How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
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How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
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Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#2> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics.
Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the next paragraph.
In my experience, during this "wartime" the author discusses, management knows the ship may be sinking/is sinking and are making their way towards the lifeboats. They still need to be seen as doing something though, so they string along the ICs hoping they can keep being "productive" even though management is completely checked out, and a lot of the ICs will be laid off or not survive the upcoming aquihire/turn down.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#3In my opinion there is a strong disconnect between the title and the advice. If in fact your house is on fire, there is a decision tree you can follow that goes something like this.
1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out.
2. If not, then determine if someone addressing the fire. One would expect that higher ups are aware of the fire, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the higher ups are not aware. Sometimes they are too busy saving themselves to address the fire.
3. If someone is addressing the fire is there a way you can assist?
I do not mean to be snarky in this- there are real people who work for real companies that are not doing well. If you are a manager, your team's well being should be high on your list.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#4> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics. Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the nex…
on average, everyone will follow the path of maximum reward/lowest risk. Management has a job to do, but is aware that they may lack any choice or path to success. They still have a job to do in e.g. allocating engineers work, managing performance, promotions, and morale... so they do it, meanwhile they may also be looking for the exit.
As an IC, never believe a manager at face value - they will promote you if it's good for them, they will pacify your concerns as it's what they are paid for, and they will fire you if its good for them. This is the nature of the relationship.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#5Pull the fire alarm and evacuate the building?
Or, just stop using over-bloviated metaphors for first world marketing creating fictional scheduling crises.
Not making you dev schedule is not a "fire", much less a "war".
Maybe try getting outside once in awhile and clearing your head of this make believe bullshit...
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#6> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics. Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the nex…
Absolutely this - management will do whatever it takes to help management get through whatever problem they currently have, and if that's outright lying to IC's, or stringing them along for a few months they will do that, and not even regret it for an instant.
A really solid engineer I know was working with a failing mobile payments company, got an offer somewhere else and like a fool took it to his manager, who matched the new offer and the guy accepted... for 2 months until the company went bankrupt and he was back at square one looking for a job.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#7> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics. Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the nex…
on average, everyone will follow the path of maximum reward/lowest risk. Management has a job to do, but is aware that they may lack any choice or path to success. They still have a job to do in e.g. allocating engineers work, managing performance, promotions, and morale... so they do it, meanwhile they may also be looking for the exit. As an IC, never believe a manager at face value - they will promote you if it's g…
Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit.
I had one manager like this after an acquisition, he literally threw his head back laughing when I said I was up for a promotion and raise (documented prior to the acquisition) and said a number which was what everyone at $ex_company with that title made. He said no, and that he was the one who got to decide if I get a promotion— I quit less than a month later for an actually good manger.
They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#8I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play.
I normally hate sports metaphors, but as an alternative to war, framing a tough business situation as “fourth down and 10” or whatever is a lot healthier way to think about it.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#9In my opinion there is a strong disconnect between the title and the advice. If in fact your house is on fire, there is a decision tree you can follow that goes something like this. 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. 2. If not, then determine if someone addressing the fire. One would expect that higher ups are aware of the fire, but this is not always the case. Sometimes…
> 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out.
Wanting to help folks out is great, but if there's one role going in some related company, and there's a few on your team who are going to be out of work, then I don't think there's going to be too many advertising the job posting to others.
Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire
#10In my opinion there is a strong disconnect between the title and the advice. If in fact your house is on fire, there is a decision tree you can follow that goes something like this. 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. 2. If not, then determine if someone addressing the fire. One would expect that higher ups are aware of the fire, but this is not always the case. Sometimes…
> 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. Wanting to help folks out is great, but if there's one role going in some related company, and there's a few on your team who are going to be out of work, then I don't think there's going to be too many advertising the job posting to others.
it's really common for people to form groups after a layoff to help each other get hired.