Good managers set goals, are clear about what those goals are, hold people to those goals, help people meet those goals, are clear with people about when they aren’t meeting goals, and are not afraid to tell some employees they aren’t right for the job.
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Good managers ensure people are in roles where they will excel and get everyone aligned around a common purpose.
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- team coordination, collaboration, strength alignment, employee engagement,

Good managers delegate, but don’t disappear after - they don’t do the work themselves but do ensure implementation happens and help employees do their work.
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The best way to ensure delegation goes successfully is to (1) be clear from the start about what you expect, (2) stay engaged enough along the way to make sure you and the employees are on the same page and to ensure the ongoing quality of the work, and (3) hold people accountable for what they deliver.
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Delegation usually starts by handing off specific tasks and projects, but the true power of delegation emerges when you can hand off broad responsibilities.
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When asking for input from your manager, apply the one hand rule - keep questions to yes/no or multiple choice, make an initial recommendation / default, and make everything clear upfront but provide background at the end as necessary.
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- favorite, managing up,

Switching to the Manager Mindset
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Know that if you don’t deliberately choose what you should do, carve out time for it to happen, and defend that time, then what you will do will be chosen for you.
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Don’t feel bad about spending time where you bring the most value and not spending time where you don’t. While some non-profits may have an “everyone is in this together” ethos where the Executive Director also stuffs the envelopes, WB$wombat$check$this$function(this) is not a good use of time. It’s okay to hire dedicated envelope stuffers and focus your time on the most important tasks.
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Delegation is a win-win for the manager and the employees - the manager gets to shift responsibility to someone else and do more with less manager time, and the employees get to enjoy responsibility.
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- delegation,

Delegating Projects
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Management problems that appear to be personal issues with a bad employee are much more likely to be about issues with expectations and communication.
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“guide more, do less”
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(highlight:: A good project plan is more than just a summary of the project, but answers the following “Five W’s and an H”:
Who should be involved?
What does success look like?
When is the project due? (and how does the priority of this project compare to other projects?)
Where might the employee go for help?
Why does this project matter?
How should the employee approach it?)
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Specifying a Project
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It is important to instill a sense of ownership and avoid defining the task too narrowly. You should tell your employee that they are in charge of something, rather than just helping.
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- favorite,

If some parts of the project are flexible, you can work with the employee to get their opinion (e.g., “You’re in charge of logistics for this event - what do you think success will look like?”, “Who else should be involved with this project?”, “What timeline makes sense?”)
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Providing the employee with templates or samples of good work is very helpful.
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Once you have the task specified, to ensure alignment it is helpful to have a repeat back, or have the employees re-explain the project back to you, either verbally or in writing.
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- 000 Inbox/OneNote Export/Project Management, management, delegation,

In projects where a number of people are involved, it is helpful to set out their roles explicitly. MOCHA (Manager, Owner, Consulted, Helper, Approver is a good framework for this:
Manager - assigns the responsibility for the task to the employee and holds the employee accountable. Ideally the manager makes suggestions, asks hard questions, reviews progress, and intervenes if the work goes off track.
Owner - the owner is the employee who is in charge of completing the task and does all the work, maybe with helpers. The manager instills the employee with ownership, and the employee might in turn informally manage other people (see “Helper”).
Consulted - someone other than the manager who is asked for input throughout the project
Helper - someone who can help do the work, and is managed by the Owner
Approver - someone who has to sign off on the project before it is final. This may be the manager.)
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- 000 Inbox/OneNote Export/Project Management, delegation,

Each project should only have one manager and one owner.
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- 000 Inbox/OneNote Export/Project Management, delegation,

