
Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management - sokoloff
https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/unintuitive-things-i-ve-learned-about-management-f2c42d68604b
======
lkrubner
This should be re-written:

"You must like dealing with people to be great at management."

This is more accurate:

"You must like talking with people to be great at management."

When I first started managing, I tried to send people a lot of email. I like
writing, so email comes naturally. One thing I learned, rather quickly, is
that most people don't like writing. Even well educated people don't like
writing. Most people find it easier to talk than to write. Most people would
rather talk an issue through than write about it. The more difficult the
issue, the more that people want to talk.

The next line should have been the sub-headline:

"Imagine you spend a full day in back-to-back 1:1s talking to people. Does
that sound awful or awesome?"

This bit is very true:

"Unfortunately at many places, you’re roadblocked in advancing your career
unless you become a manager. This sadly incentivizes the wrong outcomes, in
which people who don’t love dealing with people become bad managers, and both
they and their team suffers."

I wish this was more true:

"In more technical roles, we are fortunate that many companies support
separate but equal career tracks, where at a certain level of seniority you
can choose to go deep into the craft of your discipline or go into people
management."

I have mostly worked with startups during the last 16 years, and in all of
them the top managers were paid more than the top engineers. The only
"exceptions" were the founders who weren't paying themselves. But obviously,
their path to renumeration is very different than it is for those of us
getting paid a wage.

~~~
danieltillett
My experience is you must spend considerable one-on-one time with each of your
reports to be a “good” manager. You need to allocate at least 30 minutes per
day (1 hour is better) just talking (averaged over the week) and not
micromanaging. You don’t even need to talk about work, you just need talk
devoting 100% of your attention to the person. If you do this then everything
will be great no matter what else happens - if you don’t you just build up
management debt that will come back and bite you in the backside at some point
in the future.

Of course the problem is as soon as you have more than a few direct reports
you will run out of time in the day and you will start to build up management
debt. I haven’t solved that problem :)

~~~
ACow_Adonis
Just another counterpoint, the airing of which is therapeutic in stopping me
from downvoting due to rising tension at the thought of what you've suggested
and my experience with managerial-ilk and their uselessness in the past (and I
haven't, because I think you're contributing, but understand just how visceral
my feelings are towards this). There needs to be a counterbalance to your
advice.

Just no. Just GOD NO. Want to be a good manager? Get the hell out of my way.
You're not there for my benefit (i didn't hire you, and odds are, I probably
don't think you should have a job at all, let alone one that pays more than
me) so don't pretend you are. Its insulting to both of us. I'm there because
you've hired me, given me money, to do some labor that you can't/won't do. If
I want you, I will come to you, and it will usually be because some genius
decided that I don't have the authority to fix a problem or do something. If
you come to me, its because you're telling me to spend my labour on something
else.

If you're going to make yourself even vaguely useful, be my human shield to
keep the rest of the useless people (read: management/executives/marketers/HR)
and distractions away from people actually doing work.

I appreciate this is all context sensitive and my response is filled with
hyperbole, but you'll also hopefully understand that i'm particularly
frustrated with managers/employers in our society wanting to be my
mother/psychiatrist/friend? If I wanted to be your friend or meet with you, do
you think people would have to pay me money to be in your presence?

Its not a very Hacker-esque movie, but there's a brilliant line from the
English patient:

"I once traveled with a terrific guide, who was taking me to Faya. He didn't
speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed at the horizon and said -
Faya! That was a good day."

~~~
danieltillett
Well I am glad you are not down voting just because you don’t agree with me :)

I am not sure where I suggested that a manager is supposed to be there for the
employees benefit - the role of the manager is to maximize the performance of
the employee and team. I also didn’t suggest their role is to mother or being
a friend either (although being a friend can help).

The major job of a manager is to ensure translation of business objectives
into output that is directed towards the end goal. You might think you
understand exactly what your job is, but it is exceptionally common for people
to not really know what the company is working towards and exactly what
management wants them to do, or what is important (to the company). This is
not a failing of anyone, but just a consequence of incomplete information.

Vice versa it is also very common with hands off (or too busy managers) to not
know what the blocks or distractions are that are impeding progress. The whole
situation becomes even more fraught when the business objectives are fluid and
changing.

The only way to achieve the business objectives is to spend time making sure
the information flows happen and problems are solved. I wish there was another
way as it is incredibly time consuming.

