#92 - Manage yourself to better manage others feat. Johanna Rothman // The Pragmatic Manager

alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders

Self Management for CTOs and other Managers

Want to become a better manager? Then manage yourself better!

From managing the time you spend managing, and all the way to managing how you give your team new tasks…

Let's get real with Johanna Rothman, whom they don’t call the Pragmatic Manager for nothing. You will love her straight-talking approach to management. After almost 40 years in management, she can boil down things to sharp principles that will make you either hand pump💯, shoot the link to your buddy🤣… or smile sheepishly🫣. Yip, she got you. (Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Patterns exist because everyone does them. Which is why we need people who have been around the block to call us out 📢on them). Listen to find out:

• Why you need to manage yourself to better manage others
• Micromanagement: A recipe for multitasking chaos🤯 and WIP overload.
• Why Gantt Charts are bad👎. Use Flow Metrics and PERT instead.
• Who actually needs to be in the C-Suite (HINT: Not 25 people 🤣)
• + how things have changed since the 70s: from the CTO Role to Feedback loops.

Listen here

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius and codecentric

About Johanna Rothman:

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your thorny problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see simple and reasonable options that might work. Those practical alternatives can help them be more effective with others at work. With those choices, they can choose what—and how—to adapt their product development. With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 19 books, hundreds of articles, and blog posts about many aspects of product development. Her most recent books are the Modern Management Made Easy series. Find her monthly newsletter and blogs at jrothman.com & createadaptablelife.com.

TIMESTAMPS (approx) (00:00:00) Introduction to the Alphalist Podcast (00:02:05) Who is Johanna Rothman (00:02:46) Why she is still active at 68 (00:03:14) The Evolution of Product Development Since the 70s (00:03:36) Her Nerd Journey: RPG, Fortran, and Assembly (00:05:10) The Role of Women in the Tech Industry in the 70s (00:06:18) The Power of Tech Career (00:08:20) How the intro of PCs exacerbated the gender imbalance in STEM (00:09:37) How tech has evolved since the 70s (00:13:26) Joanna's Journey into Management and Coaching (00:15:04) How her first book was written unintentionally (00:17:40) The Importance of Self-Management (00:18:02) The Impact of Micromanagement on WIP (00:21:44) The Importance of Collaboration in Management (00:23:06) 7 Management Principles (00:23:25) Clarify your purpose (00:23:49) Develop Empathy with the People that Do The Work (00:24:20) Build a Safe Environment (00:24:35) Catch People Succeeding (00:26:04) How to micromanage less as a manager (particularly a middle manager) (00:29:32) As a manager - does that mean I am always context-switching?(00:30:12) Tracking your time as a manager (00:31:06) The Challenge of Managing a Project Portfolio (00:31:32) The Futility of Yearly Planning (00:31:45) Portfolio Management: Depth vs. Traffic Light Status (00:32:30) Why she never uses Gantt Charts. - only PERT charts (00:32:54) The Power of Rolling Wave Planning (00:33:18) Why Gantt Charts are useless (00:34:03) Flow Efficiency and Flow Metrics (00:34:11) How Cycle Time is Measured Wrong (00:34:57) What she measures (00:35:18) The Shift from Developer Productivity to Developer Experience (00:35:54) Getting Team Feedback on Delivery Dates (00:36:20) The Balance of Immediate and Future Planning (00:37:57) The Evolution of the CTO Role (00:41:25) A CTO needs to be business-minded. Otherwise, they can't have a C-Suite title (00:42:46) When do to do custom features? (00:43:59) The company with 25 C-Suite Execs whose title inflation held them back (00:51:03) The Power of Collaboration. (00:51:54) Reduce Feedback Loops (00:53:55) Collaborate with Peer Manager (00:54:30) Message to Younger Self: Be kinder (00:58:07) Her next book: Fake Agility - when you find yourself in waterfall

Quotes:###

When we reduce the pressure at the team level for more and more work, we have higher throughput and more results. ’” - Johanna Rothman,alphalist CTO podcast #92

Managers, a Gantt chart is actually the worst possible chart for a manager to see. It's the most optimistic and it's always a lie, right? It's the first date you cannot prove you cannot finish this work by. So why would you look at a Gantt chart? ” - Johanna Rothman,alphalist CTO podcast #92

About our sponsors

WorkGenius

Tired of sifting through countless resumes and struggling to find the right tech talent? Look no further! WorkGenius has just acquired Expertlead, known for its innovation in matching tech freelancers with top-tier companies and offering peer-to-peer live coding assessments. Now, they bring even more efficiency to your hiring process. Whether you're a startup or an established enterprise, WorkGenius is now here to turbocharge your hiring process. Say goodbye to the guesswork and endless interviews. WorkGenius matches your candidates experienced senior developers and puts them through tailored, enjoyable, and fair technical interviews. Your company will get the cream of the crop - the most sought-after talents in the industry- while saving your hardworking Tech and HR teams valuable time. Start your journey with WorkGenius - head over to https://link.alphalist.com/work connect with an expert, and find the perfect match for your engineering needs.

codecentric

The codecentric Culture and Career Podcast is unique for a company podcast. It is just employees talking freely about their daily life - from IT consulting projects they are working to imposter syndrome. We support this because we think it's pretty cool that codecentric simply lets the colleagues talk about everything, no matter what it's about - project business, Imposter sydrome, further education or parental leave in the consulting business. For us it is definitely worth a recommendation. Listen in - the codecentric Culture and Career Podcast. Note - its in German. Just go to: www.link.alphalist.com/cc