(highlight:: Example: Run a fundraising campaign
Manager: The executive director sets a goal of raising $100K and checks in on the campaign periodically to assess progress
Owner: The fundraising director launches the campaign and sees it through
Consulted: The fundraising director consults with the communications director frequently
Helper: At the direction of the fundraising director, a fundraising associate helps by emailing all the major donors
Approver: The executive director tracks progress toward the goal. The communications director signs off on the email template being used for major donor outreach.)
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(highlight:: Sample: Example Project Plan
This project is to: ____________
It will be completed by: ________
This project will be a success if: _______
The MOCHA is
Manager: _______
Owner: _______
Consulted: ______ (why?)
Helper: _______ (what?)
Approver: _______ (why?)
The steps of the project will be (include mini-milestones throughout):
Have outline to review by Y
Have first draft to review by Y
etc.)
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(highlight:: When communicating a role and how it should be done, it is important to distinguish between preferences, traditions, and requirements:
Preferences (e.g., “I prefer texts over calls”)
Traditions (e.g., “We’ve always done three rounds of confirmation calls”)
Requirements (e.g., “We need to turn out 200 members”)
Preferences and traditions are negotiable, requirements are not.)
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While not mentioned in the book, I think writing a “how to work with me” document is a good idea to make these more explicit.
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instead of asking “Are we on track?”, ask “What indicators do we have that show we are on track? Can you walk me through how you’re moving forward on X?”, etc.
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the manager should assume things are not going well by default, until proven otherwise. (Though if the manager is going to ask the employee critical sounding questions, they should explain that they are relying on this principle.)
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- favorite,

Rather than have the employee spend several weeks on a first draft, review an outline and then approve it before moving on to the first draft. You should only need to see small pieces of the overall work, sampled evenly throughout the process, to ensure the quality.
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If the work is not being done right, it is important for the manager to not redo the work themselves, but rather guide the employee towards doing it correctly.
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(highlight:: Good questions to ask to create engagement with an employee:
What would a successful next week look like?
Are you on track? How do you know?
Will your plan work? How do you know? How confident are you? Where might it go wrong? How can you mitigate that?
What seems to be working well? Why is it working well?
What are you most worried about?
Have you thought about what you would do if {{THING}} happens?
What is your timeline for {{PROJECT OR TASK}}?
How much of your time do you spend on {{THING}}?
Can you give me a specific example of {{THING}}?
Can we take one specific instance of {{THING}} and talk through how you are approaching it?
What other options do you consider for {{THING}}?
What else needs to happen to achieve {{GOAL}}?
Is there anything we should be starting on now in anticipation of what might be coming up in the next few months?
What is happening to throw us off track? What are we doing to restrategize?
Are there items we should de-priortize? Are there deprioritized items we should prioritize?)
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(highlight:: Good questions to ask to create engagement with an employee who is managing others:
How are you managing {{PERSON}} on that?
How are you making sure {{PERSON}} is on track?
Should we make sure you and I are aligned on {{THING}} before talking to {{PERSON}} about it?
What is {{PERSON}}’s plan for {{THING}}?
What are you most worried about in terms of how {{PERSON}} will do {{THING}}?
Have you given {{PERSON}} feedback on {{THING}}?
What’s your sense of how {{PERSON}} is performing? What are his/her main areas for growth? How are you taking those on with him/her?)
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When managing managers, it helps to have skip-level meetings where you occasionally (perhaps monthly or quarterly?) check in directly with the employees your employee is managing.
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- favorite,

(highlight:: Sample: Example Weekly Check-in Doc
This next week will be a success if: _______
Key updates are

Items for manager’s review

Lessons learned from the past week

Not prioritized this week (FYI)

Next steps

______)
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- check-ins, templates, management,

Creating accountability throughout and at the end of the project is important for ensuring employees know that you mean what you say when you set expectations. It’s important for employees to know that their quality of work will matter - as the manager, you need to correct negative outcomes and reward positive outcomes.
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Ideally the retrospective meeting is scheduled in advance during the project planning phase, to ensure that it happens.
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three components that inform how you navigate delegation for a given employee and task - skill, will, and importance.
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Will refers to how much the employee intrinsically likes or dislikes a task, with the idea being that if the employee dislikes a task, they will be less motivated to do it and do it well (all else being equal).
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Skill refers to how good the employee is at the task. When assessing skill, make sure you are assessing task-specific skill - don’t just assume that a stellar employee is skilled at this particular task.
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Importance refers to how important successful completion of the task is to the success of the organization.
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good meetings should start with a few minutes of human element.
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you should make sure next actions are very clear and there should be agreement over who is responsible for what, and when it should be done. It can be especially helpful to email everyone a summary of the action items after the meeting.
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- delegation, meetings, team coordination,

