RE: Manager README

Source: Screen grab of managerreadme.com

Unpolished notes extracted from my reply to a friend who asked me for my view on Manager README within a group chat. It was not a familiar concept to me although I have seen (very few) people within my organization practiced it.

1. It’s a good piece of introspective & retrospective document to maintain. Personally, I exercise that by penning down lessons of the week and share to very few in our conversations. I think having a way to maintain an ever-changing to-be but having a few more mechanisms to verify the constantly evolving as-is, is an important duty to anyone who’s serious about working effectively with people.
2. It however shouldn’t substitute interactions with individuals through day-to-day instances or under a group setting. Because assimilation is simply most effective through interactions vs. reading README files.
3. A Manager README is not the same as a Manager’s playbook or an Engineering handbook. If I have to choose where I should spend my time, it will be the latter as it serves a greater purpose. My objective to spend 2–5 years in a team is not to instill personal values and expectations but to align, learn, and discover the best ways we all can play well together.

Further reading

• The manager README is dead (Vroome, 2019)
• Likert’s management system