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A better title would be "How Management Works in 2018." Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product. The other half is ma

by bb88 8y ago

A better title would be "How Management Works in 2018." Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product. The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. Both of those topics have been left out of this piece.

Pyxl101 8y ago
> Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product This part has not been left out. All of the content about establishing culture, vision, expectations, responsibilities, and so on, is a direct part of managing others' behaviors to produce a great product. What am I missing? > The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. The article talks about this too, especially the importance of communication, consistency, discipline, and process: > [Communication] Communication may be the most important word in this guide. It is the key to making your team operate effectively. Failure to communicate is the #1 cause of people problems (...) > [Consistency] If you are using metrics properly, you’ll be analyzing performance on a daily or weekly basis by consistently reviewing your metrics and measuring if objectives are being achieved. This typically happens in your weekly meetings and written updates. To help facilitate your planning, there are a couple of formal analysis activities to do: > Quarterly Summary. Reflection is a healthy and beneficial process. At the end of every quarter, each functional leader should compile a summary of the objectives achieved. The summary should include metrics and descriptive analysis on where the team succeeded vs. struggled.
- bb88 8y ago
  If it was really as simple as the author has posited, then anyone can be a manager, but this just isn't the case. Many companies have this framework in place, yet the management and the culture is terrible. (Amazon, HP, Microsoft to name a few) In a number of companies I worked at the number one reason people left was a conflict with their supervisor. I think a much better introduction to management is the manager tools podcast. And after listening to about 10 or 20 episodes, you'll see how hard management really is, especially if you want to do it right. https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts
  - shadowmint 8y ago
    This is really great advice, thank you. I think it really crystalized the issues I had reading the article; you can do (or try to do...) all the ‘right things’ and still have a terrible result. If it was easy to get right, things would be great... but its not. Its hard. ...and a slide deck of protips doesn’t cut it as a solution.
    - bb88 8y ago
      Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great resource, but it's not "How to be a manager." Just an example of this, culture is hard to get right. You can't hire yourself to culture. It's something that has to be practiced by all your employees every day. If you have 1000 managers in your corporation, you have 1000 micro-cultures. If a chunk of those managers figure out they can berate their directs on a daily basis without punishment, then those employees experience of your company will be terrible. That's why Amazon employee reports vary wildly from great to horrible. That's because while some managers are truly great, some are truly horrid. The culture isn't enforced equally across the company. Jeff Bezos might treat his corporate execs great on a day to day basis say, but the average employee is usually levels of management removed from this to be inspired. Instead they see coworkers sobbing at their desk because they were fired, or forced to resign. Other's might actually deeply enjoy their time at Amazon, but it's because they got lucky in the micro-culture lottery.
      - shadowmint 8y ago
        This is quite a fair comment, but I can’t tell if you’re agreeing, disagreeing or just making an unrelated point. The point I was making is: this article isn’t practically useful, its just ‘how it would be nice if things were’ not ‘how to get there’. Its got some good ideas, sure... but as you say, reality and ideals aren’t easily matched; so as a step by step guide, its somewhat trivialising what is actually a very hard, entirely unsolved set of problems.
  - laurentb 8y ago
    having been at a small company that swore about manager tools all day long and actively recommended its staff to look into it to grasp some of the concepts and their approaches to things, it is equally as dreadful as any other resource out there. there are more than one way to do things and there are more than one different type of people that you'll have to manage. the reality is that it is a tough job that requires a lot of self awareness and a deep understanding of the risk of management drawing power hunger to really start to grasp how to leverage those tools to be effective.
darkerside 8y ago
I tend to agree. This piece reads more like, how to be a director or VP. Setting the culture is not a front line manager's job any moreso than individual contributors. A manager just needs to keep his folks productive in a way that's aligned with the company goals.
- gregskloot 8y ago
  Thanks for the feedback -- definitely a fair point. I think the piece can be beneficial in different ways for different people. In the first section I noted that CEOs/Founders might use it as a template for their management structure, while department heads (i.e. Directors and VPs) may not care as much about the culture aspects, but the Objectives and Process sections may be most relevant for them.
- gowld 8y ago
  Why? ICs don't pay so much attention to the CEO of the company. An IC is CEO of themself. A manager is CEO of the team. > needs to keep his folks productive in a way that's aligned with the company goals How is that different from "Setting the culture" ?
  - krolley 8y ago
    Because you don't set the values of the company, you just align your team to the goals of your larger organization / company.
    - lostcolony 8y ago
      Yes and no. My current company favors consensus over correctness. They don't realize they do this, but they do, largely because most of the decision makers deal with subjective things, where you can spend hours bikeshedding. When they then hear disagreement on objective things, technical things, they want agreement, and view arguments over technical things as being disagreeable. As a manager I could take that value, consensus > correctness...but I choose not to. Instead, I create an environment where my team instead chooses correctness > consensus, hashing it out internally, hidden from the rest of the company (thereby specifically eschewing 'transparency' as a value, even though it is both one we value internally, and one the business claims is a corporate value), reaching out for more information as needed but not venturing or asking an opinion until we come up with the 'one true decision' that we will pitch to them, saying it has everyone on the team's backing. At that point, the pressure to achieve consensus usually leads to all the stakeholders agreeing, too. This is, obviously, not ideal (to where I'm looking for a job elsewhere), but it's the best I could come up with given the realities of the values the business has taken hold of. But my team's values, both their declaration and their interpretation, are not the company's values.
ttflee 8y ago
It would be easier to learn from the comics at dilbert.com to avoid bad management.
- catach 8y ago
  I feel like it's pretty easy for proto-Pointy-Haired-Bosses to learn entirely wrong lessons from Dilbert strips, even if they get the joke.
adamdrake 8y ago
Spot on. I usually summarize it with clients as "you have to show people you can lead yourself before you can lead others" and that usually gets the idea across. If you wouldn't follow yourself as a leader, then you have some personal work to do. To your second point, one definition of leadership is "getting people to want to do what you want them to do." That's also a pretty reasonable definition, and the way to do that is by providing context. I always ask 3 questions in my discussions: What is the company's mission? How is your team contributing to the mission? How does the work you're doing today contribute to the mission? If a leader, and everyone on their team, knows the answers to all three of those questions, at all times, then they will probably be very effective. https://adamdrake.com/three-things-your-people-need-to-know.html https://adamdrake.com/three-things-your-people-need-to-know....
xstartup 8y ago
Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product. No! you are doing it wrong. Research shows that it's hard to change others behavior. The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. While this is in your hand but you are subject to the same limitation as your team members. Furthermore, managing people is not about making them agree with you but to use a framework of short-term incentives to align long-term goals.
- bb88 8y ago
  > Research shows that it's hard to change others behavior. I said, "managing behaviors", not "changing behaviors". > Furthermore, managing people is not about making them agree with you but to use a framework of short-term incentives to align long-term goals. Isn't that a part of managing behaviors? E.g. I pay my employees money, I tell them what to do, and then they do it. That seems to me I'm managing their behaviors. I guess I don't understand why you're arguing with me on this, since you seem to agree with that point.

