Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

đź“– The Making of a Manager

19 min read

Why did I want to read it?

A classic.

What did I get out of it?

If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager. (Location 348)

What is Management?

A manager’s job is to… build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently. (p. 16)

the problem is that these answers are still an assortment of activities. If I asked you, “What is the job of a soccer player?” would you say that it’s to attend practices, pass the ball to their teammates, and attempt to score goals? (p. 16)

Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. (Location 416)

“My framework is quite simple.” Half of what he looked at was my team’s results (…). The other half was based on the strength and satisfaction of my team—did I do a good job hiring and developing individuals, and was my team happy and working well together? (Location 444)

“Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have,” he says. “That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration.” (Location 454)

Hackman’s research describes five conditions that increase a team’s odds of success: having a real team (one with clear boundaries and stable membership), a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert coaching. (Location 456)

Since she is speaking about managers in general, I wonder what happens with “purpose” between Product Management and Engineering Management:

three buckets: purpose, people, and process. (Location 460)

The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it. (…) sharing it at every opportunity—from writing emails to setting goals, from checking in with a single report to hosting large-scale meetings. (Location 471)

Finally, the last bucket is process, which describes how your team works together. You might have a superbly talented team with a very clear understanding of what the end goal is, but if it’s not apparent how everyone’s supposed to work together or what the team’s values are, then even simple tasks can get enormously complicated. Who should do what by when? What principles should govern decision-making?

Process allergy:

Often, people have an allergic reaction to the word process. For me, it used to conjure up the feeling of glacial progress. (…) There’s some truth to this. We’ve already established that when you are working by yourself, you get to make all the decisions. (…) In a team setting, it’s impossible for a group of people to coordinate what needs to get done without spending time on it.

As the team grows in size, it matters less and less how good she is personally at doing the work herself (…) Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can. (Location 497)

And… ends up in certain people (✍️ Sin machirulos hay paraiso. Una charla heterofriendly sobre management):

A lot of this work is unglamorous. But because it’s important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you.

“Do I Find It More Motivating to Achieve a Particular Outcome or to Play a Specific Role?“. But unfortunately, what we know about human happiness doesn’t match this: we are happier if we love the process, not the outcome (How philosophy can solve your midlife crisis):

This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. This question is more important than any other on the list, and a strong yes can make up for almost anything (Location 564).

the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do. (Location 621)

8. Making things happen

Start with a concrete vision

Create a believable game plan
Craft a plan based on your team’s strengths
Focus on doing a few things well

As Koch writes, “Few people take objectives really seriously.3 They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined.” (Location 2613)

Define who is responsible for what
Break down a big goal into smaller pieces

From your target date, work backward and figure out who needs to do what every week. (Location 2683)

Perfect execution over perfect strategy

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says, “Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had.8 If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.” (Location 2715)

Balancing short-term and long-term outcomes
Define a long-term vision and work backward
Take a portfolio approach

makes sure that a third of her team works on projects that can be completed on the order of weeks, another third works on medium-term projects that may take months, and finally, the last third works on innovative, early-stage ideas whose impact won’t be known for years. (Location 2773)

over and over again the world you’d like to see. Try to connect every task, project, decision, or goal with the organization’s higher-level purpose. If everyone understands the dream, then the team’s actions will be aligned in making it a reality. (Location 2802)

Good process is ever evolving

As a manager, part of your job will be the cultivation of such playbooks: how to run a team meeting, how to close a new hire, how to complete a project on time and on budget. If you find yourself doing a similar thing over and over again, chances are good that it can be codified into an instruction manual or checklist that can make the task go smoother in the future. (Location 2829)

So I came up with a new idea: ask my team to send me what they wanted to highlight for the note. (Location 2837)

I realized I was frequently giving the same feedback over and over again, so I created a document called How to Submit a Highlight for the Weekly Digest. (Location 2843)

This book itself is the latest iteration of my personal playbook, the culmination of years of failing, succeeding, and trying in the endeavor known as management. I’m writing it for you, but I’m also writing it for myself—so that I can remember the mistakes I’ve made and the lessons I’ve tucked away for the future. (Location 2847)

Other raw highlights

Use the newbie card to your advantage by asking as many questions of as many people as you can. You might feel the urge to keep quiet and not draw any attention to yourself until you “know enough,” but if your goal is to ramp up quickly, you need to be proactive in your onboarding. (Location 771)

be up front with people—especially your reports—about the kind of relationship you’d like to build and the kind of manager you want to be. These topics are easier to discuss up front before you’ve settled into patterns and routines. (Location 790)

What did you and your past manager discuss that was most helpful to you? What are the ways in which you’d like to be supported? How do you like to be recognized for great work? What kind of feedback is most useful for you? Imagine that you and I had an amazing relationship. What would that look like? (Location 793)

One of the biggest mistakes new bosses make is thinking they need to jump in and exert their opinions right away to show that they are capable. Actually, that approach tends to backfire. Few things are more annoying than a new person wasting everyone else’s time because they are trying to prove they know something when their opinion isn’t actually informed. (Location 798)

address the elephant in the room: “Since I’m new, you might not feel comfortable sharing everything with me right away. I hope to earn your trust over time. I’ll start by sharing more about myself, including my biggest failure ever …” (Location 811)

you don’t start off your management career standing in front of a packed room delivering a ten-year vision. Instead, most of us begin by managing just a few people. You cultivate an environment of trust while diving into the detailed depths of the work. (Location 875)

