The Making of a Manager, Julie Zhuo

Post Tag: bookmanagement

Коротка и полезная книга о начале карьеры менеджера. Последняя часть, про быстро растущую команду, не самая необходимая. А остальные просто отличные.

Заметки:

• THE THREE THINGS MANAGERS THINK ABOUT ALL DAY

  • I’ve come to think of the multitude of tasks that fill up a manager’s day as sorting neatly into three buckets: purpose, people, and process.

  • The purpose is the outcome your team is trying to accomplish, otherwise known as the why. Why do you wake up and choose to do this thing instead of the thousands of other things you could be doing? … Everyone on the team should have a similar picture of why does our work matter? If this purpose is missing or unclear, then you may experience conflicts or mismatched expectations.

  • 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.

  • The next important bucket that managers think about is people, otherwise known as the who. Are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work?

  • If you don’t have the right people for the job, or you don’t have an environment where they can thrive, then you’re going to have problems. … To manage people well, you must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), make good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best.

  • 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?

  • Often, people have an allergic reaction to the word process. For me, it used to conjure up the feeling of glacial progress. I imagined myself flailing around in huge stacks of paperwork, my calendar filled with tedious meetings. In a processless world, I imagined myself free to do whatever was needed to make things happen quickly, with no red tape, no barriers, no overhead.

• I learned then one of my first lessons of management—the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

• Your path as a new manager probably took one of the four routes below:

  • Apprentice: Your manager’s team is growing, so you’ve been asked to manage a part of it going forward.
  • Pioneer: You are a founding member of a new group, and you’re now responsible for its growth.
  • New Boss: You’re coming in to manage an already established team, either within your existing organization or at a new one.
  • Successor: Your manager has decided to leave, and you are taking his place.

• Remember our definition of management? A manager’s job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together through influencing purpose, people, and process. With a small team, maintaining a shared sense of purpose is straightforward. You don’t get many crossed wires when your team can still fit around one table. That leaves people and process to focus on. Of those two, people are by far the most important.

• If you have five people on your team, four of whom are doing well and one who isn’t, you may feel like you should focus most of your time and energy on the struggling report because you want to “fix” the problem. But in the same way that individuals should play to their strengths, so should you pay attention to your team’s top talent—the people who are doing well and could be doing even better. Don’t let the worst performers dominate your time—try to diagnose, address, and resolve their issues as swiftly as you can. This is counterintuitive because your strongest reports aren’t likely asking for your help.

• So what constitutes “feedback”? Early in my career, I defined it as “suggestions for improvement.” …That turned out to be quite a narrow definition. There’s a whole swath of things beyond “suggestions for improvement” that can inspire someone to take positive action. For one, feedback doesn’t have to be critical. Praise is often more motivating than criticism. And for another, you don’t always have to start with a problem. Below, you’ll find the four most common ways to inspire a change in behavior.

  • Set Clear Expectations at the Beginning
  • Give Task-Specific Feedback as Frequently as You Can
  • Share Behavioral Feedback Thoughtfully and Regularly
  • Collect 360-Degree Feedback for Maximum Objectivity

• How do you ensure that your feedback can be acted upon? Remember these three tips.

  1. Make your feedback as specific as possible.
  2. Clarify what success looks and feels like
  3. Suggest next steps.

• Ultimately, what I’ve learned about giving feedback—even the most difficult feedback—is that people are not fragile flowers. No report has ever said to me, “Please treat me with kid gloves.” Instead, they say: “I want your feedback to help me improve.” They tell me, “I’d like you to be honest and direct with me.” How many of us don’t want the same? Telling it straight is a sign of respect.

• “It’s brutally hard to tell people when they are screwing up,” writes Kim Scott, a former Google manager and the author of Radical Candor. “You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s because you’re not a sadist. You don’t want that person or the rest of the team to think you’re a jerk. Plus, you’ve been told since you learned to talk, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’ Now all of a sudden it’s your job to say it. You’ve got to undo a lifetime of training.”

