This week we discussed the last part of Chapter 4 (driving results collaboratively — telling people what to do doesn’t work), focusing on the last two steps of the cycle. (The complete cycle is listen, clarify, debate, decide, persuade, execute, learn.) We then started on Chapter 5 (relationships — an approach to establishing trust with your direct reports).
Chapter 4 – Driving Results Collaboratively
- Execute — minimize the collaboration tax
- Topic 1: Don’t waste your team’s time
- Topic 2: Keep the “dirt under your fingernails”
- “If you get too far away from the work your team is doing, you won’t understand their ideas well enough to help them clarify, to participate in debates, to know which decisions to push them to make, to teach them to be more persuasive.”
- Houston: Can you have an effective manager who doesn’t know the tech details? Jamie said yes, if they’re just a manager, but you need someone to help guide the technical decisions. There’s a risk that they won’t respect you if you’re responsible for their work. Jameson said a product owner wouldn’t necessarily know either.
- You don’t need to be a complete expert, but you can’t exist in a vacuum for your team or department as there are up- and downstream effects. You need to stay knowledgeable to some degree. Being lazy manager is a problem, but having knowledge of context is different than knowing how to do the things in other departments.
- Jameson gave an example of having to work with someone who was knowledgable about physical product quality vs. software quality — these are two different problem domains. His team had to figure out how to advocate for themselves.
- Topic 3: Block time to execute
- Learn — “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- Jamie asked what kind of “consistency” the author is talking about. Consistency in build pipelines is extremely helpful. Jameson said there are very few things he’d concede that consistency is not good for. Perhaps this quotation was taken out of context.
- Topic 1: Pressure to be consistent
- Topic 2: Burnout
- Jameson said there are many times where you don’t realize you’re burned out until you have to step away.
- Jamie reminded the group that at the end of the day the employer and employee are in a mutually beneficial relationship; as soon as one party doesn’t hold up, you typically part ways.
Chapter 5 – Relationships
- Stay Centered
- “You can’t give a damn about others if you don’t take care of yourself.”
- The author learned in business school that her role is to maximize shareholder value (“too much emphasis on shareholder value actually destroy value, as well as morale”). If you focus on it, you’ll have short-term gains, but long-term ramifications. We as a society have become obsessed with speed and instant gratification. Geoff said as a society we value the ephemeral — we’ll just fix/replace it later.
- Work-life integration
- “If you need to get eight hours of sleep to stay centered, those are not something that you do for yourself at the expense of your work or your team.” Geoff loved this idea; investing in yourself is investing in your team.
- Figure out your “recipe” to stay centered and stick to it
- “The world is full of advice here, and what is enormously meaningful for one person is pure crap for another.” Geoff thought it was interesting that meditation/mindfulness wasn’t mentioned here, as that hasn’t worked for him (and is a fairly common recommendation these days).
- Use your calendar
- Show up for yourself
- Houston finds it difficult to be okay preventing others from scheduling over his planned meetings. Jamie said it’s about boundaries and respect.
- Free at work
- Jameson’s question: What if your manager refuses to relinquish unilateral authority when you are trying to do that yourself? Be authentic but be willing to take the consequences and be tactful about it. Jamie said that it’s freeing to stand on your own principles and have the conviction to act on it because we give people more power than they actually have.
- “The basic premise here is that when everyone on your team is able to bring the best of what they’ve got mentally, emotionally, and physically to their work, they are more fulfilled in their jobs, they work better with one another, and the team gets better results. You can’t get that out of people with power, authority, and control.”
- “[Google] Promotions were decided not by the managers but by a committee of peers.” Geoff has seen examples (https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google) where this doesn’t work.