My Energy Management for Newer Managers post has been turned into an exercise on Yerbo. You can find it here.
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Energy Management Exercise
Tag: management
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Escaping The House Elf Management Trap
I would love to find a new name for this, now that JK Rowling is cancelled, but in the Harry Potter books, house elves are powerful magical beings, who are condemned to (mostly invisible) servitude, largely of people who would uphold harmful power structures (much like JK Rowling herself). The tragedy of the house elf […]
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Meta Problems and Where to Find Them
Meta-problem (n): root cause issues of a collection of symptom problems. One of the things I do as an engineering director, is live in the realm of the meta problem. The thing that is behind the problems that people are talking about. For instance, a meta problem of an individualistic mindset on the team might […]
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The Anatomy of a 1:1
Broadly speaking, my overarching agenda for any 1:1 is as follows: It starts with the checkin, “how’s it going?”, an open ended question that some people respond with a status update, and some do not. The important thing is what comes next – finding out how the person feels. Sometimes a status update is useful […]
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Energy Management for Newer Managers
When I coach new managers, or transition ICs into management, one of the key struggles initially (which I also remember myself) is overwhelm. For some, this ends up in exhaustion, and those are the people who often switch back onto the IC path – they find management unsustainable at that time (some return to it […]
I did an interview with Range, talking about how the fully distributed teams I lead at DuckDuckGo work. Read it here
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The culture of process
My latest in LeadDev… One of the challenges we face as engineering managers is how people react to process differently. Sometimes it’s like we’re talking about entirely different things – we propose something we expect to be lightweight, and people react like we’re instituting TPS reports or time-tracking in six minute intervals (normal for lawyers, […]
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Pandemic Problems
For the past couple of months, I’ve kept a post it on my desk. It says: How are people doing? – Downtime– Social isolation– Perspective You can probably guess what it’s for – it’s a reminder of the core struggles I’ve been noticing from people. Downtime: downtime is lower quality, and people struggle to recharge. […]
My latest for LeadDev… A common area where managers fail to scale is in decision-making. The two extremes are: being responsible means making all decisions and enabling a team means staying out of details and letting them make decisions. Both of these are bad. One is controlling and fails to scale for obvious reasons. The other fails to […]
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Lead Time Chat
My friend Jean and I recorded a little video for her Lead Time Chat series on the topic of coaching. Some topics we covered… The difference between an external coach and a manager. Working with an external coach across multiple jobs. Finding a good fit with a coach. Whether an engineering background is what you […]