The Making of a Manager

Just as no financial advisor would recommend putting all your money into one kind of asset, neither should you tackle projects with one kind of time horizon. My colleague makes sure that a third of her team works on projects that can be completed on the order of weeks, another third works on medium-term projects that may take months, and finally, the last third works on innovative, early-stage ideas whose impact won’t be known for years. By taking this portfolio approach, her team balances making constant improvements to their core features while casting an eye toward the horizon.