Entropy: Not just for Physicists

The thing is, everything is subject to entropy, the notion that, over time, systems trend toward chaos and disorder. This doesn’t just manifest on the level of housecleaning and galaxies, but also in your team’s process and the relationship with your directs. 1:1s that may once have been interesting become rote check-ins, boring for both the direct and manager. A finely-tuned process that used to hum along without a hitch has suddenly developed hiccups. 

Entropy. It gets to everything. (Have you seen the L.A. freeways?) 

Every system therefore requires a constant influx of energy to keep itself organized. For a software team process, this takes the form of retrospectives, though those are in themselves subject to entropy. But what about your manager-direct relationships? How do you keep those from becoming stale? 

Stale? Whatever do you mean? 

Let’s define what I mean by “stale.” Ever had one of those 1:1s, usually in the mid-afternoon, when both you and your direct are in the post-lunch food coma, and it’s all you can do to keep your eyes open? The conversation goes something like this: 

“Hey, Bob, how’s it going?” 

“Great.” 

“Um... good, good. So, um... what’cha working on?” 

“Oh, you know. Project X.” 

“How’s it going?” 

“Good. Everything’s on track.” 

“Good. Good.” 

“Yeah.” 

<Queue uncomfortable silence.> 

“So, um... any plans for the weekend?” 

“Just going to chill out, play some Helldivers.” 

“Good, good.” 

"You?" 

Was that dialog as painful to read as it was to write? I’d guess so. Obviously, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the point stands: 1:1s where nothing awkward comes up are pointless and stale, like interviews where the signal amplitude is low. You come away not having learned anything, and in both settings, that’s not good. 

The value of intentionality 

Anyone who’s been married for more than a few months knows that a marriage, like anything else, requires work to maintain. There must be the intention to preserve the relationship, otherwise the whole thing crumbles over time. Intentional conversations serve that purpose in a relationship. 

In a large part, the relationship between a manager and direct is not unlike that of a married couple, or parent-child. They are two people who choose (though at work the choice is sometimes made by an outside party) to spend time together, working on a common goal. They are subject to the same entropy that affects any other relationship and need the same sort of intentionality to maintain that relationship constructively.  

What I try to lean into is setting up mechanisms that the directs involved align to and that we work together to enforce. 

Mechanisms

I divide my 1:1s into three categories:

1. Task-focused 1:1s should be fairly rare, and tend to occur only when there’s an urgent project being worked and we haven’t had other time to sync on it. In general, I consider a series of task-focused 1:1s to be an antipattern, i.e. a fail on my part, but having them once in a while is acceptable. 
2. Situation-focused 1:1s center around non-task-related situations that come up. For example, communication problems within the team, initiatives either my direct or I are thinking about, etc. These actually make up the bulk of my 1:1s, though I do make it a point to bring in career-oriented topics into most of my 1:1s. 
3. The career-focused 1:1 is very different. They happen monthly or bi-monthly. Every one of my directs has a spreadsheet that lists out the role expectations for their current level, and role expectations for moving to the next level. Next to each expectation is an evaluation of how closely they’re meeting that expectation, a place for Growth Action Items for that expectation, and several columns for examples. (e.g. projects they drove, documents they wrote, etc.) 

In our monthly career-focused 1:1s, we go through this spreadsheet, checking which evaluations might’ve changed, making sure the work they had done over the past month had been accounted for, and generally tracking how close they are to the next level promotion.  

This approach has yielded fantastic results in several categories: 

1. A mean score of 4.5/5 on the statement “I’m making progress toward my career goals in my current role.” 
2. A mean score of 4.5/5 on the statement “How clear are the expectations related to your performance?” 
3. A mean score of 4.83/5 on the statement “I recommend my organization as a great place to work.” (I don’t attribute this solely to the quality of our 1:1s, but they do play a role.) 

These scores come from a regular polling routine conducted at Amazon, wherein all employees answer one question a day on a 1-5 scale. The results are aggregated and distributed to managers to fine-tune their performance. 

Speaking of which... 

If you measure it, they will come...

Feedback is a super-important mechanism to keeping entropy from degrading your relationships, and the more specific a question you can ask, the better quality feedback you’re going to get. If your organization doesn’t have access to an automated feedback tool like Amazon does, use the more traditional, informal method of soliciting feedback during your 1:1s. Make a list of questions you feel are important to keep track of, and then poll your team on a regular basis. 

For example, a question I like to ask is, “How much fun are you having, on the scale of 1-10?” The actual number isn’t as important as the change to that number over time. If it’s trending down, you have a problem. Interestingly, this question is a trust indicator as well as a job satisfaction indicator. Why trust? Because a direct who doesn’t trust you will tend to inflate their numbers and not vary them from week to week. Normally, you should expect the number to fluctuate, especially as stressors are put on the team (e.g. high-pressure deliverables, etc), or as the projects the direct in question works on change. 

The key thing to note is that trust is a key outcome of a thriving manager-direct relationship, and one that makes everything else easier. 

Conclusion 

Just like any relationship, the relationship between a manager and direct degrades if left unattended. Minute issues intrude and, if left unexpressed, can poison the relationship. Stressors act like erosion agents to undermine trust and openness.  

All of this needs to be combated with intention. When your directs believe that you genuinely want the relationship to work and that you have their best interests at heart, they will be more likely to meet you half-way and do their part to maintain a productive, open discourse. And productive and open discourse is essential for a successful team.