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0 pointsabtinf2y ago0 comments

A manager should have a view about the business, and they must work to give their team the evidence and method of thinking to grasp why that view is correct. Only then will the team properly focus on the goal and execute effectively. This is part of developing the team.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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badpun2y ago

From what I've seen, the biggest role of a manager is interfacing with other parts of the business (i.e. other managers) and actually coming up with what the team should be working on, and how it will fit with what other parts of the business (i.e. teams managed by the other managers) are working on. This is the hard part - it's so easy to just go and build the wrong thing for a couple of years. Managing the internals and the actual work of the team are, in comparison, relatively straightforward part of the job.

abtinfOP2y ago

FWIW, I've been told I'm an exceptionally effective cross-functional communicator and that I outperform given my ability leverage my resources to recruit and align support for initiatives across orgs.

Imagine how wealthy our society would be if all the claims of by all managers about management success were actually true.

So far as I can tell, nearly all inter-management communication is useless and has, at best, zero impact. Only at the extreme margins or with select relationships does anything useful result. Like you find the IC SME who actually understand the target market, who is willing to sit with your team to set a vision.

Otherwise, nearly all managers you interact with are careerist.

jefftk2y ago

> If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

And yet, actual shipbuilding operations look, and have historically looked, much more like the former than the latter.

JohnFen2y ago

Probably because the first thing that group of yearning men will do is organize the work, and select someone who will be in charge of making sure everybody is in sync.

And boom! That someone is a manager.

To do otherwise ensures that if the ship gets built at all, it will sink in short order.

john_the_writer2y ago

Wouldn't they then just leave to become sailers? I build account software. If I yearned for the tax laws, I'd stop being a programmer, and start being an accountant.

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