A Masterclass on Managing Up

Summary

The speaker discusses the art of 'managing up' in a professional context, emphasizing the importance of regular communication with management to ensure mutual understanding of goals and challenges. They share personal experiences, highlighting the evolution of their approach to status updates, the necessity of escalating issues, and aligning one's work with management's priorities. The talk also touches on the balance between high agency and the need to share difficulties with superiors for better support and recognition.

Takeaways

• 📝 Regular communication with management is crucial for effective 'managing up', as it helps align expectations and keep them informed about the status of projects and business.
• 📈 The speaker initially disliked writing status updates, viewing them as low-priority tasks, but later recognized their importance in keeping management in the loop.
• 🤝 Delegating status updates to team members who enjoy the task can be a strategic move, allowing leaders to focus on higher-priority activities.
• 💡 Leaders should operate in a way that their teams feel ownership and success, even if the leader has significantly influenced the outcomes behind the scenes.
• 🗣 Over-communicating successes and wins, even if already known to management, can reinforce the team's achievements and keep them in the forefront of management's mind.
• ⚠️ Escalating issues and challenges to management is important, as it not only seeks their help but also conveys the difficulty of the job, ensuring they understand the effort involved.
• 🏋️‍♂️ High agency can lead to under-escalation, as individuals may feel overly confident in their ability to solve problems independently, neglecting the value of involving management.
• 🔄 Being flexible and responsive to changing company priorities is part of aligning one's work with management's focus, but it can also lead to shifts in strategy that may impact team stability.
• 🧭 Actively soliciting management's priorities and aligning one's work with them can demonstrate value and proactiveness, but it requires a keen awareness of the evolving goals of the organization.
• 🛑 Choosing not to align with certain initiatives perceived as less relevant can have costs, such as missing out on potential benefits or leaving a negative impression.
• 🔑 The balance between aligning with management's priorities and maintaining the integrity of one's own product or project is a key aspect of successful 'managing up'.

Q & A

What is one aspect of managing up according to the speaker?

One aspect of managing up is being in constant and regular touch with management to understand their wants and to keep them informed about the business or product status through regular updates.

Why did the speaker initially dislike writing status updates?

The speaker disliked writing status updates because they found them to be rarely an L task (strategic and important) but more often an E task (operational and less critical), and they preferred focusing on tasks that were more fun and aligned with their strengths.

How did the speaker change their approach to status updates as they became a PM leader?

As a PM leader, the speaker delegated the task of writing status updates to team members who enjoyed it, allowing them to focus on other high-priority tasks.

What is the speaker's leadership philosophy regarding team success?

The speaker's leadership philosophy is to ensure teams are successful in business, quality, and happiness without directly attributing the success to their own actions, making team members feel like they are the driving force behind the success.

Why did the speaker sometimes face problems with delegating status updates to their team?

The speaker faced problems because they preferred to operate behind the scenes and not be the center of attention. When team members wrote updates, it sometimes led to misalignment with the speaker's vision or expectations.

What is the importance of over-communicating and emphasizing wins in managing up?

Over-communicating and emphasizing wins is important in managing up because it reassures management of the team's success, helps managers remember key achievements, and maintains open lines of communication.

What is the speaker's view on high agency and its impact on escalating problems to management?

The speaker believes in high agency and its benefits, but acknowledges that it can lead to under-escalating problems to management because of the confidence in their ability to solve issues independently.

Why is it important to share job difficulties with management according to the speaker?

Sharing job difficulties with management is important because it conveys the complexity of the role, provides concrete examples of challenges, and helps management understand the extent of the job's demands.

How can aligning a product with management's priorities benefit a PM leader?

Aligning a product with management's priorities can benefit a PM leader by ensuring that their work is in line with the company's strategic goals, which can lead to better support, resources, and recognition.

What are the potential downsides of not aligning a product with management's priorities?

The potential downsides include missing out on support and resources, causing whiplash for the team as priorities shift, and possibly not achieving the product's full potential due to misalignment with the company's focus.

What is the speaker's advice on managing up when company priorities change frequently?

The speaker advises to be aware of the changing priorities but also to use judgment to decide when alignment is necessary and when it might be more beneficial to shield the team from frequent shifts in focus.

Outlines

00:00

📝 The Challenge of Status Updates in Managing Up

The speaker discusses the importance of regular communication with management in the context of 'managing up.' Initially, they disliked writing status updates, viewing them as a low-priority task and not aligned with their preference for high-agency tasks. However, as they progressed in their career, they delegated this task to team members who enjoyed it, reflecting their leadership style of operating behind the scenes and letting team members feel ownership of ideas and successes. The speaker emphasizes the need for over-communication, especially when things are going well, to ensure that managers are aware of the team's wins and progress, even if it means repeating information they already know.

