11 Quotes by Michael Lopp

Organizations of people are constantly shifting around. They are incredibly messy. In this mess, judgments of you and your work will be constructed in moments—in the ten-second conversations you have in the hallway, and in the way you choose to describe who you are.

My definition of a great manager is someone with whom you can make a connection no matter where you sit in the organization chart.

One of your many jobs as manager is information conduit, and the rules are deceptively simple: for each piece of information you see, you must correctly determine who on your team needs that piece of information to do their job.

A manager’s job is to transform his glaring deficiency into a strength by finding the best person to fill it and trusting him to do the job.

Managers who don’t have a plan to talk to everyone on their team regularly are deluded. They believe they are going to learn what is going on in their group through some magical organizational osmosis and they won’t. Ideas will not be discovered, talent will be ignored, and the team will slowly begin to believe what they think does not matter, and the team is the company.

The difference between a manager who knows what’s going on in an organization and one who is a purely politically driven slimeball is thin. But I would take either of those over some passive manager who lets the organization happen to him.

In order to manage human beings in the moment, you’ve got to be one.

Every time you say blah blah blah, a creative writing teacher dies.

Managers who don’t have a plan to talk to everyone on their team regularly are deluded.