~~~
rorykoehler
> it is exceptionally common for people to not really know what the company is
> working towards and exactly what management wants them to do

This is exactly the phenomenon I am referring to in my comment (see sister
comment on this thread level). Often no one know what management wants them to
do including management themselves. The end goal is clear but how to best get
there is anyones guess.

~~~
teamonkey
> The end goal is clear but how to best get there is anyones guess.

Surely it's the job of the team to work out how to get there? As the article
states, managers are/should be facilitators, not necessarily the experts.

------
Spearchucker
First, I've read a metric ton of these kind of posts, and Quotations from
chairman Powell
([http://govleaders.org/powell.htm](http://govleaders.org/powell.htm)) pretty
much sums up the best bits of all of them. If you nail those I don't think you
need anything else.

Second, this is mostly good stuff, other than the first. Some (many) have
called me the best manager they've ever had. Which is nice, even though I see
myself as a leader rather than a manager. That said, I dislike talking to
people. I do only when I have to. What I do really well is to take the heat
for my team. Anything (and I mean _anything_ ) goes wrong the blame stops with
me. I also admit in front of my team and my managers when I'm wrong.

Conversely, one of my peers is a spectacularly good talker. And he lays blame
like nobody's business. He also never backs down when he's demonstrably wrong.
Talking to people doesn't hurt, and I guess enjoying it is a bonus, but a good
manager make it does not.

~~~
mmatants
I think the gist of the first point is that there is a lot of _communication_
that needs to happen. Talking is not the point; understanding others and
making yourself understood is the point. And for most situations, currently,
that just happens to involve a lot of talking.

------
siliconc0w
I've never really seen 'separate but equal' career tracks be true. The manager
track is always better compensated and has more say in the direction of the
business.

IMO - talking with people makes both parties feel better but is overrated for
affecting change. A better way to manage and grow talent is to put people in a
position to succeed. This involves giving the right tasks to the right people,
removing obstacles and distractions, understanding when and how to prioritize
production(product stories) vs productivity (i.e tooling, infrastructure, and
tech debt). None of this happens in 1:1s. You need to intimately understand
your developer lifecycle and how your engineers are getting blocked or where
they're wasting their time and how to go about fixing that. Even though
they're often mediocre communicators an engineer-manager is better at making
those decisions.

~~~
karmelapple
"Giving the right tasks to the right people"

I'm wondering how this works in a self organizing team. If people are taking
tasks that aren't their strong suit, what can you do as a manager? Hand select
stories?

We currently do that, partially because many of our team are newer to the
company, but also because we think we can choose fairly well, since our team
is somewhat splintered in our products (iOS in obj-c, android in Java, the
rest in js).

~~~
aninhumer
It's possible to give the final say on task selection to the programmers while
still allowing the manager to have useful input. Instead of bossing people
around, the manager just offers their opinion, and the rest of the team
respect it as being from a position of oversight. And if they really disagree,
they can explain their reasons and the manager is better informed in future.

------
hermanhermitage
Nice article.

I'd suggest for anyone making the transition into management (particularly
from a more technical background) who is after some concrete advice - start by
reading 'High Output Management', and getting a subscription to Manager Tools.

In terms of the article, I'm not sure I would use the term 'senior' to apply
to a manager (or individual contributor), until they are at the 10-15 year
experience level (which may come in much more or less than 10-15 years
employment based on circumstances).

~~~
eitally
Manager Tools is awesome. It has helped so many of my reports become much
better managers & leaders.

------
makeitsuckless
> "You must like dealing with people to be great at management."

This is what I always assumed, and why, as an introverted programmer, I
avoided the management track until my late 30s. Turns out, I'm a pretty great
manager (at least that's what other people say, fellow managers have been
taking cues from me, and my teams have been loyal to the point where it still
stuns me when they say it out loud), despite being definitely not a people
person. Of course it helps that I'm an (ex-)engineer leading mostly engineers,
which is already a great improvement compared to what many are used to.

I do like working _for_ people, I like watching my people thrive and be happy
and productive, and I like taking on the challenges involved in making that
happen. Which does involve working with people, but that is just what it is to
me: hard work. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. However, because
it's hard work it is all the more satisfying when it's successful. More
satisfying than coding has become at some point.

My highest goal is to make sure that everyone is happy and autonomous in their
work and the results just keep flowing. Because that's when all those messy
and complicated people will leave me the hell alone...

------
thefastlane
"How do you motivate a team? [...] I’d say first and foremost don’t be an
asshole"

agreed. the easiest way to get people to walk out the door is to be a jerk to
them. it's amazing to me when i encounter a manager type that hasn't yet
learned this very basic lesson.

