand the difficulties being faced by 103 employees, as not all of those 103 employees will face difficulties that senior management need to get involved in, and when they do each of the managers involved in the communication between the team members and the CEO has an understanding of the details, so can answer questions that the CEO has. Therefore, a manager in charge of 50 or more people can understand the operational challenges faced by those people. From the article... "For two years I worked on a project, and when it finally shipped, I can remember our VP talking about the launch. I had never had much exposure to him (I was new, a grad straight out of school), but I remember his speech about the launch clearly. He talked about some of the key features and mentioned a few of the people involved. At the time, I had the impression he was out of touch; the people he recognized weren't the ones who had contributed the most code, and the features he called out were important but not the ones that had been the major engineering challenges. I can remember thinking, "How can he not know what is going on in his team?"." Would you agree that it's possible for a VP to have better information (assuming the people reporting into him are doing their job properly)? Would you agree that they're likely to be a more effective VP if they did? > "Unless your team is tiny, inserting yourself into actual execution means you just created a huge schedule hazard for your team." How so?