How I manage small teams

Recently, the forward-thinking company that I work for (Red Hat) held a short seminar about how to handle competing demands. One of the little tactics suggested in that session was this: when you get stressed about a situation, ask yourself these questions in order:

1. Will this matter in five minutes?
2. In five hours?
3. In five months?
4. In five years?

I take this a little bit further when I’m trying to establish priorities: will this matter to me when I’m dying?

We’ve probably all read articles and listened to speeches that indicate that no one on their deathbed ever thinks, "I wish I had spent more time at the office." If this is true, what does that say about our relationship to work? If the activity that takes up so much of our time and energy is not on our mind at the end, what does that tell us about today? How does our work reflect our inner life? What is the interplay between who we are as workers and human beings and who we would like to become?

As I reflect on these questions, I get to my core beliefs about this world and how I want to act on those beliefs through my work as a manager of small teams (12 people or fewer).

The power of perspective

I like to think that we exist to evolve; that that’s our real job here on Earth. I think of evolution as continually working to decide who I am in every moment, consciously. Perhaps it’s treating "who I am" as a work of art and fully respecting everyone else’s decisions for their works of art.

So, for me, the only thing that truly could matter in five months, and possibly in five years, and certainly at death (at any moment) is evolution. That evolution could be of myself, of someone I know, of the small team that I manage, of the region that I live in, of the human race, or any other category. Evolution is what I seek for myself, others, and especially us together. Asking the tough questions anchors me in this focus.

The resulting direction is clear. My main goal is to help my team evolve as a team and as individuals. Week after week. Month after month. In five years, a particular team member may not work for this company any more, but their part in our collective evolution will still be here with us. And their personal evolution will be part of them everywhere they go. They will lead the people around them, serving as an example of that possibility.

The book that started it all

I should have explained from the beginning that I am not a management expert. In fact, during my many years as a programmer, I noticed that "experts" were really just good at one technology and sold it as a solution to every problem. But that was many years ago, and I like to believe that things have changed. Now, as a manager, I have read a few books about management. When I skim a chapter to see if I want to read a book, I am only interested in those books that align with my interests, as discussed above. Of course.

The first one of those books that I encountered was Maverick by Ricardo Semler. When this book appeared in my life, I had been a manager for a few years and, to be honest, I really didn’t want to read it. But it had been given to my then-CEO, to whom I reported, and I thought it might be a good idea to read it as a kind of heads up. As I read it, I was really impressed with Semler’s courage, transparency, and openness. I was excited to think that our CEO would read it (he did not). I’m not going to rehash Semler’s book here because it’s not a shortlist of "five things to make you a better manager" or anything like that. It’s not about repeating his techniques. It’s about a way of thinking that needs to be understood by reading the book in its entirety. It’s about evolution and openness. Semler wrote Maverick in 1993, so he was way ahead of the rest of the world, and, since then, has moved on to other very interesting topics with the same approach.

So, what is this way of managing that interests me? It’s open, it’s human, it’s transparent, and it’s about evolving together. It’s not a path I can walk. It’s a direction that I commit to. It’s a constant adaptation with my team to go in that direction. I’m talking about the direction of constant evolution, not about getting the next version of our software released or reaching monetary goals. And it isn’t about techniques, although all techniques are fair game to try if my team is up for it. But it has to be the team’s decision to try some technique, and I make it very clear that it’s their choice, not mine. Unless they think it works, the technique will not stay. I am just there to suggest it as a possible solution to something that needs to change. It’s my job to make sure that our time together is a journey of evolution and to make sure they are free to participate and to freely express how they feel about everything.

An evolving perspective of work

At times, we need to find a solution to a given challenge. In these cases, I always ask first if the team has any ideas on what to do about things that are bothering them. They always do. And I do, too, of course. And, so far, we always find one that works, and it’s usually theirs.

And, wouldn’t you know it, all the other stuff gets taken care of on the way—you know, all the stuff that doesn’t matter when you’re dying.

The way individuals and teams perform and make decisions in this context is on a completely different level. It’s not about working longer hours or sprinting toward a goal, although those things may happen when they need to. It’s something else. It’s about being conscious of the importance of who we are when we show up as individuals and team members. Everything else emerges from there. I think this is already true for us, whether we recognize it or not.

It is reflected in the questions we ask ourselves.

• Who am I at work?
• Am I the person who helps my teammates?
• Am I the person who comes through in a pinch?
• Do I look after my own interests enough?
• Am I the person I want to be?
• How do I allow myself to change and allow others to change?
• Who are we as a team?

Most of us are already evolving, learning, and developing personally at work and in our lives, even if we aren’t doing it consciously. And recent changes in our world have allowed more humanity at work out of sheer necessity. Kids, animals, pajama pants, and the general sloppiness of life is no longer an inappropriate background for our professional images. We are already starting to work from a more life-centered perspective. What if, as an extension to that, we consciously begin to see work as a context in which to focus on our personal and group evolution—something, anything that would let us truthfully answer a life-affirming, "yes" to the question, "Will this matter to me when I’m dying?"