What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities.1 The first is that people don’t know how to do good work. The second is that they know how, but they aren’t motivated. (Location 884)

My friend Mark Rabkin shared a tip with me that I love: strive for all your one-on-one meetings to feel a little awkward.3 Why? Because the most important and meaningful conversations have that characteristic. (Location 926)

I wasn’t some authority figure but rather another person also wading through the choppy waters of management. (Location 958)

morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of scanning my calendar and compiling a list of questions for each person I’m meeting with. (Location 1002)

Your job as a manager isn’t to dole out advice or “save the day”—it’s to empower your report to find the answer herself. (Location 1006)

Here are some of my favorite questions to get the conversation moving: (Location 1009)

Identify: These questions focus on what really matters for your report and what topics are worth spending more time on. What’s top of mind for you right now? What priorities are you thinking about this week? What’s the best use of our time today? Understand: Once you’ve identified a topic to discuss, these next questions get at the root of the problem and what can be done about it. What does your ideal outcome look like? What’s hard for you in getting to that outcome? What do you really care about? (Location 1010)

What do you think is the best course of action? What’s the worst-case scenario you’re worried about? Support: These questions zero in on how you can be of greatest service to your report. How can I help you? What can I do to make you more successful? What was the most useful part of our conversation today? (Location 1016)

Good CEOs know that they should double down on the projects that are working (Location 1088)

The rising stars on your team may not be clamoring for your attention, but if you help them to dream bigger and become more capable leaders, you’ll be amazed at how much more your team can do as a whole. (Location 1090)

The second thing I learned is that it is possible to find people who are just as talented and who are humble and kind. It’s not an either-or, as the movies would have you believe. (Location 1106)

YOU DON’T ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE IT WORK (Location 1111)

Managers who pop in out of the blue and throw down new requirements can breed resentment with their team (just Google the term “Swoop and Poop.”) (Location 1312)

ask yourself the following questions: How would the people who know and like me best (family, significant other, close friends) describe me in three words? MY ANSWER: thoughtful, enthusiastic, driven What three qualities do I possess that I am the proudest of? MY ANSWER: curious, reflective, optimistic When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to? MY ANSWER: vision, determination, humility (Location 1572)

What are the top three most common pieces of positive feedback that I’ve received from my manager or peers? MY ANSWER: principled, fast learner, long-term thinker (Location 1578)

Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what does she yell at me for? MY ANSWER: getting distracted, worrying too much about what others think, not voicing what I believe If a magical fairy were to come and bestow on me three gifts I don’t yet have, what would they be? MY ANSWER: bottomless well of confidence, clarity of thought, incredible persuasion What are three things that trigger me? (A trigger is a situation that gets me more worked up than it should.) MY ANSWER: sense of injustice, the idea that someone else thinks I’m incompetent, people with inflated egos What are the top three most common pieces of feedback from my manager or peers on how I could be more effective? MY ANSWER: be more direct, take more risks, explain things simply (Location 1583)

if there is a secret sauce to self-improvement, it’s to ask for feedback from other people all the time. (Location 1837)

Nobody wants to be asked, “Will you be my mentor?” because it sounds needy and time-consuming. But ask for specific advice instead, and you’ll find tons of people willing to help. (Location 1870)

weekly email updates, which worked out beautifully. (Location 1950)

Leo Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with the statement “Happy families are all alike;3 every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Location 1959)

The best idea generation comes from understanding that we need both time to think alone (because our brains are most creative when we’re by ourselves) and time to engage with others (because hearing different perspectives creates sparks that lead to even better ideas). (Location 2035)

In the last few minutes of a meeting, get into the habit of asking, “So before we break, let’s make sure we agree on next steps …” (Location 2097)

Another tactic I like is the “Post-it note” opening. Before launching into a discussion about a complex topic (for example, what our marketing goals should be or what success looks like three years from now), give everyone a pad of Post-it notes and ask them to write down their thoughts on the topic. Then, have the room work in quiet concentration for about ten to fifteen minutes. Afterward, each participant puts his or her notes up on the board and talks through their thinking. Similar ideas are clumped together, and after the very last note has been added, the room discusses the various “clumps.” (Location 2130)

Google crunched the numbers on tens of thousands of interviews to see if there was a correlation between how high an interviewer rated the interaction and how well the candidate went on to perform. What they found was that there was “zero relationship” and that it was “a complete random mess.”2 (Location 2287)

Look for Passionate Advocates Rather Than Consensus (Location 2338)

my favorite all-purpose questions: What kinds of challenges are interesting to you and why? Can you describe a favorite project? This tells me what a candidate is passionate about. What do you consider your greatest strengths? What would your peers agree are your areas of growth? This question gets both at a candidate’s self-awareness and what his actual strengths and weaknesses might be. Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now? This lets me understand the candidate’s ambitions as well as how goal oriented and self-reflective she is. What was the hardest conflict you’ve had in the past year? How did it end, and what did you learn from the experience? This gives me a sense of how the candidate works with other people and how he approaches conflict. What’s something that’s inspired you in your work recently? This sheds light on what the candidate thinks is interesting or valuable. (Location 2362)

the recruiting progress can be simply understood as a funnel of numbers. (Location 2417)

