6 Counterintuitive Rules for Becoming a Better Manager

Guideline 1: Begin each week with a 15-minute metric review that highlights one number and one action. This driving habit will provide clarity on performance and anchor long-term planning. Teams feel the momentum when the data shows steady gains in the most critical area.

Guideline 2: Delegate decisions early and shrink direct oversight in managing daily work. This policy shifts responsibility to others, frees you to focus on strategy, and improves the best performance across the team.

Guideline 3: Assign a rotating feedback liaison (secretary in a tiny team) to gather input from all corners. This provides a structured channel enabling others to speak up, boosts feel of inclusion, and yields actionable takeaways next sprint.

Guideline 4: Frame performance reviews around narrative evidence rather than scores. This policy encourages observing context, roles, and constraints. Cite articles as external checks to avoid bias and keep a long-term view. The number will trend higher when baseline data align with real impact.

Guideline 5: Track a single long-term metric that updates weekly but reflects a year’s trajectory. Keep the focus on the number that best predicts sustainable performance, with quarterly check-ins to adjust action plans accordingly. This clarity helps you feel confident when communicating to executives and to other stakeholders.

Guideline 6: Close each week with six takeaways that link actions to measurable impact. This practice most effectively anchors driving decisions, supports long-term growth, and helps others align with the best path. The effort to document these notes will improve how you manage risk, staff morale, and execution, year after year.

Apply 6 counterintuitive rules to lead teams and improve interview outcomes

1) Require a concrete 90‑day plan with milestones and owners. Ask the candidate to map output, timeboxes, and what success looks like at day 30, 60, and 90. Request evidence plans: data to collect, decisions to make, and who participates. Early clarity on priorities signals practical execution. weve seen teams grow when decisions tie directly to measurable points and transparent tradeoffs. you need to see how they translate strategy into action, including how they involve anyone who will be impacted.

2) Present a real case that touches team dynamics and delivery. Have them walk through a past project where they coordinated with marketing, product, and engineering, then ask what they’d change if priorities shifted. Direct questions about alignment and tradeoffs help reveal the logic. If the project used pytorch, ask what they’d monitor in a model training loop, what metrics they’d report weekly, and who signs off. This reveals whether the candidate can link technical work to business outcomes.

3) Probe stakeholder management by asking who they listen to first and how they handle pushback. Demand a decision map: who signs off, what criteria, how long to reach a choice. Tie to respect and credibility by describing a moment when you were honest about a mistake and what you changed. Being direct about limits reduces friction and preserves momentum. As a manager, youre expected to manage teams and tradeoffs quickly.

4) Test feedback loops by asking the candidate to critique a past interview or real project, and to outline how they’d adjust the plan based on data. Have them present a compact takeaways list and show how they’d share it with the team. This demonstrates they value others input and policy‑driven improvements. Wink at candor; that tone signals openness to adjust and helps others feel safe to speak up.

5) Assess coaching and team growth by requesting examples of mentoring builders. Ask how they would create a learning path, allocate time, and measure careers progress. Mention conference networking as a channel to bring lessons back to the team, and how they’d translate that into industry impact and marketing outcomes. If you havent built a coaching habit, start with a simple weekly check‑in and a short shared library of learnings. This helps you grow respect and collaboration.

6) Measure post‑interview impact by defining what you would track: time to decision, finalist diversity, and candidate experience. Ask how they’d drive changes in the process and how you’d report outcomes to leadership. Include a clear policy about value creation and next steps, driving business value and times when you must move fast and stay fair. These points show your ability to translate interviews into practical hiring improvements.

Rule 1: Hire for potential, learning speed, and problem-solving over current polish

Recommendation: Prioritize potential, rapid learning, and robust problem-solving over polished output today.

Design the hiring sequence as a game of signals: the faster a candidate translates ambiguity into a plan, the higher their long-range impact. In ML roles, include a brief pytorch task alongside a data interpretation prompt to test reasoning and coding speed. Evaluate thinking, not only syntax, and think in terms of learning velocity, problem framing, and collaboration across rounds. There is much evidence that early indicators predict higher team performance; these signals hold true across most teams and contexts, including remotely, and there are others who consistently outperform peers. This approach doesnt reward showy credentials, yet it acknowledges that real impact emerges from how problems are tackled, not where the person studied.

