The following list is a collection of principles I follow when approach my day to day work as a manager. I treat them as a keychain pick mental models from to guide decisions when diving into details.
Most of my work is communication, so I try to communicate the best I can. I use my best practices for communication.
If multiple people wear the hat, nobody wears the hat. Clarity arises from clear ownership, ownership is always assigned to only one person1.
Managers often get information first. That's a bug. A manager must prevent information drift to allow full autonomy.
I help the teams I work with to focus on customer value by building strong customer relationships, enabling them to channel the voice of the customer internally.
Trust is a huge factor for performance. I trust the teams I work with upfront. This is done by opening up feedback cycles, sharing information in transparency, and being consistent. I try to reply fast. If you laugh together, chances are, you gain trust than losing it.
I present with working prototypes and express my ideas in code. A working prototype kills the power point slide as an argument. A pull request is the better communication tool than a slack message in a lot of cases.
GitLab calls it DRI, Netflix calls it Informed Captain, PostHog implements it as Ownership ↩