It’s all just leadership after all

November 7, 2023
by James Stanier
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Managing managers

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far, away, when I first got into management, I had mistakenly assumed that progression up the org chart meant only managing other managers.

How I was totally wrong.

Individual contributor career progression grows in parallel with management career progression, and in large organizations that implement these dual tracks, you will see individual contributors with the same seniority as managers. And this goes all the way up to the top of the org chart.

For example, at large technology companies you’ll find Principal Engineers reporting to Directors and sometimes you’ll find Distinguished Engineers reporting to VPs. Each has a different skill set but the same seniority and scope.

When a manager oversees a broad organization, a mix of managers and individual contributors cascade downwards from them in the org chart, with each pair typically overseeing the same subsets of the entire department. If you’re wondering what kinds of things these senior individual contributors do and how they operate, then check out Will Larson’s post on Staff Engineer archetypes.

Progression up the managerial track therefore isn’t just about managing other managers: it’s also about managing senior individual contributors too. This makes senior management doubly challenging, because you need to be able to manage both roles effectively, and a new senior manager may now be managing individual contributors that have far, far surpassed them in their own craft.

The pertinent question is whether you should manage senior managers and senior individual contributors differently. After all, they have different roles and responsibilities, and so it would be natural to assume the way that you manage a Staff Engineer would be different than the way that you manage an Engineering Manager. Right?

Nope, that assumption would also be wrong. Sorry.

You don’t need special approaches for managing both roles. In fact, you can apply the same strategy to both, and not only does this simplify your approach, it actually encourages the best behaviors from both roles.

Let’s explore this in more detail.

Control at the Intersection

Previously in my writing we have covered delegation, which is one of those core Management 101 concepts that you need to get right from the beginning.

Delegation isn’t just about telling people what to do. It’s about the delegation of responsibility whilst maintaining accountability.

Delegation isn’t a Boolean choice either: it is a spectrum that you traverse depending on the competency match between the task and the person or team that is doing it. You may assert more control through hands-on involvement or less control through delegation.

It turns out that we can use this delegation model to work out how best to manage senior staff that report to you, regardless of whether they are a manager or an individual contributor. The key is to think about the intersection between the two roles.

The Venn diagram below illustrates this:

Both circles represent the roles of senior managers and senior individual contributors. The circle on the left is that of the manager (who produces output through management), and the circle on the right is that of the individual contributor (who produces output through technical contribution). The intersection between the two circles is the shared aspect of the two roles: leadership.

Yes, leadership an overloaded and sometimes hand-wavy word that often means nothing. But what do we specifically mean by it? Let’s break it down:

  • Managers demonstrate leadership by leading organizations. Whether it’s one team or a whole department, they are accountable for the output of the organization that reports to them. The responsibility of individual tasks is delegated to their direct reports, and the manager leads the organization to achieve its goals through defining the right teams, people, and processes.
  • Senior individual contributors demonstrate leadership by leading technical initiatives. This may manifest in being the lead developer on a project, or being responsible for a technical area of the product. Even though they do not have direct reports, they set technical direction and are accountable for its success.

The key to managing both roles with the same approach is to focus on that intersection between the two circles: developing their leadership. This is where you should assert the most control, and where you should be most hands-on. This is where you should be coaching them, giving them feedback, and helping them to grow. It’s where you should work closely with them to ensure they are working on the right things with the right people at the right time.

What you keep within your close control is ownership of the target that your direct reports are aiming for, but you let them choose exactly how they choose to hit it. A manager reporting to you will aim at that target by constructing the right team, people, and processes for the job. Then, they’ll use their managerial skills to make it happen. Given the same target, a senior individual contributor will aim at it by assembling the right technical solution. Then, they will use their technical skills to make it happen.

Example targets are:

  • Building a new feature. A manager will assemble the right team, people, and processes to build it. A senior individual contributor will assemble the right technical solution to build it.
  • Improving the reliability of a system. The responsibilities of the roles are outlined as above, but the target will be key metrics to achieve such as increasing uptime, smoothing the range of latency, and reducing error rates.
  • Improving the speed of a system. This time the target will be metrics such as increasing throughput, improving P99 latency, and a reduction in resource usage.

Whether you’re managing a manager or a senior individual contributor, the aim is the same: you stay hands on and control what their target is. However, the details of how that target is achieved is an implementation detail that you delegate to them.

By utilizing your management fundamentals of coaching, delegation, and 1:1s, combined with your focus on the target, you can lead both roles in the same way.

The neat corollary of this is that it encourages close collaboration between the two roles by default. For example, if an Engineering Manager and their Staff Engineer are aiming at exactly the same target and being measured on its success, then collaboration and alignment follows almost effortlessly, making everyone’s job easier.

Manage Your Capacity, Not Your Time

October 15, 2023
by James Stanier
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Management 101

The internet is full of opinions about how to manage your time. There are even whole books written on it. However, they miss an important nuance: it’s not the quantity of time that you are able to juggle, assign and manage that matters, it’s the quality of the time that you are able to spend on your tasks.

