Management For Startups Podcast

When you're moving to a new role — be it as an individual contributor to a manager, or a manager to another part of the organisation — your move is often fraught with uncertainty. 

This week, we talk…

Why is it that certain people can't seem to get better at management? Why are there so many bad managers out there? 

A year or so ago, I came across the first plausible explanation for this observati…

In our last episode, we talked about transitioning from a physical workplace to a remote work configuration.

This week's episode is about taking care of yourself before you take on the responsibility…

Many of us are stuck working from home this week, as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the globe. 

This week's episode is about managing your team from this position — especially if you're not used…

Idea bombs, or founder bombs is the tendency for you to tell your subordinates about this great big idea you have, and then distract them from execution.

In this episode, we explore three methods for…

In my previous episode about my new book, Keep Your People, I mentioned that 'mission is an overrated tool for employee retention'. This was a throwaway comment that I realise should properly be expl…

Giving good instructions is difficult! This week, we look at 'executive intent', an adaptation of 'Commander's Intent', a technique that was developed by the US Army for better, clearer instructions.…

We spend a great deal of time as managers forming accurate models of the people we work with. It's important to resist the urge to stick to the first narrative we generate. 

This episode, we explore …

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos popularised the idea of 'disagree and commit' in his 2016 shareholder's letter. It's a fascinating idea, but it isn't the most common form of 'disagree and commit' that you'd ex…

This week we deal with the challenge many makers — programmers, designers, hardware engineers — face when they make the leap to management. How do you wake up in the morning to go to work when you no…

One of the implications of the manager's job of 'increasing the output of the team' is to serve as the 'shit shield' for said team. This means protecting them from the natural randomness of events in…

In Kim Scott's 2017 management book Radical Candor, Scott describes a management technique that she attributes to ex-Google manager Russ Laraway, who had to integrate the Doubleclick team post Google…

We've talked about delegation before on the MFS podcast, but one thing that I've neglected to mention is that it's important to 'explain why' when delegating to subordinates.

Explaining 'why' — somet…

Last week we discussed the dangers of firing too slowly. This week we'll discuss the dangers of the opposite view: that of firing too quickly.

In my experience, startup managers who fire too quickly …

We've discussed the difficulty of firing bad performers in the past — in the last episode on the Manager Ugh Field, for instance, I illustrated the ugh field with a personal story on the difficulty o…

The Manager Ugh Field is what you feel when you're facing a difficult situation at work. Your brain throws up a deflector shield to force your attention away from a difficult action, conversation or …