The Manager's Guide – #74
Weekly Summary Edition
The Predictability Trap
“But my key argument is that you cannot make predictable delivery the goal. You have to put value front and center and put sustainable and differentiated growth front and center.
Predictable delivery needs to be in service to that, not the end goal.”
🎯 Putting value and sustainable, differentiated growth as primary goals over predictable delivery ensures long-term success.
🔄 Predictable innovation and value delivery tailored to customer needs and product simplicity are crucial for growth.
❌ Overemphasis on predictability can lead to missed opportunities and added complexity without corresponding value.
💡 Trust and confidence in a team's value delivery reduce the focus on strict predictability and deadlines.
🛠️ A set of strategies exists for achieving more predictable delivery, but they require tough choices and prioritization.
🏗️ Continuous improvement and adaptation in delivery methods are necessary to maintain and enhance product value.
⚠️ Previous successes in predictability can become a trap, leading to unsustainable practices and inability to adapt.
📈 Focusing on value and growth as primary goals requires a strategic approach to delivery that may defy traditional predictability.
Scaling standards and community in your organization
🌱 Embrace continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and innovation to maintain agility and deliver value to customers efficiently.
🤝 Empower teams with autonomy, purpose, and access to technical assets to foster a culture of innovation.
🛠️ Scale adoption of engineering best practices and organizational standards without compromising team autonomy.
🌟 Create sustainable communities around common interests to promote transparency and best practice sharing.
🔄 Implement an “empowered federation” model, decentralizing the ownership of standards to small, focused groups.
💡 Steering Groups guide strategic direction and adoption of practices within specific problem spaces.
🔍 Focus Groups scale the Steering Group's strategy across different organizational areas, maintaining alignment with overall goals.
🤗 Communities foster knowledge sharing and collective goal alignment, enhancing skill sets and driving mission success.
🚀 Accelerate adoption through education, demonstration, strategy, measurement, and continuous innovation.
✨ Prioritize a culture of knowledge sharing and best practice adherence to drive engineering excellence and maintain agility.
Navigators
Aligning technical decisions across teams by providing a structured process for architecture reviews and tool adoption, ensuring decisions are made with full context.
🏛️ Centralized processes like architecture reviews and structured tool adoption can help align technical decisions by providing missing context.
🌀 Many organizations prioritize these processes early, but they're recommended as a last resort due to common inefficiencies and poor performance in centralized architecture teams.
🤔 Centralized teams often struggle with inefficiency, bad choices, and lack of action, leading to a need for a better solution for technical decision-making and alignment.
🛠️ Carta's experience highlighted the challenges of inconsistent decision-making and unclear accountability, prompting a search for effective management of technical decisions.
🗺️ The Navigator model assigns a single, accountable individual (Navigator) to each major business area, ensuring clear accountability and decision-making authority.
✅ Navigators have shown to be effective in aligning technical decisions with organizational strategy and resolving cross-area technical issues.
📈 This approach has led to quick improvements and better alignment within teams, showcasing the potential of trusting senior engineers with significant decision-making roles.
🚀 The success of the Navigator model suggests that empowering senior engineers with context and accountability can lead to better, more agile decision-making processes.
First, decide how to decide: “one weird trick” for easier decisions
🤔 The “Dogwood Decision-Making Process” includes a crucial “decide how to decide” step, enhancing ease and comfort in decision-making.
📜 Documenting proposals and sharing them with a guiding group, like an “Architecture Board,” helps streamline the decision-making process.
🤝 Identifying and involving the correct list of stakeholders is key to a successful decision outcome.
✅ Implementing a “One Weird Trick” by having stakeholders agree on a decision-making method, such as appointing a single decider, facilitates consensus and action.
🔧 The process must empower decision-makers with enough organizational authority to ensure decisions lead to action.
💬 A feedback and discussion period with stakeholders, time-boxed to prevent delays, is critical for inclusive and effective decision-making.
🚀 Following the agreed-upon process leads to decision implementation, emphasizing the importance of a structured approach to decision-making.’’
New Engineering Managers Have a High Failure Rate — This Figma Leader is on a Mission to Fix It
🌱 The transition from a senior engineer to a people manager is fraught with challenges, including a high failure rate among new engineering managers.
🧩 The best candidates for management are often overlooked due to a focus on technical skills over leadership potential.
🌀 New managers frequently struggle with escaping the cycle of individual contributor work, highlighting the need for structured support and mentorship.
🤝 Managing former peers presents unique awkwardness, emphasizing the importance of clear expectation setting.
📈 Exceptional engineering managers need a diverse set of skills, not just technical expertise, to effectively lead and motivate their teams.
🛠️ A key to successful management transition includes mentoring, focusing on people skills, and understanding individual and team dynamics.
❗ The article stresses the importance of selecting managers based on their motivation to solve people problems rather than just technical problems.
🗣️ Effective communication and feedback are critical skills for new managers, requiring clarity and directness.
💡 The structure of promotion tracks should not push individuals into management for the wrong reasons, like pay increases, but rather align with their strengths and interests.
How to Create a Culture Where Recruiting Is Everyone’s Job
🤝 Hiring is a collaborative effort, not just the job of recruiters.
🏆 Talent champions are crucial for attracting top talent, especially in competitive markets.
🛠️ Hiring managers play a key role in recruitment, from sourcing to engaging candidates.
💡 Engaged hiring managers can improve the quality and diversity of hires and speed up the hiring process.
🔄 Creating a culture of recruitment ownership requires shifting mindsets and organizational practices.
🌱 Regular feedback and accountability for hiring managers are essential for sustaining a culture of active recruitment.
🤖 Innovative practices like sourcing jams and coffee chats can help involve hiring managers more in the recruitment process.
📢 Managers should be encouraged to solicit employee referrals directly to foster a sense of shared responsibility.
🎉 Rewarding positive recruitment behaviors is crucial for reinforcing a culture of active hiring manager participation.
🔄 Continuous feedback between recruiters and hiring managers can enhance collaboration and improve recruitment outcomes.
That’s all for this week’s edition
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See y’all next week 👋