Managing Up

In this episode of the Managing Up Show, Brandon, Travis, and Nick talk about meetings. How did they get a bad reputation? How can they be better? And no, the answer is not to abolish meetings, but rather to put the effort into making them actually good. They share disaster stories of meetings gone wrong and what makes one actually work. They cover: Yep, there is such a thing as an effective, engaging meeting, and once you’ve had them, you’ll never go back. Mentioned this episode: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/standup-meetings-are-dead/https://www.amazon.com/Death-Meeting-Leadership-Solving-Business/dp/0787968056

Nick, Travis, and Brandon talk "hero culture" and how that affects teams. What are the drawbacks of encouraging hero culture? How do you draw the distinction between necessary heroism and chronic hero culture? What's the difference between heroism and professionalism? They also discuss common pitfalls of trying to overcome hero culture, and what it means to set a sustainable example. Show Notes:

OK, fine, y'all win. We finally did the episode of "Managing Up" about managing up. In it, Nick, Travis, and Brandon talk about techniques for managing up, how they're similar to managing your own team members, and how it is sometimes very different. They share books and resources that helped them and talk about how communication, being crisp, and (gasp) _feelings_ play into managing your upward relationships. Show Notes:

The Managing Up Crew is joined by Estella Gonzalez Madison (@chicagoing) to discuss how they've changed the way they manage since the start of the pandemic 2+ years ago. They discuss tactical changes and how they've changed philosophically during this time, and how they square their own humanity and that of their teams during the last 2 years, as well as how this affects how they plan to manage in the future. Show Notes: https://twitter.com/chicagoinghttps://mymodernmet.com/julie-nolke-funny-viral-video/https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/standup-meetings-are-dead/https://larahogan.me/blog/manager-voltron/

Nick, pondering the Texas electric grid and the 2021 power crisis posits the question to Travis and Brandon: What role does pain play in leading teams? What is the role of a manager in managing and reacting to pain on our teams? What are the dangers of hiding or deflecting this pain? This leads to a discussion of processing feedback, helping teams learn from pain, and yes, launching trains at meteors. What roles do curiosity and fear play in managing organizational pain? What role do retrospectives play in this? How do you pronounce "gigawatt"? Show notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisishttps://towardsdatascience.com/maintaining-a-good-lottery-factor-1eeb2b2f52a6https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/cff607e3-f79e-4a84-a38c-ab6124c596c6

Travis, Nick, and Brandon discuss the word "accountability". What does it mean? Why has it developed a negative connotation? What's the connection between "trust" and "accountability"? They discuss the sometimes uncomfortable conversations that must take in place before a conversation about accountability can bring real results. They also talk about how remote culture changes the shape of this conversation by removing shortcuts some leaders have leaned on in offices. Show Notes: The Five Dysfunctions of a Teamhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_TeamStart with Whyhttps://simonsinek.com/product/start-with-why/Radical Focushttps://www.amazon.com/Radical-Focus-SECOND-Achieving-Objectives-ebook/dp/B091ZL2SRLRemotehttps://basecamp.com/books/remote

Nick, Travis, and Brandon revisit the one-on-ones topic from several years ago and go beyond "1:1s 101". The hosts dive past the scripts and formulas to discuss challenges with regular one-on-one meetings with your team. How do you discern "gripe sessions" from a genuine request to intervene? When do you share context vs. listen? How do you get people to shift past surface-level concerns to the most important topics? What are some 1:1 antipatterns? Also: The group restrains themselves to only one Ted Lasso reference. Show Notes: https://www.managingup.show/episodes/54705bedhttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt10986410/https://twitter.com/TedLasso

Nick, Brandon, and Travis discuss the term "Marketing" and the myth that doing good work will speak for itself. How can you advocate for your team's work authentically without feeling like you're bragging? They talk about using tracking documents to track and showcase team accomplishments, and why it's important to demonstrate your team's impact, and not just their efforts. Episode links:

Nick, Travis, and Brandon talk about how they increase psychological safety on teams to create space for a variety of voices, starting by debating the value of "strong opinions, weakly held". They explore the questions: How do you bootstrap trust and safety when joining a team? How can you make space for less vocal team members? What are things managers do that reduce trust within their teams? How can you encourage and receive important and valuable feedback? Episode links: Strong Opinions Loosely Held Might be the Worst Idea in TechHow to Get Your Team to Challenge Your Ideas

In this episode, Nick, Travis, and Brandon talk about the word "resources", thinking of humans versus abstract notions of people, and balancing company needs with individual needs. What changes as your role moves further from managing individual contributors? Show Notes

