The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well by Michael Lopp

The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well Reviews

• 
  Sebastian Gebski

  A very good read.
  I'm not sure whether you agree, but IMHO books about management/leadership are rarely fun to read. They can be very informative, interesting, thought-provoking, but rarely "fun".
  TAoL is "fun".
  
  First thing - the language. It's very direct, informal. I'd call it: blog-post style. Sometimes funny, but always relaxed and approachable. It doesn't even feel like a "traditional" book.
  Second thing - the structure. It's split into 30 chapters that do not try to present the whole topic (leadership) end-to-end. Yes, you have the split into three "levels", but it's meant to add some gradation to the applicability of the "lessons", not to present the complete perspective on any position.
  Third thing - the content. Refreshing. Because it feels like you're reading the thoughts of someone who actually HAS something to pass further. Some real-life lessons learned, not the generic, theoretical knowledge. Plus - he has the talent to communicate his thoughts: pretty much the whole book resonate with me.
  
  Good stuff.
• 
  Dmitry Spesiviy

  I really enjoyed reading this leadership book. Picked up something for myself.
  
  few of my notes:
  
  1. Tasting the soup by asking small, but critical questions is important part of leadership
  2. Delegate until it hurts
  3. Say the hard things. Actively hearing the hard things.
  4. Build your org chat not based on people, but build it around your product or technology.
  People based org chats describes only power structure.
• 
  Dominik

  This is a heartfelt and brilliant book.
  
  If you, like me, have been reading the blog Rands in Repose for many a year -- or whether you're completely new to the mind of Rands -- a.k.a. Michael Lopp, you're in for a treat. I've been following the blog for something verging on 15 years but every "small thing" in this book is brand new.
  
  The "small things" are like finely crafted gemstones -- faceted and polished to focus their light of wisdom. Each small thing manages to capture and distill an “unspoken truth” about what makes effective management and leadership (as well as the difference between them!)
  
  The prose is direct, honest, and warm. Think of an old friend or mentor offering you advice for different stages of your career. The author spans the range: starting out as a manager, to a manager of managers (director), to a manager of manager of managers (executive). The description of the New Manager Death Spiral (Small Thing 9) is eerily accurate and worth the price of the book alone. The insights into and explanations of the thoughts and worries of directors (Delegate Until It Hurts, Small Thing 11) and executives (why they always seem to be fire-fighting and How to Build a Rumor, Small Thing 24) are incredibly valuable, whether you’re an executive or whether, like most, you (eventually) roll up and report into one.
  
  There is much to learn from in this book -- it can be read straight through, but it also demands to be returned to, drawn upon in the movements when the poignant lesson of one of its “small things” might just what is needed.
• 
  Timon Ruban

  Incredibly entertaining read. Lopp is a master at telling engaging little stories that demand your attention. Unfortunately many of the chapters, while well-written, were a little too fluffy for my taste. I am a fan of advice that sounds equally good no matter whose mouth it's coming from. I fear that for a lot of the advice found in this book, one's opinion on its quality hinges on one's attitude towards the believability of the author (which as far as I can tell is rather high). That being said there were a few nuggets of wisdom and leadership metaphors ("fires burn faster uphill", "feedback is a gift that needs to be unwrapped", "taste the soup") that I think will stick with me and to be fair Lopp starts the book by telling you to skip the "small things" that don't speak to you.
• 
  Roxana

  Strengths of the book:
  Easy to read, practical, like a handbook for beginner managers. The chapters can be read randomly, or one after the other. One will find useful advice about how to manage teams, how to behave in certain situation as a newbie manager.
  It is full of personal stories, gathered from his work experience. The examples are easy to understand, and the tips and advice he gives are easy to follow.
  The style is highly informal, highly verbal, like chatting with a more experienced friend.
  
  Weaknesses:
  It doesn’t bring that much on the table. Sometimes it feels like he is talking about the same thing over and over again. It feels like he has a bag full of anecdotes and situations and he tries to give them some constructive narrative and turn them into useful information.
  You do not find anything new, no new theory or concept. The way he uses common sense managerial practices and knowledge feels a bit like cherry picking, whatever fits best for the selected example or anecdote.
• 
  Srinivasan Nanduri

  Good read.
  
  My key takeaways:
  - “Small things, done well” make a big difference in a leader’s career
  - Managers who don’t deliver on their promises seem incompetent or lazy. That signals to their team that it’s okay to drop assignments. Good managers use self-insight to understand their own capabilities.
  
