4 ms·

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in, but I found this list/notes style basically impossible to parse. Why are any of these things true? Credentials alone are not

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in, but I found this list/notes style basically impossible to parse. Why are any of these things true? Credentials alone are not going to get me to blindly accept any of this; maybe some reasoning would help, a few anecdotes, conversations with other experts (or at least quotes) so I can relate this content to other content and start to fit this info in with everything else I already know… This reads like tacit knowledge, a series of immensely complex if/else statements, that don’t really come across well in text without immense effort, and that effort was not taken here.

afdsasdfe 5y ago
Worked fine for me. The brevity is exactly what I need instead of wading through tons of often unnecessary text. It's all common sense - which too many of my bosses just didn't have - and the summary form help bring them to focus. IMO it's good. YMMV, I appreciate.
- xelxebar 5y ago
  Not OP, but "It's all common sense" is exactly the problem, as I see it. Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge Wrapped Up Into Pithy Statements, in my experience. Sure, each point in the article may sound reasonable, but there are also 1000 other bullet points that also make sense. How do you sort out all the "good" Common Sense from the "bad"? Not to mention that every bullet points also has tons of Gotchas, where it works 80% of the time and enumerating the remaining 20% cases turns into another giant bullet list which must also be internalized as Common Sense to be effectuated well.
  - afdsasdfe 5y ago
    Do you find no value in this at all? Let's take this then > Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge I don't agree, here's some very straightforward 'common sense' statements that I've seen not followed at so many companies Don't micromanage. Do trust, but verify. Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. If the staff you employed know more than you, listen to them. Focus on business outcomes, not the tech. All good rules with few if any gotchas. All horribly broken at various places I've worked.
    - okl 5y ago
      > Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. That statement is vacuous because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". It is easy to agree with your points because they are universal but don't provide any meaningful way to differentiate, e.g., what is and what isn't "treating your staff like crap".
      - afdsasdfe 5y ago
        > because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". Go not by what they say but what they do, and I've known plenty who have treated their staff like utter crap, from screaming abuse at them to ignoring them to undervaluing them to psychological bullying and more. I guess all your workplaces must be like heaven compared to what I've seen. I don't understand where you're coming from. To me it's a decent and useful post and you are just tearing it down for no reason I can see.
        okl 5y ago
        No, I've never been treated like that at work and I wouldn't take it. But I see where you're coming from. Regardless, I'd rather you evaluate the post's content on its own merits rather than from your or my personal background.
        nuggien 5y ago
        It's not useful because it provides empty universally accepted statements (i.e. you don't have to actually have any managerial experience to come up with this list) with no examples of what each means in the context of a relationship with a direct report.
        cutemonster 5y ago
        > It's not useful It was useful to me. And the statements are not empty, not to me at least. (I'm yet another person, I mean, not GP.)
      - hnfong 5y ago
okl 5y ago
I agree, but for a different reason: There's a vast body of knowledge and literature pertaining to managing people -- assuming that and the associated social skills can be substituted by reading a list of semi-structure generalized anecdotes is lightheaded. Also some of the points are very superficial/wrong, e.g.: It's hard to get people to own a problem space fully / But this is the goal / If they are the wrong person, you can still fire them I don't agree with that train of thought at all.
sz4kerto 5y ago
I think almost everything he says is true (based on my own experience with management). The reason this post is good is because it provides very 'quotable' statements. Of course no one will learn how to be a good manager just based on these bulletpoints, but they can serve as a basis of discussion, so for example if you'd like to mentor new managers in your company (and you understand/agree with what the post says) then this can be a good starting point; you pick one quote, e.g. "As a manager, everything is your fault" -- then talk about it at length.
Ecstatify 5y ago
Very generic advice, nothing that hasn't been said in a thousand other blog posts. Honestly one of the worst blogs I've ever seen from a readability perspective.
cdaven 5y ago
> Why are any of these things true? Since you challenge the post here instead of flat-out ignoring it, I believe you think at least some of it may be true, and you want to know more. To me, the bullet points read as titles in a Zettelkasten or personal wiki, or maybe chapter headlines in a book. I'm conviced that there's depth to these points, and the author could write a lot more about everything. (Please do!) Even though the article seems very superficial, I took away at least four points in my personal notes, for further reflection and whatnot: * Trust through transparency * Processes are expectations made explicit * Make true what is real * people x context = output YMMV.

