Julie Zhuo is the former VP of product design for Facebook. She obviously did not start in this position - she began in 2006 (when Facebook was really just a few people trying desperately to make it work) as a product designer and worked her way up to a manager and later the VP of design in this company. In her book, she describes the entirety of the journey from not managing anyone but herself to managing 10 people to managing hundreds and thousands. The main point she shares is “Great managers are made, not born” meaning if you care enough, you are able to be a great manager.
The book is divided into ten chapters which almost feel like a step-by-step tutorial on how to start the journey of becoming a great manager.
The first chapter “What is management?” describes the job. Zhuo's interpretation of a manager's job is trying to get better outcomes from a group of people working together - the belief that a group of people can achieve better things together than as individuals and realizing that you don't have to do everything alone. Zhuo's main ways of ensuring she meets this goal as a manager are:
She further divides the job into three everyday brackets - purpose, people, and process. The purpose being the why, the outcome the team is trying to accomplish. The people are the who, so hiring and maintaining the relationships within the team. And the process is the how, meaning who should do what and by when.
She also talks about the difference between being a leader and a manager saying that leadership is the ability to guide and influence people, meaning that every great manager has to be a leader, but on the other hand, every leader doesn't have to be a manager. The difference is that the role of a manager can be given and taken away but leadership is not something that can do either.
In Chapter Two “The First Three Months” she describes the four most common routes of becoming a new manager: Apprentice (the team is growing, therefore, the company needs more managers), Pioneer (one is a founding member of a group and has to step up to the role), New boss (coming in to manage a team that already exists), Successor (the manager has decided to leave and one is now taking their place) and the advantages and what-to-look-for of each one of these routes.
Chapter Three “Leading a Small Team”. Most managers start by managing a small group of people, where the most important thing is trust. When you have more impact on a person's day-to-day life than they do on your day-to-day it is your responsibility to build and maintain a trusting relationship.
Zhou says that it is much easier managing a small team mainly because it is easier to maintain a shared sense of purpose in a small team - the team knows what their values and goals are because all members fit in one room and they can all talk about it all the time.
In Chapter Four “The Art of Feedback” she underlines time and time again just how important feedback is, yet a lot of people struggle with both giving and asking for it. In her opinion, the best feedback is something that transforms a person in ways they are proud of.
The thing that I never thought about before reading this chapter was just how important it is to establish what a job well done looks like at the beginning of the job. It sounds logical, but it never occurred to me to define what a good, mediocre, and bad job looks like. Without that concrete definition, one can never be sure if they're doing a good or a bad job, because they have no guidelines for their work.
The author also brings attention to the fact that one kind of feedback is never enough. In a leading position, one needs to give task-specific feedback as often as possible, as well as scheduled 1:1s and 360 feedback. And not only give it but receive it as well. So once again. Feedback is important. Ask for it as often as possible.
Chapter Five “Managing Yourself” The job of a manager asks a lot from a person, so handling yourself, and knowing your strengths, values, comfort zones, and biases, is incredibly important. How can you handle a team full of different individuals if you don't even know how to handle yourself? Understanding yourself also helps you fully play to your strengths which can make your job significantly easier - if you know what you're good at you know. And of course having people at your place of work with whom you can be real, share your doubts, and ask for help is always nice. And as always. Ask for feedback.
Chapter Six "Amazing Meetings" Good meetings are all similar in why they are good - it was a good use of everyone's time, we learned something new, everyone was engaged, everyone felt welcomed,..., but bad meetings are all bad in a different way. So how do we do it so that it's good every time? Based on this book it is not only important to have a defined purpose for the meeting, but also to ask yourself "What does a great outcome look like?" That way you acknowledge what you really want and can go from there. Another important part of meetings is inviting everyone relevant and no one else - for example, if you want to decide to change a part of a product in a meeting you need to invite everyone relevant to the product to said meeting. If you invite people who have nothing to do with the product and cannot share anything relevant, they will get bored and the atmosphere and vibe will be off - more people often mean more formal and stuffy. We could see that at the HC in November, when faculty members attended, and didn't have anything to say - they just wanted to observe. Even after a month in this school with exactly one HC under my belt at the time, I did not feel as comfortable as I did during the first HC - it was just too formal and the vibes were off. More brains doest always mean more wisdom, sometimes it just means that the place is too crowded.