(highlight:: Good tests for your system are whether it can handle these situations:
While you are working someone calls you and you say you will call them back when you are done. How do you ensure you do?
While you are driving home, you have an idea. How do you capture it?
A friend recommends a good book for you to read next summer. How do you remember?
You just received an agenda for tomorrow’s meeting. What do you do with it?)
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Reply to emails in a way that makes it clear who should drive what steps and how people should move forward so they don’t need to keep coming back to you
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The book outlines a system called “Three Homes”, but I won’t repeat it here as there are plenty of places to get systems, and “Three Homes” is not all that different from the more famous “Getting Things Done” system.
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- productivity,

Generally you want each employee to have 1-5 goals at any given time and to be established at a regular cadence (e.g., quarterly, annually). In a case where an employee has multiple goals, it might be helpful to assign them relative weight.
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Goals answer “What are we trying to accomplish?” and “How will we know if we accomplished it?”. Plans establish “How will we get there?”. Plans itemize the key activities needed to reach the goal, a timeline for that, and an assignment of responsibility for each step.
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- 000 Inbox/OneNote Export/Project Management, planning, goals,

it is helpful to have a monthly “step back” meeting to review progress on goals. The step-back meeting can also focus on morale, development needs, and lessons learned.
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Just like with individuals, you should try to keep the number of organizational goals small (1-5). Ask “if we accomplish nothing else, what would we need to achieve this year to be successful?”
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Asking “Does this advance our mission?” should also be a useful question to decide whether to take on certain projects or go in certain directions.
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(highlight:: Sample: Example Orientation Agenda
This next week will be a success if:

During the first few weeks, your role involves:

What you can expect from me is:

What I expect from you is:

Topics we will cover in the first week are:

Upcoming meetings for you are:

______)
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Culture is the invisible message about “how things are done around here” and helps employees know how to conduct themselves without being told. A culture will exist whether you want it to or not, so you might as well try to actively shape it.
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- organizational culture, favorite,

(highlight:: high performing organizations usually have cultures defined by rigor and accountability around results, shared engagement around the mission, and positive energy.
In such a culture:
Concrete achievement is valued and employees are held accountable to their goals and commitments.
People persist until they get the desired results.
The bar for performance is high and there is a sense that “not just anyone can work here”.
Ideas are subject to debate and scrutiny, regardless of their source.
Employees and managers are open about their flaws and how they can improve and share constructive feedback with others. Employees and managers focus a lot on learning from experience.
The actual impact of the work is prioritized over appearances.
Employees feel very invested in the direction and success of the organization. They regularly voluntarily suggest ways the organization can improve.
Employees are enthusiastic about their work in a visible way.
There’s a sense that everyone is working toward a common goal.
People operate with goodwill, and unconstructive interpersonal conflict is discouraged.
All the above elements are authentic and genuine.)
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(highlight:: Ways to enforce/create/cultivate culture:
The best way to create a culture is for the executives to lead by example. For instance, if you say after a meeting you will email a document that day but you don’t, employees will get the implicit signal that it is okay to be late on deadlines. If you do the work on time or proactively explain why you don’t, employees will understand that deadlines and commitments are serious.
When orienting new employees, discuss your values and what they mean in practice. It may help to even have non-contrived hypothetical scenarios about how your values would play out.
You should give constructive feedback to people the moment you see them going against the values.
You should give positive feedback to people the moment you see them acting out the values.
Consider posting a list of core values in the office and/or providing a list to all employees.
You should periodically review and edit your list of values with your entire team or your most senior people.
Rituals, celebrations, and awards can be a good way to reinforce shared values)
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The best managers are neither wimps nor tyrants, but normal yet assertive people.
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- leadership, management,

