“The only good generic startup advice is that there is no good generic startup advice.”
-Elad Gil

The same goes for management advice. It’s all situational. It’s dependent on your company’s stage, size, personalities, industry norms, relationships, power dynamics, cultural context, and a dozen other factors that make every situation unique.

I thought of this the other day when I came across an article on Business Insider where Mark Zuckerberg announced that he doesn’t do 1:1s with his direct reports and prefers to engage in spontaneous conversations as needed.

The article was promptly reposted all over social media by worn-out managers, justifying their decision to stop doing 1:1s or explaining why they never started them in the first place. “Kill the standing 1:1,” many of them said.

This reminded me of another profile of Zuckerberg from several years ago in Inc. Magazine titled, “Why Mark Zuckerberg Thinks One-on-One Meetings Are the Best Way to Lead.” Zuckerberg described his standing 1:1s with his direct reports as “a really key way in which we share information and keep stuff moving forward.”

Zuckerberg has modified his approach to 1:1s because the situation he’s in today is different from the situation he was in back in 2017. And it’s safe to say most managers are not in the same situation as Zuckerberg — running a company with possibly the best business model in tech history, still growing over 20% annually on more than $160 billion in revenue. His situation is remarkably unique, so I’d be cautious about copying almost anything he does from a management perspective.

I’m not defending the 1:1 or any other management tool. The point of this post is simply a tweak on Elad Gil’s quote above: “the only good generic management advice is that there’s no such thing as good generic management advice.”

Skilled leadership isn’t about applying management tools; it’s about applying the right management tool to the right situation in the right context at the right time.