05:01

🔑 Escalation and Alignment in Effective Management

The speaker shares personal experiences on the importance of escalating issues and aligning one's work with management's priorities. They admit to not escalating enough due to their high agency and self-confidence, which led to a lack of visibility into the challenges they faced. The speaker highlights the need for managers to understand the difficulty of their team's jobs and the importance of aligning projects with the company's priorities. They discuss the challenges of aligning with shifting company priorities and the potential costs of not doing so, such as feeling out of sync with the company's direction or causing whiplash within the team due to sudden priority changes.

10:02

🛑 The Consequences of Non-Alignment and Escalation

In this paragraph, the speaker reflects on the consequences of not aligning with company initiatives and not escalating issues effectively. They share instances where they chose not to engage with certain company-wide projects, believing their team's involvement would be minimal or not impactful. While they were often successful in avoiding these initiatives, it sometimes left a negative impression. The speaker acknowledges the need to balance between complete alignment with management's priorities and maintaining the integrity of one's product or team focus, recognizing that there can be career benefits to aligning, despite the potential costs.

Keywords

💡Managing Up

Managing up refers to the practice of proactively communicating and building relationships with one's superiors to ensure mutual understanding and alignment of goals. In the video, it is a central theme, with the speaker discussing the importance of regular status updates and clear communication with management to ensure they are informed about the progress and challenges of the business or product.

💡Status Updates

Status updates are regular reports or communications that provide information about the current state of a project or task. The speaker expresses a personal dislike for writing them but acknowledges their necessity in managing up, as they keep management informed without the need for constant meetings or check-ins.

💡LNO Framework

The LNO framework is a method for categorizing tasks based on their level of importance and urgency. In the script, the speaker mentions having ingrained this framework and initially viewed status updates as less critical ('O' tasks) compared to more important 'L' tasks. This influenced the speaker's initial reluctance to prioritize status updates.

💡Delegation

Delegation is the act of assigning tasks or responsibilities to other team members. The speaker discusses delegating the task of writing status updates to team members who enjoy the process, illustrating a strategy for effective time management and leveraging team strengths.

💡High Agency

High agency refers to a strong sense of personal autonomy and the ability to influence one's environment. The speaker identifies as having high agency, which led to a tendency to tackle problems independently and not escalate issues to management as frequently as might be beneficial.

💡Escalation

Escalation in a business context means to bring a problem or issue to a higher level of management when it cannot be resolved at the current level. The speaker admits to not escalating enough due to high agency, which can hinder management's understanding of the challenges faced by their team.

💡Alignment

Alignment in the context of the video refers to ensuring that one's work and priorities are in line with those of management or the company's leadership. The speaker emphasizes the importance of aligning one's projects with the priorities of management to ensure support and recognition.

💡One-on-One Meetings

One-on-one meetings are private sessions between a manager and an individual team member. The speaker suggests using these meetings to communicate wins and challenges, emphasizing the importance of clear and frequent communication with management to maintain alignment and support.

💡Cross-Functional Partner

A cross-functional partner refers to a colleague from a different department or team with whom one collaborates on projects. The script mentions the challenges of working with such partners and the need to escalate when they are not aligned with one's own team's goals.

💡Intuition

Intuition is the ability to understand or know something without conscious reasoning. In the context of the video, the speaker talks about managers who have high intuition about the challenges their team members face, which can sometimes reduce the need for explicit escalation or detailed status updates.

💡Prioritization

Prioritization is the process of deciding the order in which tasks or projects should be addressed based on their importance. The speaker discusses the need to realign priorities in response to changing management or company priorities, and the potential costs and benefits of doing so.

Highlights

Managing up involves constant communication with management to understand their expectations and keep them informed about your work.

Regular status updates are essential, even if they are not always enjoyable to write.

Delegating status updates to team members who enjoy writing them can be beneficial.

Leadership style can vary; some prefer operating behind the scenes, allowing team members to take credit for ideas and successes.

Over-communicating and emphasizing wins in one-on-one meetings with managers can be crucial.

Escalating issues and clearly communicating when help is needed is a key aspect of managing up.

High agency can lead to under-escalation and a reluctance to share difficulties with management.

Sharing challenges and frustrations with management helps them understand the true difficulty of your job.

Aligning your product and priorities with management's can be important for career success.

