This post highlights some of the key insights from the following book.
Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager by Micheal Lopp (3rd Edition)
This post provides only a glimpse of the book’s content. I highly recommend reading the entire book for a comprehensive understanding. Despite its brevity, the book is both engaging and humorous, offering a light yet insightful read. I particularly recommend it to new and moderately experienced managers. Certain sections of the book are even beneficial for individuals in individual contributor (IC) roles. Reading these portions can enhance your understanding of your manager’s role and contribute to your professional development.
Without further ado, here are some key insights for the managers with some interpretation and elaboration from myself:
See the people that you work with
“See” the people who work with you! Each person you work with has wildly different needs, and it is your job to know those needs and fulfill them. As a manager, it is your most important job. You need to know how to keep them motivated. You need to know their dreams and aspirations and help them progress towards achieving those dreams.
Your team is your #1 job.
As an introvert, all of this doesn’t come naturally to me. But with practice and conscious effort, it starts to become easier.
If doing this seems too much for you then perhaps it’s best to stick to an IC track.
Don’t ignore 1-on-1s
Schedule 1-on-1s, and don’t skip them just because you are pressed for work. If you must reschedule a 1-on-1 meeting, then reschedule them immediately. See your #1 job above. Every 1-on-1 is a chance to learn from your team members, so be in an active information acquisition state during this time. You should be able to get a pulse of your team during these 1-on-1s.
If you don’t have plans to talk to everyone on your team in a 1-on-1 then stop here and schedule these meetings.
Mandated Decision
You need to involve your team in the decision-making process. Your team is collectively smarter than you and any individual team member. But in your career as a manager, there would be points when a decision would have to be made for your team, either by you or by someone higher in the organizational chain.
In case your team gets stuck in the discussion phase and can’t move forward on their own, you might have to be the one to make that mandated decision. This is never a preferred choice but is sometimes a necessary part of the job.
So what are the steps necessary for a mandated decision?
Step 1: Discuss the issue at hand and invite people to share a
Step 2: Deliver the decision along with clear reasonings and justifications. Make it clear that it is the decision. Don’t leave a wiggle room in what has been decided.
Step 3: Deliver again directly to the different team members, and let them provide their feedback and share what’s on their minds. The decision remains the same but this way they know you have heard them.
If it’s a foreign mandate, ensure you know the reasoning or justification behind the mandate coming from outside the team. Often this step is forgotten or lost in the organizational communication chains. Don’t make this mistake!
Communicate the reasonings and justification behind foreign mandated decisions to your team!
Information Starvation
Every team member on your team wants to stay informed about the things that are going on in your team and your organization. If they don’t, then this could be a yellow flag indicating their loss of interest in the organization they are working for.
The good news is that your team will tell you what they need to know. Try staying quiet in your next meeting and listen to what your team is saying to figure out where information might be lacking for your team. Fill these information gaps. If you leave information gaps, people will fill them, often with the wrong information.
Don’t leave an information gap in your team or your organization.
Taking time to think
This is key for new managers. On an individual level, this can be particularly challenging for managers, especially if you are in a position where you are doing both people management and tech lead work in your team.
Do yourself a favor and give yourself time to think.
To create, you have to think. If you and your team are always busy reacting to fires, you aren’t giving yourself enough time to think. You will remain stuck in reactive states and hard-pressed to improve things along with your team.
Some of the best time for deep thinking is right after your last major release. Every single lesson of the prior release is in the forefront of the minds of everyone on the team. All the poor design decisions and pain points are fresh. Now is the time to think about what can be improved for the next release cycle.
Ask questions
It is your job to ask questions. Don’t hesitate to ask questions because you think it will show vulnerability in a lack of knowledge in a particular area. Your knowledge gap won’t fill itself, and your team has experts who can quickly bring you up to speed. If you have the luxury of building your team, then create a team with members that have complementary abilities and also fill the weaknesses that you have.
Ask questions, show humility and be eager to learn from your team.
Status Reports 2.0
Miscommunication in the organization often becomes a prominent factor as the organization scales. Usually, this happens when there are around 200 people in an organization. Departments at this point are large enough that pieces of communication start to go missing. Usual status reports start out well but then fizzle out.
Create a team wiki. It should be the recognized source of information about everything related to your team. Put the latest news and status reports there. Add FAQs to the team’s wiki as well. If someone had to come directly to you for some information, then either that information is missing (and should be added to the team wiki), or they don’t know where that information lives. Either way, fix the root cause.
Create a team wiki. Aim to make it a place that everyone in the organization goes to first to get some information about your team and systems before coming to you.
Got Feedback?
What are the lessons learned from your experience that you wish someone told you earlier in your management career?
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