Design Patterns for Managing Up
queue.acm.org
queue.acm.org
Corporate culture has changed to where instead of handling conflict according to principle (e.g. Harvard negotiation project, getting to yes, principled negotiations etc), today people are trained to out-passive each other, and marshal political campaigns to isolate opposition. (salience, political survival, working the ref, etc.)
The moment you acknowledge that the person you are dealing with is being disingenuous and manipulative is the moment you have lost. That you can see the mechanism critically signals you do not have power, and that you cannot be trusted to "keep the ball in the air."
The typical response to this is, "that's black and white thinking, people have different perspectives and views, which are valuable and legitimate." While that is generally true, different perspectives aren't the problem, nor are they new. It's a minority of people who exploit the agreeableness and civility of others with a small toolkit of negative plays, and who cluster in high-status organizations because they are motivated by proximity to power, but without responsibility itself.
The OP articulates valuable patterns for navigating flat organizations in calm seas. A set of patterns that describe when the knives are out would be a helpful follow up.
I never really considered how a pillow would actually hold up against a knife in a fight. My money would still be on the knife, but I take your point.
you want to if you have a mortgage payment each month, or there are people in your life who depend on you for food and clothing.
But its a whole other language that business leaders speak. Different etiquette. At least in F50 companies it may be better in smaller tech companies. If you’re in the room you have to speak their language, not how you would talk w a group of technologists. You have to learn new languages and immersion is good if you can get into enough high level meetings.
But, always complete self-confidence, decisiveness, problem solving. If people get aggressive, give it back. Even the CEO. Not disrespectful. Being tough without sounding like an asshole is also a skill. Even just the tone of your voice, so you have to have self control of your emotions.
Good to have a healthy retirement account too you won’t be subconsciously so worried about losing your job.
There's a guy on our team who does #1 one in the article ALL the time. NNP who slows the team by 25% probably.
No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months.
I was this employee once, but in a slightly different situation. I had a bad habit of responding to things I didn't understand in a way that almost always put people on the defensive. People didn't want to work or interact with me and politely and subtly trying to get me to stop didn't work. This was a problem across jobs, and was a huge blind spot for me.
It took a very direct and blunt conversation from my new manager where he flat out told me when I behave this way, I come off like a complete prick and no one wants to work with me for me to even realize what I was doing. It crushed me for a few days, but after some reflection, I realized I was crushed because it was true. This was nearly 7 years ago, and I'll always love and appreciate my manager for having that hard conversation with me. His having the courage to be blunt with me has made me an immeasurably better person.
My advice is find someone who is blunt or has the courage to have that hard conversation (my boss was English, and I think being blunt and direct was very natural for him, but he's also very courageous) and tell this person that their behavior is wasting a lot of people's time, and people are starting to get annoyed. Remind them that it's not a big deal now but it can become a big deal, and that in the end, people will remember the improvement and value that, not the original problem. I don't remember the pain of being crushed, I remember my appreciation for my manager who had this hard conversation with me when no one else in the past 3 years would.
He sits between the business people who tell him what they want us to build. So we build it exactly to the spec and the end user sits down to verify what we did is correct and immediately says, "this isn't what I asked for at all."
We've had to rebuild things 2, 3, 4 times, maybe more I've lost count. Without him we would have been on time and budget, instead we are WAY behind.
Imagine user stories with one sentence like: System should search like Google does.
He'll say it's easy just do it like it's already been done. Are you saying you aren't a Google level developer? that's a 3 point story, right? It's simple.
Like a startup whose leadership in effect says, "we just raised way too much money and have no path to market fit, let's just gaslight the talent until they attrition out and we can blame them for the time lost, while hopefully our competitors will establish a market where then the board can find a greater fool to buy us before we have to raise another round."
Please, help me be wrong. :)
The one bit of advice I would give to someone trying to use Gervais to understand someone in the organization's motivations : just because they may act according to Gervais doesn't mean they are bad or evil or broken in some way.
Applying this in contemporary corporate America is left as an exercise for the reader.
Asking a manager to clarify the feedback shouldn't put that manager on the defensive. If the manager hasn't gone to the trouble of getting those details then they need to be educated on how to deliver negative feedback.
Instead of simply saying "I hear you. I will be more mindful of that in the future.", a more productive response would be:
"Based on what you've shared it's not clear to me exactly what I did wrong or how I might do things differently in a similar situation in the future. Are there additional details you can share? <if they answer no:> Can you get those details so that I can make this a part of my learning plan?" <if they waffle:> What advice do you have for me for how to better handle this situation in the future?"
You've now educated the manager as to what level of detail you need when it comes to feedback. They should know that they can't just toss incoming feedback over the transom. They need to dig into the details and do what it takes to help you grow.
- say that you’re not sure
- articulate an hypothesis of what it might be to the best of your knowledge (it's likely you’re going to be 80% right)
- propose to launch an effort / work stream / project to figure it out
In many cases managers are just happy with an 80% answer and will reject to waste efforts to dive deeper. Managers can deal with uncertainty and with situations where the 80% answer is wrong. What they typically don’t like is being stalled
Please don't do this. Many managers and clients have a far better bullshit detector than you give them credit for. They might never say it directly to you, but you just lost their respect by trying to guess instead of being honest. When programmers I interview try to bullshit their way through an answer they clearly don't know, it's almost always the end of the interview. Especially because I make it super clear at the beginning that I prefer "I don't know". A solid "I don't know but I do know I can get you an answer or an update in a couple of hours" is the approach that earns my respect every time. And likely you'll be right 100% of the time with that answer.