~~~
jonesb6
But we look up to assholes don't we? Steve Jobs. Michael Jordan. The Wolf of
Wall Street. There's something to be said by that. If only "different people
are motivated by different things".

~~~
Retra
There's nothing in The Wolf of Wall Street to look up to. It's a story of
pointless people greedily shitting all over everybody because they've got
nothing better to live for.

~~~
qznc
Apparently, he seems to be good with teaching people how to be persuasive:
[http://jordanbelfort.com/](http://jordanbelfort.com/)

~~~
Retra
Looks like your run-of-the-mill time share salesman to me.

------
dpweb
Being higher on the totem pole has its status and pay advantages. You get more
respect from others pretty much across the org's layers. But it's definately a
different scene, that many tech. people I know wouldn't want to do.

The biggest insight I think after going into management is the importance of
an employee's attitude. I always had a chip cause I was kind-of a rock star,
and I can see now, how that can irritate a manager.

For a dream team, I'll take a group of people who are just generally smart
(can learn any new technology, can adapt) and have a great attitude
(basically, people who care), over other qualities. Plus, attitudes are
contagious, like a virus. Both good and bad.

------
sz4kerto
Nice article, but I don't find anything unintuitive about what it says.

~~~
artemisyna
I think that depends a lot on your perspective and background.

For example, consider someone who grew up 'macho'. By that, I mean an
environment where not looking weak is more important than being efficient, the
word of the boss is king, etc, etc. It's an archetype that definitely exists
in the world -- if you start with someone from that perspective, a lot of the
stuff in the article is definitely unintuitive.

(Not saying your perspective is invalid, of course. There are probably other
archetypes that I could've picked to try to illustrate the same effect but
hopefully 'macho' gets the idea across enough.)

------
justin_vanw
If the author of this is spending all day in back to back 1-1s (which wouldn't
surprise me, I've seen this in lots of companies), and they have 7 people
working for them, then that means every day an hour is spent in a 1-1 with
your boss if you are on this team. Don't they have a job to do other than
socializing with their superior? Does this boss have a job to do besides chat
up the staff?

Managing is a chance to amplify your own effectiveness, the goal isn't to
'manage' all day, the goal is to get work done. A manager's #1 priority is to
build a team that can get things done quickly and well. The kinds of people
that can get work done well, in a steady state don't need an hour a day, or
even an hour a week of 1-1 time. There are exceptions for totally new grads or
in exceptional situations where in depth coaching is needed, but exceptions
aren't the rule.

To put it as mildly as I can, if a team needs constant supervision, the
manager has done a terrible job.

~~~
ratboy666
The rule I use is "The rule of 11" \-- you really can't have more than 11
direct reports.

I try to give 30 minutes to each direct report every day. This is not to
"manage" them. This is not to "socialize" with them. I do not see them outside
the office, and they are not my "friends".

Each person becomes invested in the job. They become better performers. They
feel that the company is important. At 11, there are no longer enough hours --
so, if the number of direct reports gets to 11, you need another management
layer.

The reason for this? If this is done, this is the easiest way to get maximum
performance from the team members.

In your analysis, my team members each spend 30 minutes talking with me -- but
7.5 working. And, working more effectively. I am never surprised and schedules
are always met.

What do we talk about? Process improvement. What is going wrong, with
suggestions to fix it. Especially introverts, who can see what is happening,
but are loath to communicate.

Using this simple approach can give a "10x" multiplier to a team. The "kinds
of people that can get work done well, in a steady state" also benefit. By
telling me how to improve the "steady state".

FredW

