New Manager

Use when — you’re a week in, still doing your old job — with meetings on top.

Your output is no longer your work — it’s the team’s. Every instinct that made you great (jump in, fix it fast, be the one who knows) now quietly works against you, because every problem you grab is a rep your team doesn’t get.

✓Done when — You’ve written the three things only you can do — decide, unblock, grow people — and handed one old task over today.

Andy Grove, “High Output Management” — your output = your team’s output.

Use when — you “talk all the time anyway” and are about to skip them.

The 1:1 is your early-warning system. It’s their meeting, not your status update — run it right and problems reach you while they’re still small.

1. 30 minutes, weekly, recurring. Never cancel — only move.
2. Their agenda first; you bring 70% listening.
3. Always ask: “What was the most frustrating part of your week?”
4. End with one concrete promise — and keep it.

✓Done when — Recurring 1:1s with every report, titled with their name — and your first promises logged.

Andy Grove, “High Output Management”; Camille Fournier, “The Manager’s Path”.

Use when — your evenings are spent solving problems your team carried into your office.

Each report’s problem is a monkey. Say “leave it with me” and the monkey jumps to your back — multiply by the team, and you work for them now. Care for the person; leave the monkey where it can grow them.

✓Done when — A full day with zero new monkeys accepted.

Oncken & Wass, “Who’s Got the Monkey?”, HBR (1974).

Use when — someone’s underperforming and you’re about to guess at the cure.

Underperformance is can’t (skill) or won’t (will) — and the treatments are opposites.

✓Done when — Your trickiest report is plotted, and your next move matches the quadrant.

Max Landsberg, “The Tao of Coaching”; Grove’s task-relevant maturity.

Use when — you want problems to reach you while they’re still small.

Psychological safety isn’t softness — it’s the early-warning system that keeps you from being the last to know something’s on fire. You build it on purpose, in three moves.

1. Frame the work as a learning problem: “this is new — we’ll get things wrong.”
2. Ask genuine questions, then stop talking and actually listen.
3. When someone surfaces a mistake or bad news, thank them for raising it before you do anything else.

✓Done when — In the last month a report told you something you didn’t want to hear — a risk, a mistake, a disagreement — and you can name how you responded.

Amy Edmondson, “The Fearless Organization.”

Use when — you think you’re a great hands-on leader — finishing sentences, supplying answers, rescuing fast.

Multipliers get 70–100% of their team’s capability; Diminishers get about half. The worst diminishing is accidental and well-intentioned: the “idea guy” who fills every silence, the rescuer who jumps in too fast. The smarter you are, the more tempting it is to be the smartest one in the room — and the more you cap everyone else.

✓Done when — You can name your top accidental-diminisher habit and point to a recent moment where you deliberately held back and let a report carry it.

Liz Wiseman, “Multipliers” — the Accidental Diminisher.