The To-Do list: How not to succeed as a Manager

Hurray. The evil manager you used to report to just got fired. Everyone on your team is happy. Even better: you’re the new manager. Woo-hoo!

Here’s what you should do to ensure that you will fail:

Don’t learn how to manage up.

You always thought your old boss was a jerk. Your new boss will be a jerk too. You hate bosses. You never want to be a boss. Just keep doing your old job. If your new boss absolutely insists on meeting with you now and then, fine. But don’t go out of your way to communicate or—ick—try to understand his or her goals and strategies. Certainly don’t be proactive or anything. After all, the whole stupid company sucks; you’re just here for a paycheck. Share your sentiments with your team.

Don’t learn how to manage down.

True, the old manager wasn’t the only problem. There’s one particular producer who complains more than he works. His negativity had started to poison others on the team, and the lack of productivity caused the downfall of the previous manager. But whatever. Just let it fester. After all, you’re friends with all of these people, and, hey, who cares about morale? Or productivity? And so what if the best people on your team leave, so that only the crappy people are left? Crappy people are kinda fun, too.

Don’t learn how to manage laterally.

A lot of what your department does also affects Marketing and Sales and other departments—and vice versa. But don’t bother learning what those departments do, or getting to know the heads of those departments and working with them to improve communication and efficiency. You’re kinda busy with your own stuff right now. And what are they gonna do anyway, tell the boss you’re not a team player? As if!

Do turn into a complete jerk, alienating everyone around you.

Remind everyone who will listen that you are now a manager, and that means that you’re important. The proper reply to any email or phone call that annoys you is: “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU KNOW WHO I REPORT TO?” Tell your boss that he needs to punish the marketing director who disrespected you. Also, that old guy in Sales who always wears a tie and hangs out with the president; who the hell does he think he is, anyway?

It’s good that your new boss knows right away that you’re not gonna take crap from anybody. The more complaints he hears about you, the better. You’re a bulldog, dammit.

With luck, you should last a good six months in the new job. But don’t worry. With that new “Manager” title on your resume, job offers are going to come flooding in. You’re on your way to the top, baby!

Strategic Thinking: How not to do it!!

As a manager, you may occasionally be asked to “think strategically.” That means to consider issues that have a broad impact on the company, such as long-term revenue opportunities, more efficient competition in a changing marketplace, and securing job offers from other companies before everyone at your company realizes you’re clueless.

Unfortunately, “thinking strategically” requires time, effort, and precious brain power that could be better spent on fantasy cricket. 

Here are five ways to avoid it:

1. Force yourself to focus on the day-to-day.

What’s due by the end of the week? When are those reports from London coming in? Don’t you have some sort of meeting to attend? Don’t worry about the fact that your company has no office in London. The point is, you’re a manager. Look busy.

2. Only manage down.

Pay lots of attention to the work your subordinates do. Has it been double-checked? Would it look better with a slightly larger font? How about an emoticon on the cover page? Don’t worry about your peers in other departments. And by all means don’t bother your boss. Respect his privacy and let him do his own job, and he’ll let you do yours.

3. Look busy.

Did I mention that? Get to work five minutes before your boss arrives, and pretend you’ve been there for hours. At the end of the day, splash water on your shirt and the back of your neck, then hurriedly rush by your boss’s office carrying a stack of reports just as he heads out the door.

“Oh, sorry, sir, didn’t see you!”
“Staying late again, son?”
“No, sir—early night. I should be done by nine.”

Leave two minutes after he does. The more time you spend thinking about how to look busy, the less time you have to worry about “strategic” things.

4. Never leave the office during the day.

That comes with the territory of being a manager. Don’t go to lunch with colleagues. Don’t meet with people from your industry. Don’t attend conferences. Don’t play on the company team, where you might meet someone from another department. You have work to do, and the office is the best place to pretend to do it. (See tip #3 above.)

5. Remember: minutiae are your friend.

No detail is too small to overlook. How many paper clips can you salvage in a day? Did you know that staples can be reused if you just bend the edges back? Try it! You’ll be surprised.

Good luck. And remember: don’t worry about the forest—it’s just a bunch of trees!

Team Building: An Art not a method!!

