The Role of Management at Possible

THE ROLE OF MANAGEMENT

v  

HOW WE

MANAGE

We don’t want just ‘managers’. We want inspiring leaders, passionate coaches, and tireless supporters. Managers exist to help individual stars make magic.

- The HubSpot Culture Code  

We’re a team, not a family. We hire, develop and cut smartly so we have stars in every position.

- Netflix  

At Possible when you take away “what” we do,

we are really a human resources organization.

We can only deliver great healthcare if we can recruit, hire, orient, manage, and fire exceptionally well.

As in all things that require continuous improvement, this guide is aspirational.

And we often fail to live up to everything

we share here.

We also employ this management guide up to

what we call the “maximally permissible standard.”

In the work we do, sometimes organization culture doesn’t supersede the culture of the country we work in, and sometimes technology isn’t widely available enough to use the exact same systems in all areas.

But we try to minimize exceptions.

Because everything is impossible until it isn’t.

The “meta-goal” of managers is always to get

REMARKABLE RESULTS

At Possible, we use these

to guide the roles of managers

GOALS OF MANAGEMENT

1.  Context, not control

2.  Turn friction into learning 3.  Refactor 4.  Accelerate mastery of workflow

5.  Model our for-impact culture code

1

Context, not control

If something isn’t going well, it’s always the job of the manager to look in the mirror and ask, “What context did I fail to set?”

That’s because we believe management should set outstanding context for

talented team members, not control them.

Provide role clarity, make strategy widely available and understood, identify key metrics for success, set goals, and help separate “must-haves” from “nice-to-haves.”

Great talent performs better when they are given proper

CONTEXT  

Control should be used sparingly in emergent

situations or temporarily to compensate for low performers (until the

performers are replaced).

2

Turn friction into learning

Great managers increase “discussability” of hard issues team members are struggling with.

They catch problems when the problems are just creating friction, before they explode.

And they encourage team members to identify direct,

healthy solutions that do not include gossip or politics.

Managers do not sacrifice quality for social cohesion, and

they see courage as the path through conflict to learning.

3

Refactor

Complexity is easy.

Simplicity is hard.

People ignore complexity.

People enjoy simplicity.

Complexity makes work feel like a burden.

Simplicity makes work feel like progress.

It’s the job of all managers to “refactor” their team or department continuously. It’s a software term that means “change the internal structure without changing the external behavior.”*

Think of it as pruning.

* Tip from HubSpot

Management is responsible for reducing complexity through

consistent identification and removal of bad process, useless

reports, and nonsense rules.

Otherwise, complexity and bureaucracy flourish and performance suffers.

4

Accelerate mastery of workflow

We believe in

EFFICIENCY as a moral must

That means we are obsessed with using simple tech tools

to trim the time it takes to do “work about work.”

This allows team members to maximize their talent and have a life outside of work while still achieving remarkable results.

Think of the manager as the coach of a basketball team.

If the coach was building a championship team, he would ensure his players master the fundamentals first:

dribbling, passing, shooting, and continuous improvement through practice.

Fundamentals in our work are navigation and

fluency in things like Gmail, Asana, and Dropbox.

They evangelize by sharing ideas for improving how quickly we can get work

done and maximize potential.

Managers are our champions of how well people use these tools.

5

Model our For-Impact Culture Code

Managers are inspiring leaders and exhibit

EXPEDITION BEHAVIOR  

This means putting the group’s goals and mission

first, and showing the same amount of concern for others

as you do yourself.

Even when it’s uncomfortable or

extremely challenging to do so.

They inspire by living our For-Impact Culture Code in daily practice.

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Asana is the backbone of how we get work done together across multiple sites (but equally important within one office).

This is the tool we use to define “who will do what by when” for every-

thing from single self-assigned tasks to complex, long-term projects.

Small Improvements is the performance evaluation

tool we use to set 30-day plans for new team members, conduct one

360 degree review each year, and two performance evaluations.

BambooHR is the Human Resources Management System we use to

quickly and elegantly access all sorts of features related to the team and

individual members.

We believe in making this a consistent, short, recurring

conversation over a very short window of time.

Managers meet with those they manage for 45 minutes every week. This is where the goals of management get accomplished.

MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

OPEN STRATEGY Using Asana, everyone can see the organization’s agreed-upon strategy for the year.

OPEN QUARTERLY DASHBOARD Using Asana, we produce quarterly reports for key metrics across all areas of the organization.

This is visible to everyone.

AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY We extract the key role responsibilities from each team member’s contract and compile them for each department of the organization.

Using Asana, this is fully visible to everyone on the team and gives people a clear map for who to approach for certain AoRs.

DAILY STANDING MEETING We hold a 15-minute standing meeting every morning. It only has 2 goals.

1.  To share something good.

2.  Convey the one commitment you will fulfill before going to bed at night.

DAILY COMMITMENT We create a daily commitment that is “big enough to matter, small enough to ship” before we go to bed.

Using Asana, that commitment is visible to the whole team.

NO MEETING WEDNESDAY No external meetings. No internal meetings.

It’s the day to get out of everyone’s way and be highly focused on complex work without distraction. We find that having it in the middle of the week brings a lot of relief and balances build up before Wednesday and execution after.

WORKFLOW VIDEO SERIES For areas of our workflow that benefit from a quick visual demonstration, we have built a visual library of short videos showing how to execute certain things related to our tools.

LUNCH AND LIFEHACK Consistent with the manager’s goal to “accelerate mastery of workflow,” we have two lunches a month where team members present interesting lifehacks that have helped them in their personal or professional lives.

IDEA SHARING In Asana there is a space for posting topics which require feedback. This is where team members can surface any idea at any time.

This ensures that ideas from all parts of the organization are seen and documented.

RECIPROCITY RING Also in Asana, there is a space where we can be a team of givers and make our teammates’ lives easier.

Any needs, personal or professional, can be posted here.

Thanks to the many exceptional teams and individuals who influence our evolving for-impact culture. We recommend reading their work for more insights.

asana.com hubspot.com netflix.com

managementcenter.org giveandtake.com

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