Hi, welcome to the team. I’m so glad you are here at $COMPANY.
It’s going to take a solid quarter to figure this place out. I understand the importance of first impressions, and I know you want to get a check in the win column, but this is a complex place full of equally complex humans. Take your time, meet everyone, go to every meeting, write things down, and ask all the questions—especially about all those baffling acronyms and emoji.
One of the working relationships we need to define is ours. The following is a user guide for me and how I work. It captures what you can expect out of the average week working with me, how I like to work, my North Star principles, and some of my, uh, nuance. My intent is to accelerate our working relationship with this document.1
We’ll have a 1:1 every week for at least 30 minutes, except during HIGH ALERT (see below). This meeting is for discussing topics of substance, not updates. I’ve created a private Slack channel for the two of us to capture future topics for our 1:1s as well as to provide a handy historic record of what we’ve discussed. When you or I think of a topic, we dump it in that channel.
We’ll have a staff meeting with your peers every week for 60 minutes, no matter what. Unlike for 1:1s, we’ll have a shared document that captures agenda topics for the entire team. Similar to in 1:1s, we aren’t discussing status at this meeting, but issues of substance that affect the whole team.
You can Slack me 24 hours a day. I like responding quickly.
If I am traveling, I will give you notice of said travel in advance. All our meetings will still occur, albeit with time zone considerations.
I work a bit on the weekends. This is my choice. I do not expect that you are going to work on the weekend. I might Slack you things, but unless the thing says URGENT, it can always wait until work begins for you on Monday.
I take vacations. You should, too. When I’m disconnected from work is when I do some of my best work.
Humans first. I believe that happy, informed, and productive humans build fantastic products. I optimize for the humans. Other leaders will maximize the business, the technology, or any other number of important facets. Ideological diversity is key to an effective team. All perspectives are relevant, and we need all these leaders, but my bias is toward building productive humans.
Leadership comes from everywhere. My wife likes to remind me that I hated meetings for the first 10 years of my professional career. She’s right. I’ve wasted a lot of time in meetings that were poorly run by bad managers. As an engineer, I remain skeptical of managers even as a manager. While I believe managers are an essential part of a scaling organization, I don’t believe they have a monopoly on leadership, and I work hard to build other constructs and opportunities in my teams for nonmanagers to effectively lead.
I see things as systems. I reduce all complex things (including humans) into systems. I think in flowcharts. I take great joy in attempting to understand how these systems and flowcharts all fit together. When I see large or small inefficiencies in systems, I like to fix them, with your help.
It is important to me that humans are treated fairly. I believe that most humans are trying to do the right thing, but unconscious bias leads them astray. I work hard to understand and address my biases because I understand their ability to create inequity.
I heavily bias toward action. Long meetings where we are endlessly debating potential directions are often valuable, but I believe starting is the best way to begin learning and make progress. This is not always the correct strategy. This strategy annoys those who like to debate.
I believe in the compounding awesomeness of continually fixing small things. I believe quality assurance is everyone’s responsibility and there are bugs to be fixed everywhere…all the time.
I start with an assumption of positive intent for all involved. This has worked out well for me over my career.
I need you to know that sometimes we are in HIGH ALERT and things will get strange. There is an exception to many of my practices and principles, and that is when we are in a HIGH ALERT situation. HIGH ALERT conditions usually involve existential threats to our company. During this time, my usual people, process, and product protocols are secondary to countering this threat. If it is not obvious, I will alert you that I am in this state and give you my best guess of when we’ll be done. If I am constantly in this state, something is fundamentally wrong.
I firmly believe that feedback is at the core of building trust and respect in a team.
At $COMPANY, there is a formal feedback cycle that occurs twice a year. The first time we go through this cycle, we’ll draft a proposed set of OKRs for you for the next review period. These are not product or technology OKRs; these are professional growth OKRs just for you. I’ll send you these draft OKRs as well as upward feedback from your team before we meet so you can review beforehand.
In our face-to-face meeting, we’ll discuss and agree on your OKRs for the next period, and I’ll ask for feedback on my performance. At our following review, the process differs thusly: I’ll review you against our prior OKRs, and I’ll introduce new OKRs (if necessary). Rinse and repeat.
Review periods are not the only time we’ll exchange feedback. This will be a recurring topic in our 1:1s. I am going to ask you for feedback in 1:1s regularly. I am never going to stop doing this, no matter how many times you say you have no feedback for me.
Disagreement is feedback, and the sooner we learn how to efficiently disagree with each other, the sooner (and more) we’ll trust and respect each other. Ideas don’t get better with agreement.
I go to a lot of meetings. I deliberately run with my calendar publicly visible. If you have a question about a meeting on my calendar, ask me. If a meeting is private or confidential, its title and attendees will be hidden from your view. The vast majority of my meetings are neither private nor confidential.
My definition of a meeting includes an agenda and/or intended purpose, the appropriate amount of productive attendees, and a responsible party who will be running the meeting to a schedule. If I am attending a meeting, I’d prefer starting on time. If I am running a meeting, I will start that meeting on time. If it’s not clear to me why I am in a meeting, I will ask for clarification on my attendance.
If you send me a presentation deck a reasonable amount of time before a meeting, I will read it before the meeting and will have my questions at the ready. If I haven’t read the deck, I will tell you.
If a meeting completes its intended purpose before it’s scheduled to end, let’s give the time back to everyone. If it’s clear the intended goal won’t be achieved in the allotted time, let’s stop the meeting before time is up and determine how to finish the meeting later.
I am an introvert, and that means that prolonged exposure to humans is exhausting for me. Weird, huh? Meetings with three of us are perfect. Three to eight is okay. More than eight, and you will find that I am strangely quiet. Do not confuse my quiet with lack of engagement.
When the 1:1 feels over and there is remaining time, I always have a couple of meaty topics to discuss. This is brainstorming, and the issues are usually front-of-mind hard topics that I am processing. It might feel like we’re shooting the s—t, but we’re doing real work.
When I ask you to do something that feels poorly defined, you should ask me for both clarification and a call on importance. I might still be brainstorming. These questions can save everyone a lot of time.
Ask assertively, don’t tell assertively. When you need to ask me to do something, ask me. I respond incredibly well to ask-assertiveness (“Rands, can you help with X?”). I respond poorly to being told what to do (“Rands, do X.”) I have been this way since I was a kid and I probably need therapy.
I can be hyperbolic, but it’s almost always because I am excited about the topic. I also swear sometimes. Sorry.
I love to start new things, but I often lose interest when I can mentally see how the thing is going to finish, which might be weeks or months before the thing is actually done. Sorry. I’m getting better at this.
If I am on my phone during a meeting for more than 30 seconds, say something. My attention wanders.
Humans stating opinions as facts are a trigger for me.
Humans who gossip are a trigger for me.
This document is a living, breathing thing and likely incomplete. I update it frequently and would appreciate your feedback.
1 Speculation: There is an idea in this document that you’d like your manager to do. Thesis: Just because I have a practice or a belief doesn’t mean it’s the right practice or belief for your manager. Suggestion: Ask your manager if they think my practice or belief is a good idea and see what happens. Feedback is a gift.