| From first principles, as a manager at any level, your output is the collective sum of your team's output. You maximize your effectiveness by finding the right balance of things to do that (a) can contribute directly to the team's output and (b) improve the team's capability to produce. Managerial activities fall into 3 key categories: Strategy, People and Habits. Let's contrast these activities for a Level 1 manager and a Middle manager. Level 1: Strategy - The projects that the team needs to do are defined bottom up and top down, and the Level 1 manager's role is to split it into right chunks, allocate them and make sure they get done. The operational aspects of tracking and ensuring things get done is more important here. People - You have 1:1's with team members to make sure they are at their personal best and are aligned with the company. Habits - You ensure that the team is following the right practices in their day to day that help them be effective. Middle manager: Strategy - You try to make sense of the company (or Business Unit) strategy (both product and Go to market) and then boil it down to the key projects that your teams needs to accomplish. The important aspects here are high level definition, prioritization and allocation. You make sure that you allocate the right projects to the right teams based on their capabilities and past projects and that they are crystal clear on the the 1-2 big things they need to deliver per month/quarter. People - You are heavily involved in hiring and staffing the teams and making sure that your managers are being effective through skip level 1:1s. Habits - You ensure that right habits (also called processes, but I don't like that word) are being followed by teams. eg. Is the weekly planning meeting happening properly, is work getting tracked, are their development practices that helped one team which could help other teams, and so on. I hope that gives you are better picture. |