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Manager's Handbook (2020)

themanagershandbook.com

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Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#81

Post by blowski »

ericb wrote: post #54
twayt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works as intended to alienate people who can’t keep the commitments they make. Both by actively eliminating them and passively making it a painful place for them to work. The people who can keep commitments they make would enjoy working there. I’m sure once they’ve developed a track record of keeping the commitments they make, it won’t be as draconian as it seems. However this disincentivizes the often productiv…

Only management sufficiently divorced from reality can forget that "reality has a surprising amount of detail" https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital... > suggests that half of all large IT projects—defined as those with initial price tags exceeding $15 million—massively blow their budgets. On average, large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 perc…

If you’re not sure you can deliver something, don’t commit to it. Instead, provide confidence levels, increase confidence by doing the riskiest bits earlier, and give frequent status updates.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#82

Post by blowski »

civilized wrote: post #52
ericb wrote: post #42

> The first time someone doesn’t meet an agreement, you point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, you respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the person continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.” Th…

> If they apologize, you respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the person continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.” Ugh. "Your apology is irrelevant. Just never make this mistake or we will fire you." Stron…

I think it’s poorly phrased and overly specific in how the conversation should go. The mistake of the individual is committing to something that perhaps wasn’t in their gift to deliver, and then failing to update when they knew they weren’t going to deliver it.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#83

Post by throwaway48375 »

ericb wrote: post #42

> The first time someone doesn’t meet an agreement, you point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, you respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the person continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.” Th…

This seems to encourage the Scotty approach.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#84

Post by lixtra »

thesumofall wrote: post #74
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #37

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their came…

I must admit I’m one of those always-on people and everyone in our team does so. For those speaking I feel it is quite rude to not give them any visual cue on how they are doing: I’m I understood? Are my points appreciated? Do I bore people? Are people even listening? Personally, I think the only good reasons to turn off a camera are either technical issues or if you indeed briefly want to send the message “I am dist…

People also have ticks. Some drool when concentrating, some stare in a strange way. The cam on your laptop is shoved right in your face which is different from a normal larger f2f meeting. Also people don’t secretly take pictures of you in real meetings.

I always turn the cam off when I share my screen. I want people to focus on the content I’m sharing, not the pimples in my face.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#85

Post by charles_f »

The more time passes, the less interest I see in line manager (aka m1) roles. I've been m1, m2 for some time, then ic, then m1 again. Now that I'm being on track to be m2 again, I think I'll just drop the towel and get back to ic. The only thing that's been keeping me from doing so so far is that I never had a manager I actually deemed competent in that they were trying to understand the underlying technical aspect of the job in a way that actually helped me as an ic. The only ones I have liked were those just leaving me alone. The impact of bad management is marginally lesser for managers themselves, and at least I can try to do some good in my team. But the admin cost of line management, added to having to deal with people's emotions all the time, the context switching, constant interruptions, politics and general vaporware BS remove any true possibility to be "strategic", or genuinely have time to coach people through anything significant. I find the effective job closer to a mix of hr, with exec admin role, with catchall person who needs to produce the decision juice when people don't want to. It's just not worth it.

I also really dislike the notion of being "promoted" into management. It's another profession altogether. You're not promoted, you're transferring. At best its a graduation if you actually succeeded in some form of training. But let's get real, people get slapped with a manager title, and one in a thousand will care enough to open a book or even just a blog post about anything related to learning the job. Most new managers are "trained" by a combination of their own clueless bosses, and inspirational memes on LinkedIn telling you should be a leader rather than a manager. Stop pretending there is a real notion of hierarchy between managers and ic, managers are equally incompetent as anybody else (well, that's not true, they tend to be worse since lots are driven by ego and power hunger rather than a genuine interest in the job), thinking that it is a promotion is stupid.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#86

Post by kqr »

sdoering wrote: post #12
atypeoferror wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot to unpack in this comment, but in general the situation described here is specific to certain kinds of organizations, with lamentably poor leadership and management cultures. If management views the employer-employee relationship as some sort of zero-sum game - they have already lost that game. In companies with mature (which doesn't mean old - a relatively young company can also be well-run!) structur…

A lot of orgs don't control their promotion cycle. Imagine a local unit with the budget given for promotions from global is announced after the yearly promotion discussions of all team leaders happened. So they had to come up with some form of ranking so that the cut off can be made based on the available budget. So even if 15 people had done all that their team leads said would be necessary for a promotion the decis…

This sounds like a good example of the "lamentably poor leadership and management culture" we are talking about.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#87

Post by louhike »

grzm wrote: post #72
osigurdson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans communicate via audio. Actually seeing a person's face doesn't seem to add much to comprehension in my opinion. As an absurd example to illustrate this point, consider a cameras on, mics off meeting to get a sense of what proportion of information is communicated by audio vs video. As a second example, consider a meeting with cameras and audio but with a 1 second delay in audio - this would almost be as bad as…

High definition audio is great. That said, upwards of 90% of human communication is non-verbal, including body language and facial expressions. One benefit of high-quality audio vs text is that we include intonation. But it doesn't encapsulate everything. This isn't to say we've cracked that nut with the current state of internet-transmitted video. A blanket "humans communicate via audio neglects these other channels…

This 90% value is used too much without context. It is not something we can apply for all situation, or every type of information we want to convey. It’s almost seem like a magic joker when there s a debate over using video or not for meetings.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#88

Post by dijonman2 »

simonw wrote: post #45
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #37

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their came…

I tried a few audio-only meetings recently and they were SO refreshing - massively less tiring than a video meeting.

It’s exhausting to be seen and presentable all the time.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#89

Post by itronitron »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #47
bawolff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes zoom fatigue is real and being watched all the time is exhausting (somehow more so than real in person meetings)

It’s because in real meetings, you know who people are focusing on. In virtual meetings, everyone is staring at you all the time.

This is why meetings, and especially online classes, should be held in Minecraft, as it's very easy to see where people are looking.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#90

Post by ccortes »

osigurdson wrote: post #76
grzm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High definition audio is great. That said, upwards of 90% of human communication is non-verbal, including body language and facial expressions. One benefit of high-quality audio vs text is that we include intonation. But it doesn't encapsulate everything. This isn't to say we've cracked that nut with the current state of internet-transmitted video. A blanket "humans communicate via audio neglects these other channels…

> 90% of human communication is non-verbal, If true you should be able to communicate effectively without audio. Clearly this is not the case.

You can with text
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