PM from Facebook: Counterintuitive conclusions about management (part 1)
I first started to lead people seven years ago — three years after my graduation from the university and my first job in the field of design. At that time I lacked qualifications. I had almost no experience when someone led me , let alone to lead others. I am still grateful to the manager who we had at that time, for her faith in me. I do not think that in her situation, I would put it on myself. And, again, one of the things that you learn - a visionary manager can sometimes see in you what you yourself do not see and push you towards those achievements that seemed impossible.
In the center of the frame - Julie Zhuo, product design director on Facebook
In those seven years, in most cases, I managed a mix of developers, some user interface engineers, and researchers. Most recently, I became the head of design managers.
')
I love my job. It seems to me that because of people, she is both heavy, and insane, and wonderful. She is about interacting with people. About understanding people. About finding the best in people. And again about understanding that everything is not perfect, but together with our imperfections, we can still achieve more than we do alone.
The translation was made with the support of the EDISON Software company, which is professionally engaged in software design (here are examples of technical specifications, one , two , three ), as well as the creation of software for large customers ( microtomograph , mobile communications , city lighting ).
And yet, despite the fact that management, as well as education, is a certain kind of black magic without complicated and quick rules, of course, there are good and bad managers. A better manager will get better results. Not always they can be observed for weeks, months or sometimes even years, but ultimately everything will be as clear as day.
When I first started, some things worked out well. I was attractive, I was serious about my duties and I was always worried about both sides of the business. But the problems were also: Asian upbringing, which implied hierarchy and work in the stream, an insane desire for perfectionism and a lot of self-doubt.
Here are some of the lessons I learned. Every year I hope to get even more.
One of the first things I ask of those who want to become a manager is a hypothetical question:
If the idea of spending 8 hours in a row talking to people sounds awful, then you probably don’t like to work as a manager day after day. I do not say that meetings are held every day, but the fact that the pulsating vital blood of management is people cannot be avoided. If the options of listening to people and communicating with them do not suit you, then the management will be a burden to you.
In the end, what will happen if someone comes to you with a problem - this person does not get along with his colleague, he has burned out and wants to go on vacation for a month, he feels that the project will not bring anything good - and while you talk with him, you feel deep in your stomach an unpleasant realization that you hate all this and that you can no longer. You will miss the days when you could manipulate anything directly - pixels, words, codes, music - quietly, sitting in headphones, and in this blessed world no one needs to talk to you and load you with problems.
I learned this lesson well, because I myself was pushing people toward the field of management when I thought that they had sufficient skills. But in the end I knocked them out of the rut, and they burned out. It is terrible to hear from a person whom you asked to be a manager, recognition a year later, that it’s difficult for him to get up in the morning, because the idea that he needs to spend all day with people is so unpleasant to him.
Unfortunately, if you do not become a manager, you will not move up the career ladder. This sadly leads to wrong outcomes in which those who don’t like to deal with people become bad managers, and both themselves and their team suffer from this. On the other hand, we are lucky that many companies maintain separate, but equal career paths, in which at a certain level one can choose either deepening one’s discipline or guiding people. If you find yourself at this crossroads, ask yourself if you are interested in management for the right reasons.
Those who become excellent managers truly love working with people. They see problems of motivation, personal barriers, and unclear coordination is seen as a difficult but doable task. They love talking tete-a-tete. Their satisfaction is achieved by the prosperity of others.
Before I started working in the field of management, I thought that people become managers because they are the best in their discipline. In the end, if the job of a manager is to give feedback on work to your colleagues, how can this be done if you are not good at it?
It is because of this that I have long doubted this work. I was sure that I was never better in design than the guys on my team! And at the same time I thought that everyone expected it, or I should be able to do my job well. Worse, I did the same with my managers. I was inclined to think that they were right (after all, it was their job to be right!), Which meant that I did not doubt their decisions (although sometimes it turned into a passive-aggressive outrage). If something didn’t work in a team, I put it as a problem they have to solve.
Such an approach is destructive not only for me and my team, but also for my manager. This is exactly what defines our culture oriented towards ideality, in which people are afraid to admit weakness or failure, and we all, like ducks, pretend to gracefully glide along the surface of the water, while in reality we are desperately wallowing.