Actively soliciting management's priorities and aligning your work with them is a strategic approach to managing up.

Understanding the fast-paced changes in priorities within an organization can help in managing up effectively.

There can be a cost to not aligning with management's priorities, such as potential career implications.

Deciding whether to show complete alignment with management's priorities is a personal choice with potential benefits and costs.

Managing up is a complex skill that requires balancing communication, escalation, and alignment with management's priorities.

Transcripts

[Music]

one aspect of managing up is just being

in constant and regular touch with your

management about understanding what they

want making them understand what's going

on with your business or product so for

instance one aspect of managing up in

this context is sending regular status

updates and that is something earlier in

my career I didn't feel like I needed to

do cuz I hate them frankly I hate

writing status updates and that's just

not me there are people who love writing

status updates there's no right or wrong

I'm not saying that it's wrong to write

status updates I just dislike it the

reason I dislike it is actually because

I have ingrained the LNO framework and

in my mind a status update is rarely an

L task or at least it was I'll tell you

how my thinking changed on this but a

status update was rarely an L task

usually an end task and often enough an

O task so I'm like why am I spending

time on this when I have six other clear

L tasks to do and they are also more fun

for me so there's both the analytical

aspect and the fun aspect of it later on

as I became a PM leader what I did is I

delicated some of those things to others

which is I don't like it but this person

on my team loves it and it's unnecessary

so why don't you write it and then that

gets to the other point is sometimes

somebody on my team would write the

status update and then I would just say

okay yeah you just send it some managers

make their team members write it and

then then the manager sends it in my

case I was just like yeah you just send

it now it turns out that also ended up

being a problem sometimes cuz you know

I'm a leader who likes to operate behind

the scenes I don't want to be front and

center again there's nothing wrong with

being a leader who wants to be front and

center but people have different

preferences I like operating behind the

scenes My Philosophy for team leadership

is that my teams are doing great both

business-wise success wise quality wise

and happiness wise

but nobody can point to anything I did

to make that happen because the way I

like to manage is make people feel that

it's their idea make people feel that

they did everything even though I may

have significantly nudged or influenced

that was my leadership style so anyway

for a variety of reasons this is an

example where yeah you need to be in

constant touch with your management and

Leadership and you need to figure out

async ways like status updates or

synchronous ways often times you have to

over communicate that reassurance if

things are going well instead of just

letting the numbers speak for themselves

or just relying on the quarterly

Business review or whatever other

process is to share progress certainly

use more time in one-on once with your

manager to keep communicating wins and

overemphasizing them even if your

manager knows about it sometimes just

emphasize that because some managers

don't remember everything they can't

keep State and so on so that aspect is

very important second aspect of managing

up is escalating when you need to and

making clear to your management where

you need their help and what aspects of

your job are really difficult I'll share

my personal experience I'm a huge

believer in high agency and that's what

made me who I am we all double down on

our core strengths and our core kind of

attributes that make us really good at

whatever we do and so I've I definitely

doubl on the high agency thing which all

sounds great but here's the problem when

you have very high agency which I have

had for as long as I can remember when

you have very high agency the challenge

is that you're not afraid of any problem

and you make every problem oh I'm going

to solve this and an aspect of high

agency is self-confidence so you also

have that confidence of yeah I'll be

able to solve this and so because of

that what happened is that I did not

escalate to my management enough and I

also did not complain or just Express

frustration to my management enough as I

was doing my various jobs because I felt

yeah there's a challenge the chief legal

officer or this General counselor

whoever else is not on the same page but

I'll get him or her on the same page

it's fine it's okay give me two meetings

with the person they'll be on the same

page so why bring it up in the

one-on-one when I can bring up other

things that are perhaps more important

like some hiring thing or headcount

thing or some promotion thing for

somebody on my team or some other issue

so I did not escalate enough and perhaps

even more importantly I did not share

with my management proactively what the

really difficult parts of my job were

because when we express frustration and

when we tell our manager oh this is not

going right and this cross functional

partner is not listening and whatever

else what ends up happening is we're

trying to problem solve with them but we

are also conveying to them that look my

job is hard and then they have concrete

examples of how your job is hard and at

some point say especially in startups

and mid-stage startups even late stage

startups what will happen is because

it's very fast-paced things are changing

all the time your manager is busy with

50 other things plus sometimes your

manager doesn't have necessarily all the

skills yet to be a great PM leader now

there's a reason they are the your

manager they're exceptional at certain

things all I'm saying is they don't have

all the skills to be a great PM leader

yet they are just still developing in

