# Eli Zibenberg's Manager Readme

**Director of Software Engineering at Salesforce**

# Intro

Hello there ! I'm Eli and I would like to take this opportunity and provide you a quick intro of my values, ways of working, thought processes and leadership style. I'm writing it down to let you know what to expect from me and hold me accountable for it. This document will be always WIP, but reading it will set us on the right course of having productive and effective collaboration. 

# My leadership style \ core values

Most and foremost I'm people oriented, not customers or employees. **People**.

I lead by example, you will never find me asking you to do something which I would not do myself.   
I serve you, my mission is to set you and the team on the right path to success, I'm always available, try me!

Please see my core values:

- Results driven, always drive for the best outcome for the customer, next I optimize for what is best for the product, project and lastly the task level. 
- Focus on the Vision / purpose making sure the work we do is meaningful for everyone.  
- Always looking how to simplify things, I encourage innovation, experimentation and out of the box thinking.
- I believe in empowerment. I'm looking for people who have the will, skill, ability and desire to lead. 
- I am consensus driven, I believe that at the end almost any disagreement have a win-win outcome which can be achieved through EQ & IQ. 
- Believe in adopting to change rather than following a plan. Don't get me wrong we always work according to plan but having said that circumstances change and we have to have flexible mindset to adjust the plan to the circumstances.
- Always pushing for action, speed matters. Most of the decisions we take are reversible hence the worst path of action is taking the time to decide on reversible decisions and not taking the time on non-reversible ones.
- Disagree and commit, I will challenge, present my view and push towards what I think is right but when the decision maker takes the call I'm fully committed even and especially if he reports to me.   

# My role

As a leader, I'm measured by:

- My ability to connect the dots between company values, company goals and individual needs. 
- Enabling business growth with a “default to yes” mindset while providing clear tradeoffs and plans to relevant stakeholders.
- Iterating on ways of working and technology, always looking for ways to improve by constantly reviewing different KPIs and trends towards sustaining and scaling velocity. 
- To mentor, retain and attract talent over time by building a sense of belonging, purpose and care (mental safety and compensation). We will lose some people but we need to examine it through growing team spirit, flexibility and velocity over time. 

# What my team can expect from me

A weekly 1:1 where we will explore the challenges, goals and priorities for you and your team. I will rely on and play your strengths but also challenge you to experiment with what you consider your weakness. It will be done in a safe space for you. 

I will communicate clearly, gently and honestly. You will always know what I “really” think or expect you to do. If it’s not clear, and you have a nagging feeling, let me know so I can fix it! It’s not intentional. I will be always available to assist or advise, let me know you need me and I will either connect with you right away or according to the urgency propose new time if I'm preoccupied.

I will do my best to know you as a person, and connect together as humans to whatever degree feels best for you. I will also share wider context and my own areas of focus or challenge. For managers, you can also expect regular “skip level” 1:1s where I’ll chat with your direct reports individually and/or round tables. 

\*What you should not expect from me

- Micromanagement - Been there, done that. It does not work for me. If you see that I'm taking over your tasks it's either because I'm over enthusiastic about it or something is wrong. In either case if I have not spoken with you about it yet, feel free to approach me. 
- Not receiving help - I will always help, not always in a way you expect.
- Impatience - I'm the most patient person you know, well I think so at least, don't abuse it. I have my breaking points. 
- Automatic agreement - I surround myself with smart people, usually smarter then me, I love to learn from them. Convince me that you are right through data or evidence and I will move mountains with you, we don't take decisions based on our feelings. 
- Not speaking my mind - we are here to influence and improve, you can not do that if you keep it to yourself.