It is foolish to expect that the leader of the team in many ways understands better than any other person in this very team.
No need to know everything. You don't even have to pretend that you all know. The best coaches are not the best athletes. The best teachers are not the best performers. Your job is to increase the efficiency of the team, which they could not achieve without you, either because they are afraid of you, or because you motivate them.
I think we all watched enough of the episodes of Game of Thrones to know which choice was right.
How do you motivate the team? The topic itself is very long, but I would advise not to be assholes / assholes, and to do what inspires and motivates you yourself, without thinking about what others expect of you.
I used to think that there was a certain list with qualities that determine if a manager is good. Do they have great authority? Do you think strategically? Good in presentations? Can you complete 20 important tasks per day? Make a fight? To reconcile people? And so on.
I'm not going to say that these are bad traits, but it’s pretty easy to define a successful manager: his team is great. It surpasses all results.
What does it mean?
You may be the most hardworking, intelligent, most likeable manager in the world, but if your team has 20 people and a mediocre reputation, then I'm sorry, but there is no such world where you could be considered a “great” manager.
On the other hand, of course, a bad manager might get lucky. They can have incredible results, because they work very closely with the team. Or because they already got a great team.
In the long run, however, there is no getting around the fact that the best people in their field will not work for years under the leadership of those whom they do not respect or who do not really care about helping the team.
That's why one of the fastest ways to become a cool manager is to hire the right people. I remember when I was just starting to hire, I biasedly looked for people whose career path I understood and I walked along it myself. Involuntarily, I installed the ceiling for the people I was looking for. As a person with 5 years of experience, I could not imagine how someone from the 10th would want to work in my team. Unfortunately, this point of view meant that the growth of my team would be slow.
If you are the most experienced person in your team in several dimensions, then the hierarchy will seem comfortable, but believe me, you do not have a great team .
A thousand times better to have a diverse team with people who are strong in areas where you are weak, who can teach you new skills and challenge you to take on new perspectives. This is the fastest way to grow as a manager. If you are not sure whether your team will be able to approach, ask yourself whether you have learned something significant from your team. If you have difficulties with examples, you may want to focus on the team’s ambitions.
Sometimes new managers ask me: “What lessons should I learn in order to quickly improve my skills and become a pro?”. Previously, I myself asked such a question, hoping to get lifehacks that would speed up the learning process.
That is, I believe that in order to become a truly self-confident senior manager, it takes at least 3 years (and in most cases more).
You can not cut the path, trying to master this area for several months or even a year, reading books, absorbing articles or asking for advice from other people (but these things certainly help to assimilate as soon as possible).
This is because management is not just a drawing-type skill where you can practice alone for hours. You need the ability to be inside certain situations in order to learn and grow.
For example, let's see what makes a great designer. Pretend there is a company with 100 designers. If you managed only 5 designers, then in your opinion, one of these five would be the best. If I ask you: “What qualities does a great designer have?”, Then you most likely will call things that exactly that person does well.
Now let's imagine that another manager in the company manages the remaining 95.
Between you two, who do you think, statically speaking, will lead both the best and the worst designers in the company? Who do you think will have a more developed and detailed perspective on what a good designer looks like?
This refers to a ton of different management situations: leadership laggards. Hiring new people. Work with adult talents. The failure in the launch of the goods. Regulation of the period of low morale. Sudden dismissal of people from your team.
The first time that the above happens under your supervision, it is always new and hard; no matter how many books you read on this topic. But after the fifth time, the tenth or the twentieth, you are no longer psychotic. You understand that everything will be fine. You can handle it because you have to. You will become a stone, firm in the face of the winds of change.
The fact is that it is difficult to click your fingers and say: “Cool, I need to gain experience in firing people. Let's do it next month. ” Circumstances should make it so that you have a chance to really do it. At the same time, an inexperienced manager can do much more damage than an inexperienced individual assistant, so the possibilities for new difficulties do not materialize at your will.
Now, when I conduct interviews, I always enjoy people entering the door with experience in managing various teams over the years. It can be said that they bring to the room a kind of confidence and stability that says that these people have endured much - times of shortage and times of excess - and that several thunderstorm clouds on the horizon will not frighten them.
