Managing people 🤯 | Andreas Klinger

They end up micro-managing not only what when but also how people do their work.

Explicit > ImplicitClear decisions after meetingsNo clear decision? Make that explicit too.Clear ownersNo clear owner? Make that explicit too.Hear everyone's opinionsMake explicit who makes the decision 

If you got the time to micro-manage people, you can most likely hire cheaper, less talented people for your work.I think it roots in a misunderstanding of what the role of a manager is:

Processes are not complex chains of people doing things that are burdened by horrible overheadsProcesses are expectations made explicitThey can be as simple as "every morning we all do X to ensure everyone else is unblocked."Have few but very explicit processes and expect them to be followed.

The easiest way to have people trust your work is by transparently sharing it without request.Have everything accessible where people would look for it.

For some reason, "managing people" means for many that they need to control people's work.

In every discussion/project/problem/situation, it needs to be clear who makes decisions…everyone else only adds opinions.Ideally, the person who will afterward do (or lead) the follow-up work makes the decisions.

A huge production incident happened?How was this possible in the first place?Where was the focus of the engineering team?Was there a process in place to avoid it?Should there be one?The person breaking production isn't at fault here. 

When defining processes, avoid back and forthEg. if you give feedback on something assume that they will either do it or get back to you with reasons why not.