Hiring is a topic I’m passionate about because I like to work with bright, enthusiastic people who challenge me every day. I’ve spent the last decade building teams (most recently a product organization that includes designers, researchers, and product owners), and I’ve learned a number of lessons in that time. Let’s focus specifically on product ownership — a role that many gravitate toward, but few do well. I’ve seen many different types of people find success as product owners — from former developers, English majors, designers, and project managers, all the way to former CEOs and small business owners. (I prefer the term “product owner” to the more well-known “product manager” because managers manage and owners own, and building great products demands ownership.) I want people who are technical enough to dig deep with the development team and at the same time enjoy interacting with customers to discover value. Finding the right person with the right combination of customer focus, consensus building, and technical savvy isn’t easy, so I’ve put together a few things to look for during the interviewing process.

Things to avoid

Here are a few traits that are guaranteed non-starters.

• Poor listening.  You know those interviewees who start rattling off their answer before they’ve really had a chance to listen to the question? In the same category are people who answer the question they want to answer, even if it’s not exactly what we asked. In our team-based environments, these personalities haven’t been successful. Besides, one of the key characteristics of a great product owner is listening to customers and not letting their own egos drown out the needs of our users.

• Inability to connect the dots.  I look for people who have been active in all aspects of product development from the idea, concept, and research stages, all the way through to execution and optimization with wins under their belt.  When a candidate points to a different department and says, “The research team would talk to customers and tell me what to do,” or “I would hand off the specs to the development team,” I perceive this as a gap in their skill set.

• Unclear communication.  One of the most effective attributes of a great product owner is the ability to distill a complex idea into a few concise statements. Simply put, the ability to deconstruct complex subjects into clear, simple statements of value is a requirement of great product owners. Whether talking to developers or evangelizing to stakeholders, the gift of simple communication is one that is necessary to perform the job at a high level.

• Pirates not politicians. I recently asked a candidate what makes a great boss and he replied, “You scratch my back and I scratch yours,” which didn’t sit well with me.  How can you lead a group of innovators having learned all too well how to “play the game?” Your team will recognize when you speak from the heart versus when you’re just scratching someone’s back and lose trust in you over time. Immediately, I knew this candidate was from a big, slow organization and would have to unlearn some bad habits in order to be successful in our product organization.

Things we love

Here are a few qualities that will get you back for a second interview, even if you don’t necessarily have the domain knowledge.

• Being the customer.  I appreciate product owners who can empathize with customers and dig deep in research by conducting face-to-face interviews with real users.  This pseud-method acting is a positive skill for product owners who want to excel, especially those without deep domain knowledge.  If you’re building a product for photographers but have very little domain knowledge, we better hear how you can’t wait to buy a camera and start learning the craft.
• Going deep technically.  It’s perfectly OK if you aren’t a great developer. What I look for is curiosity.  If you’re a learner, you’ll figure out what you need to study in order to have a mutually beneficial conversation with your team and technical stakeholders. Different types of products will require different levels of technical depth, but generally, being willing and able to learn is the important part.

• Ownership/Attitude.  It’s good to see evidence of perseverance. You’ll see this in people who have started their own company, candidates with an aura of “unstoppability”, or those who have shown the stick-to-it-ive-ness to solve tough problems. This is a cornerstone of great product people. There will be a million reasons why something can’t be done, but those product owners who are unlikely to give up, those who push through tough problems and those who actually enjoy the process of doing so are the ones who stand out.

I want to work with the best and be challenged every day. Recruiting top talent is the most important part of building a great company. Take it personally, don’t let recruiters do all the work on your behalf, and make sure that the employees doing the interviewing are the ones you’d like more of. Anytime I feel like recruiting is difficult, typically because I’m struggling to find the right talent, I check out a quote or post from Paul English to remind myself how important it is to wait for the right person to fill these roles.

Do you have what it takes? If so, sign up. We have stuff to build.

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."

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How to make Critical Feedbacks work for you

Speaking for myself, I love getting criticism and feedback, and am completely open to receiving it any time, any place…as long as it’s positive and complimentary. When it’s not . . . um . . . let’s just say that I’m not quite as receptive. Nor are most people.

Why is that? Why is feedback—whether it’s negative feedback or constructive criticism—so tough for most people to take? When we receive feedback that we don’t agree with, the tendency is to get defensive, to explain, to make excuses, to try to invalidate it, to deny it, to be offended by it, and even to resent the person giving it.

Your Brain at Work

I just finished reading an amazing book, Your Brain at Work, by David Rock, who explains the neuroscience behind why we react emotionally (and sometimes irrationally) to feedback that we don’t agree with or don’t want to hear.

In brief, our primitive brains are biologically wired to perceive feedback as a threat. Not to get too technical or neurological, but the amygdala—the fear center (referred to often by author Seth Godin as our “lizard brain”)—intuitively senses feedback as a threat and does anything possible to avoid it.

