Longtime readers of TOA will recall my appreciation for Ben Horowitz’s ‘Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager’. He wrote the document to clarify his expectations for the Product Manager role in the organization he was leading at the time. This document, Horowitz said later in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, proved a valuable resource for increasing the productivity of these Product Managers.
As I recently reviewed my notes on Peopleware, I noticed that many of the managerial insights were stated in the same ‘good this, bad that’ sort of way. I worked with my notes until I came up with my own version of this expectations document for managers.
Signed,
The Business Bro
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Good managers do not waste time. They recognize time as the only finite resource – once lost, time cannot be regained. Bad managers leverage the unlimited number of ways to waste time.
Good managers continuously teach others about the organization and its goals. They take the time to repeat themselves and are not beneath answering any question until everyone is on the same page. Bad managers naively assume everyone accepts the organization’s goals. They give away their authority by redirecting questions to different sources.
Bad managers worry about efficiency by default. They never stop to wonder if resources are scarce or abundant. Good managers first ask for context. They question if a given task should be done at all. They do not worry about efficiency until a given resource becomes scarce. They measure productivity by work achieved in a fixed time period. Bad managers measure productivity by work extracted from a given hour of pay.
Good managers expect their teams to work. They train and motivate their teams to perform and trust them to complete their assignments. Bad managers suspect employees will not work. They place their teams under duress and use phony deadlines as a motivational tool. A good manager uses schedule pressure only when the reasoning is obvious to all concerned.
Good managers cultivate uniqueness. They replace departing team members through process adjustment and adapt the work to fit the strengths of remaining team members. New hires are brought in to support star performers. Bad managers address turnover by reducing the importance of individual initiative until no single person is irreplaceable.
Good managers understand that a reputation for high quality is built slowly and crumbles quickly. They allow their teams to set high standards for quality and support the team in achieving it. Bad managers see quality as a variable attribute. They see quality like a pizza topping – it becomes available when the market demands it. Good managers recognize high quality as a leading indicator of high productivity.
Good managers use the medium of communication to set priority. If the issue is urgent, they communicate in person or over the phone. If the receiver sets the priority, they use email. Bad managers cannot conceive of the idea that the receiver sets the priority.
Good managers limit meetings only to those who must agree before finalizing a decision. They run meetings where all participants might need to speak to each other. Bad managers run ceremonies, not meetings. Their meetings end by the clock or are simply ‘FYI’. Good managers end meetings when the purpose of the meeting has been achieved.
Bad managers hoard talent instead of building teams. They measure themselves and their teams by aggregating the ability of the individuals. Good managers measure teams by how well the team serves the organization. If a person has outgrown a place on the team, a good manager works to realign the employee so the organization derives the maximum benefit.
