Manager Mind: Time To Satisfaction
Satisfaction in management requires patience
Maker Vs. Manager. One of my favourite talking points and based on the amount of content out there, not just mine. A couple weeks ago one article on the topic grabbed my attention: Maker Mind Vs. Manager Mind.
The first reason it resonated was the way it approaches making and managing as two ends of a spectrum. It is not always black or white, there is lots of grey in between. And most importantly: you can influence where on this spectrum you want to end up.
Even more interesting for me was the section about satisfaction in each role:
A Maker gets to build, to sit back and know that they have accomplished something. Lines of code, pages of writing, screens of UX — they can see something they caused to come into the world.
A Manager very rarely has that satisfaction. One of the most frequent comments of new Managers is “I worked my ass off this week and didn’t do anything”. The satisfactions are less tangible and longer term: seeing the work of a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand people come together in a product launch; getting an email from a former employee about their new, larger position; in the case of a CEO or GM making one or two critical decisions a year that work leading to growth, a turnaround, a higher stock price, a funding round.
During the week, one of my reports — a new engineering manager — talked in our 1:1 about working from home one day. Nothing dramatic happened, other than that his team did not need him at all. They made decisions, had conversations (in public) and got stuff done.
Now hang on… that’s not nothing. That is awesome!
Especially when I tell you that this engineer used to be the core decision maker in the team. A lot hinged on him being there and pushing ahead. He should have been happy about this event and proud of himself.
But he was not. It was very hard for him to recognise what impact he had on the team. Trapped by his maker mind, he expected satisfaction to be more tangible and immediate.
Maker Vs. Manager and Delayed Feedback
As a maker your time to satisfaction (TTS) is short. Depending on what you work on, it can be minutes, hours, sometimes days. But it is rarely longer than that.
I remember back when I was an engineer, satisfaction was often immediate. Yes, I had to work hard for it, but never did I have to wait weeks to get feedback. Pushing a new feature out and seeing it live. Refactoring the test suite for speed only to see it run in half the time moments later. Fixing a bug and closing the corresponding ticket.
Being an individual contributor you enjoy near instantaneous satisfaction… how simple life can be!
As a manager, immediate satisfaction never happens, especially for the things that matter. Want to change the way feedback is given? Unhappy about the level of collaboration? Is the team not showing enough drive, care, or passion?
Making a dint in any of these aspects takes time. Lots of it. A single convincing speech is not going to do the trick. In management, a TTS of weeks is super fast — months are more realistic.
Changing these things profoundly requires lots of small steps. You need to lead by example — more than a couple of times. You need to reinforce the message over and over again. Support, coach and teach those around you.
And months later things are looking great again. Yet, after all your hard work, you wonder: ‘What did I actually do to help?’
Recap
It really makes sense to talk about Maker Mind Vs. Manager Mind. To be managing effectively you need to adopt a certain mindset.
This is true for all areas, including how you find pleasure in your work. Things you do now will take time until they have full impact. Satisfaction in management requires a bit of patience.
If you cannot handle this type of uncertainty and delay, management might not be the ideal fit for you.
