Me Manual

In this document I’ll provide some insights that will be helpful for those who work with me, especially my team. As all things in life, it’ll likely change in the future. If you noticed a typo or mistake, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at alex@sulimanov.com.

Why this document was written

Most likely you’re reading this document because we just started working together. I’m very excited for what lies ahead! In order to simplify things and make our communication more efficient, I decided to lay down certain things for you to read.

Principles and assumptions

1. Team comes first, customers are close second, the rest follows. I believe that life is relationships. One example is relationships within our team. I optimize for productive and motivated team even though sometimes I get crap about it. I believe that without great team, we can’t build great products and keep customers happy.

2. With collective work and positive intent, we can achieve a lot more and faster. No good relationship can exist without trust. Keeping trusting and open relationships within our team is essential. Only when we have each others’ backs, we can move fast and be strong.

3. I expect leadership from everyone in their respective areas. Regardless of experience, there are areas where you could be a subject matter expert. Either you will decide for yourself and let me know, or we will work together to find an are for you. Once set, we can always change it, but until then, you take care of that area.

4. Strive for progress, not perfection. Small incremental changes are better than large ones which take a lot of time.

5. Fix more than you were told. Whenever you see something wrong, even if it is not related to your area of responsibility or scope of the work, bring it up and at least document it in the backlog or create a reminder to revisit the issue at a later time.

6. Predictable and efficient processes. I value structure and clear expectations, organization, process. I want them to be like brushing the teeth - automatic and predictable. Any time I see inefficiency, I strive to optimize it, come up with new solution. More so in the beginning, I may challenge the status quo. If that happens I expect you to defend it if there are reasons to do so.

My assumptions

You’re better at your job than me.
You will always reach out to me for help. If you don’t, then I assume you don’t have issues or blockers.
Everyone is an independent, conscious and self-reliant individual. I don’t believe in fate. On the contrary, we are all a result of our own thinking and actions. If something is not right, it’s your responsibility to change it.
Everyone is in charge of their career.
Positive intent from everyone.

Meetings

With remote work we tend to have many meetings. In order to use our time efficiently, I prefer to provide some expectations about meetings we scheduled. Each meeting should have:

A clear agenda and goal
Clear expectations for all attendees (why they are on that meeting)
The organizer sends a summary with action items and assignees to everyone after the meeting. The summary doesn’t necessarily have to be sent right after the meeting.

I tend to not schedule meetings before lunch. During one of our 1:1s, I’ll ask about time when you’re the most productive in order to schedule meetings during the most appropriate time of day.

We’ll establish a no-meeting day policy to have time to focus on work.

You should expect to have following meetings with me.

Weekly 1:1s

We’ll meet once a week for 30 minutes. The meeting should not be discussed for status updates. I’ll create a doc for two of us to track the topics. This document won’t be shared with anyone else and won’t be used in any performance reviews. Please feel free to add items upfront as you see fit as a next meeting approaches. This way we can have an agenda and make sure we have enough time to discuss everything.

Examples:

I have way too many meetings, it affects my productivity.
I need more training for XYZ.
I feel like the direction we’re taking is not right, I wanted to check and align on it.

I’ll be adding topics into that doc, but primarily I’m expecting you to be the driver of the meeting and come up with the agenda upfront.

I believe in the value of constructive feedback so let’s also use this meeting to give each other feedback periodically.

Weekly staff meetings:

As with weekly 1:1s, this one should not be used to discuss project status. Most important topic is how the team is doing and do a quick retro of the past events and define actions if necessary.

Communication with me

Best tool - Slack. Best time to reach out - any time. I can Slack you on weekends and after hours, unless I explicitly ask to respond, you can respond during the next business hours. I receive a lot of messages, best to get to the point right away.

My communication style is direct and transparent. You do you, but I expect transparency in communications with me and within our team.

Shared calendar

Unless it already exists, we’ll create a new shared calendar to track PTO, team meetings, conferences and other events. Please use it as a source of truth to let everyone know about your whereabouts.

On career growth

Everyone on the team should have a personal development plan. We will work with you individually to assess your strengths and weaknesses and identify the path forward. I expect you to be honest and transparent, so that I can help you get where you want to be.

I give lots of autonomy to my team, but also want to ensure whatever we do is aligned with the organizational vision. I assess priorities based on project impact. Our team should have a set of OKRs which are linked to organization OKRs. OKRs will be created annually, revisited every quarter, with progress discussed every month. OKRs should include not only professional but also personal growth goals, i.e. conferences, patents, skill gaps, etc. Most of your development plan will be comprised from these OKRs.

Please note, that we should look for mutually beneficial partnership. It’s different from you gaining benefits without helping the rest of the team or the company.

On time off

Although I’m career driven, I also enjoy outdoors and have places and people to visit. Therefore I like to take time off to recharge and enjoy other activities. I’m expecting you to plan ahead and every share it with me every quarter.