This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage companies execute faster and cheaper. Check out his linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenleaver/
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
I was reminded recently of an incident that happened a couple years ago while working with a client. I’d been contracting for awhile and was running a team of mainly contractors to help this client with something.
I’d also interact a bit with other internal managers to coordinate with them on some things.
And one manager mentioned he was going to let someone go on his team that I’d interacted with a fair number of times. I’d thought she was great and so I asked him why he was letting her go.
I was particularly concerned because she was the main entrypoint for me into his team, which I considered almost completely dysfunctional.
He explained why he thought she was underperforming. I listened. And then I asked.. “hey, I really need someone to do XYZ and I was anyway going to try to hire someone for it. Do you mind if I use her for awhile before you let her go?”
He was hesitant but finally agreed. And I then asked the CEO who was fine with it.
So that lady joined my team and I put her on the Clickup system that my team was using and she rocked it. I loved working with her and she was an awesome perfomer.
Today i’m going to dissect this situation as it happens a fair bit in my view.
How was she managed by her former manager?
So her former manager was a fairly charismatic, but pretty disorganized person.
It was almost a fully remote company so he managed his direct reports through a weekly one-on-one video call.
During that call he expected the person to give an update on what they’d done in the past week, he’d challenge them on some topics, and then he’d ‘align’ with them on some next steps to focus on.
From my understanding he didn’t take any notes from these meetings but rather expected the other person to.
This lady was pretty intimidated by her manager as he’d demonstrated a pretty negative attitude on a few occasions with her. And so she felt a bit uncomfortable asking questions if she didn’t understand something.
As a result, she would describe to me how basically he would spout out a bunch of actions for her to take and she would nod her head and agree. Even if she didn’t completely agree or didn’t even completely understand them.
Which of course resulted in some bad results. Because she’d sometimes come back the next week having done what she had understood, but find out that according to him her understanding was wrong.
And since he hadn’t written anything, it would just need to be assumed that she was the one who was wrong. Because how could such an illustrious manager ever be wrong? LOL
How did I manage her?
When she started working for me it was like a 180. I barely even talked to her (or anyone in my team for that matter).
I created a Clickup space for the work I was asking her to do and set up a tree-like structure of folders. Then I created an initial set of tasks, which I wrote out in detail and assigned them to her.
Then I gave her a couple of clear instructions like:
- Please feel free to comment on anything that is unclear at anytime. There are no stupid questions. I will try to respond within 1-2 hours max.
- Only work on tasks that are prioritised. As soon as you start a task please put a due date on it that you try to adhere to. Keep the due dates updated.
- Please clear your Clickup inbox a few times a day to keep the flow of communication moving smoothly.
She understood and started working.
She was awesome. Her mind worked a lot like mine. She kept her inbox clear pretty much real-time and would finish everything I asked her to do well before the deadline and ask for more.
She was a fucking beast. Meanwhile her ex-manager was getting his ass kicked on a regular basis by the CEO because his team never seemed to deliver anything on time.
I’d inwardly laugh at him. Because he reflected the type of manager that I want to make extinct one day.
What was the difference?
Well there were a lot of differences. Here are some of the key ones:
With him: Nothing was written. So sometimes the scope was misunderstood.
With me: Everything was written.
With him: She didn’t feel comfortable asking questions.
With me: She felt comfortable asking plenty of questions, which i answered rapidly.
With him: It was hard for her to get support from the rest of the team. In part because they knew the manager was not very fond of her.
With me: She got support from the rest of my team almost instantly all of the time. She felt like she was part of the team almost instantly.
Why this often happens?
There are tons of managers that still operate like the one I describe above. And when you look at how their teams operate you often see dysfunction all over the place.
You see people doing overlapping work because of poor communication.
You see people working on things that are not priorities. But since nothing is documented in a structured way, there is poor transparency on it.
You see people that act with arrogance being rewarded. And thus this behavior becomes accepted.
But this still happens all of the time because this is how the vast majority of managers out there were taught. And so they don’t know any better.
What you can take away from this?
If you’re working in a team that resembles the manager I described above than my main goal is to let you know that there is a different way.
A way that is more comfortable, more transparent, and will lead to better results.
So don’t let it drag you down and just accept working in that way. Try to either bring change to the team or find a team that works more like the model I describe with my teams.
As someone who has worked a few times in his career for managers that share some qualities with the one I describe above… I understand the situation you are in.
Not only would I never work for one of them again, but I plan to tar and feather them these coming years in my writing. And as I mock them and their methods, I hope to get more and more folks to view them the same way I do.
Kinda like a VCR.
Yeah, the VCR had it’s time. But now the only place it belongs is in the f*cking museum. hahaha
