Weekly antimanager satire · Product · Engineering · Management · People · Startups
Every Tuesday I talk to Manolo about product, engineering, management, people and startups. At 7 A.M.
Management problem
Processes, coordination, and communication that should support work but end up replacing judgment.
Guiding question: When does a process stop organizing work and start obstructing it?
Manolo removes a middle manager to speed things up. The approval disappears from the org chart, but someone still needs it to refund 180 euros.
eliminar capas sin reasignar autoridad y capacidad traslada las esperas y el trabajo invisible.
Manolo demanded an urgent report on Friday at six. David lost his weekend. Monday: unread. This is how the word urgent gets burned.
abusar de la urgencia destruye su capacidad de coordinar.
Manolo sends 63 emails a week that nobody asked for. On noise, interruptions, and why broadcasting is not communicating.
informar sin necesidad del receptor añade trabajo y ruido.
Manolo hires consultants for his digital transformation: Discovery, Assessment and a roadmap nobody will read. The ouroboros of consulting, dissected.
externalizar el análisis no externaliza la decisión.
Manolo's EBITDA keeps climbing while his company loses its capacity to respond. Control theory for business: perfect stability comes right before collapse.
evitar todo cambio convierte estabilidad en fragilidad.
Manolo laminates his definitive BPM and learns a diagram is no substitute for judgment. Satire on processes that optimize bureaucracy, not the business.
formalizar un proceso defectuoso consolida el defecto.
Manolo demands a hard date for a product nobody has defined. The deadline arrives and the product is alive and dead at the same time.
una fecha ambigua no coordina ni permite decidir.
Manolo discovers Parkinson's law and wants three weeks of work done in three days. Cutting deadlines without cutting complexity just speeds up chaos.
reducir plazos sin rediseñar el trabajo aumenta presión y deuda.
Manolo thinks ChatGPT summaries make him an expert in product and culture. GIST management: the illusion of knowing without ever doing.
entender el sentido puede ser más útil que controlar cada detalle.
Manolo parks in the front row like a champion. Jose tells him about Japanese omoiyari: culture is measured in the small gestures nobody sees.
las reglas útiles dependen del comportamiento colectivo que las sostiene.