The Main Thing: The Role of a Manager

With the recent spate of layoffs in the tech industry, there has been a resurgence in the concept of the Player-Coach manager for teams; a manager who looks after the team while still delivering as an individual contributor.

The intent is great because the manager is often the most experienced person and will be able to provide the best feedback and insights to move the product forward. However, it can be challenging for the managers as they need to juggle a lot of responsibilities.

I like the McKinsey 7S model for describing management responsibilities:

1. Structure: Defining the structure of their teams, who is needed, what skill sets and where they work.

2. Strategy: Where does the team need to be in 1-3 years time and how will they get there?

3. Systems: What processes should the teams follow to achieve their goals? How do we ensure continuous improvement?

4. Staff: The hiring, onboarding, management and offboarding of people in their team.

5. Skills: The identification of skill gaps in their teams, and the training and coaching to fill those gaps.

6. Style: The approach to managing the team to ensure the best results.

7. Shared Values: The core values and principles that guide decision making in the team.

It is very hard to be great at all of these things. If managers are also expected to spend time doing individual contributor work then there needs to be an acknowledgement of what areas are more important and which they can let drop.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

Learning From A Strategy Project by Anna Shipman
Anna shares her lessons shifting from delivery to strategy and the challenges of getting everyone on board.

The Rebalancing Of Management by Cap Watkins
Cap argues that we need to return to more hands-on managers, such as creative directors, who manage both team members and quality.

Product Direction

Ditch Epics & User Stories and Focus on Outcomes by Ant Murphy
'Epics' and 'user stories' make people think the defined scope is the only way. Things like one-pagers, opportunities, and hypotheses facilitate outcome thinking.

Here Are the Key Differences Between Strategy, OKRs, and KPIs You Need to Know by Michael Goitein
When we confuse strategy, OKRs, and KPIs, we inevitably create problems for our organizations, that cascade all the way down the teams and people themselves.

Continuous Discovery

How to Find the Right Users to Involve in Product Discovery by Raphael Weiner
Identifying the right users is tough. It's a multi-step, iterative journey starting with the key question: "What do we want to learn?"

30 Product Discovery Questions to Ask Your Next Project by UserTesting
The questions you should ask the team before starting interviews and what you should ask users during interviews.

Continuous Design

Designing With Integrity: The Ethical Designer's Handbook On Dark Patterns by Jan Nikka A. Estefani
Dark Patterns, intended to manipulate users into actions they may not have intended, pose a significant ethical challenge for product teams.

Zeigarnik Effect: Why it's Hard to Leave Things Incomplete by Growth Design
Learn what the Zeigarnik Effect is and how to apply it to improve your product without relying on unethical dark patterns.

Continuous Delivery

DORA Metrics At Work by Jan Nikka A. Estefani
How Booking.com doubled their team’s delivery performance within a year as measured by DORA metrics.

Why React Server Components Are Breaking Builds To Win Tomorrow by Vishwas Gopinath
React evolves: from front-end roots to handling both client and server-side rendering. Yet, performance issues linger. React Server Components aim to resolve this.

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The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: From one controversial corporate policy to another, what is your company's policy towards remote/hybrid working?

Hybrid working is the most popular approach at the moment with 54% working hybrid in some form. Although fully remote is still quite a bit ahead of the fully in office group.

The prevailing mood in management circles is that in-person teams perform better which is leading to the push for office work. But given how unpopular return to office mandates are we might see some more stealthy approaches. One person commented that while they are 3-4 days in the office they have the “Option to go fully remote with reduced career prospects, no promotion etc." This could be a way that companies encourage people without mandating it.

I'll repeat this poll in a few months to see how the stats change.