My first few years as an engineering manager were heavily influenced by my idea that I needed to be a "shit umbrella" - I needed to protect my team from all of the shit raining down around the organization so they could focus on getting stuff done.

I eventually realized that this is a terrible management philosophy! Your team would much rather understand what's going on, why things are happening and why certain projects are high priority, and protecting them from the shit doesn't actually help with that at all.

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Gormo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's a big difference between protecting a team from all the shit and hiding it from them completely.

It's good to be a transparent shit umbrella. The team should absolutely have visibility into what's going on, and understand why certain decisions are being made, but a good manager does need to step in to avoid the shit hitting them directly.

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lesdeuxmagots 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Love the idea of the transparent shit umbrella.

Some people advocate keeping the team inside and telling them it's raining. But how far does that go? Are you keeping them in an underground bunker? Or is it a room with a window? A skyscraper with floor to ceiling windows surrounding them?

I'm of the mind that if it's possible, the team needs to be outside in the shit rain while protected by the shit umbrella. But they need to FEEL the weather, not just see it or vaguely know of it, but still protected enough to be able to get to where they need to go.

Of course, what if the shit storm is overwhelming and coming in sideways, or if it's flooding shit, so that even with protection, everyone is stuck in a quagmire? Well, obviously, don't actually let them go outside, but 1) the company has much bigger, likely existential problems it needs to deal with, and 2) the team REALLY needs to know.

Needless to say, this all applies more to decently high functioning organizations, but not to completely dysfunctional ones. When it's a nuclear winter outside, everyone is bought into the idea of staying in the bunker and just keeping calm and carrying on regardless of how bad it is outside. There's nowhere to go, you're there just to survive.

	▲	samwillis 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> But they need to FEEL the weather You mean they need to smell it!

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simonw 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Transparent shit umbrella" is indeed a much more useful metaphor.

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michaelcampbell 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You CAN tell the team it's raining and details of the weather without letting them get overly wet.

There's middle ground here.

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kepeko 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agree. team needs to know about the shit. It's important information that helps them prioritize their work and motivates them as they know that what they do is important for the bigger bosses. If manager shields me from everything I go apathetic, not knowing why I even do the boring stuff if manager doesn't tell me his manager is giving shit

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tonyarkles 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm laughing because I used that exact same phrase: "shit umbrella". Like some of the other replies mentioned, telling your team it's raining is great. The balance I found was to let them know what's coming and why but to let leadership's "pivots" to stabilize for a few days before sharing the unfiltered shit stream with my reports. This meant that the team still knew what was going on early but didn't panic as much when there was a sudden crazy random request from leadership that would be highly disruptive.

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cracki 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Distinguish between "seeing the shit" and "being hit by it all".

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wmeredith 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Shit umbrella is not a great analogy. More like a shit filter. Let through what needs to be let through and block all the distracting crap.

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dyauspitr an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A shit umbrella is not a two way block. It keeps shit from falling onto the employees but doesn’t prevent employees from knowing what is happening at higher leadership levels.

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zawaideh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The metaphor I prefer is to be a transparent shit umbrella.