Managing Upwards to Balance Impact and Effort

As a private equity consultant, I would regularly work 14–18 hour days, sometimes including weekends. The projects I conducted were normally three week long due diligences. For one project, I needed to tell investors whether or not to invest hundreds of millions of USD to buyout a false eyelash company. As an unaware 20 something year old male, I was starting with zero knowledge of the false eyelash industry. After the project, I could tell you that Ardell dominated Wal-Mart shelves and that consumers in windy cities have trouble with magnetic lashes. Though my learning came with a cost; I remember the worst day was 22 hours long. I got into the office at 9am and did not leave until 7am the next day. Was 22 hours in a day really necessary? Was it my fault for being inefficient? Could I have gone home earlier?

By the end of three weeks, I did not even finish everything assigned to me. But not completing everything was intentional and I made this logic clear to my manager. If I finished everything, I would have been at the office for three weeks straight. From working these intensive projects, I needed to learn how to create more impact with less effort by managing upwards.

Background

Managing Upwards involves working with your manager to optimize what is best for the company and also best for you. To do so, we need to understand the impact of our work, explain methodologies, and get feedback as we progress. Managers cannot think what is best for every situation, so we need to help guide them by providing well thought out options.

I hope to answer how can we mold the relationship with our managers such that we produce high quality work and also receive the right amount of work? Alternatively phrased in a pessimistic view, how can we ask for less work while conveying that we are more than competent?

Manager Assessment

Before starting to manage upwards, we need to understand our manager. Specifically, we will want to know what are their priorities. How does the manager prefer to work? Do they care more about results or people? Let’s tackle these questions one at a time.

Working Preferences

Ultimately, it is a relationship, so you will need to get to know your manager and their working style. Developing a strong working relationship with our manager will give us more credibility to manage upwards. To begin, we should build an understanding of both high level general expectations and detailed preferences.

General expectations revolve around how we work and communicate. For example, am I expected to work outside of office hours? How will email, slack, skype, texts, phone calls be utilized? What is the expected reply time for each? Am I expected to read/reply to messages holidays, evenings, and weekends? How often should/can I check in? If you feel some expectations are not rationale or there is a conflict in your communication styles, ask your manager to sit down and discuss how the two of you can work together better. To reduce psychological strain on both parties, this conversation should not demand changes, but rather allow for open communication to work towards the best mutual solution.

We can get our manager’s detailed preferences from acknowledging the types of feedback we, along with our teammates, receive on our work. For example, if the manager always tell people to “check their data sources” or “develop a process before coming to me”, we should be able to determine that they care deeply about correct data and they prefer seeing functional outputs as opposed to helping during the conceptual stages. We will leverage our knowledge here so that we can adapt to our manager’s preferred working style(s).

Results vs. People

A results focused manager will actively take on more and more projects while pushing current projects harder. This could mean the manager wants to go for a promotion or simply really enjoys getting results. A people focused manager will look after their team’s best interests. This translates to accepting fewer projects, investing more time into people development, and valuing lives outside of work. Most managers are a blend of these two extremes, but may lean more towards one as opposed to the other. In my experience, more managers are results focused than people focused. If you cannot profile your manager into one bucket, in my experience, it is safer to assume they are results focused until proven otherwise.

Understanding this tell is important because the basis of our requests will need to change based on the manager type. For example, let’s say you want to go to your brother’s wedding, which was booked on a Thursday afternoon to cut costs. The day after the wedding an ‘important’ report is due. If your manager is a people focused manager, you should only need to say “It’s my brother’s wedding”. The people focused manager will figure out a way to get the report done with the remaining resources. However, if your manager is results focused manager, the approach should be, “Here’s my plan to complete the report while being out of office Thursday afternoon.”

I think the results vs. people manager is an important distinction, so I want to give a lens from a project perspective as well. Let’s say your manager has been taking on many projects because they are being pushed by their boss. If we have a people focused manager that understands their team’s workload and capabilities, the manager will manage upwards with their boss to discuss priorities and only take on the high impact projects for now. So, we would not need to do anything in this case. If we have a results focused manager, all of these projects will be cascaded down without considering bandwidth. In this case, we will need to be the ones to manage upwards. If no one along the chain manages upwards, work quantity will be high and quality may be inconsistent. The actual approach to ‘managing upwards’ in this case and others will be discussed in the following section.

