Management for Humans
Before you’re first promoted into management, you don’t tend to hear about the crying. People give you tactical suggestions, they tell you about books to read, and give you a lot of good and bad advice about how to get things done. But the first time you have someone in your office who is dealing with the end of a personal relationship at the at the same time a work project is going off the rails, you really get a broader view of the job. How do you make sure that they’re okay? How do you make sure that they can stay motivated? How do you help them get back to a place where they can continue to grow and improve?
Even when things are going well, those questions still matter. The human part of the work is essential. As someone’s manager you might spend nearly as much time with them as they spend with their immediate family. They’re probably seeking fulfillment in their work, and as a manager you play a significant role in whether they find it. And, if they don’t find it they are likely to quit or become less effective over time.
Being a manager is a role that has outsized impact on both companies and individuals. When you manage you know that it’s very easy to go home every day feeling like you’ve let your team down. Every manager feels that way, at least sometimes.
I’ve spent over ten years managing teams. In companies small and large. In software companies that ship continuously and in software and hardware companies that build complex products that take two years to deliver. In teams going through hyper-growth and teams in the middle of painful layoffs. In functional and divisional organization structures. In teams full of eager recent college graduates and teams full of experienced industry veterans. In vision driven companies and in metrics driven companies. In bottoms-up companies and top-down companies. Companies with rigid performance management systems and companies that wing it. Companies using granular OKRs and companies using informal goals.
So much of what managers need to be effective depends on all of these variables; it’s enough to make a person despair about whether there are any general approaches to follow.
Two early managers helped me see the parts of managment that are immutable — and that each individual manager can do regardless of the environment. By thinking of people management independently (related to but distinct from executive management and project management, which are much more company-dependent), managers can make sure that they are truly supporting their teams.
The conceptual framework that has been most helpful to me originally came from High Output Management. It starts with the idea that in people management, you have only two ways to make your team better: increasing their motivation and increasing their capabilities. As a manager you have a huge amount of direct influence on these two dimensions — to the point that you should feel wholly accountable for each of them.
For motivation, you should be asking questions like: Am I touching base with my team enough? Am I striking the right tone? Am I responsive enough to make them feel I care?
For capability, you should be asking yourself questions like: Am I giving them specific high quality feedback to help them get better? Is that feedback coming frequently enough to be useful and non-threatening?
Over the years I cobbled together a series of macros, email filters, and simple processes that helped me every day as a people manager. Tools that let me go home knowing I hadn’t left a message from a team member sitting unacknowledged in my overwhelmed inbox. Prompts that ensured that I was giving deep feedback on people’s real work, rather than on status reports or glimpses in a meeting.
That isn’t to say I’ve been perfect. More than once I’ve sent off a quick note that was unduly harsh or given someone feedback that was unnecessarily vague.
But having even rudimentary tools has been incredibly helpful, and I’ve long felt that having a real product focused specifically on people management would make a meaningful difference in how effective and happy people are at work.
With the rise of remote teams and squads the challenges that managers face are greater than ever. Your team might ask you a question in Slack, in Email, in Google Docs, or anyplace else where collaborative work gets done. How do you make sure that you are connected and responsive?
We started Riverin to deliver the first real tool for people managers. We integrate with all the places where work gets done so you never let your team down.
We’re in private beta now and starting to share the product with more managers. You can sign up for the waitlist here.
