Book Summary – The Making of a Manager

Author: Julie Zhou

Synopsis

The Making of Manager is written by Julie Zhuo, who is the Vice President of Product Design at Facebook. The book covers lessons that Julie learnt, picked, and practised in the years she switched gears and became a manager. There have been a ton of books for/about managers. But this one starts with a clean slate and successfully ends up as a manual for anyone working in managerial roles. Julie’s insights are very straightforward, without any fluff. The advice is practical. The examples are universal. The writing and explanation are extremely digestible. If you have any kind of managerial responsibilities as part of your role, this book will certainly help you in calibrating your skills and playing your role at the right pitch.

The 5 big ideas from the book

1. Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
2. The compass for a manager needs to have 3 components: Purpose, People and Process.
3. Giving feedback is one of the most fundamental aspects of the job – both when things are going well and when they aren’t.
4. Hiring is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to grow and build the future of your organization.
5. Success becomes more and more about mastering a few key skills: hiring exceptional leaders, building self-reliant teams, establishing a clear vision, and communicating well.

Key takeaways from the chapters

1. The job of a coach is to support and help team members reach their goals.
2. Purpose, People, Process. The why, the who, and the how.
3. You will be far more successful aspiring to be the leader you want to be and playing to your strengths than trying to live up to some other ideal.
4. Managing is caring – doing your best to help your report be successful and fulfilled in his/her work.
5. The most precious resource you have is your own time and energy, and when you spend it on your team, it goes a long way toward building healthy relationships. This is why one-on-one meetings (“1:1s”) are such an important part of management. Have a weekly 1:1 with every report for at least thirty minutes.
6. Culture describes the norms and values that govern how things get done.
7. Growing great teams means that you are constantly looking for ways to replace yourself in the job you are currently doing.
8. The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution.
9. Management is all about the art of balance.
10. There is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it.

My favourite quotes

1. The best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.
2. Prioritization is key, and it’s an essential managerial skill.
3. The role of a manager is not to do the work even if the manager is the best at it. The role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.
4. A resilient organization isn’t one that never makes mistakes but rather one whose mistakes make it stronger over time.
5. Success or failure is never usually the results of a few sweeping decisions. Rather, how far you get will be the sum of the millions of actions taken by your team during the small, quotidian moments.

My take on the book

I enjoyed reading this book. I wish I had it when I first became a manager. But the book gave me the impression that it will be useful for all managers, no matter how tenured they are into the role. Every manager is different. And many managers do try to synthesize multiple take-aways from various sources – articles, books, HBR, podcasts etc. to frame, develop, and hone their management style. I can say that reading this book ticks many buttons in a single shot, for it comprehensively lays out the best practices for managers. The codified set of practices recommended by the author, if implemented with all the sincerity, can lead to building great teams, managers and leaders, irrespective of the context and domain.