Manager Philosophy
Created 2016-11-04 / Edited 2016-11-04
- Meet people where they're at
- Taylor the guidance style based on the situation
- Do things on purpose
** Be hands off because you want to, not because you are too busy
** Be hands on because you want to, not because you haven't stepped back to see how to empower - Top down strategy (problems), Bottom up tactics (solutions)
- With great responsibility comes great power
- The price of many things is time, the most precious commodity. It takes time to manage - if you are not spending time you are likely not managing
- People mostly want to be happy and do the right thing. If they aren't, try to figure out why. * Often people aren't doing what you want because of other factors - they don't understand (and thus buy in) to the bigger picture. Assuming a base level of cooperation is a better starting point
- Feedback works well when you can illustrate the results of actions (impact feedback). The causality chain is an important part to everyone.
- Get people to "consent" - full agreement is great, but there is a space between full agreement and veto that can be used for compromise and experimentation
- Build and use tight feedback loops!
** In building code things
*** Edit code, see live results
*** Push code, get expensive test results
*** Submit PR, get other dev feedback
*** Deploy to staging, get qa and stakeholder feedback
*** Deploy to production, get real world data and usage experience from users
** Same patterns apply for manager feedback loops
** Instant feedback let's us dynamically adjust, like riding a snowboard
** If feedback is fast enough then things become an extension of our body
** Slower feedback limits us to slow adjustment
** Reaction time to feedback is proportional to the event to feedback delay
** Force feedback loops to exist; have 1-1 or solicit impactful feedback
** Everyone needs feedback, even bosses - Humans are humans - messy flawed amazing machines made of meat. They can be programmed directly to a degree, but are mostly self-programming. Look for ways of enhancing the self program system - feedback of the results of actions is a great way to do this, as their self-programming system is entirely based on feedback mechanisms
- Look for ways to leverage strengths
- Help people imagine a better world and figure out how to move in that direction
- "The only difference between science and screwing around is writing it down". Write down your plan and results.
- Decrease the barrier to doing things right. Make it so it is easier, more convenient, more joyous to do things right than to do them wrong
- Failure is required for learning
- Don't test people, instead talk to them and teach them, ensure succeed