by bb88 8y ago

Pyxl101 8y ago

> Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product This part has not been left out. All of the content about establishing culture, vision, expectations, responsibilities, and so on, is a direct part of managing others' behaviors to produce a great product. What am I missing? > The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. The article talks about this too, especially the importance of communication, consistency, discipline, and process: > [Communication] Communication may be the most important word in this guide. It is the key to making your team operate effectively. Failure to communicate is the #1 cause of people problems (...) > [Consistency] If you are using metrics properly, you’ll be analyzing performance on a daily or weekly basis by consistently reviewing your metrics and measuring if objectives are being achieved. This typically happens in your weekly meetings and written updates. To help facilitate your planning, there are a couple of formal analysis activities to do: > Quarterly Summary. Reflection is a healthy and beneficial process. At the end of every quarter, each functional leader should compile a summary of the objectives achieved. The summary should include metrics and descriptive analysis on where the team succeeded vs. struggled.

bb88 8y ago
If it was really as simple as the author has posited, then anyone can be a manager, but this just isn't the case. Many companies have this framework in place, yet the management and the culture is terrible. (Amazon, HP, Microsoft to name a few) In a number of companies I worked at the number one reason people left was a conflict with their supervisor. I think a much better introduction to management is the manager tools podcast. And after listening to about 10 or 20 episodes, you'll see how hard management really is, especially if you want to do it right. https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts
- shadowmint 8y ago
  This is really great advice, thank you. I think it really crystalized the issues I had reading the article; you can do (or try to do...) all the ‘right things’ and still have a terrible result. If it was easy to get right, things would be great... but its not. Its hard. ...and a slide deck of protips doesn’t cut it as a solution.
  - bb88 8y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great resource, but it's not "How to be a manager." Just an example of this, culture is hard to get right. You can't hire yourself to culture. It's something that has to be practiced by all your employees every day. If you have 1000 managers in your corporation, you have 1000 micro-cultures. If a chunk of those managers figure out they can berate their directs on a daily basis without punishment, then those employees experience of your company will be terrible. That's why Amazon employee reports vary wildly from great to horrible. That's because while some managers are truly great, some are truly horrid. The culture isn't enforced equally across the company. Jeff Bezos might treat his corporate execs great on a day to day basis say, but the average employee is usually levels of management removed from this to be inspired. Instead they see coworkers sobbing at their desk because they were fired, or forced to resign. Other's might actually deeply enjoy their time at Amazon, but it's because they got lucky in the micro-culture lottery.
    - shadowmint 8y ago
      This is quite a fair comment, but I can’t tell if you’re agreeing, disagreeing or just making an unrelated point. The point I was making is: this article isn’t practically useful, its just ‘how it would be nice if things were’ not ‘how to get there’. Its got some good ideas, sure... but as you say, reality and ideals aren’t easily matched; so as a step by step guide, its somewhat trivialising what is actually a very hard, entirely unsolved set of problems.
- laurentb 8y ago
  having been at a small company that swore about manager tools all day long and actively recommended its staff to look into it to grasp some of the concepts and their approaches to things, it is equally as dreadful as any other resource out there. there are more than one way to do things and there are more than one different type of people that you'll have to manage. the reality is that it is a tough job that requires a lot of self awareness and a deep understanding of the risk of management drawing power hunger to really start to grasp how to leverage those tools to be effective.

