Progress + momentum = confidence. The moment you see yourself tackle the smallest part of the impossible task, the quieter the Critic (your internal voice) becomes because you’re slowly proving him wrong.
A manager’s job is to take what skills they have, the ones that got them promoted, and figure out how to make them scale. They do this by building a team that accentuates their strengths and, more importantly, reinforces where they are weak.
One of your many jobs as manager is information conduit, and the rules are deceptively simple: for each piece of information you see, you must correctly determine who on your team needs that piece of information to do their job.
Rule of thumb: When the debate is no longer productive, it’s time to make a decision.
There’s an industry standard regarding the amount of time it takes to make a hire, and it’s 90 days.
Process is the means by which your team communicates. Whether this is via a wiki, e-mail, or the hallway, any team larger than one needs to define a means to share information. This is not an argument for specifications, documentation, or a whiteboard filled with dos and don’ts. You just need to agree how you’re going to share information.
Avoid giving orders, because people don’t hear the order, they hear “Shut up, get moving, I don’t care what you think.” Your job as a manager is to avoid giving this impression at all costs because it eventually erodes your credibility.