Managing Upwards

Your manager manages you, so you should manage your manager as well. The goal of managing upwards is to build a better working relationship with your manager. Through strengthened two-way communication, upward management will produce higher work quality and personal credibility. The communication coming from your end should come at strategic moments, which we will address in this section.

Process-wise, we can break down managing upwards to a project level. For every project, the manager will inform us of the details. In upward management, our first duty is to internalize what is the impact of the project. After internalizing the impact of various components, our second task is to develop a methodology and proposed timeline broken out by step and send to the manager for approval. Upon approval, our third step is to provide progress update(s) at ‘feedback points’. For a visual representation of our steps, kindly see below:

Upward management is represented by the orange lines in the diagram. To further our understanding of upward management, imagine if the orange lines disappeared. If we received projects, methodologies, and feedback and did not provide input to our manager, we would not be managing upwards, but rather simply executing mindlessly.

Impact

When a manager gives you a project, you cannot follow them blindly and assume they know what they are doing. Instead, when we receive any project or task, we need to internalize the impact. Since we need to internalize the impact, the upwards management line in the diagram above points internally. When evaluating impact, we need to consider both the impact on the organization as well as on yourself to determine if it is best option available.

For the organization, we should first look to understand the overall objective. Next, we should answer how does each task fit into the overall objective and what is the impact of each one. After understanding the goal and overall structure, we need to think, is this the best solution? Typically managers use ‘deadlines’ to denote priority, but internalizing the impact means understanding why the deadlines were set that way. For example, if the piece that I am working on was not completed, what would be the implications? In a best case scenario, our manager will help us understand the impact when assigning work. However, if you do not understand the impact of your work or believe the impact is marginal, ask your manager for a further explanation. If the explanation did not uplift the impact of the project, a serious conversation needs to occur about aligning organization goals and your projects.

For the impact on yourself, think about what matters to you. What do you want to learn? What do you want to gain exposure to? What do you enjoy doing? Our manager should be well informed of the answers to the previous questions so they can assign work that aligns with our interests. Assuming the manager knows, we should still ask if our assigned projects are getting us closer to our goals? If the project is not getting you closer towards your goals, let your manager know your projects are not developing you in the desired direction.

After going through impact on the organization and impact on yourself, you should be able to answer the question — Is this assignment worth my time? Ideally, our work is high impact and pushing us towards our goals. If our work is low impact, but we are learning, it is acceptable temporarily, however in the long term, we will eventually need to take on high impact projects. If our work is high impact, but not develop us personally, we should ask for additional projects that will help us learn and grow — bandwidth permitting. If our work is low impact and we are not developing personally, do not be afraid to say no to the project, which should then be accompanied with a goal alignment conversation.

Methodology

Once we deem a project is worth our time, we can start to develop methodologies to tackle the problem. Our methodologies should contain the planned approach and estimated timeline for each piece. For assignments with a faster turnaround time, this step is the most important because a clear alignment on the task is required to co-create the most efficient path. After developing a methodology and estimated timeline, meet with your manager to discuss if appropriate. The purpose of this conversation is to set the manager’s baseline expectations by getting their approval on the deliverables and the deadlines.

Deliverables are often created in order to solve problems. You may not get to decide the end deliverable, but developing the methodology does require our input, where we can define intermediate steps. When developing these intermediate steps, if our manager approves, great. If our manager is antagonistic and shuts down our ideas, think about how we can grow and develop from these critiques. For additional details, check out my previous article on approaching antagonistic relationships here.

