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

by Julie Zhuo

I’m drawn to management—it feels like a deeply human endeavor to empower others.

this is how anything in life goes: You try something. You figure out what worked and what didn’t. You file away lessons for the future. And then you get better. Rinse, repeat.

amazing leadership training courses (Crucial Conversations is my favorite), articles and books that I turn to again and again (like High Output Management and How to Win Friends and Influence People), and, most important of all, my colleagues.

helping a group of people achieve a common goal.

Great managers are made, not born.

only when you’ve bought into the whys can you truly be effective in the hows.

a book about how someone with no formal training learned to become a confident manager.

Like in most start-ups, our team was focused primarily on getting things done, not on organizational hierarchy.

A MANAGER’S JOB IS TO … build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently.

answers evolved from basic, day-to-day activities (having meetings and giving feedback) to longer-term goals (building teams and supporting career growth).

The management aspect has nothing to do with employment status and everything to do with the fact that you are no longer trying to get something done by yourself.

you’re giving up some level of control. You won’t get to make every decision anymore. When things go badly, it might not be because of anything you did.

This is the crux of management: It is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone.

Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.

a great manager’s team will consistently achieve great outcomes.

If the outcome you care about is getting amazing design, then a great manager’s team will consistently deliver concepts that wow. A mediocre manager’s team will produce work that gets the job done but doesn’t stand out.

“the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved.

You can be the smartest, most well-liked, most hardworking manager in the world, but if your team has a long-standing reputation for mediocre outcomes, then unfortunately you can’t objectively be considered a “great” manager.

a bad manager might achieve a few quarters of amazing results because she inherited a talented team or set high-pressure ultimatums that had people burning the midnight oil.

The best employees don’t tend to stick around for years and years under a boss who treats them poorly or whom they don’t respect.

talented managers can typically turn around poor-performing teams if they are em...

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.

Being awesome at the job means playing the long game and building a reputation for excellence.

you’re ultimately here to do: help your team achieve great outcomes.

problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration.

five conditions that increase a team’s odds of success: having a real team (one with clear boundaries and stable membership),3 a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert coaching.

multitude of tasks that fill up a manager’s day as sorting neatly into three buckets: pur...

The purpose is the outcome your team is trying to accomplish, otherwise known as the why. Why do you wake up and choose to do this thing instead of the th...

What would be different about the world if your team were wildly successful?

Everyone on the team should have a similar picture of why does our work matter?

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 it.

The next important bucket that managers think about is people, otherwise known as the who. Are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work?

the last bucket is process, which describes how your team works together.

Who should do what by when? What principles should govern decision-making?

it’s impossible for a group of people to coordinate what needs to get done without spending time on it. The larger the team, the more time is needed.

For managers, important processes to master include running effective meetings, future proofing against past mistakes, planning for tomorrow, and nurturing a healthy culture.

Purpose, people, process. The why, the who, and the how. A great manager constantly asks herself how she can influence these levers to improve her team’s outcomes.

As the team grows in size, it matters less and less how good she is personally at doing the work herself. What matters more is how much of a...

If I spend all my time personally selling lemonade, then I’m contributing an additive amount to my business, not a multiplicative one.

My performance as a manager would be considered poor because I’m actually operating as an individual contributor.

Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.

When you are in survival mode, you do what it takes to survive.

When you’re beyond survival in your team’s hierarchy of needs, then you can plan for the future and think about what you can do today that will help you achieve more

you have to enjoy the day-to-day of management and want to do it.

Her curious and thoughtful spark had been replaced by glassy-eyed exhaustion.

At her core, she was a maker; she wanted long periods of uninterrupted time to go deep on a problem and create something tangible with her hands.

Do I Find It More Motivating to Achieve a Particular Outcome or to Play a Specific Role?

As a manager, you are judged on your team’s outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed.

If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your tim...