Wimp = bad. Wimps let their desire to be nice trump their obligations to hold the quality bar high, hold people to standards, warn them when they are falling short, and take action when the warnings don’t work. Wimps avoid conflict and present requirements as mere suggestions (though get frustrated when these “suggestions” aren’t adhered to). Wimps let consensus rule even when it shouldn’t.
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Normal and assertive = good and effective.[3] These managers act with confidence, directly lay out expectations, operate in a fair and straightforward manner, and back up their words with action. They are direct and don’t shy away from difficult or awkward conversations, are calm and avoid hostility and anger, are open to the idea they might be wrong, are fair and willing to make decisions, and are comfortable in charge.
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being normal and assertive might make some people unhappy. You should try to keep your employees happy within reason, but getting results is more important than making people as happy as possible all the time.
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(highlight:: Feedback can be:
positive - recognizing someone doing something well
developmental - sharing a way someone is doing something good and how they can do it even better
corrective - telling an employee that something must change in order for them to meet your expectations)
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Good feedback (positive or negative looks like this:[6]
Describe a specific observed behavior in a single sentence (e.g., “I noticed that when you give a presentation, you use the same presentation for both inexperienced and very experienced groups.” - note that this is not “You should work on your presentation skills.”)
Provide two or three specific and concrete examples (e.g., “In our last presentation, people had already been to this training before but you repeated all the introductory definitions from the first training. And in the presentation before that, you asked people if they ever have done this before when clearly everyone has.”).
State the impact of the behavior (e.g., “as a result, our attendees are leaving confused and are wondering if they are in the correct training. One person even asked for a refund!”)
Make a recommendation (“Try keeping your presentation the same for the introduction group but notice ahead of time when we are doing a follow-up training and provide different content.”)
Ask the employee for their perspective (“What do you think about this?”). Actually listen.
Follow up later to ensure things are on track.)
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negative feedback should always be delivered to people individually, even if it is a group of people that failed to meet expectations.
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Employees should be evaluated on what they did (projects), what they accomplished (goals), and how they did it (values/culture).
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- favorite,

rarely should anything in a performance review come as a surprise - ideally you have been giving feedback throughout, early and often
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a common failure mode is to accidentally give a lukewarm-sounding performance review to an employee you’d be devastated to lose, or to have to fire an underperformer after having not made it clear in the performance review that you need to see improvement.
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You should also aim to make the review holistic and resist the temptation to overweigh more recent events
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- management, performance reviews, feedback,

it’s important to make sure the people you promote are promoted based on their strength and skills match with the role you are promoting them into.
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- rewards, promotion,

(highlight:: If you have the right people, you shouldn’t have to spend too much time actually motivating them. Instead, spend your energy creating an environment that breeds motivation naturally by[7]…
giving your employees meaningful roles with lots of genuine responsibility
giving them clear feedback about how they are doing and how they could do better
holding them to ambitious but attainable goals
helping them make progress and mentoring them along the way
giving them a sense that they are learning
giving them opportunities to work on more and progress (though this may depend on the employee - some employees will welcome the new challenge, but other employees would see the challenge as a burden)
helping them connect their work to the bigger picture
praising their efforts
showing them you care)
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don’t underestimate the value of asking employees about retention directly. While this is rarely done, taking a valued employee out to lunch and asking them “How can we make sure you stay around for the next two years?” can open a discussion to valuable feedback.
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- retention, feedback, employee satisfaction, favorite,

the costs of letting low performers remain in the organization outweighs the costs of firing them.
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- business, organizational efficiency, management, hiring, favorite, lean,

it’s helpful if your manager works with you to form goals and keep you accountable to them. You can help this along by being proactive about your goals, get clear about what success looks like, and talk explicitly about this with your manager.
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- managing up, goal setting, goals,

It’s also helpful to proactively discuss what decisions of yours your manager wants to be informed about, what they want to be consulted on, what they need to pre-approve before you do, and what they don’t even want to be bothered with.
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(highlight:: It’s also helpful to make it easy for your boss to give input by applying the one hand rule:
Imagine the person you’re emailing going from one meeting to the next and checking their inbox between meetings. Could they reply to your email while waiting for Zoom to launch? Could they send off a response in the time that it takes to walk from the bus or their car to the office? Or will they glance at the email, see that it requires a longer reply than they have time to type, and set it aside for later (which may never come)?")
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- favorite, writing, communication,

This involves keeping questions to yes/no or multiple choice, make an initial recommendation / default, make everything clear upfront but provide background at the end as necessary. This link has some examples.
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Green's blog, "Ask a Manager", is really well-written. Many of the questions are a bit narrow, or "funny but rare", but I still find the blog a good way to immerse myself in the mind of someone who thinks clearly about hard problems in the workplace.
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My old organization brought Hauser’s and Green's group — The Management Center — in for a training session in 2019. It was excellent. TMC also has plenty of free resources on its website, for those who are interested. I'll check out the book this winter.
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