WorkPatterns beta launch announcement

Calling all intentional managers and ambitious contributors

Understanding the ideal person for your product is critical at any company, but it’s especially important when you’re creating a new type of product in a category that’s still emerging.

As we’ve conducted pilots and done user testing at Charma, there are clear “identities” (we think that’s a more accurate word than “personas” in this case) that especially gravitate toward our vision and get the most benefit out of the product. 

Instead of keeping all that a secret in an internal marketing doc, we thought we’d describe those identities publicly so people can decide for themselves if Charma might be a fit for them.

We think of people that self identify in two ways. Intentional manager (if they manage people) and ambitious contributors (if they don’t.) Here’s a description of each. Do they sound like you?

Intentional managers

Intentional managers are students of leadership best practices and take an active role in honing their own skills and in helping the people that report to them develop.

Intentional managers can be found anywhere in the organization, from the CEO to someone managing their first few employees.

Regardless of where they are in the org chart, they share certain characteristics:

• They are thoughtful about their priorities and manage their personal focus rigorously
• They set clear priorities for their team and are consistent about follow up on those things at the expense of competing demands for peoples’ time
• They have systems that help them be proactive vs constantly responding to things that come inbound
• They have regular one-on-one meetings with their direct reports to align on priorities, progress, and blockers
• They understand the importance of accountability and how it can have an outsized impact not only on productivity, but also on culture and morale
• They care as much about the process as the output, and focus systems instead of just outcomes
• They work effectively cross-functionally by communicating clearly and having structure around expectations and commitments 

Ambitious contributors

Ambitious Contributors are passionate about learning and developing and thirst for accountability both when they’ve done incredible work, and when there’s an opportunity for feedback. Similar to Intentional Managers, they can be found throughout the organization. Some Ambitious Contributors are early in their career, but others are high level individual contributors such as enterprise sales account executives or senior product managers.

Regardless of where they are in the org chart, Ambitious Contributors share certain characteristics:  

• They are thoughtful about their career trajectory and work with their manager to set goals and milestones
• They take an active role in developing a plan for measuring their performance, even if the output of their job function is more subjective
• They actively seek out feedback and ensure they have direct conversations about their performance, even when it’s uncomfortable
• They “manage up” by presenting their successes and roadblocks objectively with clear data
• They back up expressions like “I feel like” and “it seems like” with proposed solutions and measurement
• They hold themselves and their manager accountable to commitments that each of them make to each other

If you think you’re either an intentional manager or an ambitious contributor, sign up here, and we’ll keep you in the loop as we roll out products we built with you in mind!