• The first part in understanding how you lead is to know your strengths—the things you’re talented at and love to do. This is crucial because great management typically comes from playing to your strengths rather than from fixing your weaknesses. There are some useful frameworks for understanding your strengths, like StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath or StandOut by Marcus Buckingham. If you want to do a quick version, jot down the first thing that comes to mind when you 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

  • 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

• To develop our self-awareness and to calibrate our strengths and weaknesses, we must confront the truth of what we’re really like by asking others for their unvarnished opinions. The goal isn’t to seek praise; the goal is to give our peers a safe opening where they can be honest—even brutally honest—so that we can get the most accurate information. In the same way that you gather feedback for your reports, you can learn about yourself through the following tactics:

• Ask your manager to help you calibrate yourself through the following two questions:

  • What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact?

  • What skills do you think a hypothetical perfect person in my role would have? For each skill, how would you rate me against that ideal on a scale of one to five?

  • Pick three to seven people whom you work closely with and ask if they’d be willing to share some feedback to help you improve. Even if your company already has a process for 360-degree feedback, it helps to be specific about what you want to know and to provide reassurances that you’re looking for honesty, not just pats on the back.

  • Ask for task-specific feedback to calibrate yourself on specific skills. For example, if you’re not sure how good of a public speaker you are, follow up with a few people after you give a presentation and say, “I’m hoping to improve my speaking skills. What do you think went well with my presentation? What would have made it twice as good?”

• Over the years, here’s what I’ve learned about what enables me to be my best:

  • I’ve received at least eight hours of sleep the night before.
  • I’ve done something productive early in the day, which motivates me to keep the momentum going.
  • I know what my desired outcome looks like before I start.
  • I have trust and camaraderie with the people I work with.
  • I’m able to process information alone (and through writing) before big discussions or decisions.
  • I feel like I’m learning and growing.

• Once I understood those facts, I was able to change a few habits to make it easier for me to operate in my ideal environment. Here are some examples:

  • I set up multiple “prepare for bed” alarms at 10:00 p.m., 10:15 p.m., and 10:30 p.m. so that my head can hit the pillow at 11:00 p.m. sharp.
  • I exercise for ten to fifteen minutes in the morning right after I wake up. It’s not much, but it gives me a sense of accomplishment that anchors the rest of the day.
  • I schedule half an hour of “daily prep” into my calendar so I can study my day and visualize how I want each meeting or work task to go.
  • I make an effort to become friends with my colleagues and learn about their lives outside of work.
  • I schedule “thinking time” blocks on my calendar so I can sort through and write down my thoughts on big problems.
  • Twice a year, I look back on the past six months and reflect on what I’ve gotten better at. Then, I set new learning goals for the next six months.

• I also set personal goals and do bigger look-backs every six months, which gives me a longer time frame to tackle ambitious projects and learn new skills.

• If your meetings tend to be dominated by a few individuals, try mediating the amount of airtime everyone gets. Be on the lookout for interruptions. If someone starts making a point but another loud voice cuts her off, provide cover by saying, “Hang on, Ann wasn’t finished.” As an added bonus, I’ve found that doing this also bolsters your own credibility.

• When creating new products, builders must determine which features are essential and which are “nice to have.” When forming a new team, managers try to hire the leaders or “anchors” before the rest of the group. When determining which patients to see in the emergency room, doctors will triage and tackle the most urgent issues first. Prioritization is key, and it’s an essential managerial skill.

• The best way to practice prioritization is to order any list you make by importance. Make sure that the things at the top are taken care of before you venture further down the list. For example, if you’ve got five tasks on your to-do list for today, rank them by priority and do number one before number two. If you have three goals for your team this half, force yourself to answer: “If I could only achieve one goal, which would it be?” If you have five open roles to hire for, pour your energy into filling the one that’s most critical.

• Effort doesn’t count; results are what matter.