During a conference-style interview, the gathered panel–scott, randle, and others–pushed a candidate to reframe a feature request under time pressure. The direct questions, paired with curiosity, revealed someone who can provide clear tradeoffs, teach peers, and steer a cross-functional team. The best hires demonstrate being able to lead others remotely and to ship impact that travels beyond the interview room. A secretary wink from the back row signaled cultural alignment while the candidate delivered concrete, measurable steps there.

To operationalize this approach, implement a tight onboarding plan with earlier milestones, rapid feedback, and a couple of high-signal wins. The system provides a framework that managerial teams can use to hire people who think in systems, like anyone in the group, and will raise the bar across the entire unit. These decisions impact the most, and the results appear in the next rounds and across these teams, delivering concrete insights; in the final round, deliver measurable impact as the best hires prove being able to translate strategy into action, when happening aligns with reality.

Rule 2: Let quiet candidates speak first to reveal thinking, not rehearsed answers

Ask quiet candidates to speak first in each discussion to reveal thinking, not rehearsed answers.

There is a simple, open list of three prompts you can use in early meetings to surface original thinking rather than rehearsed responses.

Finding the first mover among quiet voices matters; after a concise opening, you gather real information about problem framing, options, and risk. The three prompts are: describe your initial approach, name the assumption behind it, outline the three potential consequences. The approach made transparent the reasoning behind choices.

In workplaces with software builders, focusing on actual thinking, not theatrics, creates an episode of learning. There, finding after finding accumulates into a long-term plan aligned with current goals. Workplaces havent matured listening rituals.

Scott gathered experience in early teams; flavio says quiet candidates reveal more real thinking; juvenal says discipline starts with listening; guru says this shift builds focus and long-term value for management. This counterintuitive move reduces noise and yields sharper decisions. scott notes a similar pattern.

There is a need to track outcomes; spend a number of minutes after each session to log who spoke first, what idea emerged, and how it steers the current plan toward goals.

Adopting this rhythm strengthens the person leading the team and supports workplaces, delivering three outcomes: clarity, speed, and alignment with long-term goals. Assuming you aim at long-term growth, this rhythm delivers durable improvements.

Rule 3: Assign a real, short project before the interview to see work in action

Start with a real, compact project that runs 48–72 hours, tied to the role’s core workflow. Give access to a lean dataset, a django-based task, and clear acceptance criteria. The candidate opens a branch, builds a small feature, and delivers a runnable prototype that demonstrates how they think, plan, and execute. This practical round exposes skills that interviews alone seldom reveal and translates ideas into concrete output.

Set scope with concrete criteria: build a small API endpoint, wire a django mock database, write unit tests, and deliver a concise article that explains decisions. Provide a lean environment, mock data, and a 20–30 minute round where the candidate explains trade-offs, shows code choices, and highlights git history with clear comments.

Evaluation rubric targets goals, quality, speed, reliability, and teamwork. Use a same, replicable checklist across applicants; score each axis on a 5-point scale, and require a short word that summarises rationale. This metric yields comparable signals across candidates and reduces bias that may creep in during interviews alone.

In many workplaces, from massive product squads to open marketing units, this method strengthens career paths and careers alike. scott from marketing says it surfaces practical signals that builders provide, while managing teams gain clarity about communication and scope. A guru with experience in managing cross‑functional work notes how this round aligns with real constraints, and juvenal discipline helps keep candidates focused on outcomes. After submitting, the same points apply across articles about careers; weve gathered concrete data here, so you can compare candidates across rounds and build a consistent view in your organization’s workplaces.

Rule 4: Delegate with clear constraints and immediate accountability checkpoints

Define the task, set written constraints, and insert checkpoints that trigger quick actions if milestones slip.

1. Write a concise brief that states objective, scope limits, budget cap, deadline, and the required outputs. Include acceptance criteria and a clear definition of done.

2. Specify decision rights and escalation steps. Indicate who can approve changes and when to involve you, their superior, or a cross-functional lead.

3. Establish immediate accountability points: daily 15-minute updates, a mid-cycle review, and a milestone sign-off with measurable deliverables, ensuring high-quality outputs. This keeps progress going smoothly and reduces back-and-forth, which most teams appreciate in workplaces.