In the center of the frame - Julie Zhuo, product design director on Facebook
In those seven years, in most cases, I managed a mix of developers, some user interface engineers, and researchers. Most recently, I became the head of design managers.
')
I love my job. It seems to me that because of people, she is both heavy, and insane, and wonderful. She is about interacting with people. About understanding people. About finding the best in people. And again about understanding that everything is not perfect, but together with our imperfections, we can still achieve more than we do alone.
The translation was made with the support of the EDISON Software company, which is professionally engaged in software design (here are examples of technical specifications, one , two , three ), as well as the creation of software for large customers ( microtomograph , mobile communications , city lighting ).
And yet, despite the fact that management, as well as education, is a certain kind of black magic without complicated and quick rules, of course, there are good and bad managers. A better manager will get better results. Not always they can be observed for weeks, months or sometimes even years, but ultimately everything will be as clear as day.
When I first started, some things worked out well. I was attractive, I was serious about my duties and I was always worried about both sides of the business. But the problems were also: Asian upbringing, which implied hierarchy and work in the stream, an insane desire for perfectionism and a lot of self-doubt.
Here are some of the lessons I learned. Every year I hope to get even more.
1. To be a great manager you must like to deal with people.
One of the first things I ask of those who want to become a manager is a hypothetical question:
“Imagine that you spent the whole day working side by side with people and constantly interacting with them. Does it sound awful or cool? ”
If the idea of spending 8 hours in a row talking to people sounds awful, then you probably don’t like to work as a manager day after day. I do not say that meetings are held every day, but the fact that the pulsating vital blood of management is people cannot be avoided. If the options of listening to people and communicating with them do not suit you, then the management will be a burden to you.
In the end, what will happen if someone comes to you with a problem - this person does not get along with his colleague, he has burned out and wants to go on vacation for a month, he feels that the project will not bring anything good - and while you talk with him, you feel deep in your stomach an unpleasant realization that you hate all this and that you can no longer. You will miss the days when you could manipulate anything directly - pixels, words, codes, music - quietly, sitting in headphones, and in this blessed world no one needs to talk to you and load you with problems.
I learned this lesson well, because I myself was pushing people toward the field of management when I thought that they had sufficient skills. But in the end I knocked them out of the rut, and they burned out. It is terrible to hear from a person whom you asked to be a manager, recognition a year later, that it’s difficult for him to get up in the morning, because the idea that he needs to spend all day with people is so unpleasant to him.
Unfortunately, if you do not become a manager, you will not move up the career ladder. This sadly leads to wrong outcomes in which those who don’t like to deal with people become bad managers, and both themselves and their team suffer from this. On the other hand, we are lucky that many companies maintain separate, but equal career paths, in which at a certain level one can choose either deepening one’s discipline or guiding people. If you find yourself at this crossroads, ask yourself if you are interested in management for the right reasons.
Those who become excellent managers truly love working with people. They see problems of motivation, personal barriers, and unclear coordination is seen as a difficult but doable task. They love talking tete-a-tete. Their satisfaction is achieved by the prosperity of others.
2. Knowing all the answers is not the goal. Team motivation to find answers is already a goal.
Before I started working in the field of management, I thought that people become managers because they are the best in their discipline. In the end, if the job of a manager is to give feedback on work to your colleagues, how can this be done if you are not good at it?
It is because of this that I have long doubted this work. I was sure that I was never better in design than the guys on my team! And at the same time I thought that everyone expected it, or I should be able to do my job well. Worse, I did the same with my managers. I was inclined to think that they were right (after all, it was their job to be right!), Which meant that I did not doubt their decisions (although sometimes it turned into a passive-aggressive outrage). If something didn’t work in a team, I put it as a problem they have to solve.
Such an approach is destructive not only for me and my team, but also for my manager. This is exactly what defines our culture oriented towards ideality, in which people are afraid to admit weakness or failure, and we all, like ducks, pretend to gracefully glide along the surface of the water, while in reality we are desperately wallowing.
Listen, nobody's perfect. In some aspects of our life, we are heroes, while in others we are tough.
It is foolish to expect that the leader of the team in many ways understands better than any other person in this very team.
No need to know everything. You don't even have to pretend that you all know. The best coaches are not the best athletes. The best teachers are not the best performers. Your job is to increase the efficiency of the team, which they could not achieve without you, either because they are afraid of you, or because you motivate them.