those situations when they don't get

this visibility into your frustrations

your challenges Etc you're not

escalating that much all of which I was

guilty of what ends up happening is they

don't actually understand that your job

is so hard when you are a really strong

PM leader when you understand product

management very deeply and when you've

had sufficient experience managing PM

you can be quite intuitive about this

meaning you don't need somebody on your

team to tell you their frustrations to

understand how hard their job is you

need some basic understanding of the

shape of the problem the team they are

dealing with the main issues they're

facing whether it's regulatory or

privacy related or security related or

compliant whatever it is whatever set of

issues they're facing the personalities

they're facing you can quickly

intuitively get to the point of okay

this person's job is actually really

hard this person's job is okay medium

difficulty and this person's job is on

the easier side of the spectrum you

don't need your reports to give you

anecdotes on a weekly basis for you to

create that model early in my career

especially at Google I had these kinds

of managers who had very high intuition

about this stuff so I did not get dinged

very much for not sharing with them all

my problems and not escalating enough

and whatnot but later on it became more

of a problem in some cases particularly

at stripe there were people managing me

who had less product management

expertise than I did now again there was

a good reason why they were my managers

the point is then they found it much

more difficult to understanding a third

aspect of managing up is really aligning

your product as much as you can with

what your Management's priorities are if

you're high enough in the company It's

usually the CEO's priorities aligning

your project your product your team as

much as possible with their state

current priorities now this one has two

components to it one is are you actively

soliciting what they're worried about

are you actively soliciting what their

priorities are are you actively

soliciting how you can help them Etc

that's one aspect of this and the other

aspect is then actually doing the

alignment realigning your priorities

your strategy Etc with whatever is being

proposed at the higher levels and I

don't mean this in the macro sense of

course if the company priorities for

2023 are ABC everybody aligns there but

the people who are very good at managing

up are constantly checking in they're

much more aware of what is the CPO

thinking right now where is their head

right now this week and then two weeks

from now and then 3 weeks from now they

also try to join certain meetings where

they can get that signal that real-time

signal CU again in a fast-paced

organization many things happen very

quickly so here in lies the problem and

this is why this stuff is some times

hard and certainly this is why it was

hard for me I was very good at

understanding what my manager wanted and

understanding how I can help my manager

in his or her goals but sometimes that

felt a little random both sort of my

manager's goals or maybe my manager

wasn't even aware what their goals were

and sometimes the company like the trend

we're going to do this and if you've

been at a company long enough you know

oh it's not actually going to work

they're going to say this month and then

next month they're going to do something

else I've seen this movie enough times

before it's not coming out of cynicism

or disdain for anybody it's just coming

out of an understanding of the

organization so in those cases I would

try to Shield my team from this stuff

here's an interesting thing that happens

in particularly mediumsized several

thousand people to larger tech companies

tens of thousands hundreds of thousands

something gets announced then teams are

told oh everybody needs to figure out

how you can make this initiative

successful everybody in this or like

figure out like how can you make this

project Sigma successful whatever

project Sigma is and then create your

proposals in this case what happens is

there are some teams who are implicated

by project Sigma who can have a very

meaningful role in making Sigma

successful but for most teams the role

is minor and it is a little bit of

signaling basically which is oh we're so

committed to Sigma that everybody is

going to try to make Sigma successful

but then if your team is only going to

marginally be helpful or actually not

helpful at all in your view so in my

view when that was the case I was like

I'm not going to bother with this stuff

like why should I this makes no sense

we're not going to be able to influence

Sigma or whatever in a way that is

expected so I would try to get out of it

and again I would usually be successful

in getting out of it because of my

ability to influence my manager and

other people but that doesn't mean that

did not leave a bad taste right so so

it's really important to remember that

when you do this or certainly when I did

this there was a cost to it I wasn't

managing up well in this situation and

you have to decide I'm not saying do

what I did cuz certainly some of these

things have been minor blips in my

career like oh I should have gotten a

higher rating but I did not whatever

again I've done extremely well luckily

so I have zero zero regrets about

anything but I'm just sharing my

experience of some kind of minor blips

along the way and what were some of the

reasons for those so you have to decide

if you decide that you're going to just

show complete alignment that's fine that

does come at the cost or perhaps your

product will not do as well or your team

will feel Whiplash sometimes as you

change priorities based on what

management wants so it does come at a

cost but even that sometimes that cost

is not that high we might think that's

very high but sometimes it's not and

there are benefits to your career of

doing that so that's another aspect of

managing up so hope that helps

a

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