Category Archives: Management

When Leaders Should Get in the Weeds

Management
man in a white button up holding his glasses and looking at a computer screen

I’ve been thinking a lot about when, as a leader, you should be in the weeds versus when you should be focusing on the strategic, high-level work.

The role of a leader is to provide strategic direction, drive internal support, remove roadblocks, and grow their teams. But does that mean they should never get in the weeds?

I believe there are a few key scenarios where you should – and a lot of situations in which you shouldn’t, but will be tempted to. Here’s my non-exhaustive list.

When to Get in the Weeds

1. Your team is suffering.

If your team is incredibly overloaded or stressed and you can ACTUALLY help out (instead of just performatively helping), hopping in can help dig them out and raise morale. When I first joined Reddit there was a HUGE ticket backlog, so I spent two weeks in a conference room with the team crushing tickets. (And let them hit me in the face with a pie after.)

2. You have a wild idea and you don’t want to distract your team.

Sometimes you’re chasing down a really fringe idea and it doesn’t make sense to distract your team. Go pound the pavement on your own to see if there’s something there.

3. You’ve been asked to do something annoying.

Sometimes a request comes down from the top that can be a little irksome. You still need to do it, but it can be nice to shield your team from these from time to time.

4. You need to understand the reality of something.

Especially if you’re planning on making changes to how your team operates, spending some time IN their workday understanding how it really works is crucial. Whether doing the work or shadowing, this helps you pressure test your ideas against the real world.

When NOT to Be in the Weeds

A) You feel guilty.

Your job is to be strategic, and that IS real work. Sometimes you can feel guilty as a leader for not doing the day-to-day work, but don’t let that pull you away from making sure you’re steering the ship.

B) You want to feel productive.

Similarly, it can often feel far more productive to go do a thing rather than think, research, and have conversations. Both things are important and productive, but again, your job IS to do the strategic work.

man in professional attire speaking to a woman in professional attire seated at the computer looking irked

C) You’re micromanaging your team’s work.

If you’re getting in the weeds because you feel you need to fix your team’s work, hit the breaks. There are two likely scenarios here: either you’re being overly critical and you need to chill out or there really IS a problem with the team’s work. If it’s the latter, fixing it yourself isn’t sustainable; you should be spending this time thinking through what structural changes you need to make to support them.

Solo image by MART PRODUCTION

Duo image by Yan Krukau

The Future of Remote Work (and why companies need to start hiring more community professionals NOW)

Community, Management, Tech, , ,

Slack just released some fascinating research on remote work in the age of COVID-19. There are some important takeaways every company should think deeply on.

People lean towards a hybrid workplace

Despite all the claims of “remote is the future”, the majority of Americans surveyed said that, post-COVID, they’d like to spend some time in the office and some time at home. Very few want to spend 5 days a week in the office, and they appreciate saving time and money working from home.

I suspect many more would have been excited about fully remote, save for one major pain point cited in the research: human connection. People are feeling less connected to their coworkers, and this seems to be one of the main things driving them to think about a hybrid workplace.

The office is not necessary – opportunities to connect as humans are

It’s clear from these results that the office as a workplace is unnecessary, but the office is an easy (if not cheap) way to drive some human connection. That said, it’s uneven, biased towards those who naturally connect with others, and frustrating for truly remote workers.

The future is much more likely about creating structured opportunities for people to connect, both online and in-person. With the focus on connection, these interactions can intentionally drive inclusivity and, frankly, spend more money on peak experiences rather than office perks that become less novel over time. (Hell, even just from a COVID-19 standpoint, safety at one big in-person event is much more doable than safety in an office open to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people every day.)

People Ops teams need to start carving out roles that focus on creating connections and belonging

In other words, they need to hire community professionals. Connection and belonging has become a big focus for People Ops teams in recent years, but it will need to be a top priority for hybrid and remote-first companies. Employee engagement is heavily affected by connection, so someone needs to be dedicated to not just building that into the day-to-day, but building intentional spaces for people to connect. This might look like:

  • Programs that connect employees over coffee
  • Career development buddies
  • Interest/hobby groups
  • Identity groups
  • Team offsites/onsites
  • Big internal summits
  • Onboarding processes geared towards building connection
  • Etc

This will certainly involve events, but won’t work if it’s simply an event planner hire. Experienced community professionals know that the logistics of the event are secondary to driving the desired human connection.

It also requires thinking through how you foster conversation and connection around touchy, emotional issues, something many tech companies are struggling with. These are community-building and moderation issues. Luckily there are a bunch of us who are very experienced at tackling these challenges and opportunities. Rather than learn these skills from scratch, People Ops should look towards the experts.

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This stuff is work. My team’s engagement score has actually improved during the pandemic, but that’s due to hours and hours of work and experimentation on the part of me and my lieutenants. If we leave these things to chance, we’re going to see this get worse.