My primary role as your manager is to set expectations and communicate what you need to accomplish in order to be successful in your role. If I am not doing this, I am not doing my job. Expectations may change over time, but you should never be surprised when they do with last minute additions. Conversely, I expect you to help manage my expectations. Please communicate early and often with me about project updates and status. I don’t like being surprised when a project is delayed at the last minute, particularly when it was obviously going to delayed last week.

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Why do I manage

• I am primarily motivated to deliver outcomes for the organization and drive excellent work to completion. I will regularly check in on the status of your projects and care a great deal about the quality, progress, and outcomes of the work, and your role in it. I am your personal work catalyst. Here are my expectations:
  • Above all else, get the work done.
  • Ensure your outcomes are measurable and measure progress/impact with it.
  • Provide regular and consistent progress updates.
  • Describe blockers with clear context and a plan for movement (and ask for help when you need it).
  • Share ideas for how you could make those outcomes even better, faster, or more impactful.

What brings me pride

• I believe how things get done is just as important as what gets done. I seek to build well-oiled machines and processes that are humming. I am less concerned with the craft of how things are completed. Here are my expectations:
  • Plug in to any and all appropriate processes that I have set up (meetings, 1:1’s, team events, unstructured time).
  • For projects you are playing a leading role in, agree upon which project management practices to invoke.
  • Regularly get a pulse on stakeholder satisfaction.

Where I plug in to the broader organization

• I will challenge conditions within the organization to bring new ideas to team practices. I value experimentation and embrace change (and may even push for it). Here are my expectations:
  • Proactively point out examples for where things could be better, or where the organization could experiment with a new way of doing things as a model to the rest of the company
  • Share feedback on existing team conditions and new ideas for improvements liberally, even half-baked ones.
  • Focus those ideas on topics that align with other manager preferences. It will light them up and help them see you as a partner in the team’s success.

How I will bring work to you

• My preference is to share problem statements and assign goals to solve to solve them, and I expect you to come up with the tactics that will provide the best solution most efficiently. It’s up to you to investigate potential solutions, prioritize workstreams, take the work to completion, and share results. My default is to trust your work. Here are my expectations:
  • Ask about principles for the goal (how was the goal created?)
  • Communicate all decisions (especially at the beginning so you don’t end up running down the wrong path).
  • Track progress and provide regular updates.

How I prefer to work with you

• I will step in when you need me to and get involved when necessary to unblock your work and clear the path for your success. I will play the roll of “shit umbrellas” and will do my best to protect your time. Here are my expectations:
  • Be prepared to share precise context
  • Have a specific ask prepared.

What phase should you share your work with me

• I prefer to see your raw material of your work and I am interested in your processes. I like coming to your meetings and being cc’d on your emails. I best process information (and/or relay it to others) by synthesizing on my own. Often, this comes from a place of wanting to be able to represent not only the big picture, but also the small details involved in the work. Here are my expectations:
  • Overshare with meeting and email invites (make activities opt-out versus opt-in for her).
  • Ask for observations/feedback/learnings regularly (to ensure that you have a shared view of reality).
  • Still create a formal artifact at the beginning and end of a project that collects full state.

See also My User Guide