~~~
dlandis
You really talk about process improvement for 30 min a day with every single
team member separately? As a developer that is unimaginable to me.

~~~
ratboy666
Understand that as a developer, you are more important than me. It is likely
you make more money than I do (at most organizations I have been in).

But, say something goes wrong. The defect is then tracked back to your work.
What happens? (PS. this is purely hypothetical, I just want to make it
imaginable for you).

We talk, and I may bring up "Five Whys". Are you familiar with this technique?
Assume you are not. We may discuss the role of process. Not for process sake,
but process improvement. To make your life easier. Since you spend 1/3 of your
life at work, you have an interest in this. I then suggest you google this,
and that we should carry on this discussion in (say) a weeks time.

Note that this entire discussion takes 30 minutes. The follow-up will take 30
minutes a day over 4 days, but _you_ will be doing the bulk of the talking.
Because you want to. I don't get angry with you. I shield you as much as
possible. But (again, this is hypothetical), this is your mistake. Everyone
makes mistakes. What is interesting is that you know more about fixing this
than I do. After all, I am but your manager. I want to teach you techniques to
learn from what happens, listen, and propose approaches.

See? That is management. I will let you push the idea(s) to others. Actually,
the modification of the idea that works for you.

Initially, I find I drive the conversation. But, as people become comfortable
with me, they drive the dialog. I facilitate and eliminate problems to
productivity.

Now, for the bonus answer -- rule #2 for an effective manager is to deal with
issues immediately. Your desk should always be clear (as best as possible). I
maintain _all_ current open issues on a white-board, where status is
immediately inspectable.

Back to "5 Whys" \-- if I think that will be valuable to more people, I may
create a training session -- which will be referred to in the 1 on 1s. And
this is how I would manage a larger group (7 to 11 people). And, the value I
can provide to being a "manager of managers"; value to the people I am
indirectly managing.

Yes, I try to give 30 minutes a day for every team member.

FredW

~~~
gfody
Tbh you sound like a terrible manager. I imagine some developer rolling his
eyes as he gets called into your office to hear another technique blathered at
him for a defect he couldn't have possibly prevented. His coworkers took him
out for beers later where they cheered him up with jokes at your expense. You
weren't there of course, you're not their friends.

~~~
knughit
An important part of a manager's job is helping keep self-centered self-
unaware primadonnas contributing productivity to the team, despite their
short-sighted immature attitude. It's rather like parenting in that respect.

------
dmak
This is a little off topic, but a question that immediately popped into my
head was... how does a manager deal with salary?

I haven't managed before, so these questions are all hypothetical. Any insight
is appreciated.

I would like to think that most managers would like to pay everyone as equally
as possible to show equal appreciation right? But... there's also a question
of talent scarcity, then how do you balance out salary for something like
that? I wouldn't want an engineer thinking their worth is less (or that they
are appreciated less), because their pay is not on par with the scarce talent
person. If you put that scarce talent person below market rate, how would you
deal with him/her constantly wanting a higher salary (assuming he/she deserves
it)? Would you just have to let that person go at some point to maintain
salary levels? But you REALLY need that resource, and rejecting that person
would just cause that person to eventually leave.

~~~
curun1r
Firstly, this is something that's going to vary depending on the company and
the rules they've got in place. The larger the company, the greater the chance
that there's a whole lot of rules in place that confine a manager's choices on
the matter of salary. You also have to break down what you mean by
salary...are you talking offer letters or raises, because the two are often
entirely separate concerns.

I can give you my own perspective as someone who's managed at a very large
company, which will give you an idea of some of the lunacy and arbitrariness
of how salaries were determined. First, there's offers that we extended. For
hiring, managers were given a headcount number, not a budget. This led to most
managers trying to hire as senior talent as they could find until they were
told no (i.e. you're maxed out on Principal- and Staff-level engineers).
However they could always get as many Senior-level engineers as they wanted,
so very few managers ever hired I's and II's. When offers were extended, a lot
depended on the desired salary of the candidate and the salaries we were
allowed to offer for their designation. This is where the dance with the
recruiter makes a difference. People unskilled in that and/or unaware of their
worth would come in low on the "let's just see if we're in the right ballpark"
number and get lowballed in the offer and there was very little a manager
could do about that. People who came in high got preemptively booted from the
interview process. Once offers had gone out, there were a couple of ways
things could go. Either the candidate was expecting a lot more and took
something else, the candidate accepted, or the candidate pushed back. How they
pushed back is interesting...H1-Bs would almost never negotiate on salary, but
would want the faster EB-2 visa process whereas citizens would push for more
money or stock. Occasionally, there was an exceptional candidate who would
push for more money than was allowed in the salary band for their intended
designation (i.e. SWII can make up to $130k and the candidate wanted $145k).
In those cases, we'd almost always simply bump their designation to one with a
higher band if we were allowed to.