Chapter Seven “Hiring Well” is at the moment the chapter I took the most from. I am currently in the middle of selecting the first employee that I am going to hire and it is stressful. As Zhuo says - you cannot be too selective because no one will pass your tests and the situation will not move forward, but you also can't be too open because you will deal with the same problem a month later when the employee you have hired has either quit or has been fired. When hiring, you also have to keep the rest of your team in mind - is this a person that makes sense for the team? do they bring new superpowers or points of view? You want to have a team that is diverse enough that you have multiple POVs, but cohesive enough that they get along. Connecting those two points can be tricky, Zhuo talks about recommendations in this case a lot. Has someone on the team worked with a person that they can imagine doing that job? Perfect! Bring them in for an interview. It is important to remember that no one is perfect and everyone can become better, Zhuo's advice is to take calculated risks while hiring, vibes are sometimes just as important if not more than the factual interview itself.
Chapter Eight “Make Things Happen” the path to success is never a straight line it is not about having one great idea and winning the game immediately, but rather about consistency in planning and execution. You start with a clear vision - something that everyone (especially the people who work for you) understands and you go from there. Zhuo talks about Facebook's vision - One day we will connect the entire world when it only connected a few (million) students in the US, but by having that shared vision that goal, everyone knew what they were working for and what the end game was. In times of struggle Zuckerberg would stand up and say that sentence, just so everyone would be reminded what they are working on and for.
Once you have that vision, you need a believable plan and a strategy to make it real. That plan should be based on the strengths of your team. Assign people responsible for different parts of the plan and break it down into smaller pieces, so everyone can see what they need to do today/this week. That, for example, is something that we didn't do with our semester goal. We set it, and everyone is responsible for their part, but we didn't break it down so we didn't know how much there was to do, and now some of us have to read seven books in two weeks.
Chapter Nine “Leading a Growing Team” The biggest difference between leading a small and a big group of people is going from direct to indirect management. You may know everyone's names, but that's about it from a personal perspective, your reports also don't know much about you. With that uncertainty comes also the different feeling your reports will get - they are no longer as open because they see you as an authority not as a person. It is then the manager's responsibility to remind them that they are indeed a person.
Zhuo writes that one should always manage as if they are aiming to put themselves out of a job. Delegate as much as you can, and spend your time only on things that others can't do or you do significantly better. Because even if you delegate everything you have on your plate today, there will still be something that needs your attention.
Chapter Ten “Nurturing Culture” team culture guides each member of the team in questions about how things are done, and how to treat each other. It simply describes the norms and values of each team. Understanding what kind of team you want to be a part of is very important, and taking care of that team culture once you're in is equally important.
Another point Zhuo emphasizes is to never stop talking about what is important. For example, the things that are important to talk about for our team at the moment are the team contract, our shared vision, our goals - the team structure. Even if it seems repetitive at the moment it is incredibly important to keep talking about it, because only if we talk about it enough will we come to a conclusion and resolve this matter. She also talks about inventing traditions that celebrate the team and its values. That is something that I would love if we did more of. Of course, we have traditions in TAP, like the gong, but I would love it if we had something just for our team.
So yeah. That's the book. I really enjoyed it. It gave me a better idea of what management is, how to become a better leader, it reminded me once again that the most important thing in business is people and assured/solaced me that it is completely normal to feel frustrated, imposter-ish, and uncertain in a new position/place.
AND as a plus that is not really relevant to the educational layer but more to the feeling you get when reading the book. Zhuo uses different pronouns when speaking about both the reports and the managers, which is a really small detail but it makes all the difference to me in regards to never having met her and still seeing her as a really competent and sympathetic leader at the same time. Mostly because all the other books I've read in this genre either only use he/him when speaking about people in positions of power or at the most use they/them, but I have never read a book that said: "A great manager constantly asks herself how she can influence these levers (purpose, people, process) to improve her team’s outcomes."
