"Greatness is in the agency of others"

To get the best from others, the journey has to begin with you.

When I graduated into a people manager role, I wasn’t sure about what I was supposed to do. As an individual contributor, it was more clear. I had been directly responsible for a product’s success. I was in the day-to-day, leading developers and designers, ensuring products resonated with users. But as a manager, all my contributions had to flow through others. I wasn't sure how to add value anymore.

So, I reflected on my time as an IC. What had I needed from my managers to be successful? What had frustrated me most?

Managers often demand a vision for a specific area without first providing the broader organizational vision it needs to support. This lack of context leaves direct reports charting a path forward without knowing if they're headed in the right direction. Consequently, they face criticism (e.g. "is this really the most important thing?") without constructive guidance on what truly matters.

Scott Galloway has a line I love: "greatness is in the agency of others." In other words, your success is in your ability to get others to act in the best interests of a higher purpose (whether that be yours or that of your organization). This makes sense because if you’re inserted into every decision, you become a bottleneck and then you can only scale as large as your calendar permits. But giving others real agency isn't as simple as just stepping back. It requires intentional work.

For me, that means three things: providing a clear vision, ensuring people have the resources they need, and protecting them from noise so they can focus.

Vision

I use "vision" here, but it's similar to what Dan Pink calls "purpose." The point is to paint a compelling picture of the bigger objective and then carve out a piece for someone to own.

What you give your team member is a quantifiable objective (e.g. increase the average number of users per organization to 5) aligned with carved out piece along with constraints about where they can and cannot operate (e.g. you need to work within this product area). After that, they should have the freedom to figure out how to accomplish the objective. The reason that the objective needs to be quantifiable is because, ultimately, this is what will define if they have been successful or not. The individual should be measured on how close they came to achieving the goal while respecting the constraints, not the method by which they got there.

For the manager, it’s important not to be married to any preconceived ideas about how they'll achieve their targets. That's the team member’s journey to navigate. Even when they come to you for help, it's better to coach with guiding questions ("if you pick that path, what could go wrong?") rather than prescribe solutions ("if I were you, I would do this...").

If they stumble along the way, that's a learning experience. As people managers, we have a responsibility to give our direct reports space to grow, prove their ability, and expand their responsibility. It's possible they won't be capable of hitting their target. When that happens, a different conversation is necessary.

Resources

Assigning a task to someone without providing the necessary resources for its accomplishment can be unproductive. This is where a manager's experience becomes crucial. You need to identify whether individuals possess what they need to succeed, be it team members, skills, or support.

I see organizations build teams first and set objectives second. But the team might not have the right composition to accomplish the goal. It should be done in the opposite order: start with the objective, then staff the correct team to achieve it. It should be obvious, but how often do you see a team's mission change while the team members stay exactly the same?

To do this effectively, managers need to leverage their experience as an individual contributor to understand what resources are required and how many people you need to set a team up for success.

Noise

If your team is constantly distracted by requests and can't focus, they won't achieve their objective. The last thing I can provide my direct reports as their manager is protection from noise.

I learned long ago that one of the most powerful words in product management is no. But the more junior you are, the harder that word becomes to say. This is where the manager can help push back on new requests and manage expectations. Unless an idea truly shouldn't be worked on at all, I typically handle this by giving the requestor a timeline for when it will be look into.

Don't get me wrong, urgent priorities do come up that should preempt current work. But that should be the exception, not the norm. Creating successful products is challenging; don't make it harder by allowing your team to be constantly distracted with lower priorities.

It takes courage and humility to relinquish full control and give agency to others. To achieve this, you must clearly define the goal, provide adequate resources, and eliminate distractions.If you're not comfortable, start with something small, but make sure it's something they can truly own rather than simply carry out your instructions. As trust develops, so too should the level of responsibility you delegate. While this should be standard practice, it often isn't. However, for the crucial personal development of your direct reports, it's a necessity.