BA 36/52: Leveraging 1-on-1s Effectively
This piece is part of an ongoing stream of thought on Systems of Work. Together, these individual pieces form a playbook on how TPMs can leverage their skills to help teams do the work of doing work effectively.
The greatest TPMs had high levels of situational awareness of all the projects active within the organization including their own.
The only human way to maintain such awareness, in my experience, is through communication and no method is better than 1:1s.
Yes, you can read documents, status reports, and other artifacts but these are all snapshots in time. Conversations with engineers, talking to other TPMs will always be the best way and something many TPMs either don’t do or can do better.
However, it is often not productive to just throw a bunch of meetings on people’s calendars and show up with “How’s it going?” vibes. Like all things in software development and tech leadership, systems and playbooks can help.
Let me share my 1:1 playbook that I have developed over time from making the very mistakes I mentioned above.
Individual Contributor On Your Team or Teams You Support (Engineers, PMs, TPMs)
Cadence: Weekly to every other week 30mins.
Agenda: Progress, Priorities, Risk list, Open Discussion.
Timing: Any day of the week.
Additional Notes: I always start the 1:1s with just checking in on how they are doing. Part of your role is to give the ICs space to vent their frustrations alongside talking about the work needed to be done. That is how you build trust and very soon information flowing to you without needing any formal pull from people.
Engineer Managers You Directly Support
Cadence: Weekly 1 hrs long
Agenda: Focused on team priorities, risk list, progress updates, org growth strategy.
Timing: Monday or Tuesday
Additional Notes: One of the things you want to always walk away with from these 1:1s is what do we need to communicate to the team on priorities and focus. You and EM are setting the tempo for the engineering teams. If you and the EM are not in sync and keeping an eye on the overall roadmap, the team will not be effective.
Cross-Functional Partners (EMs, PMs, TPMs, Design PMs)
Cadence: Every other week 30mins - 1hrs long
Agenda: Focused on team priorities, risk list, progress updates.
Timing: Monday to Wednesday
Additional Notes: The goal for these types of meetings is getting a beat on where the rest of the organization is especially the teams you do not typically interact with in the course of the project. This does two things: gives you better situational awareness and learning opportunities from non-traditional places.
Your Direct Reports
Cadence: Weekly 1:1s
Agenda: How can you help, progress on priorities, and any topic for discussion.
Timing: Either Monday or Friday (perfect for setting the tone for the week or the week to come).
Additional Notes: Quarterly 1 hrs long 1:1 focused only on career goals and progression. I also recommend that during the new hire onboarding, try to meet with your direct report every other day of the week at the end of the day for 15mins to check-in on how they are progressing. This gives them a sense of care that you are not going to through them to the wolves (yet) and are there to help to have a successful onboarding.
Your Manager
Cadence: Weekly 1:1s
Agenda: How can your manager help you? Progress, blockers, unexpected risk items.
Timing: Either Monday or Friday (perfect for setting the tone for the week or the week to come).
Additional Notes: Quarterly 1 hrs long 1:1 focused only on career goals and progression. Depending on how deep you are on the org chart, you want to leverage these 1:1s with your manager to make sure they are never caught by surprise on anything from project risk, delays, to blockers. Never be afraid to ask for help.
Leaders, Executive Team, Skip Level (Optional)
Cadence: Monthly to Quarterly 1:1 (depending on how far away from leadership you are in the org chart; further away, the more respectful you want to be of leadership’s time so aim for quarterly or every 6 months.)
Agenda: Focused on roadmap and big ticket topics of the philosophical nature (ex: are we as an organization learning the right things from our wins and mistakes?).
Timing: Whatever day the leaders schedule allows. Be accommodating.
Additional Notes: This is one of those 1:1s you don’t need to have but I highly encourage for a few reasons but the primary one being creating visibility for yourself. Whether we like it or not, our career progression is in our hands and we are our best advocates so we have to do whatever we can to make sure we are visible in the right corners of power at your org and then back that up with superb work performance; visibility alone is not enough.
Applicable to all 1:1s - For all of these 1:1s meeting, I maintain a running Google doc that is attached in the calendar invite. This gives you the ability to plan agenda topics in advance and have accountability record of action items you or the other person takes away.
Why should I care about this?
As TPMs, our power is knowing what is happening in what part of the organization with what team at any given time. We are not information brokers but information connectors and that is hard to do without Information. The only way to acquire this information is through communication and conversations.
The 1:1 playbook I have outlined above is something I have developed overtime watching other TPMs execute, through mistakes I made, and through reading books and articles (Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager has been super influential for me especially when I became Director of Program Management at Nike).
Now, this is not a prescription that will solve all your problems but rather a guide which you should adopt for yourself and your style of work. This is just a starting point.
If you do apply this approach, please do let me know if you saw a change in how you approach your work and any improvements in org wide situational awareness.
Until next time 👋!
-Aadil
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