# Martijn Verburg's Manager Readme **CEO at jClarity** # Motivation for this document This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. The intended audience is primarily anyone who reports to me in a commercial setting or more informally in a Java / FOSS ecosystem project. Please treat it as a reference and promise on how I will conduct myself as well as what I find helpful when working with others. I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises, and to call out anything that might be missing from this document! # My role As a **CEO** I'm measured by various KPIs by the stakeholders of the whole company.  This includes (but is not limited to): - **My Board -** Strategic vision and growth. e.g. Are we growing users, customers, revenue and are we taking advantage of and / or leading market trends. - **Employees / Staff -**  Facilitating a culture that encourages autonomy, personal growth, shared values, diversity, workplace flexibility and enjoyment! - **Customers - ** Products that delight and help solve real world problems, providing quick turnaround for support issues and taking into account their feature requests and requirements. As a **Java and Open Source Community leader** I'm measured by various KPIs by the stakeholders in the ecosystem.  This includes (but is not limited to): - **Vendors -** To provide impartial commentary, advice, guidance and insights from the end users (developer community). To provide technical and legal review of specifications and help set strategic direction for the ecosystem. To assist in negotiations between vendors when requested. - **End Users (Developers) -** To champion the needs of the end users (~10M+ developers) and to facilitate communication between them and the vendors in the ecosystem. In all cases I set **strategic vision** (shaped by expert stakeholders) for the organisation and then create the technical and cultural infrastructure to allow individuals and teams fulfil that vision.  That usually means stepping back to let tactical decisions get made and executed by the experts and practising [Servant Leadership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership). # What do I value most? I value open cultures, diversity (and not just lip service to it), self starters and willingness to learn.  I greatly value domain experts and my default position is to let those people do their job and interfere as little as possible!   I believe in building quality software and lasting communities, which then naturally leads to happy customers / users and (in a commercial setting) increased revenue. # My expectations I expect people to be have done a little bit of research or homework before asking me directly for help, especially with regards to understanding the strategy and their place in it.  If that's not well understood, then I/we have a challenge to solve. I prefer email as the initial way of kicking off an activity but then I find F2F (virtual or in person) and real time communications (e.g. Slack the most productive). In terms of product delivery I define done when it's in the hands of a customer who can give us feedback after it's gone through rigorous automated testing, a code review by a human and the whole organisation understands why that feature went in and what impact it will have. In the (fairly rare) instances where I need to manage conflict my first step is usually to make all parties aware of their own backgrounds and biases and have them think about why the opposing party is taking a particular position. I expect people therefore to be openminded to others. I have **zero tolerance** for gas lighting, or harassment on grounds of sex, race, gender identity etc. A major challenge for me is knowing when to say "No" before overloading my schedule. That can lead to me only spend a relatively short amount of time on a particular issue or task before I'm context switching to something else. It's not that I'm unwilling to help, it's just that I often have a lot of open 1-1 communication channels open. It's helpful if you let me know that you really need X amount of my time, or that I'm the wrong person to tackle X or that you need a regular catchup in order for something to succeed. The organisations and teams I currently work with are all distributed / remote teams.  I do my best to hold core office hours where folks can reliably get hold of me and work around the more difficult time zones as best I can with an early morning or late night coffee! # 1:1s I usually hold 1-1's informally once a month and formally each quarter.  I prefer the 1-1 to be lead by you.  I'll usually cover how the person feels about how they've met our strategic goals, improved themselves (I'm a fan of pushing people a little bit past their comfort zones - stretch goals if you will), any issues their reports have raised.  Then I cover if there is anything I can do to make them more productive and simply whether they're happy or not! # Personality Quirks I tend to make decisions quickly but will happily back track or reverse a policy if new information comes to light.  My Dutch parents installed my strong trait of crossing 't's and dotting 'i's so I can be pedantic about accuracy.  I prefer data driven decision making. I'm not great with remembering names or personal details about a person which are important to them and so I need to work on that. I'm an extroverted introvert.  That is, I greatly enjoy public speaking, facilitating and talking to people.  But afterwards I need some proper decompression time alone. I'm happy to receive brutally honest feedback on whether I've been helpful to that person or if they feel I've had a negative impact on them or other parts of the organisation. # Where to focus on your first 90 days? For my first 90 days I always observe, listen and then set about resolving any dysfunctional relationships between teams and individuals.  This may involve introducing structural changes (with buy in from staff). After that I set out the strategic vision and work with leaders in the organisation on how they can tactically go and fulfil that. For your first 90 days, I prefer that you use self service on boarding with regards to any technical setup.  So reading the documentation and working through the steps (and making suggestions!) is the best way to on board in an organisation that I lead. Asking existing folks about the shared culture and values and what they see the strategy as is also important.  If their lists don't match each other's or the ones that I've discussed with you, I want to know!