Choosing your management M.O.
About choosing the management modus operandi you bring to the table to your organization and team.
In my previous post, I covered why it is critical for product leaders to be intentional & clear about the “architecture” of their product portfolio & organization - and the “interfaces” they need to implement to manage & run it. This post today is intended to quickly expand on a specific thread within that general idea re: choosing your management M.O.
On management theory
I was recently introduced to the concept of theory X vs. theory Y vs. theory Z of management, and have been intrigued by it ever since. Without going into too much detail here, these management theories center around hypotheses for what primarily motivates workers.
Theory X orients around lower-level motivations (ex: money, security, etc.)
Theory Y orients around higher-order aspirations (ex: mission, purpose, etc.)
Theory Z orients around balance and integration (ex: duty, community, etc.)
As you can imagine, subscribing to these theories will have very different implications in terms of how you lead & manage your teams. For example, if you subscribe to Theory X, you may focus your energy mainly on designing incentives structures (i.e. rewards & punishments). If you subscribe to Theory Y, you may focus mainly on motivation by evangelizing the long-term vision of your product org. Or if you subscribe to Theory Z, you may focus primarily on team-building, career development, knowledge sharing, etc.
In the complex messiness of the real-world, managers and product leaders must blend elements from each of these theories to be effective within their specific contexts. You need to calibrate your M.O. across:
Your organization’s values and cultural DNA
What your organization needs to achieve its goals
The distinct nature & needs of your teams
Your own preferred style and de facto style as a leader
Striking the right balance here is tricky, because any of the considerations above may be in tension with each other. This is most typical in organizations that are going through major transitions (ex: making a big strategic pivot, getting acquired, turnover in personnel, etc.).
For newer product leaders, the most common mistake I see is biasing - often implicitly - towards #4. It’s easy as a leader to assume that the management approach that has worked best for you will scale to others around you and your new teams. This projection is risky and often leads to hard-won lessons subsequently when they struggle to get their teams to operate harmoniously and effectively at scale.
While there is no one-size-fits-all management M.O. that is guaranteed to work, you can at least be intentional about how you adapt your approach to your specific context. This requires understanding your environment and thinking critically about what elements of theories X, Y and Z you should optimize around. And when there is tension between organizational, team and your personal needs - you have a better opportunity to influence outwards and inwards to reach a more harmonious state.
An example of management M.O. and “interfaces”
To make this more tangible, I want to use a specific example from my previous post re: designing “interfaces” between you and your teams for engagement on product work.
Distinguish clearly between inputs vs. outputs - and how you intend to engage with them. Inputs are the actions being taken across the product (ex: product strategies, decisions, execution) and outputs (or outcomes, if you prefer) represent the sum impact of those actions in the real world (ex: metrics, user feedback, etc. ).
Together these represent the context, the shared consciousness, of the product organization.
Introspecting on this point allows you to clarify where you wish to land on the spectrum of “micromanagement” to “macro-management”. Over the years, with practice and reps, I have discovered that my preferred M.O. in this area is to:
Inputs: understand them well, and positively influence them (if needed)
Outputs: own them fully, and align with teams on what good looks like
Having settled on that as my preferred “default” M.O., I am better able to adapt and tailor this approach to the unique needs of my organization and teams within very specific context. There are certain circumstances where I will need to flex away from my default M.O.
If the organization need is to strengthen execution, I will engage deeper and/or more regularly on both inputs and outputs. But this may look different for each team in my org depending on their execution rigor and muscle.
If I sense that long-term vision and strategy is a gap, I can influence inputs more to ensure that the team is expanding opportunities to learn & test new hypotheses. And influence the wider organization to ensure there is space & support for more creativity & ambiguity for the team to work within.
In exceptional circumstances (ex: a team that is stuck in a local-optima or under-performing), I may have to shift from influencing to controlling inputs to help the team course-correct.
Most leaders do some version of this adaptation intuitively or implicitly. It’s more powerful to do this intentionally and explicitly.
I hope this post helps clarify for you what you wish your management M.O. to be, and how you may flex within your specific context. All the best!