However the hiring process was remarkably sane in comparison with the process
for giving out raises. Raises were limited to a degree that I always felt bad
about not being able to keep pace with the market rate for developers. Almost
always, if there were two developers at the same level, the one with the fewer
years of experience would be earning a higher base salary. The one who'd been
there longer would almost certainly get more RSUs, but that compensation is
intended to reward you, not make you whole, so it seemed like the base
salaries should have been more consistent too. The way that raises were
limited was a formula based on 3 ratings that we'd have to give each of our
direct reports. We'd then have a large meeting where managers defended their
ratings to calibrate across the business unit. At the end of calibrations,
there were quotas our business unit could not exceed for the higher ratings,
so we were often forced to lower someone's rating simply because we had too
many good people. Once ratings had been hashed out and approved by upper
management, each employee would be given a range of percentage increases that
we could assign without needing approval. However the overall increase for our
entire teams couldn't exceed a certain percentage. Think of it like a
MMORPG...you've got a certain amount of gold to spend and you have to decide
how to strategically deploy it in such a way as to maximize productivity
overall, only you never have enough gold. It was possible to request a one-
time adjustment which would have to be cleared by upper management, but those
were rarely approved without a really good reason.

That's a long-winded explanation, but I think the overall takeaways are: 1) It
can be a Kafkaesque process where it's easy for what people are paid and why
they're being paid that to become almost entirely disconnected. Filling out
those forms was somewhat like filling out your taxes. You put in some numbers
and the software spit out a resulting number based on logic that was rarely
comprehensible. 2) The initial setting of salary and the adjustments are
almost entirely separate and it's really hard to adjust salaries after the
fact. We had people quit and get rehired because it was simpler to adjust pay
that way. 3) Researching your own worth is super important...a little time on
GlassDoor or otherwise figuring out what you're worth can really pay off in
the long run, since you'll correctly set your initial salary. 4) At the end of
the day, managers are human. All things being equal, I gave higher ratings and
more money to the people who created fewer problems for me and helped keep the
rest of the team productive. Whether it was scheduling a return flight from a
vacation on Monday morning and then coming into work that day or letting your
phone die so you couldn't answer late night pages...all that stuff got
remembered and the people who maintained their professionalism and made my
life easier got the better raises.

I hope this helps answer your question.

~~~
dmak
This was all pretty clear and insightful, thank you.

So, at the end of a calibration, if you were forced to lower someone's rating,
does that mean their salary would be lowered as well? If so, how does that
typically end up when you break the news to that person?

Also, how do you figure out how much you are worth? You can compare with what
X position is getting paid in the market, but wouldn't this just be cherry
picking?

~~~
curun1r
Thanks to inflation, you don't have to actually lower salaries to effectively
lower salaries. You just give raises that don't keep up with the rate of
inflation. Employees with low ratings would usually either not receive a raise
or the raise would be small (~1%). Low rated employees would also usually get
small equity grants (under $5k/yr). But even delivering this kind of news is
hard. If the employee has been through an EoY period before, they're
conditioned to expect a nice raise and news like this feels like an insult.

As far as how to determine how much you're worth, you can look at GlassDoor
and the spreadsheets that have been circulating. There's also salary data out
there...not sure how you get it, but my company gave it to managers to guide
our decisions on pay. They were dumb enough not to limit it the positions that
we managed, so I got to see pay ranges for my position and even look at what
I'd get paid in various other parts of the country. But the best way that I
know of to gauge your worth is to spend time applying for jobs. Since most
recruiters will drop you if you throw out an oversized salary requirement,
it's not that time consuming to start at a number you know is over and work
down to the point where you start getting put in their hiring pipeline. I also
advise people to actually go through the full process as much as possible, as
long as you can keep your current employer from finding out. When you come
into the process wanting the high end of the salary band, you need to nail the
interview process, and practice really does help you avoid being nervous and
gives you the ability to read your interviewer better so you can give them
what they're looking for. Also, for engineers, the hiring process can actually
be fun when you remove pressure from the equation. If you don't care if you
pass or fail the process, you're just going to try to solve problems and learn
about better engineering practices which you can incorporate into your own
work. Many places will even give you a free lunch.

~~~
dmak
Thank you for all the information

------
peteretep
You don't have to like talking to people to be a great manager, but you do
have to like talking to people to enjoy being a manager. Related, but not the
same.

------
Ace17
Exactly which part of "you must like dealing with people to be great at
management" is unintuitive?

~~~
sokoloff
"2\. Having all the answers is not the goal. Motivating the team to find the
answers is the goal."

That's one that I still sometimes struggle with as an engineer-turned-manager.
The natural growth phase along this path is engineer to team lead, where you
are probably still the most knowledgeable and where having the answers is
workable and even desirable. The next step to leading a couple of related
teams you can also usually get by by trying to have the answers. At some point
right around there, it flips to where you know less than the people you lead
and need to change your style as a result. I've seen a lot of people struggle
with that (and I personally still occasionally struggle with it).

