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There's at least two distinct aspects to management.

One is getting the best out of the team. The manager is subservient to the needs of the team, from this perspective.

The other is ensuring the team is doing the right thing. The manager is in control of the team in this perspective.

The former has more of the human relations aspect. The latter is definitely business focused.



The military approach is interesting in this regard - generally you have a "leadership pair" of officer+NCO; commanding officer + executive officer, with quite separate duties, one is responsible for planning and giving the orders/deciding what needs to be done; and the other is responsible for "managing the troops" to get that task done effectively and ensuring that they have what they need to do it.

Business, on the other hand, tends to conflate these roles in a single position.


> The other is ensuring the team is doing the right thing. The manager is in control of the team in this perspective.

This is what I consider to be the most important part of management. At a large company, you will have thousands of employees working on tons of different features and products and your job is to make sure everyone's incentives (usually through things like quarterly goals) are aligned to the most productive things while accounting for what everyone else will be working on.

I like to think of it as commanding a navy where individual contributors are rowers and managers are overseeing ships of various sizes (different products and features). The battle is constantly changing as some products fail while others are successes, new markets opportunities open up while others close, and good managers will monitor it all and rebalance/incentivize their workforce as necessary.




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