Deadlines and prioritization are upward management’s best friends. If utilized correctly, they allow you to build a mutually beneficial working relationship with your manager. If no deadline was provided, we should discuss with our manager to arrive at a mutually agreed upon timeline. If the deadline provided by the manager aligns with your estimated timeline, perfect. If the deadline provided by the manager appears to be not feasible, break down the time investment for each piece so they can better understand your approach. Then ask your manager which pieces they believe can be done more quickly and to help revise the approach to help you save time in execution. During the methodology step, to ensure your manager perceives you as someone who solves problems and not someone who complains, you do not ask for extensions, but rather you ask for more efficient methods to execute. Alternatively, if a more efficient approach is not possible, set an earlier check-in point, which will be utilized to prioritize — to be discussed in further detail in the next section.

Progress

Progress check-ins should occur at unclear decision points or if projects are falling behind schedule. Alternatively phrased, these are points at which you are not sure what next steps should be or you cannot complete everything on the agreed upon time. Even though these may sound like negative things, if we manage upwards well, we will still be viewed in a positive light by our managers.

Unclear decision points occur when a problem arises and our previous experiences have not given us the tools to solve the problem. Depending on our manager assessment from earlier, we should know whether our manager prefers to help during conceptual stages or prefers to see an output. If the manager enjoys being involved in concept creation, we should bring up unclear decision points along with our initial thoughts on potential approaches to solving the problem. If the manager enjoys seeing outputs, we should test our idea(s) first and gather appropriate data before approaching our manager. In both cases, if we are not sure what to do, we need to practice solution oriented thinking, then discuss our potential solutions with our manager to gather their feedback. When discussing ideas with a manager, I found it most useful to provide options along with pros and cons to each. Then the manager simply needs to choose. Coming to your manager with clear laid out thoughts and options, even if you are not sure, will elevate your credibility.

If the project is falling behind schedule based on our estimated timeline from the methodology step, we need to let our manager know. Our approach to inform our manager of this situation will separate typical vs. great upwards management. If we knew we were short on time from the beginning, make sure to check-in earlier rather than later. When informing the manager that the project is falling behind schedule, come with a revised plan with options. The options should be:

• Changing deliverable, but keeping deadline: From a positive lens, this is also called re-prioritization. From a negative lens, this is called cutting corners. If you are in an iterative work environment, this is the likely option.
• Keeping deliverable, extending deadline: If you are in an environment centered around perfection, cutting corners is not an option.
• Keeping deliverable, keeping deadline, working smarter and harder: Typically this is associated with service industries and/or results focused managers, however, in dire circumstances, it may be required nonetheless.

The latter two options are controlled by the nature of our work, so there is little room for negotiation and persuasion. However if the manager selects to change the deliverable, but keep the deadline, we can influence the final deliverable. We should do so in such a way that maximizes impact in the amount of time remaining. To help your manager understand your prioritization logic, list out the tasks, their relative impacts, and amount of time investment needed for each. When making such a suggestion, remember the discussion should point towards maximizing impact for the company in time available, and not, “I do not have enough time.” Demonstrating that you care about impact and not your own time will further improve your workplace credibility.

Closing Remarks

During my 20+ hour consulting days, I can tell you now that I was being as efficient as I could with my skill set at the time. Over time, I gradually built an understanding of the working styles of my managers. Once starting projects, I internalized the impact of my work so that I could develop methodologies to tackle larger and larger problems. After getting manager buy-in to my approaches, I would start solving. Once I ran into issues or found a timeline no longer feasible, I would suggest alternative paths and ask my manager to help prioritize. Even though I did not complete all work originally set out to do, I found a way to create the most impact possible with the time constraints. These efforts resulted in a deeper understanding of business strategy and a better working relationship with my manager and the firm’s leaders.

As with many things, upwards management is a skill that needs to be practiced over and over again. If done correctly, we will produce higher quality work, receive the right quantity of work, and build stronger ties with our managers. This article was designed to convey how individuals can build better working relationships with their managers. If you would like to understand the other side of the coin, my article on Mentoring Effectively tells how a manager should work with and develop their team members and mentees.

Are there nuances that I missed? If you have any comments or questions, feel free to respond below or connect with me on LinkedIn. Please follow me on medium.com/@dhuynh2979 for more articles about leadership and management.