I think we all watched enough of the episodes of Game of Thrones to know which choice was right.
How do you motivate the team? The topic itself is very long, but I would advise not to be assholes / assholes, and to do what inspires and motivates you yourself, without thinking about what others expect of you.
3. To assess the strength of a manager, look at the strength of his team.
I used to think that there was a certain list with qualities that determine if a manager is good. Do they have great authority? Do you think strategically? Good in presentations? Can you complete 20 important tasks per day? Make a fight? To reconcile people? And so on.
I'm not going to say that these are bad traits, but it’s pretty easy to define a successful manager: his team is great. It surpasses all results.
What does it mean?
At the most basic level, this means that all the daily things that you - yes, you personally - achieve, do not in themselves mean anything.
You may be the most hardworking, intelligent, most likeable manager in the world, but if your team has 20 people and a mediocre reputation, then I'm sorry, but there is no such world where you could be considered a “great” manager.
On the other hand, of course, a bad manager might get lucky. They can have incredible results, because they work very closely with the team. Or because they already got a great team.
In the long run, however, there is no getting around the fact that the best people in their field will not work for years under the leadership of those whom they do not respect or who do not really care about helping the team.
That's why one of the fastest ways to become a cool manager is to hire the right people. I remember when I was just starting to hire, I biasedly looked for people whose career path I understood and I walked along it myself. Involuntarily, I installed the ceiling for the people I was looking for. As a person with 5 years of experience, I could not imagine how someone from the 10th would want to work in my team. Unfortunately, this point of view meant that the growth of my team would be slow.
If you are the most experienced person in your team in several dimensions, then the hierarchy will seem comfortable, but believe me, you do not have a great team .
A thousand times better to have a diverse team with people who are strong in areas where you are weak, who can teach you new skills and challenge you to take on new perspectives. This is the fastest way to grow as a manager. If you are not sure whether your team will be able to approach, ask yourself whether you have learned something significant from your team. If you have difficulties with examples, you may want to focus on the team’s ambitions.
4. The most significant advantage of a senior manager compared to a junior manager is an expanded perspective.
Sometimes new managers ask me: “What lessons should I learn in order to quickly improve my skills and become a pro?”. Previously, I myself asked such a question, hoping to get lifehacks that would speed up the learning process.
Now, to be completely honest, I don’t think that you can learn a lot about management without practicing it.
That is, I believe that in order to become a truly self-confident senior manager, it takes at least 3 years (and in most cases more).
You can not cut the path, trying to master this area for several months or even a year, reading books, absorbing articles or asking for advice from other people (but these things certainly help to assimilate as soon as possible).
This is because management is not just a drawing-type skill where you can practice alone for hours. You need the ability to be inside certain situations in order to learn and grow.
For example, let's see what makes a great designer. Pretend there is a company with 100 designers. If you managed only 5 designers, then in your opinion, one of these five would be the best. If I ask you: “What qualities does a great designer have?”, Then you most likely will call things that exactly that person does well.
Now let's imagine that another manager in the company manages the remaining 95.
Between you two, who do you think, statically speaking, will lead both the best and the worst designers in the company? Who do you think will have a more developed and detailed perspective on what a good designer looks like?
This refers to a ton of different management situations: leadership laggards. Hiring new people. Work with adult talents. The failure in the launch of the goods. Regulation of the period of low morale. Sudden dismissal of people from your team.
The first time that the above happens under your supervision, it is always new and hard; no matter how many books you read on this topic. But after the fifth time, the tenth or the twentieth, you are no longer psychotic. You understand that everything will be fine. You can handle it because you have to. You will become a stone, firm in the face of the winds of change.
The fact is that it is difficult to click your fingers and say: “Cool, I need to gain experience in firing people. Let's do it next month. ” Circumstances should make it so that you have a chance to really do it. At the same time, an inexperienced manager can do much more damage than an inexperienced individual assistant, so the possibilities for new difficulties do not materialize at your will.
Now, when I conduct interviews, I always enjoy people entering the door with experience in managing various teams over the years. It can be said that they bring to the room a kind of confidence and stability that says that these people have endured much - times of shortage and times of excess - and that several thunderstorm clouds on the horizon will not frighten them.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/341642/
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