  - Managers must listen to employees, prepare well for meetings and handle problems with a cool head.
  - Managers must carry out frequent performance evaluations.
  - Effective time management is crucial for managers.
  - Managers who gain promotion to the director level must manage expectations, delegate and always be recruiting.
  - Directors must run efficient meetings, work well with remote employees and provide constructive feedback.
  - Executives should smooth the gaps among different cultures within the company.
  - Executives benefit from having a mentor.
  
  The line stands out for me:
  - Managers see where you are, whereas Leaders see where you are going....
  
  On the flip side, book offers more for managers than leaders - the overlap being less critical.
• 
  Mindaugas Mozūras

  You can’t hack leadership.
  
  Over the years, I've read many of Rands' blog posts and I've also read his previous book "Managing Humans". Thus a lot of the content was not new to me. Yet, I still liked this newest book "The Art of Leadership" and I found some new things to jot down for myself.
• 
  Zaharenia

  There are some gems in there and I like the structure of the book into different eras of a manager’s life. However, and this is personal: I’m tired of reading management advice from grizzled white men, because that comes with a certain flair I stopped enjoying anymore.
• 
  Miguel Paraz

  It unfortunately didn’t teach me much and Lopp’s/Rands’ experiences did not sink in. Now it could be because I’m not the target market since I am not in or aiming to be in software engineering management.
• 
  John

  I'm a big fan of Michael Lopp and this book extends the utility I found from his earlier book
  Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager. There's a lot here about being an effective leader that I think I do pretty intuitively, but I can backslide, so I obtain high value from a reading session with Lopp's books.
  
  This one is a little unusual in that the essays are divided into three categories:
  
  * Manager
  * Director
  * Executive
  
  As the book moves along, the guidance becomes more nuanced and abstract following the increasing responsibilities of these roles.
  
  One thing I would recommend as you read: When you like a chapter, put a check by it in the table of contents. Then when you're done with the book, reflect on which chapters got the check. My bet is that the checks will cluster where you need to do the most work in terms of responsibility. For instance, if you're an executive but all of your checks are in the "Manager" section, it may suggest that you've lost some of your baseline tactics with the people who report to you (the basic stuff like privileging 1:1's should never go away).
  
  A few beauties from the book:
  
  Pp. 134ff: Good guidance on describing emergent situations in writing and then socializing to increasingly wider circles in the company.
  
  Chapter 24 ("How to Build a Rumor") - The perils of groupthink, and how to mitigate the risk.
  
  Pp. 119-121. Everyone must lead. "There are many good reasons for an engineer to want to move into management but if their only reason is the perception that management is the best place to grow as a leader, then the leadership team has created the perception that leadership is not the job of individuals. This is a disaster" (p. 119).
  
  Chapter 20 ("The Guard") - The culture split between the old-timers and new hires. This is especially a thing in startups. Read Lopp on the trust burden between these groups.
  
  P. 101. Innovation bias. Let's say your company needs an agile process or a "ladder" for engineering roles, and you have something from a prior gig. Lopp says: Use it, and don't try to build something from scratch again. You just don't have time. I agree with this fully and think organizations that do their own design of such things might be better off adopting something "off the shelf" and then modifying it as needed.
  
  Chapter 12 ("How to Recruit"). Apparently some engineering organizations don't know the basics. Lopp tells you.
  
  About my only concerns about this book are: (1) That it's so engineering-focused. Lopp's counsel is generally useful but I think he stays in his comfort zone with the nerds maybe too much. And, (2): In Lopp's world, it seems that reports always work for the person tom whom they report. I have noticed in agile organizations that the "work" may be organized by product owners and scrum masters, but reporting will be up through a different hierarchy. The split between the work and the reporting has a lot of benefits and also perils: I'd be curious to learn what Lopp thinks of that.
  
• 
  Christof Damian

  I really enjoyed the book.
  I am familiar with his blog and podcast and some of the content also made it into the book.
  I like the idea of "Small Things, Done Well", how he introduces a concept and backs it with reason.
  His writing style is probably like his communication style, very direct and condensed.
  
  I don't give the full five stars, because some of the later chapters in the Executive section seemed to be just fillers to get the book done. Some were straight copies from the blog and others were just not as polished as the first two thirds of the book.
  
