Book Analysis: The Making of a Manager By Julie Zhou

The book the making of a manager was written by Julie Zhou, the Vice President of product design at Facebook and a Co-founder of the company in spirit. Her book is aimed at those at leadership or management positions in their respective companies. In her book, she shares her own personal experiences as a manager, as well as explaining complex and important topics. They are often explained in a more understandable way by simplifying the complex topics to managing a small lemonade stand. Additionally, the author provides a generous number of examples to further understand the topics raised.

“The crux of management is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a sing person going at it alone. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.”

The author stresses that one of the most important components of a good manager is the team he/she manages. Teamwork, as the saying goes, makes the dream work. Management is simply guiding a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.

The book also explains that a manager has three jobs, namely to ensure that the team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it, to understand people, especially the people he/she manages, and to develop a great team process.  

“What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities. The first is that people don’t know how to do good work. The second is that they know-how, but they aren’t motivated.”

Julie Zhou also provides one-on-one advice on how to manage effectively. She emphasizes the need of receiving feedback and communicating openly with one's team. It's critical to get to know your team and ensure that they understand what success entails. The team's united goal is to achieve success, which in her case, was to achieve