Management and Culture checklists
Two sets of things that are worth confirming are true in your world (third one coming soon)
Do readers love bullet points?*
I’m going to try an experiment in sharing some ideas in a less narrative form. Things I believe that on their own might help someone, but without (over) explaining things in narrative form. Some of these are going to be repeats from past or future posts.
LMK if this is useful? - it seems like it would be fun to alternate between longer form stuff and these short takes. I have a deeper dive into cross-discipline pod frameworks I plan to share in next week. Please consider subscribing so that hits your inbox directly.
BTW - I did a long post on the history of a key marketplace management tool at Amazon that’s still in use 20 years later. Open rate of the email was quite low so I’m suspicious it’s length caused some email clients to not show it proper love. If that’s the case just wanted to let you know it’s <here>. And if you just love bullet points instead - this is definitely your week. :-)
“Ways of working” leadership framework
Lead through context - the context should take both the global org goals and everyone’s problems/pain into account.
Make goals visible and grounded in observability of what would be better when they’re achieved. Not always quantitative - but ensure people agree on what success is and have a shared vision.
Focus on controllable inputs for the things you’ll do to impact the state you want to get to.
Use mechanisms not just best intentions
OKR’s + Tenets drive autonomy: Once alignment is achieved - encourage autonomy with connections through OKR’s. Document goals and when possible pre-load how we think about decision making with tenets. I’ll write more on tenets in the future.
Encouraging disagreement is good for the organization. I’d rather be right in the long term than feel right in the short term. Do a lot of demonstrating that if you want people to believe.
Encourage pods that are cross discipline in their interactions and goal setting -> this diversity much more likely to yield higher impact at lower cost.
Make work visible -> simple mechanisms best. Kanban boards are probably the simplest. Stay focused on keeping work in progress (WIP) under control to maximize throughput.
Help teams reduce multitasking. Auditing over and over that teams are starting something and finishing - period! is a great use of your time. As is demonstrating how critical it is for managers to keep their teams unblocked. This excellent, short and specific book is worth reading a few times.
Don’t be a jerk! Better yet, be a mensch! I wrote this without elaboration. but then I realized it might be not entirely obvious. I don’t mean that one should avoid telling people there are problems, even if they think you’re a jerk for doing so. Sometimes the “jerky” thing to do is to avoid unpleasant feedback and preventing someone from having a chance to change things, or at least discuss it before it’s an unresolvable problem. But there’s a jerky way to give that feedback - if you’re not sure run it by someone else first. But otherwise, most people if they pause before acting/speaking when they’re annoyed probably know intuitively how to follow this mandate. :-)
Important Org Cultural Characteristics
Without any specific proof I present a list of things that if not true are eventually going to bite you in the ass. Or at least slow you down.
Agreement on the Global inputs that drive impact: Clarity and shared understanding about what’s important globally (bottleneck, success). This is the key step of creating shared context. "Global” is a reference to what has to be true for the entire company to achieve it’s real goals. Things like making more money now and in the future with super satisfied customers.
A simple and clear prioritization approach: Transparency on how work is prioritized - what has to be true in the future. This isn’t a giant spreadsheet, it is a simple control rule. For example; We will prioritize things that keep our pricing model from being broken, then improving performance in the 3 of 15 pricing segments we’ve agreed are most impactful to our current business, and if there is any time left things that let us go faster (or reduce time spent) on the first two.
Shared Trust that people can voice when there are problems and have the outcome be constructive
Shared Visibility (and ownership) as to where work is - focusing on the most important things. The org should continually work to make all work visible over time. A counter example is I worked somewhere not that long ago where “updating dependencies” took something like 20-30% of every team’s time. Lots of people complained. But there was no shared visibility across all teams - only when we started doing some simple reporting was there immediate vision that this was a top problem for throughput.
Invest in inputs that drive technical fearlessness, letting people build faster in the future. These could be architecture, process, or a combination. If you don’t have current best practices like continuous deployment, loosely coupled systems, etc. then it’s almost always a good idea to move in the direction asap. Basically it’s usually important to do things that will clearly let you build faster tomorrow.
Local ownership/autonomy in how work is done. Once you have super strong alignment and have robustly shared context about what’s globally important, then you can really reap the benefits of higher velocity as teams can safely make their own decisions in keeping with the global/greater good.
* Random video for fans of The Wire
Sometimes things just stick with you. Best TV series ever!