Wobble

Abstract work

The higher up the organization chart you go, the more that you’ll find that the day-to-day concerns you are dealing with are more abstract, uncertain, and just plain messy. If you’re brand new to management, dealing with this very human element of the workplace can be stressful. Whereas, days spent as an individual contributor allowed constant focus around (mostly) well-defined pieces of work, your days spent as a manager open you up to issues and interactions that are much harder to define, contain, and resolve.

In addition to the unstructured and complex issues that you’ll experience through managing humans, you’ll also partake in discussions that have no clear or correct answer. Should we hire this person or that person? How do we cut costs? How do we cancel this project and do the other one instead? Should we be building this product or that product? The higher the stakes, the more likely uncertainty and the increasing seniority of those involved will create tension, conflicts of personalities, and sometimes horrible arguments and falling outs. Yuck.

You’ll begin to realize that part of your job as a manager is to shield your team from input that is too messy, disruptive, and emotional when it would be detrimental to their ability to work well. Often, you’ll need to be the person that digests information and filters it down in a more palatable way. Sometimes, ...