Six manager productivity hacks from an Amazon Senior Manager
How to help your team be more productive
In my previous newsletter, I shared personal productivity tips anyone in a demanding job could use. This time, I’m focusing on productivity tactics for managers.
When I became a manager, my then-mentor said, “Managing is like working with your hands tied behind your back.” That metaphor stuck with me.
Just this morning, as I watched my daughter make fruit salad for the first time, I had to keep my hands behind my back — literally. I had to remind myself: my job wasn’t to make a fruit salad, it was to raise someone who can take care of herself.
One of the manager’s most important responsibilities is to grow people. Other responsibilities include hiring, passing information up and down, translating leadership direction, motivating the team, unblocking progress, and making decisions.
Here are my six favorite tactics that help me do all of this more productively.
1. Who, not How
One of the first lessons in management is this: stop asking, “How do I solve this?” and start asking, “Who can solve this for me?” It’s a mindset shift which doesn’t come in a day.
Before becoming a manager, you were the problem-solver. You got promoted because you were good at it. So, your instinct is to think, “How would I tackle this?” Then, once you figure it out, you can bring in others to execute. Right? Wrong.
When a problem lands on your desk, the right question to ask is: who has the knowledge and expertise to solve this? A novice manager tries to solve it herself. An experienced manager delegates. A veteran solves it through other teams.
It’s a strong instinct though: I see experienced people falling into this trap all the time.
We were running a complex technical project. A product manager on my team owned several workstreams. He kept reporting status as “green”, but deadlines kept slipping. Each week, a new issue appeared. I offered help, but he assured me that everything was under control.
But my instinct said otherwise. The project was too critical to fail. After two missed deadlines, I stepped in. I flew to Seattle and gathered all the experts in one room. We mapped out the interdependencies and timelines on a whiteboard. That’s when the problem became clear: we wouldn’t meet the deadline.
While my instinct urged me to step in, I realized that I couldn’t manage this from across the ocean. We needed someone technical on site, working with teams in real time. I went to my boss, asked for help, and he found us a strong TPM*. From that point on, the project stabilized. Deadlines held. We launched on time.
* At Amazon, TPMs (technical program managers) are rare. Many engineering orgs with 100+ people have just one. TPMs know how systems connect across teams and can propose sound technical solutions. They are also expert negotiators, often persuading multiple teams to align. That’s why they only get pulled into the most complex projects.
2. Is this something only I can do?
I have seen managers jump into email threads to answer questions their team could easily handle. Often, they do it to set an example or shield the team. But every time they step in, they are not doing something only they can do.
There’s another hidden cost.
A mentee once shared this story: She owned a document for an important meeting. It had been reviewed by multiple stakeholders, including her boss several times. The night before the meeting, her boss introduced significant changes — without talking to her in advance.
When she logged in the next morning, she didn’t recognize the document. The structure had changed, key sentences were altered, parts aligned with partner teams were removed. On top of all this, it was full of typos. It no longer felt like her document.
Her biggest frustration was: “Why didn’t he just tell me what he wanted and let me make the changes?”
When we jump in to “save the day,” it always costs something. The team might not say anything, but they will feel less trusted, less confident, less likely to step up next time.
So when I review my to-do list, I ask: is this something only I can do?
Maybe it’s a stakeholder only I can influence because of my seniority or relationship. Or a meeting where I’m the only one who can speak with authority. Or a pushback that only I can make. Those are the tasks I prioritize. It leaves me less time for other things — things that still may be a stretch for my team. But they step up and grow. (Thank you, team. I’m very proud of you.)
3. Remove interruptions for your team
A few years ago, I learnt a useful mental model in a leadership course:
Team Capacity = (Resource − Coordination Loss) × Capability – Interruption
(Yes, I’m a math geek. Equations help me think clearly.)
When managers are asked to deliver more, we often default to requesting more people: “This will require two more engineers”. But adding people only helps up to a point. More people means more coordination which slows everything down. At Amazon, we like our tech teams small enough to be fed with two pizzas. It’s not just a quirky rule; it’s a strategy to keep communication overhead low.
Even if headcount stays the same, managers can boost team capacity by increasing capability. That might mean hiring more skilled people, training the ones you have, or giving them better tools. I’m especially excited about what’s coming with AI. New tech will unlock leaps in capability. Take exoskeletons, for example: one worker can now safely lift what used to take two. I can’t wait for the day my washing machine is delivered by one person in high-tech gear.
But the last part of the equation is the quiet killer: interruptions.
Every interruption costs time, sometimes more time than we realize. It takes real effort to regain focus. In today’s workplace, with constant pings, meetings, messages, and open offices, it is a wonder anyone gets deep work done at all!
