Lukas Murdock
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Management

Planted 02022-12-22

Management is the act of aligning peoples actions, behaviors, and attitudes with the needs of the organization, and making sure little problems don’t become big ones.

— Patrick Lencioni, The Motive

Management is a core business challenge.

Internal:

  • Vision and values
  • Goals
  • Onboarding
  • One-on-ones
  • Coaching
  • Feedback
  • Decision making
  • Communication
  • Motivation

A Land & Expand Reading Program

Management Books

Questions

What do we value?

How do we communicate?

What technology do we all use to operate? If non-default (e.g., Zoom over Google Meet, why? Where can we learn how to use them?

What are the core areas of responsibility and who is directly responsible for that area?

What, specifically, are we responsible for? When?

What are we measuring?

How do we propose improvements for others to comment on?

How do we make decisions?

Where do decision records go?

Frameworks

Areas of Responsibility (AOR) and Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI)

Process goal: clarify roles and responsibilities

https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/roles-and-responsibilities

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/directly-responsible-individuals/

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Process goal: clarify vision, goals, and progress

https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/set-goals-with-okrs/steps/introduction/

https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/okrs

RAPID

Process goal: clarify decision accountability

RAPID is short for Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input and Decide.

  • Recommend: the person who proposed the Issue and Solution
  • Agree: people whose input is required to make the decision
  • Perform: people who will have to enact any decision and therefore should be heard
  • Input: people whose input is worth considering
  • Decide: the one who will make the decision

https://www.bain.com/insights/rapid-tool-to-clarify-decision-accountability/

Facts, Assumptions, Beliefs (FAB)

Process goal: align teams on foundations of work

TBM 46/52: (F)acts, (A)ssumptions, (B)eliefs Spotify Wants To Be Good at Failing

  1. Start a document
  2. List incontrovertible facts relevant to your work, with links to support these facts. (e.g., [Competitor] recently launched [Product])
  3. List assumptions relevant to your work with a level of certainty.
  4. List your beliefs.
  5. Regularly revisit document.

Outcome super prompt

Process goal: help teams focus on what they are measuring (instead of how they will measure it).

Outcome Super Prompt

Right now we are working to improve the [variable_A] [variable_B] for [for who] which we could potentially measure by tracking [measurement].

The Tick Tock Doc

Process goal: strategy for sharing new information throughout an organization.

The tick tock doc

  1. Draft the most important and straightforward version of what you need to share with your team.
    • (The what) I need my team to know ________.
    • (The why) This change is happening right now because ________.
    • (The who and how) This will impact ________.
    • (The when) The timeline for this change is ________.
  2. Craft your talking points by threading together the key points from step 1.
  3. Create a new row per audience (an audience might just be one person, a team or function, or the entire organization)
  4. Prioritize audience order based on required input and impact.
  5. Assign a message, delivery medium, and communicator for each audience.
  6. Ask the other communicators for feedback and concerns about working, timing, and mediums.
  7. As you execute communication make notes of feedback and reactions and share with other communicators.

| Date | Owner | Channel | Talking Points | Feedback | |——|——-|———|—————-|———-|

Success and velocity metrics

Success & Velocity

Success metrics tell you whether you have achieved your goal. At any given time you should be able to measure your progress towards your goals using success metrics.

Velocity is how fast you’re moving. Your velocity should always be increasing, and if it’s slowing down then you likely have some significant problems.

Success metrics are many of the common metrics you likely use in your business today, including Revenue, MAU/DAU, Net Retention, and Churn Rate. You likely have goals right now that are measured by success metrics.

Velocity metrics measure the drivers of success. You always want to be more productive than you were last month, and velocity metrics are a measure of that productivity. Given the same level of investment, will you get more out of it in the future? Velocity metrics will tell you exactly that.

WBR (Weekly Business Review)

Process goal: Provide a heartbeat of the business for operators to know what’s going on.

https://www.holistics.io/blog/how-amazon-measures/

Improvement Proposals

Process goal: Source improvements and clarify decision-making accountability by removing uncertainty over roles or responsibilities for a decision.

Improvement proposals

ADRs (Architectural Decision Record)

Lightweight ADRs:

  • Title
  • Status (proposed, accepted, rejected, deprecated, superseded)
  • Context (The issue motivating this decision or change)
  • Decision (The change made)
  • Consequences (What became easier or more difficult because of the change made)

https://adr.github.io/

Next Step prompt

TBM 214: From Assumption to Next Step

Currently I [A] that [B] based on [C]. Given that assumption I [D]that we [E].

Management Resources