  Still, a worthwhile read and something I will come back to in the future to read up on certain topics and review my notes.
• 
  Kevin

  Oh, Rands... I really enjoy the writing and there's a lot of great advice in here, but there's quite a lot of material that seemed to be super familiar. Not sure if it's because I had seen some of it on the blog, the prior book, or what... Even so, I found myself highlighting a lot and making notes, so it clearly was worthwhile.
• 
  Sven Kirsimäe

  Written like it is been spoken by a mentor. Rarely this happens in a book. The outcome makes you think and act on your thoughts, not on the book's author.
  
  One of these books where you will need to come back to, every now and then.
• 
  Simon Hohenadl

  Engaging. Not many new insights.
• 
  Herval Freire

  A sorta autobiographic collection of anecdotes and tactics. I struggled to get to 50% - the main message of the book is basically the bullet lists on page 2.
• 
  Fred

  I found The Art of Leadership more entertaining than dense with insights, but an overall enjoyable read. Lopp uses stories, metaphors and a casual, humorous narrative to make the chapters fun to read. But as I was taking notes from the book, I often found myself traversing a lot of narrative to get to the key message.
  
  Metaphors and homebrewed concepts sometimes got in the way of the key message or argument of a given chapter. I'd get drawn in to the chapter called "Anti-Flow" to realize it was just saying to leave some unstructured time to have shower thoughts. My key takeaway from "Spidey-Sense" was that you should trust your intuition, and use the intuitions of other people when there's not enough data. And a chapter called "Kobayashi Maru Management" used an elaborate Star Trek narrative to describe how to use avoid mistakes in change management through gradually broadening feedback and communication circles.
  
  If you appreciate a creative narrative with a sense of humor, you'll love this format. If you're here for density of insights or advice, this might not be the best resource.
  
  My favorite chapters talk about a few things that happen at companies but we don’t talk about enough:
  
  - Chapter 12 talks about how we often neglect the engineering part of the hiring funnel, missing opportunities to optimize, but crucially leaving the candidate with too many gaps to visualize themselves at the company.
  - Chapter 19 talks suggests that executives gather context and avoid acting in the first 90 days. And how when they start acting, they often fall into the trap of trying to build consensus for everything even in situations where they could act quickly based on experience.
  - Chapter 20 acknowledges the split that tends to form between the new guard and the old guard in growing companies, and suggests some ways to begin to address that split.
  
  I loved the author’s humility and sense of humor throughout. Overall, I’d recommend this book as an audiobook to read casually rather than something to read cover to cover.
  
  
  ✍️ My notes from the book
• 
  Ashik Uzzaman

  Last week I finished "The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well" by Michael Lopp. I read his "Managing Humans" recently and joined his leadership channel in slack that has more than 15 thousand members. In 30 articles borrowed from his long running blog "Rands in Response" and divided equality for line managers, directors and executives in topics, he tells us that Leadership practices are small things done repetitively over time. He touches on several ideas - reading the room, using spidey-sense to render decisions, delegating until it hurts, getting feedback, giving compliments, understanding the culture, being kind. I liked this book as well although I would rank his other book Managing Humans a bit higher.
  
  Source:
  http://www.dragon-bishop.com/2021/07/...
• 
  Michael Koltsov

  I'll split this book into 2 main parts: the importance of 1:1s & how to conduct them and depiction of really impressive author's experience after working in multiple high-tech companies where he had to deal with a lot of stress and challenges that're the main attributes of every growing company.
  
  The book is very well-written, if I were in the business of allusions to dishes this particular book would be a molecular caviar. Standing on shoulders of giants of the past, with a pinch of bleeding edge terminology and references to the companies that are hot.
  
  If I condense the whole book in a bullet list, that'd be
  
  Conduct 1:1s, no matter what
  Embrace the change, it's inevitable
  Trust to delegate or you'd crumble under load
  Find time to innovate
  Be enthusiastic about what you do and either lead or leave
  Be kind to people
  My score is 5/5.
• 
  Shreyas

  Exceptional leadership book. Builds on the content in Managing Humans nicely.
  
  Lopp's leadership philosophy particularly resonates with me because he is a rampant incrementalist (I'd like to think I am the same, Atomic Habits anyone?). Book has lots of practical advice that you can apply to your job as a leader immediately.
  
  My favourite part is that he preaches `kindness` above all things and sharing critical information as leadership philosophies, which I wholeheartedly agree with
  
  One of the few, slight disappointments in the book is some of the language, which can be very abstract and confusing for people who don't know Star Trek (The Kobayashi Maru chapter for example).
  
