Insights from Research Participants: Week of February 24, 2020

Optimize team management in minutes with ManageBetter. Start your free trial now and join Uber and Microsoft in boosting performance, gathering insights, and generating reviews—all AI-powered, no writing required.

LR

• He does not track accomplishments on the ppl on his team unless it’s for a promotion or demotion.

• He does track his accomplishments — they go directly into the resume.

GH

• GH is an entrepreneur in Seattle.

• He’s a fan of getting feedback. So he put a feedback link at the end of his emails.

• He’s had that link for about 18 months, and over that course, he’s only had two people fill it out. One person who filled it out (was me) a feedback geek.

DY
Introduction

• DY is a consultant at a medium sized company spread across the US.

• She leads a team of 6: 3 are in the same city as her; 3 are located in CA.

15Five usage

• Has been using 15Five for about 2-3 years.

• It was rolled out to the company about 2-3 years ago as a way to get remote workers more connected.

• 15Five has a couple of key components. The ones they use primarily are:

  • 15Five (weekly updates)

  • 1:1s

  • Reviews (quarterly / annual)

  • OKRs (more recent; company as a whole hasn’t been great disciplined about setting OKRs in general).

• 1:1 form has been the most useful of the 4 components they use.

• 15Fives aren’t as useful because 1) not everyone fills them out 2) she’s pretty connected with folks through other means (working side-by-side on projects, use Slack).

  • Many private things aren’t shared in 15Five like “Challenges.” They’d rather just share it privately via Slack.

  • We also discussed how it’s natural to not completely trust the information gathered there like “How you feel?” DY shared a story how she was in a bad mood once and wrote down a “2” (out of 5) on how you feeling and her CEO called her immediately.

• Stuff shared on 15Fives aren’t pretty.

• <To be continued>

KL

Introduction

• KL spent five years as a senior software engineer at a leading Seattle cloud company

On visibility

• As you get more senior, visibility is less important. He could go a couple weeks without a checkin.

• One way he provides visibility is finish his work and then send out a document.

• Other ways KL gets visibility on other people’s projects (esp. within a team):

  • Daily standup

  • Confluence/JIRA

  • GitHub

  • Wiki (MediaWiki)

  • Quip

• Every team has different tools.

• For inter-team collaboration, getting a meeting was the fastest way to get visibility.

• Always checking to see if activities were aligned to S-Team goals.

• Getting visibility can be hard. It feels like it’s inefficient.

• It becomes a trainwreck when there’s a critical dependency, something changed, and you just couldn’t count on the team.

GJ

Introduction

• Senior PM at a Seattle cloud company

On providing visibility

• Use Confluence

  • It’s less about the tool and more about the content.

  • Once he’s done with a document, he would send it out on Confluence.

• Also use daily standup meetings, run by engineering director.

  • Any notes from the daily standup are logged in their JIRA ticketing system.

On personal logging of to-dos

• Keeps a One Note with all of his to-dos. It’s private. Not shared w/ anyone.

On performance reviews

• For the last 10 years, has kept a spreadsheet with all of his accomplishments.

• He logs and refers to it all the time, throughout the day.

• It includes impact and any quotes.

• He thought an accomplishment tracker helps to overcome biases.

• The spreadsheet has been super helpful. Handy to explain to the six bosses in the last two years what he’s been doing. Naturally, also handy for performance reviews.

Other

• He keeps track of his energy level throughout the day, using a scale of 1 to 10.

• He gives himself credit for having X number of productive hours in a day. (E.g. 6 hrs. of productive time).

• He also uses the Pomodoro technique to minimize distractions (e.g. 45 min. of distraction free working).

RN

Introduction

• HR executive at a small-medium sized Seattle company.

• Has her own budget for HR tools.

• Most tools are in the $10k+ range.

• Current issue: wants to integrate into a single platform. Perhaps into ADP since it seems to be the foundation for HR processes. Wants to go away from the hodge podge of best-of-breed tools they have now.

Sharpen Your Leadership Edge: Join 3,000+ executives receiving weekly, actionable insights from industry experts. Subscribe free to The Thoughtful Leader and elevate your team's performance.