As a manager, protecting your team’s focus time is one of your highest-leverage moves. Here are a few ways managers can do this:
Designate a recurring “no-meeting day” for the team, block it in everyone’s diary and actively defend from external stakeholders.
Set up a formal intake process, like trouble ticket queues, so requests are triaged at specific times.
Negotiate clear deadlines with stakeholders to prevent constant follow-ups.
Publish a visible team priority list, so people think twice before adding “just one more thing”.
Establish team norms for asynchronous communication.
Create shared documentation (FAQs, wikis) and ask everyone to check it before interrupting.
And don’t forget the biggest source of interruptions: the manager.
Do you ping your team throughout the day? Set up last-minute meetings? Keep shifting schedules?
Take a critical look at your own habits. Better yet: ask your team what disrupts their focus most. Then fix it.
4. Match the cost of the problem to the cost of the solution
As a manager, you’re responsible for a significant chunk of the company’s resources.
Say, you manage a team of forty, each earning $100K/year. Once you factor in taxes, benefits, tools, and office costs, the real cost is closer to $200K per person. That’s $8 million a year.
Now imagine your CEO asks for a weekly report that takes five people on your team one day to produce. That’s $200K a year just on reporting!
Auditing the business is important. But at what cost?
As a manager, your job is to clarify the ask up front. What does the CEO really need and how will they use it? Build a prototype. Once the format works, automate it. Cut the effort from 40 hours a week to just 2, and your reporting cost drops to $10K per year. That’s a much better deal.
Perhaps your team is doing the reporting and automating it, but it still takes time, say 2 months to do. What if at the same time your team is building a product that will generate $200M a year after launch? A reporting load of 40h a week takes away an equivalent of one person. A six-month project now takes 6.15 months. That delay just cost the business $2.5M.
All because you said “yes” to a weekly report.
A smarter approach? Make the trade-offs visible. Share the numbers, highlight priorities, and ask: is this the best use of time? If not, give the task to a different team or bring in a temp to handle the report. Keep your high-value project on track.
5. Move your best people to your most important areas
This might be the most powerful productivity tactic of all: put your best people where it matters most.
Not all work is created equal. Some areas can’t fail. Some accounts matter more. Some projects promise exponential returns. That’s where your top talent should be.
These roles are often high-stakes and full of ambiguity. But they also offer learning, challenge, and visibility — exactly what your best people thrive on.
Of course, this is easier said than done.
Some roles require hard-to-find skills, like language fluency or domain expertise. Some top performers may have other plans. The high-stakes area may be taken by someone unwilling to move. This may require patience and hard conversations. But if you wanted to be liked by everyone, you should’ve driven an ice cream van.
The closer you get to having your best people in the most critical roles, the easier your job becomes.
No wonder Warren Buffett could read six newspapers a day while running a giant company. His management principle was: hire great people, let them do the work, and watch the costs.
6. Keep everything in shared docs
COVID shifted me from writing in notebooks to shared digital docs. Before the pandemic, it felt awkward to type in face-to-face meetings. Now, with most meetings on screen, keeping notes no longer feels impolite. Someday, AI will probably do this for us. But until then — shared docs are a game-changer.
I keep a shared doc for most recurring meetings, whether it’s a one-on-one or a cross-functional sync. Whenever I have an idea or topic to raise, I drop it into the doc.
Some things are urgent. But most can wait until the next scheduled slot. (Bonus: fewer interruptions — see Hack #3)
My team and stakeholders use the same shared documents to prepare for meetings – dropping in thoughts, feedback, and agenda items ahead of time. It keeps meetings focused and ensures we don’t forget important topics. And for less frequent conversations, it’s a helpful reminder of what we last discussed and agreed to do.
Thank you for reading. Do you have your favorite productivity tactic as a manager? I’d love to hear it—just hit “reply” or leave a comment on Substack. I’m always looking for smart ideas to try!
If you want to go deeper on manager productivity, these are three books I highly recommend:
High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove – written in 1983 by Intel’s CEO, this book is still incredibly relevant. Grove explains managerial leverage in a way that holds up—whether you’re working with paper, email, or AI. It’s not available on Kindle (except in German!), but the print version is worth tracking down. I re-read it every few years.
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman – This book is a masterclass in leadership leverage and especially powerfil for managers of managers. Wiseman explores why some leaders amplify the intelligence and productivity of their teams, while others diminish it. If you’re operating at a senior level, this book helps you scale yourself through others, avoid micromanagement traps, and build a culture of ownership.
Effective Executive by Peter Drucker – this is another classic one, written in 1966, with many modern productivity books borrowing from Drucker. Why not read from the source? He teaches how to think, not just what to do. The book focuses on time management, prioritization, and decision-making at the executive level helping shift from “doing more” to “doing what matters”.