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Design Patterns for Managing Up

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Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#21

Post by erikb »

dpweb wrote: post #9
motohagiography wrote: post #3

Concise articulation, and valuable. My comment is that this is happy-path advice. Corporate culture has changed to where instead of handling conflict according to principle (e.g. Harvard negotiation project, getting to yes, principled negotiations etc), today people are trained to out-passive each other, and marshal political campaigns to isolate opposition. (salience, political survival, working the ref, etc.) The m…

Usually the technologist is not even in the room with the business leaders. Your manager or their manager is. You want to be (and be seen as) valuable. You have to depend on your manager to vouch for you. If you have a complete asshole political or whatever manager, you must find another job. Don’t bother swimming against the tide. But its a whole other language that business leaders speak. Different etiquette. At le…

Yes, always make sure to follow all the rules you've read in a book! Then you will be save and feel well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kfgXoclrjk

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#23

Post by fraggle222 »

Not sure if they cover...

A typical scenario is that you are in a corporate culture where, for whatever reason your manager does not "manage down", like at all. Meaning that they are not giving you direction and nor are they listening to any needs, direction from you (ok, maybe once per quarter?). Your interactions with them (if you are letting them set the schedule) are very limited. Now that can be great or bad.

Typically though these people (by essence of being someone you report to) control more corporate power than you do. They can perhaps authorize work, hire 10s of additional resources, approve muilti million dollar projects, set a budget for next year, etc. So it becomes imperative for you to 'manage up' if you want to achieve more than what you are being fed.

Just how to do that, maybe this book covers. Hope so.

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#24

Post by khalilravanna »

User23 wrote: post #8

My favorite managing up pattern is the Feynman estimation technique. During the Manhattan project he and others were asked to report on what they would be discovering in the next quarter. Since they were doing groundbreaking work nobody had a clue how to answer and this caused the researchers a great deal of stress. Then they realized they could just hold back 3 months worth of results and “estimate” the discoveries…

Very cool process but this seems antithetical to the tech world which is often driven by agile processes, right? I can’t imagine a business leader being happy about making decisions that should be “agile” on dated information. This seems a bit like lying to get away with working on pet projects unhindered by product/business. Am I way off-base and misunderstanding the suggestion here?

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#25

Post by hoorayimhelping »

yeahitslikethat wrote: post #12
motohagiography wrote: post #3

Concise articulation, and valuable. My comment is that this is happy-path advice. Corporate culture has changed to where instead of handling conflict according to principle (e.g. Harvard negotiation project, getting to yes, principled negotiations etc), today people are trained to out-passive each other, and marshal political campaigns to isolate opposition. (salience, political survival, working the ref, etc.) The m…

You're higher up the food chain than the audience of that article. Just keep doing your job better than they do their job and vent to allies behind closed doors. There's a guy on our team who does #1 one in the article ALL the time. NNP who slows the team by 25% probably. No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months.

>No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months.

I was this employee once, but in a slightly different situation. I had a bad habit of responding to things I didn't understand in a way that almost always put people on the defensive. People didn't want to work or interact with me and politely and subtly trying to get me to stop didn't work. This was a problem across jobs, and was a huge blind spot for me.

It took a very direct and blunt conversation from my new manager where he flat out told me when I behave this way, I come off like a complete prick and no one wants to work with me for me to even realize what I was doing. It crushed me for a few days, but after some reflection, I realized I was crushed because it was true. This was nearly 7 years ago, and I'll always love and appreciate my manager for having that hard conversation with me. His having the courage to be blunt with me has made me an immeasurably better person.

My advice is find someone who is blunt or has the courage to have that hard conversation (my boss was English, and I think being blunt and direct was very natural for him, but he's also very courageous) and tell this person that their behavior is wasting a lot of people's time, and people are starting to get annoyed. Remind them that it's not a big deal now but it can become a big deal, and that in the end, people will remember the improvement and value that, not the original problem. I don't remember the pain of being crushed, I remember my appreciation for my manager who had this hard conversation with me when no one else in the past 3 years would.

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#26

Post by hopler »

khalilravanna wrote: post #24
User23 wrote: post #8

My favorite managing up pattern is the Feynman estimation technique. During the Manhattan project he and others were asked to report on what they would be discovering in the next quarter. Since they were doing groundbreaking work nobody had a clue how to answer and this caused the researchers a great deal of stress. Then they realized they could just hold back 3 months worth of results and “estimate” the discoveries…

Very cool process but this seems antithetical to the tech world which is often driven by agile processes, right? I can’t imagine a business leader being happy about making decisions that should be “agile” on dated information. This seems a bit like lying to get away with working on pet projects unhindered by product/business. Am I way off-base and misunderstanding the suggestion here?

It works with agile. You just have to sandbag a bit. Doesn't have to be 3months in an agile organization, just work for a sprint, then tell manager that's your plan for next sprint. If they change plan, you'll naturally have a 1 sprint slip, and in Sprint 2 you plan the previous sprint's worth. Or do this on the week or day level.

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#28

Post by sunir »

Confusion wrote: post #27

I think the abstract pattern here is: own it.

It is slightly different: lower anxiety.

You do that by being reliable, honest, receptive, taking ownership, mitigating risk.

But the human dimension is emotional. Your counterparts feel it as anxiety. They will ultimate adjust their internal feelings to you based on how anxious you make them.

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#29

Post by drharby »

motohagiography wrote: post #3

Concise articulation, and valuable. My comment is that this is happy-path advice. Corporate culture has changed to where instead of handling conflict according to principle (e.g. Harvard negotiation project, getting to yes, principled negotiations etc), today people are trained to out-passive each other, and marshal political campaigns to isolate opposition. (salience, political survival, working the ref, etc.) The m…

You just described working in a tech org of a major IB

Re: Design Patterns for Managing Up

#30

Post by peteradio »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #25
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're higher up the food chain than the audience of that article. Just keep doing your job better than they do their job and vent to allies behind closed doors. There's a guy on our team who does #1 one in the article ALL the time. NNP who slows the team by 25% probably. No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months.

> No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months. I was this employee once, but in a slightly different situation. I had a bad habit of responding to things I didn't understand in a way that almost always put people on the defensive. People didn't want to work or interact with me and politely and subtly trying to get me to stop didn't work. Thi…

I'm confused. What exactly were you doing?
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