Revisit the people management relationships in your sphere of influence. It’s really tough to manage over 4-5 people with care. In many companies, the quest for flatness leaves the only official managers in the system with dozens of direct reports. You need to mend this first.

Work with your HR team to establish meaningful reporting relationships between people. This doesn’t have to translate into a complex management structure for work. The idea is to find each individual, a people manager who’s close to their work. For example, a tech lead can manage the developers on their team. An engineering manager can work with the tech leads. So on and so forth. 

The rule of thumb is to get to a ratio of about 1:5 between managers and their direct reports. Why 1:5? Well, if you’re managing people then you need to spend 1:1 time with them. One hour a day will mean you can meet everyone individually each week. If you can’t get to this kind of ratio, you’ll always be behind the eight ball. 

  1. You’ll make compromises in terms of how much time you spend each week with people;

  2. or you’ll stretch yourself and spend a lot of time in meetings with very little time for work.

And #2 doesn’t work. As Kim Scott says, you need to keep the “dirt under your fingernails”.  

“In order to be a good partner to the people on your team, and in order to keep the GSD wheel spinning efficiently, you need to stay connected to the actual work that is being done—not just by observing others executing but by executing yourself.”  - Kim Scott

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Find the "goldilocks" zone

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Fund cross team retreats