The Pillars of Management

Often when coaching managers, I’m asked about prioritization and focus. For newer managers, it can be difficult to understand all the aspects of your new role. Where do you put your time? What skills should you focus on developing? How do you ensure that you aren’t overreaching with your designers or engineers or product managers? For more seasoned managers, it’s more about prioritizing all the different parts of your role. How do you strike a balance between leading and managing? How do you decide between doing tasks that improve your particular discipline vs tasks that impact cross-functional product teams or business strategies?

A few years ago, while I was managing managers at BuzzFeed, I came up with a list of four areas for which each of them was ultimately responsible:

You’re responsible for managing the careers of your team members, and ensuring that they have what they need to be successful in their roles. If you find your team members are blocked, help unblock them. If they need mentorship, it’s up to you to help them find the right help. In general, you should advocate for them and help them.

If you’re a design manager, for instance, part of your job is to be a caretaker and advocate for the discipline of design. This includes the rituals specific to your discipline (design critiques within design, for example, or post-mortems in engineering), as well as general operational things like recruiting, on-boarding and career tracks.

Do your teams understand the company’s business objectives? Are they working together effectively to meet those objectives? Is their strategy sound? Your role is to help identify and troubleshoot teams that are off-track, as well as highlight and encourage teams that are performing at a high level. You should also be knowledgeable about each of your team’s product areas and goals, so that you can confidently advise them and other leaders.

If you’re new to management, it’s likely that you’ll be told this isn’t your job. While it’s certainly true that a lot of new managers accidentally over-index on work quality (since it’s their comfort-zone)…

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