Being a first-time manager is absolutely challenging, but
I take Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts my mission,
inspired by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.
I joined Adobe in August 2017. Within in 5 months, I was asked to take more responsibility to lead the team as a design manager. I inherited my director's team for her to scale up and drive greater pictures. Some team members had strong personalities. One of them was actually the other candidate of this role. I was new to the team and company, and no any program manager supported. It was a very critical situation.
In the middle of the year, I was rated as 100% favorable scores in 8/all categories in 2018 employee survey. In December, a small reorg was going to happen. I brought the opportunities to the team and encouraged them to choose their desired positions. Everyone wanted to stay voluntarily. My director was impressed about how I stabilized the team and cultivated the collaboration culture to get an equivalent 100% retention rate and autonomy.
Principles
Reviewing my journey last year, I keep three principles that formulate my leadership strategy, even up to today:
"Love your neighbor as yourself." — Jesus, Mark 12:31, Bible
I believe in Christian and believe that love solves problems. Loving my team empowers my emotional intelligence and motivates me to be stronger day-to-day.
"Leave no man behind."
I had the military background back to my early stage. I've led a small troop guarding the coast. The team is a team, and no one should be left behind.
Role modeling
An ancient Chinese philosophy expresses that self-discipline first and then influence others.
At Adobe, most of the managers below director level are both people manager and hands-on design lead. This manner gave me a runway to the new role. I started leading multi-discipline collaborations (UX, UI, writing, product, and frontend engineering) since 2015. Also, I had been an individual contributor longer enough working for 16 different managers in my career. These experiences help me recognize people's personalities and identify effective interaction models.
Visualizing Leadership Strategy
My leadership strategy has multiple dimensions:
Internal first, then external — Cultivating internal culture first and then outreaching to external stakeholders
Bottom-up and top-down — Consolidating foundation and driving from vision
In and out — In the team as a servant and next to the team as a commander
These experience can be visualized as below diagram (not an academic theory):
Each layer has more details in strategy and tactic to be described...
(To be continued)