------
sgt101
"Unfortunately at many places, you’re roadblocked in advancing your career
unless you become a manager. This sadly incentivizes the wrong outcomes, in
which people who don’t love dealing with people become bad managers, and both
they and their team suffers."

Random thoughts on this..

A good manager, who builds & runs a good team can achieve far more than any
single great employee.

There are no one man companies worth $1bn.

It's appropriate that manager compensation reflects this value for
shareholders. The problem is that organisations are very poor at training
managers, business schools don't do it at all as far as I can see. MBA's are
about money and "problem solving", other courses produce "human resource
managers" which is code for pseudo lawyers and process administrators.

Strategic action to create and foster human capital outside academia is
woefully lacking in our economy at the moment. Companies are increasingly
ephemeral and are not invested in developing people in the way they were,
there is a fight for "talent" that seems to suppose that business capabilities
are innate and not learned, and disregards the benefits of team work and
corporate culture. How many times have people reading watched teams and
projects smashed up by new hires (or early career) from Harvard, LBS or IMD
who then get promoted to do even more damage or bugger off to consultancy or
some other corporate? 6 months of good numbers followed by 5 years of turmoil
and painful retrenchment - if you are lucky.

Loyalty is at the heart of bad management, pension schemes locked people in
meaning that they were tied to shareholders in the long run. Corporate
software is the epitome of this issue - we used to chant "that fine for you
but we have to live with it" at vendors, now everyone looks at the latest
lashed up piece of crap and things "well, if I am here in five years then no
one else will have the faintest idea that this is my fault and anyway I will
probably be sacked for not filling some form properly so sod it."

The McKinsey driven cult of performance management (cf. In Search of
Excellence, Build to Last and Beyond Performance) has done huge damage. This
sets managers against employees in a forced pantomime of marking and red queen
style denotions of performance. Management time is burned in handling a
dangerous (in career terms) process which ruins their relationship with their
teams, employees are asked to do things that demonstrate their performance
that are orthogonal to actual performance, and not vital things like
supporting team mates or their management, developing for four quarters hence
(vs. 2 weeks hence) implementing infrastructure for others and so on.

~~~
nicoburns
"A good manager, who builds & runs a good team can achieve far more than any
single great employee. There are no one man companies worth $1bn. It's
appropriate that manager compensation reflects this value for shareholders"

Is what the manager does really more valuable? Sure, the team wouldn't work
without a great manager. But it also wouldn't work without great team members.
All of those people are replaceable with someone of equal qualities, and not
with someone else who isn't as good in some way.

Thus I think any claim that managers should be compensated more has to rest on
the idea that management is more difficult (which is presumably true in some
cases and not others, depending on what the team is doing).

Managers shouldn't be seen as leaders sitting above the team, they should be
seen as a member of the team with a specific role focused on business
objectives and ensuring that the others on the team's work is going smoothly.

~~~
sgt101
I think it's interesting how little statistical or empiric information is
around to underpin argument in this space. So, that said, I guess I am just
going on experience when I say that good managers can make an average team
into a good one and bad managers can turn great teams into poor ones. I think
that the value added can be large and the value destroyed significant.
Thinking about a team of 6 contributors and one manager six folks delivering
at the differential good vs poor seems to me to be likely to be much greater
than the whole value of one person who is delivering at "excellent".

2 * 6 * x > 10 *x ?

Also 6 is a reasonable team size, but in reality I think very strong team
managers tend to attract more staff and handle them efficiently up to much
higher numbers (in the past I've been part of functional teams >14)

Senior management (managers of managers) can have much greater multiplicative
effects. Turning a poor manager into a good one (or getting rid of the so and
so), helping good managers really shine, and setting the right agendas and
behaviors (don't be a jerk, talk about your stuff, fess up fast) and most of
all empowering people and getting them to believe in a future can make 100's
of people go from delivering 0 value to delivering scores of millions in a few
years.

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salimane
we manage things, not people. people are led, not managed.

~~~
a_imho
freudian slip

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nunez
This was a great read. Thanks for posting this.

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KaiserPro
Sorry, but all of those points are intuitive to me.

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known
Brilliant

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partycoder
The idiocracy movie covered this very well: "lead, follow or get out of the
way"

~~~
rco8786
That's a George Patton quote...not from Idiocracy

