60 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
60 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
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# Manager Productivity
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The manager trap: helping everyone else succeed while your own work never happens.
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---
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## What Actually Fails
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**Infinite Availability**
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"My door is always open" = your calendar is never yours. Teams learn to interrupt instead of problem-solve.
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**Meeting Colonization**
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Back-to-back 1:1s, team syncs, cross-functional alignments. No time to think, plan, or do actual work.
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**Doing Instead of Delegating**
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"It's faster if I just do it" creates dependency and prevents team growth. You become the bottleneck.
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**Context-Switch Burnout**
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Jumping between projects, people, and problems every 30 minutes. Mental exhaustion without tangible progress.
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**Unclear Delegation**
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Handing off tasks without decision authority, success criteria, or context creates boomerang work.
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---
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## What Actually Works
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**Office Hours, Not Open Door** — "I'm available 2-4pm for questions." Outside that: focused work time protected.
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**1:1 Prep** — 5 minutes before each 1:1 reviewing context, notes, goals. Better conversations, faster progress.
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**Decision Frameworks** — "If X, do Y. Only escalate if Z." Teams can decide without you for most things.
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**Manager Block** — 2 hours weekly for planning, strategy, documentation. Treat it like a board meeting.
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**Batch Similar Work** — All 1:1s on one day. All planning on another. Context switching kills depth.
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**Delegate Outcomes, Not Tasks** — "Make sure the report is ready by Friday" not "Write section A, then B, then..."
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---
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## Energy Reality
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- People problems drain energy differently than task problems
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- Your emotional state affects the whole team — manage it
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- Saying "I need to think about this" is a complete answer
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- Protecting your time models healthy behavior for your team
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---
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## The Leverage Question
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Every hour you spend doing IC work is an hour not spent multiplying your team's output. Ask: "What can ONLY I do?"
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---
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## The Real Issue
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Manager productivity problems are often systems problems: unclear ownership, too many meetings, insufficient delegation. Fix the system, not just your schedule.
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