The Making of a Manager summary

by Julie Zhuo · 2019 · 7 key ideas · 18-minute read

A friendly, practical guide for new managers: your job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together, through purpose, people and process.

Why read it

For first-time managers, people thinking about management, and anyone who wants a down-to-earth picture of the job. Zhuo shares her own early mistakes, which makes the advice feel honest and doable.

The Making of a Manager in brief

Zhuo became a manager at Facebook with little idea what the job involved. This book is the guide she wishes she'd had. It's written for new managers, illustrated with her own simple sketches, and grounded in her many mistakes along the way.

Her starting point is a clear definition. A manager's job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. Managers influence outcomes through three levers: purpose (why the team exists and what success looks like), people (who is on the team and how well they're doing) and process (how the team works together).

The book walks through the practical parts of the job: the first three months, leading a small team, giving feedback, managing your own doubts and energy, running useful meetings, hiring, making things happen, leading a growing team, and nurturing culture. Each chapter offers concrete tips, questions to ask and common pitfalls.

Throughout, Zhuo stresses that management is a learnable skill and a change of role, not a reward. New managers will feel lost, make mistakes and doubt themselves. The goal is to keep learning, stay focused on outcomes and genuinely care about the people on the team.

The 7 key ideas

1. Management is about outcomes

Your output is your team's output.

2. Purpose, people, process

When stuck, ask: why, who or how?

3. Four ways into management

Know your path to know your pitfalls.

4. Feedback, early and often

Most bad feedback starts with unclear expectations.

5. Can't or won't

Ask whether it's ‘can't’ or ‘won't’ before you act.

6. Run meetings with a purpose

No purpose, no meeting.

7. Managing yourself

Everyone feels like an impostor at first — keep learning.

Key takeaways

• Measure yourself by your team's outcomes and health, not your own output.
• Diagnose problems by asking whether they're about purpose, people or process.
• Set clear expectations before work starts, then give fast, specific feedback.
• Ask whether a struggling person doesn't know how or doesn't want to.
• Give every meeting a purpose and outcome — or cancel it.
• Learn what brings out your best and worst as a leader.

Our take

The Making of a Manager is warm, clear and practical, and its honesty about mistakes makes it especially reassuring for first-time managers. Its frameworks are simple and easy to apply. Its limits: it's grounded in one person's experience at a fast-growing, well-resourced tech company, so some advice assumes that kind of setting. Experienced managers may find much of it familiar, and the book offers less on deeper challenges like organisational politics or managing in crisis. As a first guide for new managers, though, it's one of the most approachable available.

About Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo joined Facebook in its early years, became a manager there at 25, and rose to vice president of product design. She is known for her writing on management and design.

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