afdsasdfe 5y ago

Worked fine for me. The brevity is exactly what I need instead of wading through tons of often unnecessary text. It's all common sense - which too many of my bosses just didn't have - and the summary form help bring them to focus. IMO it's good. YMMV, I appreciate.

xelxebar 5y ago
Not OP, but "It's all common sense" is exactly the problem, as I see it. Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge Wrapped Up Into Pithy Statements, in my experience. Sure, each point in the article may sound reasonable, but there are also 1000 other bullet points that also make sense. How do you sort out all the "good" Common Sense from the "bad"? Not to mention that every bullet points also has tons of Gotchas, where it works 80% of the time and enumerating the remaining 20% cases turns into another giant bullet list which must also be internalized as Common Sense to be effectuated well.
- afdsasdfe 5y ago
  Do you find no value in this at all? Let's take this then > Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge I don't agree, here's some very straightforward 'common sense' statements that I've seen not followed at so many companies Don't micromanage. Do trust, but verify. Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. If the staff you employed know more than you, listen to them. Focus on business outcomes, not the tech. All good rules with few if any gotchas. All horribly broken at various places I've worked.
  - okl 5y ago
    > Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. That statement is vacuous because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". It is easy to agree with your points because they are universal but don't provide any meaningful way to differentiate, e.g., what is and what isn't "treating your staff like crap".
    - afdsasdfe 5y ago
      > because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". Go not by what they say but what they do, and I've known plenty who have treated their staff like utter crap, from screaming abuse at them to ignoring them to undervaluing them to psychological bullying and more. I guess all your workplaces must be like heaven compared to what I've seen. I don't understand where you're coming from. To me it's a decent and useful post and you are just tearing it down for no reason I can see.
      - okl 5y ago
        No, I've never been treated like that at work and I wouldn't take it. But I see where you're coming from. Regardless, I'd rather you evaluate the post's content on its own merits rather than from your or my personal background.
      - nuggien 5y ago
        It's not useful because it provides empty universally accepted statements (i.e. you don't have to actually have any managerial experience to come up with this list) with no examples of what each means in the context of a relationship with a direct report.
        cutemonster 5y ago
        > It's not useful It was useful to me. And the statements are not empty, not to me at least. (I'm yet another person, I mean, not GP.)
    - hnfong 5y ago

okl 5y ago

I agree, but for a different reason: There's a vast body of knowledge and literature pertaining to managing people -- assuming that and the associated social skills can be substituted by reading a list of semi-structure generalized anecdotes is lightheaded. Also some of the points are very superficial/wrong, e.g.: It's hard to get people to own a problem space fully / But this is the goal / If they are the wrong person, you can still fire them I don't agree with that train of thought at all.

sz4kerto 5y ago

I think almost everything he says is true (based on my own experience with management). The reason this post is good is because it provides very 'quotable' statements. Of course no one will learn how to be a good manager just based on these bulletpoints, but they can serve as a basis of discussion, so for example if you'd like to mentor new managers in your company (and you understand/agree with what the post says) then this can be a good starting point; you pick one quote, e.g. "As a manager, everything is your fault" -- then talk about it at length.

Ecstatify 5y ago

Very generic advice, nothing that hasn't been said in a thousand other blog posts. Honestly one of the worst blogs I've ever seen from a readability perspective.

cdaven 5y ago

> Why are any of these things true? Since you challenge the post here instead of flat-out ignoring it, I believe you think at least some of it may be true, and you want to know more. To me, the bullet points read as titles in a Zettelkasten or personal wiki, or maybe chapter headlines in a book. I'm conviced that there's depth to these points, and the author could write a lot more about everything. (Please do!) Even though the article seems very superficial, I took away at least four points in my personal notes, for further reflection and whatnot: * Trust through transparency * Processes are expectations made explicit * Make true what is real * people x context = output YMMV.