My favourite quote from the piece:
“If you have a bunch of self-motivated and smart people and you put them together they’ll produce something incredible. But you can’t minimize the importance of management.
It’s a dirty word. It’s prosaic. It’s not vision. It’s not dream. It’s not technological excellence. But unfortunately, it makes all the difference.” - Joanna Hoffman, Head of marketing at General Magic
Good management in technology environments is akin to tracks for a train/monorail.
Boring: yes, but they provide the 'connective tissue', the velocity and the direction for everyone in the organisation to leverage, the support infrastructure for everyone else to produce great 'stuff' (products, services, outcomes, whatever). They should also build upon years of experience and/or brilliant thinking - which is what tracks do!
Great tech management teams also help (all) staff understand why the tracks are there to begin with: to solve problems for users (relevant to the Andy Hertzfeld 'put the user first' and the Tony Fadell 'understand your audience' quotes).
And yeah, reframing rejections and criticisms (the Marc Porat quote) is great advise for any entrepreneur.
It’s a dirty word. It’s prosaic. It’s not vision. It’s not dream. It’s not technological excellence. But unfortunately, it makes all the difference.” - Joanna Hoffman, Head of marketing at General Magic
Good management in technology environments is akin to tracks for a train/monorail.
Boring: yes, but they provide the 'connective tissue', the velocity and the direction for everyone in the organisation to leverage, the support infrastructure for everyone else to produce great 'stuff' (products, services, outcomes, whatever). They should also build upon years of experience and/or brilliant thinking - which is what tracks do!
Great tech management teams also help (all) staff understand why the tracks are there to begin with: to solve problems for users (relevant to the Andy Hertzfeld 'put the user first' and the Tony Fadell 'understand your audience' quotes).
And yeah, reframing rejections and criticisms (the Marc Porat quote) is great advise for any entrepreneur.