The lesson: Recruiting top talent is all about the relationships you build. Good, seasoned leaders aren’t short of options, because everybody wants to hire them. When they’re looking for their next role, they tend to choose opportunities that they already know to be great. (Location 2479)

Process is simply the answer to the question “What actions do we take to achieve our goals?” Even if that answer isn’t written down anywhere, it still exists. (Location 2542)

your plans take into account your team’s unique capabilities. (Location 2598)

Decisions will be made without your input, and things will be done differently than how you might personally do them. At first, this can feel disorienting, like you’re losing control. But empowering your leaders is a necessity. One of the biggest challenges of managing at scale is finding the right balance between going deep on a problem and stepping back and trusting others to take care of it. (Location 2893)

As my team grew, my capacity to spend long, focused blocks on a single topic began to shrink. (Location 2917)

Over time, I came to understand that this was the job. (Location 2922)

my ability to context switch also needed to keep pace. I discovered a few techniques to make this easier: scanning through my calendar every morning and preparing for each meeting, developing a robust note-taking and task-management system, finding pockets for reflection at the end of every week. (Location 2923)

I’ve come to accept that there will always be a dozen different issues to work through at any given time—some big, some small, and some unexpected—and as the manager of a large team, you learn to roll with it. (Location 2925)

you are only one individual with a limited amount of time. You can’t do everything, so you must prioritize. (Location 2933)

At higher levels of management, the job starts to converge regardless of background. Success becomes more and more about mastering a few key skills: hiring exceptional leaders, building self-reliant teams, establishing a clear vision, and communicating well. (Location 2943)

you need to actually believe your report is capable of solving the problem. (Location 2987)

The historian Yuval Noah Harari, in his bestselling book Sapiens, theorizes that the one unique trait that made the human species the most successful in the world is that we are able to share the same vision in our heads, which helps even complete strangers work together. “We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers,”1 says Harari. (Location 3003)

To create a shared vision of what’s important, ask yourself two things. The first is, What are the biggest priorities right now for our team? Then, talk about those with your reports and discuss how they might play a role. (Location 3007)

Once these top priorities are covered, ask yourself the second question: Are we aligned in how we think about people, purpose, and process? Digging in one level deeper, does your report know what matters to you when it comes to team building? Does he understand what you expect of him as a coach for his own reports? Do you see eye to eye on which of his team members are knocking it out of the park and which aren’t meeting expectations? (Location 3011)

The growth mindset taught me that anyone can get better at anything given the will, hard work, and time. The question was, how long would it take? And how would that affect the team? (Location 3042)

AIM TO PUT YOURSELF OUT OF A JOB (Location 3058)

As for what you shouldn’t delegate, consider the unique value you’re able to add when it comes to the organization’s top priorities. Some of that flows from your personal strengths. For example, I’m a good writer, (Location 3090)

Identifying and communicating what matters. (Location 3097)

Hiring top talent. (Location 3104)

Resolving conflicts (Location 3108)

The act of constantly trying to replace yourself means that you create openings to stretch both your leaders and yourself. Right ahead is another mountain that’s bigger and scarier than the one before. (Location 3122)

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CURRENT TEAM What are the first three adjectives that come to mind when describing the personality of your team? What moments made you feel most proud to be a part of your team? Why? What does your team do better than the majority of other teams out there? If you picked five random members of your team and individually asked each person, “What does our team value?” what would you hear? How similar is your team’s culture to the broader organization’s culture? Imagine a journalist scrutinizing your team. What would she say your team does well or not well? When people complain about how things work, what are the top three things that they bring up? UNDERSTANDING YOUR ASPIRATIONS Describe the top five adjectives you’d want an external observer to use to describe your team’s culture. Why those? Now imagine those five adjectives sitting on a double-edged sword. What do you imagine are the pitfalls that come from ruthless adherence to those qualities? Are those acceptable to you? Make a list of the aspects of culture that you admire about other teams or organizations. Why do you admire them? What downsides does that team tolerate as a result? Make a list of the aspects of culture that you wouldn’t want to emulate from other teams or companies. Why not? UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE On a scale from one to nine, with nine being “we’re 100 percent there” and one being “this is the opposite of our team,” how close is your current team from your aspirations? What shows up as both a strength of your team as well as a quality you value highly? Where are the biggest gaps between your current team culture and your aspirations? What are the obstacles that might get in the way of reaching your aspirations? How will you address them? Imagine how you want your team to work in a year’s time. How would you describe to a report what you hope will be different then compared to now? (Location 3154)

I’ve found that the more frequently and passionately I talk about what’s important to me—including my missteps and what I’ve learned through them—the more positively my team responds. I’ll get notes from people saying, “I care about that too. How can I help?” (Location 3193)

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