Metadata
- Author: Julie Zhuo
Highlights
Good design at its core is about understanding people and their needs in order to create the best possible tools for them. — location: 177
this is how anything in life goes: You try something. You figure out what worked and what didn’t. You file away lessons for the future. And then you get better. Rinse, repeat. — location: 180
Great managers are made, not born. It doesn’t matter who you are. — location: 209
Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. — location: 281
you feel you’re more likely to succeed. This is the crux of management: It is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone. — location: 278
It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. — location: 279
Time, however, always reveals the truth. — location: 302
The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it. — location: 333
The next important bucket that managers think about is people, otherwise known as the who. Are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work? — location: 337
To manage people well, you must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), make good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best. — location: 342
Finally, the last bucket is process, which describes how your team works together. — location: 343
Who should do what by when? What principles should govern decision-making? — location: 346
You are limited only by how fast you can think and act. In a team setting, it’s impossible for a group of people to coordinate what needs to get done without spending time on it. The larger the team, the more time is needed. — location: 353
We need to establish common values within our team for how we make decisions and respond to problems. For managers, important processes to master include running effective meetings, future proofing against past mistakes, planning for tomorrow, and nurturing a healthy culture. — location: 355
Purpose, people, process. The why, the who, and the how. — location: 357
Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can. — location: 380
Context always matters. — location: 385
When you are in survival mode, you do what it takes to survive. When you’re beyond survival in your team’s hierarchy of needs, then you can plan for the future and think about what you can do today that will help you achieve more in the months and years ahead. — location: 401
management is the art of getting a group of people to work together to achieve better outcomes. — location: 405
great managers are made, not born. But there is one caveat, and that caveat is this: you have to enjoy the day-to-day of management and want to do it. — location: 406
As a manager, you are judged on your team’s outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. — location: 421
If people don’t know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. — location: 423
because it’s important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you. This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. — location: 424
You can’t separate management from team, so there is no getting around the fact that, as a manager, you will have to spend a lot of time with other people. — location: 432
A major part of your responsibility is ensuring that the individuals you support are able to thrive. This means that listening to and talking with them are a core part of the job. — location: 433
Because management is all about people, and each person brings his or her own unique experiences, motivations, hopes, fears, and quirks to the table, managers face their fair share of hard conversations. — location: 440
becoming a manager is not a promotion but rather a transition. — location: 462
first lessons of management—the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do. — location: 480