Rock compares the feelings that feedback triggers to that sick-to-the-stomach, hair-standing-up-on the-back-of-your-neck fear you might experience when walking alone down a dark, scary alley and hearing footsteps quickly sneaking up behind you. The sensation that we are about to be attacked. The feeling that our lives are in mortal danger. That’s what feedback can feel like. And when we receive negative feedback, we are, in fact, at risk, especially when we feel our confidence, our self-esteem, and our sense of self are under attack.

It’s the “fight, flight, or freeze” response in action. That’s why, when receiving negative feedback (or sometimes even positive and constructive feedback), we may respond by lashing out in defensiveness, running (or storming) away, or standing there, speechless, in shock and disbelief.

The Five Threats

David Rock created a now-classic acronym, SCARF, that clearly and effectively captures the ways that feedback may threaten us:

Status: Getting feedback may feel as if we are being spoken down to and that our status or position relative to that other person is being threatened. A boss’s saying something as simple as, “I need to see you in my office” can trigger a feeling of heart-stopping terror . . . and make you feel two feet tall.

Certainty: When we receive feedback, especially if it is unexpected, it could create feelings of uncertainty and confusion. You thought you did such a great job on that presentation, but now the feedback has made you doubt your abilities and shaken your self-confidence.

Autonomy: When we receive feedback that puts into question the decisions and choices we’ve made, not only might we start to doubt our own judgment, but we may now fear that our freedom and empowerment might be taken away.

Relatedness: When we receive feedback from someone, it could impact our relationship with that person. “How could you say that? I thought you liked me. I thought you were on my side. Is that what you REALLY think of me?”

Fairness: Have you ever received feedback from someone and felt misjudged, misunderstood, or unfairly evaluated? If you’ve had the reaction “That’s just not fair. That’s not true. You’ve got me all wrong!” then you know how it feels to have your sense of fairness threatened.

So, now that we know WHY feedback might be perceived as a threat to our personal well-being, and that it’s a completely natural, neurological, biological response, what can we do about it?

Making Feedback Work for You

1. Try to keep an open mind, consider the source and the intention, and keep things in perspective. Don’t react or overreact; just take the feedback in. With the self-awareness you now have about WHY feedback feels like an attack, it might be a little easier (over time, with practice!) to be more open to receiving the feedback objectively.

2. Though it’s natural to react emotionally (especially when under stress), try not to get defensive. Even though it may feel like you are being attacked when the feedback’s coming from multiple people simultaneously, be open to the feedback, let it settle in, and then decide what you want to do with it.

3. Feedback is a source of knowledge. Though some things may be difficult to hear or to admit, keep in mind the value of knowing. If you were about to go on stage to deliver a presentation, and you had a “Kick Me” sign on your back, toilet paper stuck to your shoe, and your fly was open, wouldn’t you be better off knowing than not knowing? At least now you can do something about it.

4. When you get vague, general, ambiguous feedback (e.g., “You need to do much better next time”), seek out specifics. Ask for suggestions on how you might improve. Confusing feedback is worse than no feedback at all. You could even request that the person start with something positive before getting to the constructive criticism. Encourage them to use the Feedback Sandwich with you!

5. Change your mindset about feedback. Reframe it as a developmental opportunity rather than a criticism of you personally. Recognize that while the tendency (basic human nature) is to focus on the negative, it is equally important to validate your strengths and leverage what you’ve done well.

6. After receiving feedback, take some time to let it sink in, and think strategically on what to do with it and where to go from here. Remember: Unless something is a real emergency that is causing serious, immediate problems, you don’t have to change or fix everything—or anything—overnight! In fact, it’s almost impossible. Continuous improvement is an on-going process and a lifelong journey. And feedback is a mechanism that will help you to stay on course and moving ever-forward. Without it, how will you know how well you’re doing?

The Gift

There’s an old saying that “Feedback is a gift.” And like any gift we receive, we can choose to toss it in the trash, or we can appreciate the thought behind it. Perhaps when we unwrap that gift, when we have a chance to sit alone with it and ponder it, we’ll find a nugget of truth hidden somewhere inside that box; one that we need to seriously consider.

And if feedback is, indeed, a gift, the polite thing to say to the feedback giver is, simply, “Thank you,” as you would to any gift giver.

So the next time someone approaches you with some feedback and says “Let’s talk,” be open to what they have to say.

And what better time than NOW to keep that sentiment in mind!