You’re the Chief “Unblocking” Officer
Metadata
- Author: Khe Hy
- Full Title: You’re the Chief “Unblocking” Officer
- URL: https://radreads.co/unblocking/
Highlights
A manager’s primary objective is to drive the performance of their team. This can take many forms, like setting clear goals, coaching, communicating norms and providing psychological safety. And these activities will all fall into one of four quadrants of $10K Work:
(View Highlight)
The $1,000 work category is pretty straightforward. Most managers these days are “player coaches.” In addition to management, they have to do their job. A marketing manager might need to craft and execute marketing strategies. A product manager is also creating wire frames and conducting user research. And in my old role at BlackRock, I managed Research Analysts yet also did research myself. That’s the essence of $1,000 work – performing your unique skill. (View Highlight)
Thankfully there’s a simple rule of thumb to follow. Since your direct reports drive your collective output, your role is to maximize their highest value (i.e. their $10K) work. (View Highlight)
A manager should consider dropping all of their work if they can unblock their direct reports highest-value work. Yes, usually the thing that you are doing has a higher task value, but since you have multiple direct reports, their high-value tasks will scale to offset the current task you’re not doing. (View Highlight)
If you’re optimizing for the company’s ROI above your product’s— which you should be — you’ll now need to assess the cumulative ROI of not just your project, but the dependent projects that you unblock in order to make the correct prioritization decision for your team. (View Highlight)
So in my new role as a manager, I’m constantly scanning my direct reports’ work looking for one thing: $10K Work that requires unblocking. Clearly that’s not my only responsibility, but in that moment – it maximizes our team’s output. (View Highlight)