darkerside 8y ago

I tend to agree. This piece reads more like, how to be a director or VP. Setting the culture is not a front line manager's job any moreso than individual contributors. A manager just needs to keep his folks productive in a way that's aligned with the company goals.

gregskloot 8y ago
Thanks for the feedback -- definitely a fair point. I think the piece can be beneficial in different ways for different people. In the first section I noted that CEOs/Founders might use it as a template for their management structure, while department heads (i.e. Directors and VPs) may not care as much about the culture aspects, but the Objectives and Process sections may be most relevant for them.
gowld 8y ago
Why? ICs don't pay so much attention to the CEO of the company. An IC is CEO of themself. A manager is CEO of the team. > needs to keep his folks productive in a way that's aligned with the company goals How is that different from "Setting the culture" ?
- krolley 8y ago
  Because you don't set the values of the company, you just align your team to the goals of your larger organization / company.
  - lostcolony 8y ago
    Yes and no. My current company favors consensus over correctness. They don't realize they do this, but they do, largely because most of the decision makers deal with subjective things, where you can spend hours bikeshedding. When they then hear disagreement on objective things, technical things, they want agreement, and view arguments over technical things as being disagreeable. As a manager I could take that value, consensus > correctness...but I choose not to. Instead, I create an environment where my team instead chooses correctness > consensus, hashing it out internally, hidden from the rest of the company (thereby specifically eschewing 'transparency' as a value, even though it is both one we value internally, and one the business claims is a corporate value), reaching out for more information as needed but not venturing or asking an opinion until we come up with the 'one true decision' that we will pitch to them, saying it has everyone on the team's backing. At that point, the pressure to achieve consensus usually leads to all the stakeholders agreeing, too. This is, obviously, not ideal (to where I'm looking for a job elsewhere), but it's the best I could come up with given the realities of the values the business has taken hold of. But my team's values, both their declaration and their interpretation, are not the company's values.

ttflee 8y ago

It would be easier to learn from the comics at dilbert.com to avoid bad management.

catach 8y ago
I feel like it's pretty easy for proto-Pointy-Haired-Bosses to learn entirely wrong lessons from Dilbert strips, even if they get the joke.

adamdrake 8y ago

Spot on. I usually summarize it with clients as "you have to show people you can lead yourself before you can lead others" and that usually gets the idea across. If you wouldn't follow yourself as a leader, then you have some personal work to do. To your second point, one definition of leadership is "getting people to want to do what you want them to do." That's also a pretty reasonable definition, and the way to do that is by providing context. I always ask 3 questions in my discussions: What is the company's mission? How is your team contributing to the mission? How does the work you're doing today contribute to the mission? If a leader, and everyone on their team, knows the answers to all three of those questions, at all times, then they will probably be very effective. https://adamdrake.com/three-things-your-people-need-to-know.html https://adamdrake.com/three-things-your-people-need-to-know....

xstartup 8y ago

Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product. No! you are doing it wrong. Research shows that it's hard to change others behavior. The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. While this is in your hand but you are subject to the same limitation as your team members. Furthermore, managing people is not about making them agree with you but to use a framework of short-term incentives to align long-term goals.

bb88 8y ago
> Research shows that it's hard to change others behavior. I said, "managing behaviors", not "changing behaviors". > Furthermore, managing people is not about making them agree with you but to use a framework of short-term incentives to align long-term goals. Isn't that a part of managing behaviors? E.g. I pay my employees money, I tell them what to do, and then they do it. That seems to me I'm managing their behaviors. I guess I don't understand why you're arguing with me on this, since you seem to agree with that point.