Every leader should share their management philosophy

Management is an art, and every artist probably has her own taste of greatness.

When people ask me about my management taste, I love to tell them: "I see management as an investment, and I love my investment with compound interest." In other words, I believe

Management practices that do not scale are bad.

If the only way to get more is to invest more, the investment does not generate compound interest. I avoid this kind of investment and prioritize the precious resource, i.e. time, on those activities generating compound interest in return.

The bottleneck and the unconscious bias

I still remember vividly the time when I was promoted to be a first-time manager. I was super excited and highly motivated. I was highly engaged -- for example, I worked 12 hours a day, spending my evening reviewing merge requests and working on projects constantly. I also replied to emails almost instantly, and I was always on: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

At the time, I was the most senior member leading projects, and I was very good at my job. I earned respect from everyone; I was the go-to person. My team loved me, so did stakeholders and my boss. I had a strong sense of control.

Working hard on something one loves is called passion. I was full of passion. Life was good.

This management mindset was not really a bad thing in the beginning.

However, as we recruited more people, the demand on my time increased. First I invested my evenings, then my weekends, to catch up on work. In order to support a bigger team, I had to work more hours. One day I started to freak out not only because my wife started to complain, but also because I couldn’t put any more time into my work. I was about to fail everyone.

Ouch! Working 80 hours a week is not a sustainable solution. Worse, I started making mistakes.

I had to fix the problem, and fast! With the help of many great mentors, I delegated and gave away my trophy. I let go of my ego along with the desire to be the smartest kid in the room. You can read more about my solution in this article as I explained why a good TLM often becomes a bad manager.

I was fortunate to patch my own (behavior) bug for once.

Yet later on in my career, I somehow kept driving myself into the same trap, that is, working 80 hours a week. What was wrong with me? I knew I had to find the root cause and get it fixed if I wanted to advance my career. In other words, I had to refactor the algorithms in my brain.

After spending more time thinking and digging deeper, eventually I found the bug. Aha!

Research has shown that we as humans have a tendency to leave our options open. If you are interested in learning more about this irrationality, I'd recommend the book "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. Simply put, my irrationality here is the desire to leave my options open, which happens unconsciously.

I cannot know which projects will be more fruitful, so I keep my hands on many of them. I want to keep my options open. When I became a senior manager, then a director, I said yes to new projects because I was afraid that I might miss a big opportunity for my team to win. Similarly, I showed up at meetings where my attendance was actually optional. I was afraid of missing something, so I decided to show up.

As an executive, this tendency of keeping one’s options open is actually more dangerous and detrimental than you think.

If a leader is busy with activities to keep her options open, who is going to prioritize? Who is going to think about the long term? Who is going to lead a transformation? Who is going to recruit? Who is going to think about future risks? The list goes on and on.

Based on years of experience, self-reflection, and failures, I am going to share my journey in developing principles for solving this bug. I constantly challenge myself to say no to activities that do not scale. These activities often come with very little or no compound interest. In other words, the only way to get more from these activities is to put in more time.

Good investments I have learned

The majority of management experience accumulates from the mistakes one makes in their career. A wise person once told me "sometimes we win, sometimes we learn." I can't agree more. Here are the three best investments I have learned over the years that offer compound interests and help make a great team.

They are trust, clarity, and inspiration.

As John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches in history, said: a player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. A good manager needs to become a valuable player in the organization.

Trust

“I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou

How can we measure trust? Often it’s easier to improve something that’s measurable.

The way I measure trust is to ask this simple but powerful question: do people in your team feel like they can disagree with you or another team member without worrying about the repercussions?

In a 1-1 with a direct report, try to ask for honest feedback for improvements. For example, "can you point out an opportunity for me to work on?" Or, "is there anything I should do differently next time to be more effective?"

You may not get the feedback right away, but keep trying. Don't give up! The time when a person gives you feedback, you establish some trust.

Take the feedback as a gift. Be curious. If you believe the feedback is reasonable, admit you're wrong and be big enough to change your mind. If not, recognize the courage it takes for the person to provide a different perspective. Do not defend your position.

When you find someone who speaks freely about her disagreement with you, you two establish strong trust.

With trust, we can disagree with each other and let the best idea stand out. With trust, we will do our best to help each other. With trust, the manager can spend more time communicating outwardly and less time monitoring inwardly. With trust, a member is more likely to receive coaching. With trust, a person is more likely to support the manager's decision even when her proposal is overruled by the manager.

I'm a firm believer that trust is the foundation of an effective team. I highly recommend the book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni for those who want to build effective teams.

As a leader, we should care not just about headcounts; we must also care about heart-counts.

Why does investing in trust generate compound interest in return? 

It enables a leader to do less and accomplish more in the long run. Trust brings effectiveness. Effectiveness is an advantage.

Better yet, trust is contagious. When a new member joins a team with strong trust in its DNA, the member can develop trust and bond with the team more easily and more quickly.

In my experience, building trust is simply the very best management investment to generate compound interest.

So, how to build trust?

I found that being genuine and humble helps. I found that apologizing when you have to reschedule a 1-1 helps. I found that showing care for a team member’s family helps. I found that taking someone out for dinner and spending some quality time together helps. I found that making myself approachable helps. I even found that leaving my cell phone off the table during a conversation helps.

I don't believe in the "magic bullet" for building trust. Instead, I believe that every day a leader should find every possible way to care about what others feel.

Close your eyes and think of managers you have worked with. You might not remember exactly what they did or how they did it, but you will forever remember how they made you feel. For good ones whom you followed, I bet you felt trust.

Clarity

“ Do less, then obsess.” ― Morten Hansen

How can we measure clarity? I found it useful to ask my team these two questions:

• Do you understand the mission of our team and why it is important?
• Do you understand how your work fits into that mission?

