The Manager's Guide – #56

Used to be called “The Leadership Garden Newsletter”

New week, new name and platform – I migrated The Leadership Garden Newsletter to Substack and to a new name – The Manager’s Guide. It’s still the same old weekly curation under the hood, though I’ll occasionally write more in-depth pieces on certain topics.

The farther you go up the ladder, the less it’s about your technical skills

It’s not that technical skills aren’t important, but that soft skills are a lot more vital.

• 😎 Soft skills are crucial for career advancement.

• 🤝 Building connections and effective communication are vital.

• 🚀 Leadership involves inspiring and taking calculated risks.

• 💪 Identifying key individuals and maintaining decorum matter.

• 📈 Advancement requires influencing others and improving soft skills.

• 🔄 Learning soft skills leads to growth and confidence.

• 📝 Promotions consider unquantifiable soft skills.

• 🤔 Perception of skills varies with leadership visions.

• 🧘 Balance technical and soft skill development for success.

Good Fences – Managing Fence Jumpers

Expressing your boundaries to others can feel daunting at first, but it’s a vital step towards establishing healthy dynamics and clear expectations.

• 😌 Setting boundaries can be challenging, especially for newcomers to the practice.

• 🛡️ Recognize and overcome challenges like guilt, fear, and negative reactions when asserting boundaries.

• 🧘‍♀️ Practice self-compassion and remember that setting boundaries is an act of self-care.

• 🤝 Healthy relationships thrive on mutual respect, even if some people react negatively to your boundaries.

• 💪 Trust yourself and your well-being; seek support from those who encourage your growth.

• 🗣️ Communicate boundaries clearly using “I” statements, avoiding blame or criticism.

• 🔄 Use the “Broken Record” technique to calmly and consistently repeat your boundaries when challenged.

• ☁️ Employ “Fogging” to acknowledge others' perspectives without becoming defensive.

• ❓ Practice “Negative Inquiry” by asking questions to gain insight into others' intentions.

• ⏸️ Use “The Assertive Pause” before responding, maintaining assertive body language.

Service Delivery Index: A Driver for Reliability

How a simple metric drives a reliability culture across the Slack engineering organization.

• 🚀 Emphasizes reliability and customer experience.

• ⚙️ Shifts to proactive measures from a reactive approach.

• 🛠️ Incident response and service ownership foster reliability culture.

• 📊 SDI-R: Key metric for service reliability, including user success and uptime.

• ⏱️ Availability: Measured by critical user interactions, converted to 9s representation.

• 🤝 Collaboration: Engineering leadership, service owners, reliability engineers work together.

• 🕵️‍♂️ SDI-R Proactivity: Early issue detection and resolution.

• 🔄 Program Evolution: SDI originated from Security, Performance, Quality, and Reliability metrics.

• 🗣️ Forums: Engineering meetings and SDI-R data aid prioritization.

• 🔄 Continuous Improvement: Iteration on metrics and processes.

• 🎯 Customer Focus: Reliability and availability for enhanced customer experience.

The Elite's War on Remote Work Has Nothing to Do with Productivity

A hot take on the “return to the office” trend – while I’m sure it’s part of the big picture, I’m not so sure if it’s the only or even the major factor.

• 💼 The push to return to office work is not primarily about productivity, but about preventing a potential commercial real estate crash.

• 🏢 Corporate landlords are facing an office real estate apocalypse due to remote work trends, with $1.2 trillion in loans on office towers at risk.

• 🏙️ Major cities that rely on workers for commerce and property taxes from commercial real estate are being adversely affected by the shift to remote work.

• 📉 A significant percentage of office space remains vacant (12-20%), worse than the 2008 recession, jeopardizing landlords' ability to repay loans.

• 🏛️ The Federal Reserve's interest rate policies have exacerbated the situation by motivating companies to abandon office leases.

• 💰 The elite's desire for workers to return to offices is driven by the need to prevent a collapse in commercial real estate value and protect their fortunes.

• 🌆 The focus on productivity, creativity, and health is secondary to the elite's goal of avoiding a commercial real estate crisis.

To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort

An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is: “maximum effort = maximum results.” But research shows that it doesn’t actually work that way in reality. Here’s what actually works: The 85% rule, which counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort. Operating at 100% effort all of the time will result in burnout and ultimately less-optimal results. While the precise number 85% may just be a rule of thumb, it’s a helpful one for managers who want to create high-performance teams without burning people out.

• 🤝 Managers aiming to build high-performance teams should adopt the 85% rule to prevent burnout.

• 💼 Encouraging a “done for the day” time helps avoid decision fatigue and diminishing returns.

• 💪 Invite team members to work slightly below their perceived maximum capacity for better performance.

• 🗣️ Ask top performers how work can be made less stressful and take actions to improve their situation.

• 🤝 Embrace 85%-right decisions instead of demanding perfection to reduce pressure on high-performing employees.

• 📢 Use language that avoids excessive stress and pressure when communicating with the team.

• ⏰ End meetings 10 minutes early to prevent stress buildup and maintain focus.

• 🧠 Managers should also operate at 85% intensity to set an example for the team.

The Tech Layoff Tracker

The latest layoffs across big tech, tech unicorns, and startups.

Snapshot at Aug 21, 2023:

So far in 2023, there have been 1,427 layoffs at tech companies with 334,273 people impacted (1,435 people per day).

In 2022, there were 1,557 layoffs at tech companies w/ 243,318 people impacted (667 people per day).