# George's Manager Readme ** Data Science at Microsoft** _The content is inspired from the culture and management philosophy I’ve experienced over the years from fantastic peers, managers and companies that I worked for. This is a work in progress, as I grow this will probably change too._ # Context I wrote this document to give a little bit more insight in how I like to work and what I care about. It should help introducing you to my philosophy, core values and thought process. There are two things to keep in mind while reading through this: - I do believe that every person is different, therefore, I always look to tailor my management style to you; please do not see anything here as fixed in stone; - the principles outlined in this document apply to both direct and indirect reports # # My purpose In principle, I have two goals in mind: - Help our company thrive and grow - Help you succeed in your career I strongly believe that we can’t achieve the one without the other; Our team can’t be successful if folks on the team aren’t successful and enjoying the journey.  # What I deeply value in my team(s) I deeply value psychological safety, empathy, and bias towards action. I expect each of us, including myself, to embody these values along with the ones listed below: - **Failing Forward -**  when you approach a problem, I encourage you to figure out the simplest thing you can do, try it quickly and learn from the experience. If something does not work out as expected, use it as a learning opportunity.   - **Transparency - ** Do you have a concern? Do you feel like we are going in the wrong direction? Something’s bothering you? please talk to me about it because you give me the opportunity to do something about it. I'll always give you the benefit of the doubt if it comes out wrong and I'll genuinely try to be supportive, no matter the news.  - **Master \> Teach \> Learn -**  I encourage you to see that continuous learning is a journey that starts with mastering your knowledge on a topic, you then teach your learnings on the topic to others and ends up with learning something new; and you repeat the cycle. - **Say it as It Is -**  I encourage diverse viewpoints and that we strive to create an atmosphere where everyone’s views are heard and assimilated. We should always strive to understand our team’ points of view and where they are coming from. - **Our Time is Precious -**  if I ping you out of normal hours, please ignore my message until the next day; this could happen because I found some capacity to share information about work or share a relevant article that I read; I am very cautious on it and if you see me doing this a lot, please call me out on it. Ensuring we all have a good work/life balance is incredibly important to me. # # What you can expect from me I am here to support you in identifying and strengthening your super powers; As a team, we will be contributing to a shared sense of purpose, we will be evaluating our priorities and goals to ensure they are meaningful, impactful, and aligned.   The following four points sum up a large part of my management approach: - **There’s no team without trust - ** I will work with you and your peers to create high performing teams; a key ingredient for our success is to build a working environment that fosters a culture that motivates team members and encourages sharing new ideas & opportunities for improvement.  - **Guided Autonomy & Dependability - ** The only way to scale our impact is by empowering everyone in the team to make decisions. At the same time, I do believe that autonomy comes with a sense of ownership and that when everyone in our team is accountable, reliable and trustworthy, we succeed.  - **On Feedback -**  This is critical to your success and mine; I firmly believe in ongoing feedback, because receiving information on time drives ongoing growth. Therefore, when there is an opportunity for improvement, you will hear about it directly, promptly, and humanely from me. I expect that you will do the same for me and others. - **Your Career Development -**   Your personal growth and career is super important to me. We will work together on this. I can provide feedback and an outside perspective; we will also use feedback from your peers, figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, and discover career paths you find exciting. I’ll do my best to provide growth and learning opportunities.  You should keep in mind that my role is also to connect the dots across team(s) / discipline(s) and ensure that you have what you need to do your best. A large part of what I do is to ensure what we create takes us closer to the bigger vision. Anything I can do to help you to do this will take priority over most other things. # What I expect from you By no means, I am not here to tell you how to do your job. I am here to set context and provide feedback. I am here for advice, guidance and mentorship, you name it. Similarly, I expect you to operate with ownership, accountability, dependability. I trust you will ask for my help / support when you need it.  We will talk about specific expectations based on where you are in your career and what you want to do. I separate my considerations for individual contributors and managers in the following way: **As an Individual Contributor...** I expect you to fall in love with the problem, not the solution; I do value a mindset of incremental delivery, where you start simple, try ideas and iterate quickly on better solutions. I encourage you to develop simple solutions to difficult problems, to learn but also teach others; I also encourage you to go and solve problems without being asked to as long as you feel that this is the "right thing to do". By no means the "right thing" may vary and that's ok because when there is a misalignment we will have an adult conversation about it. I trust you to choose the right tools/methods for the job; I trust you that you will tailor your communication approach to the audience using data and insights to fuel your story.  **As a Manager...** I expect you to put the needs of your reports and the business before your own. I expect you to listen well to your reports and help them grow as individuals. I trust that you will praise team members for doing a job well and that you will hold them accountable when required. I expect you to push people and not shy away from difficult conversations. I also expect that you will identify and capitalise opportunities that are aligned with our company's strategy. You will work with your team to influence and gain buy-in across stakeholders. # Asking Questions During our interactions, you will notice that I ask lots of questions. This is not to make you feel uncomfortable, it is simply to ensure that we focus on the right problem and deliver better solutions.  I am also a big advocate of the "debate, decide and commit" mindset; I do value the power of diverse perspectives and that engaging in respectful debate with facts and data guide us in making thoughtful decisions. After the decision, we as a united team move together towards achieving our goals.  Being challenged by my team has been the greatest gift I ever received. # A few things about my personality quirks  - In some meetings, people might misunderstand me when I'm quiet. I do not like interrupting others and you may see me listening to stakeholders, teams, peers as this empowers me in making informed decisions. I will never hold back what I need to say. - I get nervous when being in meetings where people are talking in circles without a clear purpose. At the same time, I do value brainstorming, exchange of information and knowledge; thus, I appreciate having clear agendas and wrapping up meetings with a list of actions that are followed up upon. - According to the 16Personalities test, I’m “The Protagonist” (ENFJ): “Thoughtful and idealistic, the Protagonist strive to have a positive impact on other people and the world around them. They rarely shy away from an opportunity to do the right thing, even when doing so is far from easy.”. You can read the full personality profile [here](https://www.16personalities.com/enfj-personality). Thank you for reading this.  Now, let's go win!