Instead, the idea is to say "Well, I am not sure. However, If I had to guess, I'd say X" where X is your best guess. You can follow up with "If needed, I could find out for sure in {time-frame}"
EDIT: I should clarify why this often goes badly. "If I had to guess, it's the filter in the gas line". Now everyone thinks it's a $20 problem, and they appreciate having an expert like you around to help them mentally frame the extent of the problem. When you come back with "actually the entire engine is warped and needs to be replaced", everyone is going to be disappointed. Like it or not, that disappointment is attached to you now. Trust is lost. There is almost nothing ever to be gained from guessing.
Sometimes certainty is expensive. In fact, in my experience with complex systems, it usually is. Depending on what you're uncertain about, you may need to modify the system to measure it. Resolving uncertainty can take a long time, particularly if the thing you're trying to be certain about is a rare event or cannot easily be isolated.
When certainty is hard to achieve, making probabilistic decisions sooner and falling back to more costly decisions with more expensive certainty only after those have failed, is a better general strategy, even if you're sometimes wrong. Analysis paralysis is real. Someone who always acts the way you suggest has too much fear of being wrong, IMO.
It could be warranted in other situations, where human life is on the line. I think it's not a fast enough process for most businesses though.
Not at all. I deal with uncertainty all the time. What I don't like is people inventing answers, just so they have an answer. I think you'll find this "intolerance" increasingly as you deal with people higher and higher up in management. People's time becomes increasingly the most expensive factor by far. Let's stay focused here. That paragraph in the article is advice about what to do when "someone asks you something you don't know". I'm still firmly in the camp of a simple "I don't know, but I will find out for you." YMMV.
So yes, if your hypothesis is just something you made up only so you can have an answer, then please don't do that. I don't care how solid the guess is. It's still a guess just to have an answer.
In the situation you described, you do know something and you're sharing that knowledge. I have no problem with people sharing that knowledge. It's not a hypothesis. It's the opposite of "you don't know". It's knowledge about the history of the situation.
The other people are usually smart enough to know if they need a more precise answer or not.
If I have completely no idea, then I just say so.
...This is only applicable if it's something major, that would require research or experimentation, rather than "let me go talk to Drew after this meeting" or even "I'll look it up on Wikipedia."
I suspect that those would cover a majority of the cases of this.
A typical scenario is that you are in a corporate culture where, for whatever reason your manager does not "manage down", like at all. Meaning that they are not giving you direction and nor are they listening to any needs, direction from you (ok, maybe once per quarter?). Your interactions with them (if you are letting them set the schedule) are very limited. Now that can be great or bad.
Typically though these people (by essence of being someone you report to) control more corporate power than you do. They can perhaps authorize work, hire 10s of additional resources, approve muilti million dollar projects, set a budget for next year, etc. So it becomes imperative for you to 'manage up' if you want to achieve more than what you are being fed.
Just how to do that, maybe this book covers. Hope so.
Indeed, there's a whole range of dysfunctional (and sometimes simply toxic) managerial behaviors that seem to occur very frequently int the workplace, and for which it'd be nice to see some advice as to how to deal with them.
But overall the advice in this particular article seems very superficial.
Person A owns task
Person A: I don't know much about task, but person B seems like an expert. Person B, please take over task
Person B is no more or less qualified at task than person A
However,
'As a leader, you don't want to tell your team that the reason things are changing is "because _ made me do it." That makes it seem like you have no power, as though you do things just because you are told to. It certainly won't inspire confidence in your team or make them any more likely to embrace the decision.'
Are you sure?
Do you really want to tell your team "We are painting the building purple because fairies love the color purple and will bring us good luck"? Especially when your team already knows you personally don't believe in fairies?
It seems to me "Look, the CEO is firmly committed to the belief in fairies, and has made the policy decision that we are going to paint the building purple. It's up to us to implement that decision," is the least bad thing to say in that situation.
2. Don't disagree;
This sounds like a recipe for a toxic work culture where everyone is walking on eggshells and fearful not only of stating their opinions - but in many cases, making simple statements about objective reality.
The next part of that sentence is "ask about the context and reasons for the change", immediately followed by, "Start with your manager or the main decision maker if you have a prior relationship, and then escalate up the chain of command together (rather than just emailing your thoughts to the CEO)."
> making simple statements about objective reality.
It is extremely rare that decisions are "objectively" bad -- that was the main point of that section. In fact, the article explicitly says: "Remember there is someone in the chain who thinks this is a good idea; that is why it is being implemented. So, it is worth your time to try to understand the "why" behind this idea"
I read and understood the full context. I was keeping it short for the sake of simplicity.
The basic message they're conveying is, after all: "If you have disagreements, don't express them."
It is extremely rare that decisions are "objectively" bad -- that was the main point of that section.
I was referring not to the decisions, but to the assertions about reality that are used to justify them.
See also Chesterton's Fence: https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/
Obviously, this is a risky approach; only do it if you can afford switching jobs. But in my experience it is less risky than it looks. Bullying persons have a good sense of their opponent's strength, and will rather look for new easy targets than going into a serious fight. If you can talk to your team mates and make this a team stance, this will of course strengthen your position further.
1) Customer Obsession
2) Ownership
3) Disagree and Commit
4) Vocally Self-Critical / Earns Trust / Learn and be Curious
You do that by being reliable, honest, receptive, taking ownership, mitigating risk.
But the human dimension is emotional. Your counterparts feel it as anxiety. They will ultimate adjust their internal feelings to you based on how anxious you make them.