Ryan is a friend of mine. We’ve worked together at several companies over the past 15 years. He is the most adept technologist I’ve ever come across — a savant. My role at work has generally been as his manager, though I mostly defer to his judgement as a technical expert, and he really requires no management. All that to say that I have a TON of respect for Ryan. Also, what I’m about to recount is certainly not the first time I’ve pissed him off, and it surely won’t be the last.
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We had an ongoing technical issue with our app. To be more specific, we had issues around our frontend code deployments messing up users’ experience when files would get out of sync, for lack of a more concise explanation. This is something that we’ve gone round and round on with many iterations on potential solutions — all with trade-offs and fairly far-reaching consequences when it comes to our users being directly impacted. It’s been a wrestling match with code, and Google, and Amazon Web Services…epic proportions. Get the picture?
As I implied earlier, I rely on Ryan as the authority when it comes to overcoming these kinds of obstacles. He digs in and really comes through every time, without fail. He also pours a lot of himself into the solution. So when a discussion with our product manager and UX director came to the conclusion that we basically had to undo a lot of work that had been done on this issue, it had potential to be offensive to the team, and particularly Ryan. We all knew it. It was one of those, “dig the ditch and then fill it back in” situations.
I’m not a dictator as a manager, if you haven’t caught on to that yet. But sometimes the action is clear. I am a big believer in getting right to the point: Say the words. Don’t dance around it. I immediately got up from the table with product and UX and went right to Ryan’s desk to figure out how to alleviate the pain our users were experiencing. I was direct and matter-of-fact.
I pissed Ryan off.
I didn’t jump into the conversation with the intent of making him angry, but I knew it was a distinct possibility. Did he throw his hands up and quit? No. Did it get heated? I would characterize the debate as “spirited”. But we quickly got past the emotion and figured out a plan of action. Ultimately we were successful in making our product better very quickly.
So why didn’t I take more care not to piss Ryan off in this situation?
I knew we’d be fine because we have a clear common goal and a very strong relationship. Strong relationships are built on trust established over time and true empathy. Because of our common goal (“make the best product that we possibly can as fast as we can”) and because we trust one another (with each others’ lives in some situations outside of work) I knew that we could tackle the challenge head-on and come out better on the other side.
There is no substitute for a great team. There are many things that go into making a great team great. This is one example of one part that I’ve found in my career: trust + common goals + direct communication.
