The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

by Julie Zhuo

I believe this as deeply as I believe anything: Great managers are made, not born. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager.

True, but the problem is that these answers are still an assortment of activities. If I asked you, “What is the job of a soccer player?” would you say that it’s to attend practices, pass the ball to their teammates, and attempt to score goals? No, of course not. You’d tell me why those activities matter in the first place. You’d say, “The job of a soccer player is to win games.”

Half of what he looked at was my team’s results—did we achieve our aspirations in creating valuable, easy-to-use, and well-crafted design work? The other half was based on the strength and satisfaction of my team—did I do a good job hiring and developing individuals, and was my team happy and working well together?

The first criterion looks at our team’s present outcomes; the second criterion asks whether we’re set up for great outcomes in the future. I’ve gone on to adopt this framework

“Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have,” he says. “That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration.”

Hackman’s research describes five conditions that increase a team’s odds of success: having a real team (one with clear boundaries and stable membership), a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert coaching.

The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving