A description of my management philosophies.
One of the most compelling managers I know shared a document which highlighted his management style, philosophy and expectations when he joined our company and took over our team. I found it useful and have continued the tradition. With each new role, the document is updated. I saw someone else published their ManagerReadme on github and decided to do the same. Thanks also to Joe Shirey from whom I have also cut-n-pasted some of his content.
As Manager of a team, it is my job to:
- Attract and retain talent
- Manage and Build well-functioning teams
- Help grow every person on the team technically and through their career (even if the next step is not on our team)
My basic premise is to do the right thing. I will understand the business and translate that into priorities for the team. I will ensure that you have what you need to do the job and if there are barriers, we will work together to address them. I am pleasantly persistent and am effective at addressing logjams. I will also advocate for you and help you grow technically and in your career. I also like what I do and hope the same is true for you.
I am responsible and attentive but I do not want to micro manage anyone. Your success is ultimately my success, so I will go out of my way to try and make you successful.
I am frequently on calls or in meetings. I'm happy to IM via Skype or Teams if I am able or I will get back to you shortly. If it's burning, please txt my cell or call my cell.
I expect you to do the right thing.
Your daily work will be guided by our team priorities. If there are barriers, I'll work with you to find ways to get around them or address them. If there is an issue you cannot manage, or require guidance, please let me know. I am here to provide guidance and mentorship, either directly or by finding people to help. Frequently, PMs or Leads will go to you directly. I am ok with that as you know your availability better than me and it is more efficient than my being in the middle. I want my role to be to support your decisions on priorities and help you say no when appropriate. One thing to note: if you commit to a project, I expect you to live up to your commitments (barring emergencies).
If you know you cannot live up to a commitment, I expect you to promptly notify those who will be impacted. Celebrate success, yours and others.
The CSE team has a weekly Rhythm of Business, ROB. That means that there is a weekly cadence for status reporting. More details will be provided when available.
A few times when I would like you to chat with me before making a commitment:
- Any commitment that requires you to travel outside of your country or internationally. Travel is expensive and I want to confirm the reasons we are doing this before we commit.
- Any project that will be longer than one week, especially if travel is required each week. I want to make sure we are doing the right thing for you and optimizing for the right reasons. We may adjust the duration as group needs change.
- Any time you are not sure if you should take something on because of your existing commitments or concerns about being technically ready, or if you have been traveling a lot, let me know and I can help you prioritize.
I want you to be empowered to make decisions about your projects/activities as much as possible with me serving as a guide. I believe everyone on the team is capable and competent and I will treat you accordingly.
With regards to vacation – you do not need to ask for permission to take a vacation. If you have a commitment that you have made, I trust that you won’t take vacation over it. Otherwise, please schedule your vacation and block your calendar. Before you go, please send out a non-blocking, no reminder, meeting request to me and others on my team as well as other people you are actively working with. I also ask that when you are on vacation, set an OOTO message and fully disconnect. Prior to going on vacation, in order to have a seamless experience, please engage a peer for coverage. Frequently, I would have someone from the account team (CSA or DSA) cover and I would cover for them when they were out. You can also work with a peer from our team or someone on the WW Retail team or CSE. I ask that you use good judgement.
Before or after you go on vacation, please enter your vacation time in the Time and Reporting too, mark your calendar and notify others.
Likewise, if you need to do something personal during work hours you don’t need to ask for permission. Just book it on your calendar as out. Again, do the right thing. That includes an honest weeks work.
More on this in next weeks meeting. I will also be investigating if we can have a group vacation/OOTO calendar. More on that later.
Every job has a set of operational items which may not be fun but are a requirement of the job. This job is no exception. Any time I need to spend to chase you down or explain to upper management why you didn’t get something done or reject an expense report is wasted time. Please do your activity tracking, expenses, internal training, etc. done on time and correctly. We'll know more about weekly reports and VSTS soon.
Starting next week, everyone should schedule a weekly, 1:1 with me. I prefer that you schedule the meeting so it works in your time zone and you can avoid interrupting other meetings or work.
One of my key philosophies is that I have a motivated team that I don't need to micromanage. I like to keep 1:1s less about the status of your work and more about how work is going, how I can be a sounding board for your ideas and if there is anything I can do to guide you, coach you or anything else that can improve your career. More on that below.
If I'm traveling, I may, on occasion need to cancel due to timezone issues or conflicts. If I need to cancel, I can always make time for IMs or a conversation at another time.
We will have 2-3 Connects each year and once a year we will discuss Rewards. These are the official tools at Microsoft where we document Performance. However, I will do whatever I can to make these non-events. My goal is to have performance and feedback be part of an ongoing dialog rather than 2-3 points in time a year. If you ever are concerned about how I am viewing your performance please let me know so we can discuss.
Conversely, I expect you to provide me feedback too. If I am doing anything that impacts your happiness at work or your ability to do your best work please do me a favor and let me know. I am good at taking feedback and like to know so I can work on it. Please don’t raise things in Poll that haven’t been brought to my attention.
I strongly believe in fostering a healthy work-life balance. This job can easily go well beyond the normal work hours as it ebbs and flows. Additionally, there are opportunities to travel nearly every week if you wanted to. I want to partner with you to help ensure that you are not working at the expense of family/health/beliefs/etc. In order to make this work we need to have an honest ongoing dialog. If there is anything I can do to help here please let me know. I want you to make most of the decisions regarding balance and support you however I can. I'm sometimes a night owl and sometimes a morning person. Do not be surprised if you receive emails in the off hours from me. It does not mean that I expect you to do the same.
Typically, I believe it is my responsibility to let my management know clearly if I believe something is awry or if there is something they need to be aware of. I also believe that they have a different view of the landscape than I do. Since their lens is different than mine, once I've delivered a message, if I note that the message is received then it is fine if they choose to follow my inputs or not. You may observe this as I will solidly support decisions of our management team once inputs have been shared with them.
- I assume everyone is coming from a position of positive intent.
- All people in Microsoft have important roles and their lens of impact may be different than mine. I need to respect that as part of our interactions.
- I am not a fan of surprises. If something is wrong or you made a mistake I prefer to hear about it from you and not someone else. I am ok with mistakes or failures if we are learning from them. I am not ok with hiding a mistake.
- I have tried to hire people who naturally have an engineering curiosity. When you have nothing on your plate I expect you will be using your free time to upskill on something new. Generally, it is expected upskill on items relevant to our org although that's a pretty broad target.
- I have found that outstanding people in our organization tend to have breadth and a deep technical reputation in a specific area. I am happy to help you make sure you are focused on a specific technical area that is relevant to the org.
- Do the right thing
- Our meetings will begin and end on time.
- Time is a precious resource, one of the core values for our org is being on time for meetings. I'd ask you to do the same.
- Please pay attention to your calendar and use whatever notification system works for you. There is nothing worse than having a meeting and spending 5 minutes while we IM/Text people to see if they are joining the call.
- If you are unable to attend a meeting, please let the organizer know
- We will listen to each other and not interrupt.
- No need to agree but disagree in an agreeable manner.
- I'm a firm believer in disagree and commit.
- We will make sure everyone has had a chance to speak.
- We will speak respectfully to each other.
- Be mindful of our humor.
In my prior team, we each did our own thing but we were very supportive of each other. We not only had great success, but we enjoyed what we do and appreciated working with each other. Each of you has different skills, a variety of experiences, diverse interests and an assortment of goals. Those differences make us more capable as a team. We each bring skills to the team that are valuable while we are being provided the wonderful opportunity to learn and grow. It's a wonderful time to be on Retail with Azure. This is a fantastic opportunity and I'm looking forward to working with you in FY19!