Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

by Sarah Drasner

At first she did terrific work. Time after time, I cautioned her that she might be trying to do too much, but I would stand back and be amazed at what she did. But after a while, her progress slowed. The boulders left on her plate were big ones. She started to freeze at the enormity of the task. For a little while, that was okay. After all, she had consistently been bringing in incredible work, and no one should be expected to keep up such a pace forever. But after a little while, I began to get worried. She seemed a bit more shy than usual, and I could tell her lack of progress was getting to her. “You know we don’t have to get all of this done, right?” I said. “Yeah, I know,” she said. But I could tell it wasn’t really me she was trying to make amends with. It was herself and her own ambition. “Okay, how about this?” I offered. “Some of these projects are fairly large in scope. How about we break these down?” I saw a glimmer in her eye that I’d not seen in a while. For the next hour, we worked to break down one of her larger tasks into smaller bits. We gave her the tiniest pieces to focus on that week. Lo and behold, she completed all of these small parts and came back the next week rejuvenated. Shipping some small parts helped her feel that the rest was doable. Which of course it was. For someone who might be trying to grow, breaking tasks down and focusing on the smallest, most doable bits first can help a ton.