Maslow management.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs models human motivation as a pyramid. Physical needs like food and water form the base, with several layers stacked up all the way to self-actualisation. The same pyramid model applied to team needs is one of the simplest and most enduring frameworks I use as an engineering manager.

When you first move into a manager role, it’s really hard to judge whether you’re spending time on the right things. Software engineers see feedback loops everywhere: passing tests, code reviews, observability metrics, and more. Suddenly as a manager you’re accountable for decisions that will play out over weeks or months and you often need to define the success criteria yourself. This gets easier with experience, but a little structure might help you become more intentional with your time.

3 level pyramid: foundational, tactical, strategic

I think about 3 basic levels of work: foundational, tactical, and strategic. The idea is that you strive to focus your energy further up the pyramid, but this is hard to sustain without satisfying the needs of the layers below.

Foundational

Foundational work creates the base conditions for a team to deliver value. For example:

  • Health (motivation, cohesion, feedback culture)
  • Structure (roles, filling open positions)
  • Process (planning, retrospectives)
  • Standards (on-call, SLAs)

These are the sort of topics you might cover in a team charter. Who are we? What are we trying to do? What’s our operating model? This layer of the pyramid is satisfied by a fully-staffed team of capable and motivated individuals working towards common goals.

Tactical

Tactical work is the realm of prioritization and optimisation. Have we selected the most impactful projects? Are we moving at the right pace? Are we innovating?

For me, most of the work of building high-performing teams sits in this layer. A happy and productive team is a foundation, but teams usually don’t achieve their full potential without some targeted intervention. (Or what are we here for?) This will be different for every team and different across time for the same team. Perhaps it’s fostering a deeper connection with users, building a culture of ownership, or sponsoring an new initiative.

Strategic

At the top of the pyramid sits strategy. It can be difficult to make headspace for strategy when you’re busy managing a team, but luckily this type of work has a long time horizon and changes infrequently if you get it right. This might be aligning team missions to broader business goals (like in a quarterly planning cycle) or technical strategy (like a major vendor or technology choice).

Navigating the pyramid

Just like in the original hierarchy of needs, you can skip to higher levels at your own risk. I’d find it uncomfortable to invest in optimising project prioritisation if my team was struggling with a more basic need like morale. However, there might be cases where you need the bones of a strategy to build the right foundations.

Interrupts

Managers deal with unexpected events all the time. Entropy happens. A sudden resignation will pull you into foundational work. A must-do regulatory project will pull you into tactical work. This is totally normal. In these scenarios, the pyramid is a useful prompt to consider what you’re actively deprioritising.

Growing as a manager

Scaling yourself as a manager requires you to spend less time at the base of the pyramid. It’s impossible to grow your scope or operate across multiple teams if projects and team rituals can’t progress without you. Using this framework, you can invest time intentionally, guide your team towards a high-performing steady state, and leave the foundational layer more often.