The Missing Manual: Why Humans Should Come with Instructions

By the rule of thumb, the more complex a product, service or machine is, the thicker the manual will be. I am not advocating that having things with long manuals is the way you should be building a product, but there is a clear correlation. If it is not self-explanatory, you need to provide additional context.

Humans''eelings, relationships, needs and wishes are messy and certainly not self-explanatory. So why do humans don’t come with manuals? I advocate that we absolutely should. There are two underlying issues we don’t have manuals on. Firstly, sharing how we work shows a high level of vulnerability. Unfortunately, we are hardwired not to show how completely flawed we are. The second problem is that writing a manual means that you need to understand how something is working. For us, this means mastering the art of self-reflection and being honest with ourselves, which is a pain.

When I started to lead my first team at a prominent media company in Switzerland, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, I wanted to be a good boss. Preparing myself for onboarding the first hires, I stumbled upon the idea of writing a management README. A README is a text file that introduces and explains a project. It contains information that is commonly required to understand what the project or product is about.