Minimum Viable Management is a podcast where Mike and Neha talk about the messy, human side of engineering leadership.
This repository contains resources created from the conversations between @MikeMcQuaid and @nerdneha in the podcast.
Each topic summarises a pattern they discussed and links back to the episode where it appeared so you can dive deeper.
Some summaries may be drafted with AI assistance, but every contribution is reviewed and edited (if necessary) by Mike or Neha before merging.
- 🗣️ Minimum Viable One-on-Ones – run question-driven conversations that trade status updates for context, feedback, and unblocking support.
- 🌐 Building Context and Connections – use your organisational awareness to connect people before work gets stuck.
- 🤝 Servant Leadership and Explicit Ownership – model getting into the trenches while making your responsibilities visible.
- 🗳️ Strategic Influence Without Authority – help individual contributors share unique insight, offer execution support, and reinforce effective leadership.
- 🪙 Political Capital and Table Flips – recognise political capital as a currency, map where it sits, and spend it tactically for the team.
- 💬 High-Trust Feedback for Senior ICs – keep the bar high with courageous, two-way feedback loops.
- 🧠 Decision-Making Heuristics – balance consensus seeking with decisive calls and clear communication.
- ⚖️ Accountability and Compromise in Leadership – stay aligned after decisions land and embrace the trade-offs of leading.
- 🙋 Owning Mistakes Before Trust Erodes – recognise the warning signs, invite hard feedback, and model blameless diagnosis when you misstep.
- 📋 Rebuilding Trust with Visible Plans – make the recovery strategy readable, credit collaborators, and keep iterating in the open.
- 📓 Engineers’ Self-Reviews and Growth Plans – help engineers write reflective reviews and convert insights into development plans.
- 🧾 Performance Reviews – run reviews as no-surprises summaries that balance documented feedback with future growth focus.
- 🧰 Delegation Playbook – decide what to hand off, who should own it, and how to support their success.
- 👥 Developing Engineers Through Mentorship – structure mentorship, coaching, and sponsorship programs that scale across your organisation.
- 🧵 Social Capital for Candid Leadership – bank trust before dissent so honest feedback strengthens relationships.
- 🎭 Intentional Authenticity at Work – choose how much of yourself to bring so work stays sustainable and aligned with what you want to gain.
- 🛡️ Rebuilding Psychological Safety in Frightened Teams – restore trust in anxious teams through stability, service, and human connection.
- 🔄 Sustaining Team Productivity – encourage sustainable productivity without burnout through continuous improvement habits.
- 🌱 Long-Term Team Building – invest in team durability via rituals, succession planning, and resilience work.
- ⭐ Staff-Plus Engineering Expectations – partner effectively with senior ICs by understanding their charter and impact levers.
- 🌍 Remote Management Habits – operate confidently with distributed teams using tested async practices.
- ⚡ Creating and Keeping Momentum – align missions, ship visible increments, and prune process so energy compounds.
- 🏛️ Working With Institutional Inertia – understand the organisation as an entity, trace its guardrails, and set expectations for change.
- 🎚️ Pacing Change in Mature Organisations – pick the battles that matter, protect stability, and run safe experiments as you shift norms.
- 🧭 Navigating Unwritten Norms – surface missing norms, translate trade-offs for newcomers, and run safe experiments so teams can deliver without breaking trust.
- 🛑 Setting Boundaries and Saying No – make deliberate commitments to protect focus and model healthy pace.
- 📐 Scoping and Estimation Pitfalls – surface hidden complexities before they derail delivery.
- 🎯 Hiring and Interviewing for Impact – refine interview loops and candidate experience to uncover signal.
- ⚖️ Balancing User, Business, and Technology – keep cross-functional decisions grounded in the three core personas.
- 🤝 Negotiating Cross-Functional Trade-Offs – replace flat refusals with explicit assumptions and option-heavy trade-offs.
You can watch or listen to the Minimum Viable Management podcast on:
- Episode 1 – Building Trust and Having Better Fights
- Episode 2 – Leadership Is a Series of Decisions (and Compromises)
- Episode 3 – Psychological Safety vs. Telling the Truth
- Episode 4 – Creating and Keeping Momentum
- Episode 5 – When Things Go Wrong: How Leaders Rebuild Trust
- Episode 6 – Beyond Engineering: Healthy Tension
- Episode 7 – Politics at Work Without Losing Your Soul
- Episode 8 – Performance Reviews, Done Right
- Episode 9 – Getting Shit Done in Institutions
Have another theme you want discussed? Open an issue and we can discuss it on the podcast.