# What I expect from my team

- Take care of yourself - I expect you to handle yourself and come to work with a smile. Take the needed time to spend with your family, friends, hobbies what ever. Take the time, I measure your results not the time spent in the office.  
- Treat others in a way you expect to be treated - We spend a lot of time at work, usually more then with our families, friends. No one wants to be around people who treat them poorly. 
- Take ownership - Practice extreme ownership, care about what you do and make it yours. Doing so will improve dramatically the outcomes of our team. 
- Practice the "Boy scout rule" - Always leave the subject of your work in a better shape then you originally found it.
- Commit and be committed - Estimate your work and commit to it. Its ok to miss, I do expect you to raise flags and improve over time. 
- Feedback - Let me know for good or for worse, I will appreciate much more if you will let me know if I'm wrong or made a mistake. We all do and I'm keen to learn and improve.
- Help others - Share knowledge, land a hand, be available. We are a team and we help each other to reach our common goals. It wont matter if your part works while everything else fails. 
- Invest in yourself - Learn, Improve. Doing so will make you a better human being, professional and a team member and eventually you will bring much more value for our customers, product and company.
- Keep me updated - Time offs, vacation, sick day, few hours to spend with the kids, what ever. I need to know when you are off. Don't get me wrong, its ok, I just don't want to be surprised and start looking for you with something I need while you are out.
- Understand what you do and why - I expect you to always understand the motivation and the reasoning behind the tasks you do, it will reflect greatly on the outcomes of your work and the value it will bring to our customers.

# 1:1s

I usually do weekly 1:1s with my direct reports. The meeting is for the employee and its not a status meeting its a discussion so please come prepared. More over, its your meeting and you are the driver of it. I would speak only 10% of the time and expect you to fill up the rest of the 90% with issues we need to discuss.

I like the following format to set some structure and context:

- What were the challenges you faced last week. 
- What are the challenges you anticipate for next week. 
- How can I help ?

# My definition of High performing team

- Clear goals - Clear goals tied closely to team and company priorities.   

- Vision - Understand how the work fits into company mission. 
- R&R - Defined Roles and responsibilities.
- Communication - Communicate clearly and respectfully.
- Plan & execution - Manage work and deadlines based on priorities. 
- Trust and respect - Trust and respect each other. Bring they full selves, take risks, experiment, share ideas and innovate together. 
- Continuous learning - The team practices feedback culture and invest in ongoing employee development.

# My definition of High performer

- Highly skilled. 
- Goal oriented and life long learner. 
- Passionate, positive and good communicator. 
- Committed to their commitment. 
- Do not feel constrained by titles and job definitions.   
- Take risk and take ownership.   
- Curios and open minded. 

# My definition of a successful meeting

Meetings are one of these things which all of us have mixed feeling about, many jokes were told and Memes were created to articulate how we should not conduct a meeting. 

My ground rules are:

- Single owner - The owner manages the meeting.
- Clear agenda - Meeting invite must come with a clear agenda.
- Time - The meeting starts on time, don't wait for someone if he is late, start without them. if you cant the meeting should be canceled. 
- Always send response - When receiving an invite, either decline or accept. Tentative is not an acceptable option.
- Culture - We come to work to express our selves and provide value for our company and customers. It can not happen in a bad atmosphere. A heated debate is great, a war like situation isn't.
- Summary - A meeting is useless if there's no summary and action items with clear owners. The owner of the meeting owns the summary. 
- Minimize audience - Only invite required people. 3-5 people is usually the right amount (except for group meeting and wider meetings).

# Personality quirks

- I'm usually the most quite person in the room, its not because I do not care or have nothing to say its because before speaking my mind I want to hear and absorb the whole situation and see the picture as clearly as possible making sure everybody have spoken. 
- I love to change my mind, I love learning through debate and optimizing my views and decisions. I love people challenging me and proving me wrong with emphasis on data and facts. I always encourage my surrounding to let me know if I'm wrong and provide me with feedback.
- I'm always available, if its important enough for you its important for me as well. Don't abuse it.
- When approaching me with a problem I expect that you already went through the thought process around it considering different options and pitfalls, I will definitely help but you need to come prepared. When you come unprepared I will send you to do your homework! 
- I have very little patience for negative behavior which effects the team, I will not tolerate it in my team. You can share with me privately your thoughts and dilemmas but when its done in a wider forum and it hurts other people I will end it. 
- I am a big fan of “[no broken windows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)” when building products. I believe in straight forward pragmatic system design, clean code, clean logs, clean exceptions, etc. When planned and executed properly in hour of need (in the middle of the night) it will help you resolve the problem much faster and more efficiently.