A personal reflection on my weaknesses as a manager.
From a background in sales to using AI to review how I manage.
The problem actually starts with me
Recently, I ran into a difficult problem. In fact, it’s something that has bothered me for quite a long time. It comes from some issues with the way I work.
I come from a sales background. I didn’t have much management experience before, and my abilities were basically built around a sales system.
Sales often involves factors such as differences in the information people have. But being good at sales doesn’t mean I’m equally good at understanding people and managing them.
Looking back on my experience of running companies, I’ve failed quite a lot in this area. Over the years, my biggest setbacks may have been in finding people, attracting talent, understanding people and managing them.
I’ve broken my own problems down into four areas
1. Finding people
How do I find the right people?
2. Attracting talent
Sometimes I may find someone excellent, but they don’t want to join us. Or perhaps they and I just can’t work well together. So figuring out how to attract people is also a problem I need to work on.
3. Understanding people
How do I recognize someone’s abilities?
4. Managing people
How do I manage and organize talented people so that we can do better things together? This also includes figuring out how to retain them.
I haven’t done very well in any of these four areas in the past.
I’m now using AI to review how I manage
Recently, I’ve started reading books and treating finding people, attracting people, understanding people and managing people as areas I need to work on. I also ask AI to help me come up with more specific, stronger approaches in these areas.
I’ve now finished a set of prompts and also turned them into a skill.
For the version I use in China, I’ve put it on Kimi. For the international version, I’ve put it on Codex.
The way I use it is very direct: after recording and organizing the material, I put all the content in together with the prompts and ask it to help me sift through the material and review my abilities in these areas.
A real example: what was actually delivered in the daily report?
For example, I asked it to analyze the daily reports of a UI colleague and a backend colleague. It first picked out all these words:
“Moving things forward,” “organizing,” “adjusting,” “optimizing,” “collaborating,” “providing support.”
Because these words on their own don’t show much value, and they don’t show results either. It reminds me to go back and ask my colleagues:
- Which versions of the designs were actually delivered today?
- Which pages can be finalized today and move into development?
- What key design problem was solved today?
- How good is the design, really?
Following up: the membership card
Take today’s membership card, for example. It would keep asking:
- What was the hardest part to decide on?
- What information did you keep?
- What information did you remove or hide? Why?
I find this approach quite useful. It doesn’t just look at what the daily report says. It also reminds me what I should ask next.
I’m sharing this today because I think it could be useful to quite a lot of people.
