15 principles for managing up

“When your boss loves you, you have options. Here's how to help your manager get what they need, so you get what you want.”

• 👋 Embrace managing up to further your career
• 🎯 Focus on the punchline to avoid back-and-forth
• 🧠 Show your thought process to propel the process forward
• 🚩 Flag potential issues to alleviate the burden on your manager
• 💡 Bring solutions, not complaints to be value-adding
• 📊 Use information hierarchy for effective communication
• 🔄 Keep your manager in the loop for expanded trust
• 🙇‍♂️ Proactively assert what to do to share the cognitive load
• 🤝 Don’t only ask questions, share your point of view
• 🔮 Anticipate questions to address them before they arise
• 🚪 Know when to get out if issues are deeply troublesome
• 🔍 Be explicit about what you need to get the right support
• ⏳ Expect to manage up forever as a continuous skill in your career

Headline driven development

Instead of MVPs, here is a simple process for shipping software projects that works.

• 💡 Decompose project into a stream of headlines
• 🚀 Ship the first headline by an aggressive deadline
• 🔄 Work on one headline at a time
• 🪓 Ignore tasks that don't help ship the headline
• 📰 Headlines communicate change effectively
• 🎯 Ruthlessly prioritize by cutting non-essential tasks

Have Concerns And Commit

• 💡 The topic of communicating top-down decisions you disagree with is important
• 🚀 Engage appropriately with decisions to communicate effectively
• 🛠 Give feedback on non-material decisions and ensure feedback is considered on material changes
• 🤝 A healthy sense of humility is essential when engaging with decisions
• 📋 Letting small issues go helps maintain focus on important matters
• 🔄 Avoiding agreement or disagreement with every decision fosters a better approach
• ℹ️ Leaders should provide sufficient information for supporting decisions
• ⚠️ Don't dismiss seemingly small issues that may be important
• 🛠 Forcing action on material and critical decisions is crucial
• 🤷‍♀️ Dealing with bad leaders requires evaluation and potential action
• ⚖️ Leaders should take ownership of outcomes and not act helpless

Clinical troubleshooting: diagnose any production issue, fast.

• 🛠 Clinical troubleshooting is a method for harnessing the diagnostic power of groups
• 🧠 Collaborative troubleshooting with a team can solve problems faster than solo troubleshooting
• 🤝 Bringing together a diverse group of perspectives is crucial for effective clinical troubleshooting
• 💡 Clinical troubleshooting involves steps like identifying symptoms, brainstorming hypotheses, and selecting actions
• 🔄 The clinical troubleshooting process involves cycling back through steps until a solution is reached

Four Responses to Feedback

• 📊 Feedback is data about our impact on others at a specific time, reflecting the giver's perspective
• 🌟 Acknowledge and appreciate positive feedback to make conversations more productive
• 🔧 Consider easy changes, hard changes, and changes that are too difficult/costly in response to negative feedback
• 🤝 Meet individually and in small groups with feedback providers to separate signal from noise
• 🗣 Share remarks with a larger group to build a feedback-rich culture if you are a leader

Wisdom From Three Stoics for Leaders

• 💡 The Stoics believed in self-development, resilience, and focusing on things within your control
• 🌟 Learning can be challenging when one thinks they already know everything
• 🧠 Asking questions and showing up as a learner can lead to growth
• 🌿 Tranquility can be achieved by doing less and focusing on essentials
• 🚫 People who can't say no often live frantic lives
• 💬 Communication and helping people identify essentials are key in leadership
• 🤔 Denial and defensiveness indicate blind spots that can be addressed by self-reflection and openness to feedback

Tech talk of the week

Better Code Reviews FTW! - Tess Ferrandez-Norlander - NDC London 2024

• 🚀 Code reviews are crucial for knowledge sharing and team collaboration, fostering code ownership and consistent patterns.
• 💡 Request targeted feedback, appreciate positive feedback, and prioritize major issues to streamline code review processes and encourage continuous improvement.
• 🔧 Automate tasks, prioritize timely reviews, and embrace incremental improvement mindset for evolving code quality over time.
• 💬 Initiate follow-up sessions, trust colleagues for minor fixes, and use concrete examples for effective feedback.
• ❓ Frame feedback as questions, avoid personal remarks, and resolve feedback stalemates proactively with compromises or seeking second opinions.
• ✍️ Watch for code review procrastination, manage time pressures effectively, and balance quick fixes with long-term code improvements.

That’s all for this week’s edition

I hope you liked it, and you’ve learned something — if you did, don’t forget to give a thumbs-up and share this issue with your friends and network.

See y’all next week 👋