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

by Julie Zhuo

We were all wearing many hats then, tackling problems as we saw them, diving in and out of code and pixels and back to code again.

“Yeah, but at that point, you won’t remember what it’s like at the beginning, when everything feels new and hard and crazy. You’ll be so far removed.”

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they share a common purpose: helping a group of people achieve a common goal.

All.managers a like

We can create things far grander and more ambitious than anything we could have done alone. This is how battles are won, how innovation moves forward, how organizations succeed. This is how any remarkable achievement happens.

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.

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.

Without understanding this deeply, it’s hard to know how to be good at it.

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.

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.

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

Andy grove

Time, however, always reveals the truth.

talented managers can typically turn around poor-performing teams if they are empowered to make changes.

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.

Facebooms cpo. Chris cox

help your team achieve great outcomes.

three buckets: purpose, people, and process.

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 thousands of other things you could be doing?

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

you’ll need to get him and the other members of your team on board with what you truly care about.

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.

To manage people well, you must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), make good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best.

when you are working by yourself, you get to make all the decisions. You are limited only by how fast you can think and act.

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 multiplier effect she has on her team.

But what could I do instead with my time? Suppose I spent it teaching Henry and Eliza how to become better lemonade salespeople.

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 people say they are interested in management, I try to understand what they find appealing about it and whether that matches what would be their actual day-to-day job.

This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers.

adaptability is a key trait of great managers.

If you’re committed to your purpose, then you will probably enjoy (or at least not mind) the variation that comes with the job.

ensuring that the individuals you support are able to thrive.

becoming a manager is not a promotion but rather a transition.

None of the designers were truly sold on my idea. They didn’t think it was going to succeed.

the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

So to be a great manager, one must certainly be a leader.

If you can pinpoint a problem and motivate others to work with you to solve it, then you’re leading.

“What turned out to be more challenging than you expected, and what was easier than you expected?”

Does everyone get along? Are your processes efficient? Is your team known for rigorous and high-quality work?

create a list of all the things that could be better. Is your team cagey about deadlines? Does it seem like priorities are always shifting? Is there that one really long weekly meeting nobody wants to attend?

how to best act as a multiplier for your team.

I’d frame criticisms as suggestions—“Hey, just an idea, but have you considered … ?” I knew that, ultimately, they owned their own decisions.

the mistake that I made—and that I see virtually every apprentice manager make—is continuing to do individual contributor work past the point at which it is sustainable.

finally realized that I had to give up wanting to be both a design manager and a designer, because in attempting to do both, I was doing neither well.

becomes four or five people, you should have a plan for how to scale back your individual contributor responsibilities so that you can be the best manager for your people.

To be successful, you’ll need to unearth all the values and know-how in your head and pass them along to others.

How do I make decisions? What do I consider a job well done? What are all the responsibilities I took care of when it was just me? What’s easy or hard about working in this function? What new processes are needed now that this team is growing?

ask your reports the following questions to understand what their “dream manager” looks like.

What did you and your past manager discuss that was most helpful to you? What are the ways in which you’d like to be supported? How do you like to be recognized for great work? What kind of feedback is most useful for you? Imagine that you and I had an amazing relationship. What would that look like?

One of the biggest mistakes new bosses make is thinking they need to jump in and exert their opinions right away to show that they are capable.

Few things are more annoying than a new person wasting everyone else’s time because they are trying to prove they know something when their opinion isn’t actually informed.