With these questions, I'm checking the clarity of vision to ensure that we are in sync.

Moreover, I have learned that a manager can improve clarity by encouraging ruthless prioritization.

I can't tell you how frustrated a person can feel if what she delivers is considered irrelevant to the company. This is probably the easiest way to discourage an employee. This tragedy can and must be prevented.

To achieve clarity, ask a person, especially a manager, to share one top priority mission on her mind. You then discuss and debate to ensure the top priority is right. The right top priority mission is: if this mission fails, everything else doesn't matter; if this mission is a success and we deliver it on time, delay in other projects is tolerable. You then make it clear that you will confirm it with this person's team and follow up on discussing it every week.

Once you define the mission, ask "what would success look like? Imagine when we achieve success, what will we see at that moment? What about at 25%, 50%, and 75% checkpoints?" Describing the expected outcomes helps the team get clarity for its roadmap.

I know that many executives want to see metrics. I would be very cautious about setting metrics, especially setting wrong ones.

I'm not against metrics. I believe one metric is better than two. I believe we should measure outcomes, not activities.

For example, if your goal is to stay in shape, measure your BMI, not the frequency you hit the gym. Experience has taught me that we humans are very good at optimizing for metrics to make them look good, and we have a tendency to measure activities not outcomes because it is easier to cheat metrics that measure activities.

I'm not denying the fact that we need to allocate resources to support daily operations or to repay the technical debt. However, the team needs to see the true north. Well-defined and clearly communicated expected outcomes at checkpoints will ensure the team marches toward the right direction.

Be smarter than me, please! I once put myself in a situation where my team wandered because the true north was unclear. The team worked on multiple missions but many of them got reprioritized often. My boss felt that my team was unproductive even though we all worked very hard.

Once the team has its clarity, push the team to favor speed over anything else when testing new ideas. Once the proof of concept is accepted through demonstration, switch gears and have the team focus on efficiency and reliability when launching it to production.

Surely there can be a good choice and a bad choice when picking your true north, but indecisiveness is always a bad choice.

If you are interested in learning more about the scientific research behind the "do less, then obsess" principle, I highly recommend the book "Great at Work" by Morten Hansen. Dr. Hansen's research provides scientific evidence for the fact that obsessing over few priorities yields much better performance.

Investing in clarity always pays dividends. Focusing on one thing at a time allows you to deliver faster. Delivering a project gives you political capital to push back requests of low priority and to get more resources. Even better, delivering it allows you to celebrate the success with the team, recognize their effort, and boost the morale.

Clarity is a managerial investment that generates compound interest. It enables you to accomplish more and be less busy.

Inspiration

“Winning isn't everything -- but wanting to win is.” ― Vince Lombardi

We leaders must ensure everyone sees and feels that we are marching toward victory.

This belief comes from both experience and experiments.

I still remember the time when I heard a lot of trash-talk about the management when I was an individual contributor. Switching to the management ladder has its downside: you now formally join the party that people are complaining about. So if you are a manager, no one will complain bluntly in front of you anymore.

One day I had a crazy idea -- I joined some local meet-ups and blended in. I “disguised” myself by intentionally not disclosing my role and my title when attending the meet-ups. I then picked people who seemed to be looking for a job and offered to buy them a drink after the meet-up to have some 1 on 1 time to hear their stories and opinions.

What I did was a "follow me home" study --- I observed and collected data in the field, not through surveys. I asked many questions and listened carefully. 

I repeated the same practice a few times, and I found something in common that is very interesting:

People are not afraid of going through a tough time or putting in long hours to solve hard assignments. However, the sense of no hope toward success (i.e. a win that comes with recognition or rewards) truly scares them. If they believe that they are marching toward success, they will develop grit along the way. On the other hand, if they think or feel that there's no hope to excel or to win, any assignment becomes annoying, and no one wants to give her best at work.

I learned one very valuable thing --- going through a tough time or facing challenges is not a problem; losing the hope to win or the desire to excel is a serious problem.

For many of us, our job is our life. We all have the urge to excel and to win. This is a psychological need.

We as leaders have to facilitate and motivate our team to win.

To begin, we must make sure each member of the team feels important. You cannot fake it; you have to really believe in it and make it happen. You do this by showing your genuine interest in their lives and their work. You listen with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply.

To inspire the team, I found this classic book very helpful, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

Furthermore, I find that inspiration is a skill that can be taught and learned. For instance, when someone expresses a negative feeling to you, don't respond with "you should not feel that way." Instead, acknowledge and validate the person's feeling and emotion. I learned lots of useful ideas from this book "Why Motivating People doesn't work" by Susan Fowler.

Again, there's no magic bullet, but there are many ways to inspire your team. Every great victory is achieved through a lot of smaller wins. I find that celebrating every small win helps. Also, I find that timely recognition helps. This is true even for recognition without monetary reward. Every team is different, so I encourage a leader to conduct A/B tests on different ideas to learn which ones are the most effective.

If you want to recruit, retain, and have the very best talents to form a team that is capable of doing things bigger and better than you could have done yourself, you should invest in inspiring the team. Note that inspiration or motivation is not a task that a leader can accomplish easily through an offsite event or a program. People can only be inspired when their leader makes genuine connections with them.

But the reward is worth the invested time. You will quickly receive compound interest in return when you have a highly inspired and motivated team.

Conclusion

Through this article, I’ve shared my philosophy in building trust, improving clarity, and inspiring the team. Undoubtedly there must be other good managerial practices which can scale and pay high dividends.

William Pollard once said: "the arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow." I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, and I certainly don't think I have discovered all management practices that yield high dividends. I would love to hear about your ideas, and I'll happily buy you a coffee to say thank you.