In the last episode we recorded in the "before times", Nick and Brandon discuss the connection between blameless culture, systems thinking, and just culture. Nick explains how blame robs learning, and how to foster an environment that allows the system to learn and improve. They talk about how accountability fits into a blameless culture, and Nick introduces Sidney Decker's idea of Forward Accountability and shifting behavior rather than assigning blame. Show notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_culturehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMk6rF4Tzsghttps://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/dp/0754648257https://sidneydekker.com/just-culture/

In another episode recorded in the "before times", Travis talks about finding the balance between not enough and too much process. Is Scrum too much process? How do you tell when process is designed to help versus be a remote control for a team? What if the process is being blamed for other problems? They discuss the signals that tell you when a process isn't working for you and when to modify existing processes versus throw them out. Notes: https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Programming-Explained-Embrace-Change/dp/0321278658https://www.scrumguides.org/index.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

In an episode recorded in "the before times" that we feel is still relevant, Nick suggested we talk about what to do when you can't do it all. Nick, Brandon, and Travis discuss how the game of "Calendar Jenga" is symptomatic. What happens when your calendar is so full of "valuable" things that you have to choose between lunch or more meetings? Nick talks about using WIP limits to keep your calendar clean, and Travis talks about how designing your schedule is like designing teams. Notes: https://twitter.com/catehstn/status/1231685231909974018https://speakerdeck.com/tehviking/the-new-managers-toolkit?slide=62https://blog.rescuetime.com/time-blocking-101/https://facilethings.com/blog/en/time-management-matrix

Travis, Nick, and Brandon ask: what do you do when you have a sense that things are about to change? What about when your work evaporates due to a startup pivot or major organizational change? They talk about how to help maintain a team's composure and capability during times of uncertainty or lack of clear direction, including leaning on your own manager.

Burnout is a very real problem right now, and is often aggravated in our jobs as managers, ironically in our work to help others avoid burning themselves out. Nick, Travis, and Brandon ask: how do you stop the cycle of overwork that led you to success in the first place? How do you take a break? Once you do, how do you come back to work? They discuss learning to set boundaries and say no, even to things we want. Travis compares burnout to technical debt. Nick explains how systemic thinking can alleviate the "trapped" feeling that can exacerbate burnout. Show notes: https://hbr.org/2019/07/6-causes-of-burnout-and-how-to-avoid-them

Nick, Travis, and Brandon talk about the chaotic and downright scary state of the world and our own prior adjustments to remote work. They discuss ways to lead authentically in these times, and how remote work has helped them learn how integrate life and work (and also, paradoxically, how to keep them separate). Show notes: https://mike-robbins.com/work/https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/03/10/interview-interrupted-children-newday.cnnhttp://lanipeterson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Career-Timeline-Exercise-01.2015.pdfhttps://basecamp.com/shapeuphttps://miro.com/

Travis and Brandon talk about the tendency of software developers to fall into an "overly strategic" or "overly tactical" style of thinking. How do you encourage individuals and teams to consider both near and long term impact in their day to day work? How does team design factor in? What can you do if external factors are causing or aggravating these challenges? Is there a way to achieve balance? Show notes: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Software-Design-John-Ousterhout/dp/1732102201/https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-journey-mastery-Anniversary/dp/0135957052/https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/

Nick, Travis, and Brandon talk about the seasonality of work and how that affects individuals and teams. They talk about how they work with low points in the cycle and how to capitalize on the high points, rather than fighting these cycles. How can you change the rhythm when things are flagging too much? What do you do when you can't move dates or deadlines around? When is it OK to ask the team for an "above and beyond push"? Notes: https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467https://alexsexton.com/blog/2014/1/the-productivity-cycle/

Brandon asks Nick about a piece of advice he doesn't even remember giving about teaching teams to manage themselves. Nick, Travis, and Brandon explore tough questions around self-managing teams: How do you know when to let go and when to step in? What is the job of a manager on a self-managing team? How do you deal with micromanagement from above? How do you dig out if your team can't live without you?

Travis and Brandon talk about how teams can support early-career developers and career changers. What environments are they a good fit for? How do you set expectations for newer folks? How can you help them get and stay productive? Is the cost of doing so worth it? They also talk about the surprising lack of definition around the space between "Entry-Level" and "Senior" engineers to define the main role that the rest are supposedly based on. They talk about the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, how folks get stuck in "Advanced Beginner" stage, and how to help them move to "Competent" and toward real, holistic expertise. Notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_developmenthttps://twitter.com/mipsytipsy/status/1191622396207190016https://twitter.com/bryanl/status/1192408098457174016?s=21https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition