Navigating to Get Things Done

In engineering culture, we sometimes refer to managers and Staff Engineers as “shit umbrellas” for their team. I’ve never liked this idea. It paints a picture that individual leaders create a peaceful oasis for their team while chaos reigns outside.

Sounds nice to be one of those engineers! Not a care in the world. Just flow. It must feel special to have a shit umbrella manager.

But the shit umbrella is a lie.

If every manager believes they create a sphere of deep focus and flow, where is all the shit coming from? One team’s flow is another team’s dysfunction.

The “shit umbrella” metaphor entrenches an “us versus them” culture and isolates individual teams from the rest of the company. It pits leaders against lowly engineers and ensures communication starts with arguments rather than curiosity.

Be a Navigator

Effective engineers engage across an organization and know how to navigate its complexities. Effective engineers recognize that people are complex, have diverse emotions, make mistakes, and struggle to communicate effectively. And that’s okay because we are all human.

Teams need to understand how an organization operates to be effective engineers, and people leaders are responsible for helping teams focus, navigate complexities, and achieve their goals.

Being a navigator for a team means helping them find their way and letting them do the work to reach their destination by helping the team understand who is who in the organization and what these individuals care about. Working with the complexities in an org is about curiosity and learning.

Helping your team navigate an organization begins with trust and focus: trust that your team can handle what comes their way and that the people they work with understand their part of the organization better than you do.

In Matheus Lima’s recent post on politics, he says:

The engineers who refuse to engage with politics often complain that their companies make bad technical decisions. But they’re not willing to do what it takes to influence those decisions. They want a world where technical merit alone determines outcomes. That world doesn’t exist and never has.

The same goes for managers who choose to be shit umbrellas. Protecting your team from politics isolates them from the business and creates an insular culture where “everything could be better if…” while not improving anything.

Protecting Your Team Protects Dysfunction

When people leaders try to protect their team from organizational chaos, they are unintentionally ensuring the dysfunction stays in place.

The purported “shit” that a shit umbrella protects people from is just people being human. To quote Will Larson:

[T]he reality is that executives are human. You’ll make much more progress by focusing on improving how you communicate with them than by blaming them for their deficiencies.

Larson’s comments apply to anyone you work with in your org. Improving your communication skills ensures that you approach conversations with a clear understanding of the core business needs.

Blaming others for their deficiencies ensures organizational dysfunction is the norm and prevents the business from growing.

People at all levels of an organization need to make mistakes and learn from them. The shit-umbrella culture breaks this feedback cycle. It allows new leaders to fail without receiving feedback and support from their peers, isolates senior leaders from the teams they need to work with, and isolates your team from the business.

Focus

People who talk about being a shit umbrella want to maintain their team’s focus and limit distractions. It comes from a well-meaning place, but creates a culture of isolation instead of focus.

As a navigator, show your team what to focus on and how to reach their destination. Trust them to raise concerns when things get hard, and trust your peers on other teams to support their work.

Provide your team with a map and help them to focus on the business impact of their work, so that they can approach complex parts of the org with curiosity and an ambition to build great things for the business.