Introduction

In this series, I share my early reflections on transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. My goal is to document how my perspectives evolve over time as I navigate the challenges and opportunities of leadership.

My Background

• Experience: I’ve been a manager for a few months.
• Team Size: I currently manage four people, one of whom leads an additional team of four.
• Purpose: I’m sharing these initial thoughts as a starting point for deeper exploration in future posts.

Management Philosophy: Amplifying Output

I firmly believe that effective management is about amplifying your own impact by increasing overall team efficiency. As Andrew Grove famously put it, “The Manager’s Output is the Team’s Output.” In my view, a manager has two primary levers:

1. Maximizing the Team’s Output: Enhancing productivity through direct actions and support.
2. Setting Direction: Ensuring that the team’s efforts align with strategic goals.

Maximizing Team Output

There are three key behaviors that I believe a manager can leverage to boost productivity:

1. Shielding the Team:
• Purpose: Prevent net new negative factors that hinder productivity.
• How: Understand and pressure-testing broader organizational goals (top-down guidance).
2. Speeding up the Team:
1. Purpose: Actively remove existing negative factors that hinder productivity.
2. How: Stay attuned to individual team members’ frustrations (bottom-up insights)
3. Mentoring and Skill Development:
• Purpose: Directly improve team productivity by growing individual capabilities.
• How: Work one-on-one with team members to identify the roles you envision for them, understand their current gaps, and provide tailored guidance to help them grow into these roles.
4. Motivating Individuals:
• Purpose: Align each team member’s short- and long-term goals with the team’s needs.
• How: Understand what drives each person and connect their personal aspirations to the role they’re growing into, ensuring their work remains engaging and impactful.

Setting Direction: Minimizing Thrash

Imagine this scenario:

You own a bike shop, and a customer confidently states they want the “best high-performance bike,” though they’re unsure about the specifics. Eager to impress, you spend an entire night building what you believe is the ultimate bike. However, after a series of revisions and feedback, the customer ultimately abandons the project. Despite your impressive speed and craftsmanship, you lost the customer. Several mistakes to point out:

• Lack of Conviction from your Customer:

You didn’t recognize the customer’s initial hesitation. A more thorough initial consultation could have led you to better understand the problem the customer was trying to solve. Maybe it’s not even a bike that they’re looking for!

• Inefficient Use of Resources:

Excessive time was spent building a product without really understanding what problem you were trying to solve. Those resources could have been better spent on other things. Doing nothing would have been better!

For managers, these are the takeaways:

• Direction is Critical:

Even with a high-output team, misalignment on strategic goals can lead to efforts that produce little  or even negative value.

• Validate Conviction:

Pressure-test and provide a bit of friction to validate that the customer (your bosses) really want what they’re asking for. Remember, ideas are plentiful, but execution is costly. As the holder of execution, it’s crucial to be selective about what projects to pursue.

• Maintain an “Innovation Treasury”:

Keep a running list of ideas and potential improvements—ranging from developer velocity enhancements to system reliability upgrades. This treasury can be leveraged while taking the time to validate top-down goals.

I look forward to seeing what I got wrong and refining my mental model of what the role of a manager is :).