Regardless of where you work or how senior you are, you have a finite amount of capacity: there are only so many hours every day in which you are working effectively, and only so many of those hours that you can spend in a state of productivity and flow.

Everyone typically has the same amount of hours that they dedicate to their work. However, everybody is different in finding how and when they work best. Some people are better finding flow in the morning, whilst others are better in the afternoon. Some people thrive on long blocks of time spent on a single task, whereas others prefer to work in shorter bursts, switching to new tasks often to avoid repetitiveness. It’s likely that you already know what works best for you.

However, regardless of how much autonomy and self-directed time you accumulate, optimal allocation of your capacity is not a box packing problem where you must allocate every single minute of your day. This is an anti-pattern.

Capacity Allocation

Instead, you should aim for allocating a default workload that is not your full capacity, purposefully leaving some portion of your time unallocated. This is because you need to leave space for the unexpected, such as escalations, meetings, and other interruptions that will inevitably arise.

It’s likely we’ve all worked with people — especially senior ones — that are impossible to get hold of when we need them urgently. They are always in meetings, or working on something seemingly more urgent, and are otherwise unreachable. This should be seen as a bug rather than a feature. These folks are not managing their capacity effectively. They are not leaving enough unallocated breathing room for the impromptu events that happen every single day. This is bad for their organization as they are not immediately available in times of need, and it is also bad for them as they are constantly living in a state of busyness and reactivity.

If we’ve been lucky enough to work with leaders that manage their capacity well, then we may have been surprised that when we reach out with something urgent, they are able to respond quickly and effectively: perhaps they’ve offered to jump on a call straight away. This isn’t luck or anything to do with you. It’s just good capacity management on their part. Make sure that you’re always available for your team when they need you.

Energy: Increasing and Decreasing Your Capacity

You are only able to allocate as much time to your tasks as your capacity allows. However, your capacity is not a constant: it is a function of your energy levels. On a given morning, if you are well-rested and feeling good, you will likely have a productive and effective day and also be stable in the face of unexpected events. However, if you are tired, overworked or stressed, you will be unlikely to be able to apply yourself in a measured and effective way.

Your energy levels effect your total capacity:

  • Your capacity has a fixed upper bound, which is the number of hours in a day that you are able to work effectively. In a senior role, this may manifest as 3-4 hours in which you can dedicate to deep work such as writing, reading, or thinking. The rest of your time will be spent in meetings, 1:1s, and other activities that require your attention.
  • Your capacity depletes when you are spending time on tasks that drain your energy. Exactly what these tasks are will depend upon the individual, but these are typically tasks such as production incidents, overwhelming input, repetitive toil, conflict, delay, blockers, and overwork. The more you find yourself here, the more that your capacity will shrink as the days go by.
  • Your capacity replenishes when you are spending time on tasks that energize you. Again, this will depend upon the individual, but these are typically things such as finding flow in deep work, making progress on your projects, achieving goals, helping others, and, most importantly, getting good rest and balance outside of work time. The more you find yourself here, the more that your capacity will grow until it restores to the upper bound.

Therefore it follows that you need to be mindful of your energy levels as they directly effect the quality of your work. This requires introspection and regular reflection against your tasks and activities. In addition to being effective at managing your time and your output you also need to balance hard work with rest, reactive firefighting with deep work, and meetings with focus time. You will know what increases and decreases your energy levels: it’s up to you to ensure that you are spending your time in a way that keeps your capacity high.

Log Your Week

In order to better understand the relationship between your capacity and your energy levels, it is useful to keep a log of how you are spending your time and how you feel. Although this exercise may seem simplistic, trust in the process: it may be enlightening.

  • For the next week, at the beginning, middle and end of each day, log what you feel that your energy level is on a scale of 1-10. 1 is completely drained, and 10 is completely energized. You can use a spreadsheet, a notebook, or whatever works for you.
  • Alongside each log entry, jot down what you have been doing in the last few hours. This could be meetings, 1:1s, deep work, or anything else.
  • At the end of each day, note how many hours of productive work that you did. This can be deep work or meetings where you thought you were effective.
  • At the end of the week, take a look at your log. What patterns do you see? Are there any activities that are consistently draining your energy? Which activities increase it?
  • How did you feel about your capacity by the end of the week? Was Friday an unfocussed slog, or was it a day of high productivity? Can you see a relationship between your energy levels, the type of tasks that you were doing, and your capacity? What can you do next week to improve your capacity?

You owe it to yourself and your team to work on keeping your capacity high. The more capacity you have, the better work that you do, the less reactive that you are, and, fundamentally, the more output you produce.

Don’t be the frazzled stress ball that struggles through each day. Understand the tasks you spend your time on, how you work, and how you can look after yourself to keep your capacity in check so you can do your best work. You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.