How I Manage

This is a continuation of my README.

Management Princples

• Strategy
  • A strategy has concrete plans, within a chosen set of constraints, applied to a theory of some challenge.¹
  • A good strategy must do all 3 well: plans, constraints, and theory. And all 3 must be coherent².
  • Strategy can exist anywhere, not just within a leadership team.
• Operations
  • Operational management’s role is the pursuit of knowledge, where knowledge means a causal model of the business. Said another way, management’s job is to figure out which knobs move the company towards its goals.
  • Management’s responsibility to the team is to set clear, achievable expectations.
• Teamwork
  • Start with good faith.
  • Create the conditions for trust to be earned.
  • Hold each other accountable to shared commitments.
• Miscellaneous
  • A healthy team tries to get each other “wins”.
  • I’ll constantly look for ways to get you wins, and I’ll expect you to do the same for your teammates and our customers.
  • I will talk about risk and how to deal with it… a lot.
  • I believe that project estimation is a risk management exercise (see, I’m already doing it).

Management Tactics

• Setting Expectations
  • We’ll have a leveling matrix to define expectations for roles.
  • At the outset of a project, we’ll have clear scopes and timelines or, failing that, shared expectations for the ambiguity. I’ll also set personal expectations for you (for example, “I want you to focus on the schedule” or “I want you to put your head down and write code”).
  • We’ll do annual reviews. They won’t be overly formal. I’ll have a template and it will be a conversation.
• Improvising Off That
  • I want to find the overlap between what the business needs, what you are good at, and where you want to grow.
  • Think of expectations as a starting set of contraints. We’ll adjust them. I believe that taking care of my team is not mutually exclusive with taking care of the business.
• We’ll do regular 1:1s, and they won’t be project status updates. Rather, we’ll talk about bigger picture things like your role at the company and cross project efforts. Sometimes we’ll just shoot the breeze.
• I will quickly give direct feedback both when you exceed expectations and when you aren’t meeting them. I’ll give criticism with kindness.
• If you are frustrated with something or someone (and that someone could be me!) I want you to tell me. I prefer that you do this 1:1 on a video call. I commit to having thick skin.