A Masterclass on Managing Up
Summary
TLDRThe 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
📝 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.
🔑 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.
🛑 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Managing Up
💡Status Updates
💡LNO Framework
💡Delegation
💡High Agency
💡Escalation
💡Alignment
💡One-on-One Meetings
💡Cross-Functional Partner
💡Intuition
💡Prioritization
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
[Music]
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