  Long live Lopp/Rands.
  
  - A fan of your leadership style
• 
  Michael Columbus

  I listened to the audiobook.
  
  This book is hardly a book. It’s more like a collection of short vignettes, as if he copy and pasted snippets of blog posts into “chapters” to get a payday. Every chapter could be a tweet (seriously, they’re that short) and the book reads like a twitter thread.
  
  I really wanted to like this book, but here at the end I am left feeling empty. While I did appreciate that Lopp made an attempt to be more specific in his advice than other leadership books that are written for a generic audience, I don’t consider this book to be “the art of leadership.” It would be better titled “Sample size of one: advice I learned in my Silicon Valley startup career that may help you if you work in Silicon Valley and aspire to lead.”
• 
  Kate Donaldson

  Unfocused but interesting
  
  This book promises a list of small things you can do to improve your leadership skills, but really it’s a much more philosophical book than that. Often, I had to really dig to figure out what the “small thing” or action I was supposed to glean from an example. Sometimes I couldn’t find it. The organization of the book really doesn’t make sense, it’s more like “anecdotes about leadership and lessons to be learned from them”, and splitting the book up between Manager, Director, and Executive is not relevant to most of the examples and stories. Anyway, it was interesting!
• 
  Mason Jones

  I enjoyed Lopp's previous book "Managing Humans" but felt that it was occasionally repetitive and suffered a little from being what it was: a compilation of blog posts. While I've read a few of the chapters in "Art of Leadership" as blog posts as well, this book feels more planned and internally consistent. It's clear that the idea for the book was well thought-out, and there's a story arc that pulls it together, avoids repetition, and makes it a cohesive object rather than a collection of objects. It's an enjoyable read and will be a useful reference, and offers plenty of food for thought to any engineering (and probably other) leader.
• 
  Jason Gessner

  This book has a ton of solid advice from years of the author's experience. I recognize a lot of this from my time in Big Tech, but each essay focuses that advice in such a concise way that i found many things said to me in fresh ways.
  While this is a solid collection of individual essays that is jam-packed with gems, it felt a bit disconnected as a whole. Some essays felt like they were in the wrong section and in the final section about being an Executive, there is a quick description about what separates that from the Director role before, but then that difference is not focused on again.
• 
  Marcin Golenia

  The book is worth the money spent. I'm neither a manager, CTO nor director but I still found it valuable. As Lopp states - leadership can come for everywhere so most of the stuff still applies. Some of the practices can even be applied in your life! If you are interested in growing you and your team this is a must-read.
  The part about "Hearing the hard thing" is just great, techniques like blue tape or instructions on saying good compliments are simple and effective. The language of the book is direct and simple - you won't get bored.
• 
  Radek Maziarka

  Reading this book is like a roller-coaster. Some parts are "strange" - you just don't get the vibe of the author. Then there come some groundbreaking chapters and you recover faith in the author.
  
  But the book is definitely worth reading just for these few chapters:
  - "Taste the Soup" - if you create policy, be the first person to feel this policy in place
  - "The Blue Tape List" - in new context write down everything that feels off
  - "Everything breaks" - that changing the rules is inevitable
  - "A Precious Hour" - being anti-productive purposely is still important
• 
  Viktor Malyshev

  Not the first book I've read written by Lopp. He's good at telling stories, good at managing humans. I kinda like his writing style.
  This book is dedicated to leadership. Mainly, divided into 3 parts: the manager, director, and executive. All those levels have different problems and challenges. I've mostly enjoyed the 'manager' path since this is what I do these days. Small chapters with easy-to-understand problems and proposed solutions. Some of them were not rocket science to me, some were pretty good. Overall, interesting book, good for your management mind.
• 
  Ines

  This book is filled with golden nuggets of wisdom. You can read it in any order or just the chapters you want - everything makes sense in site size. I'll be back to re-read some of these chapters because there is a lot of good advice there, as well as strategies to be a good leader (a better leader?). The audiobook is pleasant as well, there is only one part ("Critical Freshness") that doesn't work so well because of an image in the chapter.
• 
  Tim Sommer

  It's really not often that you read management/leadership books and find them enjoyable and even hard to put away once you have started reading them.
  And yet, "The Art of Leadership" definitely is one of those books. It's practical, opinionated, even funny at times; and backed by what seems a lifetime of experience. Very relatable, written by a human; for humans ;).
  
  For everyone finding themself in a leadership position; this should be a definite read!