Some New Learning: Management 101

Last May, I embarked on a new series of professional learning adventures, taking over the management of the Analytics Database Engineering team in Adobe's Digital Experience division.  I have read or listened to many management-related books as I have tried to wrap my head around the position and its responsibilities.  Almost six months into the adventure, I am almost ready to share some thoughts.

For the moment, though, let me share a list of books that I have either read or listened to (or both) that have been incredibly helpful:

• The First 90 Days
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• The Effective Manager
• Start With Why
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
• Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues
• Seeking SRE
• Database Reliability Engineering
• Nudge
• The Making of a Manager

Each of these books has been incredibly helpful in one way or another.  For example, The First 90 Days, The Effective Manager, and The Making of a Manager helped me to understand the basics of managing a team, including communication inside and outside the group (The Making of a Manager goes beyond these basics in so many ways--it's an amazing read).

Start With Why was crucial for helping me to pull together a vision of what the team (and my role in particular) is all about.  Connect provides amazing insights into building deeper relationships.  While less directly applicable (at least so far), Nudge is giving me other insights into working with people. 

My favorite of these books, with the widest set of applications, is probably Never Split the Difference.  After hearing Chris Voss talk, I can tell he is as unlike me as anybody can be, but the insights and perspectives shared in this book are as powerful as they are generally applicable.

On a more technical level, Seeking SRE and Database Reliability Engineering were great for providing insights into how the group should grow in the work being done (I've read Site Reliability Engineering, The Practice of System and Network Administration and Time Management for System Administrators in the past).

I will probably write something more substantive later about each of these influential books later.

I have started to read or listen to a number of other books which I hope to understand better as I mature in this new role:

• The Essential Drucker
• Leadership: Theory and Practice (by Peter Northouse) 
• Measure What Matters
• Leading with Questions
• Designing Your Work Life
• Management 101
• Kanban A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to the Basic Concepts in Kanban

As an academic practitioner in the Information Technology space, I love learning about the theories and principles behind anything I am working on.  These books have been very helpful in my transition from Senior SysAdmin/Systems Engineer/DevOps Engineer/SRE/whatever to IT Manager.