4. Choose transparent metrics: on-time completion, quality score, and cost variance; publish these here so the total impact is visible to all, including their teammates and other stakeholders.

5. Provide access to resources, like data, templates, brand assets from marketing, and any external vendors. This practical setup shortens the path from planning to execution.

6. Openly document risks and assumptions; maintain an open risk log and update it at each checkpoint, as discussed earlier.

7. Set cadence that balances autonomy with visibility; avoid micromanagement, yet keep the higher-level progress open to the team, so youre able to adjust quickly if needed. It leverages their experience and most teams notice improvements.

8. Lead with accountability: a direct line of reporting allows others to find the status quickly; a simple weekly snapshot often suffices to keep the table aligned. Jason has tested this with a marketing pilot and saw clear gains; it made a difference.

9. Capture takeaways after each cycle and turn them into short articles or memos that inform other workplaces here; use these practical references that teammates can reuse.

Rule 5: Structure 1-on-1s for listening, feedback, and rapid adjustments

Recommendation: adopt a standing 15-minute weekly 1-on-1 per direct report, using a fixed agenda that centers listening, concise feedback, and two concrete adjustments. From experience, teams that keep this cadence remotely or in person show faster pivots, higher performance, and stronger transparency. There is a clear link between listening quality and growth across millions of contributors, and every seat at the table matters for sustained improvement.

1. Cadence and prep
   • Timebox: 15 minutes weekly; same day and time; maintain a fixed seat (virtual or physical) to build rhythm and reduce friction.
   • Prep: each person brings a one-page note with roles, priorities, blockers, and two actionable items to discuss.
   • Template: publish a shared skeleton so both sides can track progress, learnings, and transparency across going teams.
2. Three-phase flow
   • Listening phase (7 minutes): ask open prompts, listen first, jot findings, and avoid interrupting; capture context that drives performance.
   • Feedback phase (5 minutes): speak with two concrete observations and two next steps tied to outcomes; use neutral language and own what you hear.
   • Adjustment phase (3 minutes): decide two tangible moves for the week, assign owners, and record in the log for accountability.
3. Question framework
   • What changed since our last talk?
   • What are you most proud of this period?
   • What obstacles block progress? what support do you need now?
4. Action discipline and documentation
   • Capture outcomes; share a concise, searchable summary to keep stakeholders informed and to protect transparency across roles.
   • Link actions to measurable shifts in performance, quality, or speed; track completion and impact in the next session.
5. Remotely enabled habits
   • When teams span time zones, keep a consistent cadence and leverage video to read signals; this approach helps Americans and others to stay aligned.
   • Use a quick code of practice that everyone can follow; rituals reduce friction and boost trust.
   • Three quick checks before ending: is there anything unsaid? who should own what? what will change next week?

Three best practices to start now: keep the log current, insist on two actions per session, and review progress at the next meeting. Assuming you lead diverse roles, this structure scales across teams, including those who work remotely; it accelerates growth by maintaining clarity and accountability. Going into July, this approach has shown meaningfully faster iteration cycles and clearer expectations than ad hoc chats, especially where millions rely on steady delivery. Some teams even report higher engagement after adopting explicit seat-and-role mapping, which improves speaking up and listening quality during each talk.

Rule 6: Establish early wins and transparent decision-making to build trust

Pick two high-impact wins you can deliver within 30 days and publish a simple, public decision log so teams feel how choices are made.

Define clear criteria around those wins: time-bound targets, measurable performance, and a one-page summary of expected impact on workplaces and careers. Gather feedback during implementation to learn quickly.

Establish a transparent decision-making process: specify who speaks, when updates happen, and how input from builders, managers, and tech teams is integrated. State the criteria, publish the rationale, and show how trade-offs were weighed, whether speed or quality influenced the choice.

Keep the tone practical–a wink in updates signals safety and momentum. Use a simple arad checklist to ensure every decision has explicit criteria, alternatives, and the next step.

As the data says, early wins plus transparent decision-making raise performance, elevate connections, and boost careers. Teams feel more engaged when leadership speaks clearly, when timeframes are visible, and when anyone can trace how conclusions were reached. Weve learned this from gathered experience in workplaces, including tech, and it shows in higher trust and stronger collaboration. Managers ask what comes next, and this focus sustains momentum.