Stop managing by instinct.
Start leading with a system.
Most technical professionals don't fail at management because they're not smart enough. They fail because nobody gave them an operating system for leading people. This playbook gives you the foundation — so that in 90 days, you know your team, you've redefined your role, and you've earned the trust to actually lead your team.
One-time purchase. No subscription required. Price increases as the audience grows.
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Your First 90 Days
If any of these sound familiar, this was built for you.
You were promoted because you were excellent at execution — and now you're not sure what excellent looks like for a manager
You keep jumping back into IC work because it's faster than delegating — and you know that's a problem but you don't know how to stop
You're giving feedback, running 1:1s, and setting goals — but you're not confident any of it is actually working
Your team seems fine on the surface, but you sense they're more dependent on you than they should be
You've read management books, watched talks, taken courses — and still feel like you're figuring it out in real time
You want a real system — not more theory, not motivational frameworks, not content written for people who were born leading
The real reason the transition is so hard has nothing to do with how capable you are.
The habits that made you exceptional as an individual contributor — going deep, solving every problem yourself, owning the output end to end — are the exact habits that hold you back as a manager. It's not a capability gap. It's a system gap.
Nobody tells you this at promotion. You go from "own your work completely" to "own your team's work" overnight — with no training, no framework, no language for what good management actually looks like day to day.
So you do what analytical people do: you try to figure it out yourself. You read. You observe. You iterate. And it still doesn't click — because the skill you're missing isn't in any book. It's a complete operating system that most managers are never taught. They spend years guessing at something that should have been handed to them on day one.
Every decision routes through you. Nothing ships without your involvement. You're not leading — you're a very stressed senior IC with direct reports.
When you solve every problem, your team never builds judgment. Their ceiling becomes your ceiling. The dependency compounds.
Senior leaders don't promote managers who execute. They promote managers who multiply. Staying in IC mode signals you haven't made the shift.
The system I built after seven years of leading real teams.
It's what guides me every day — and it's what this playbook teaches.
I didn't find this in a book. I built it through trial and error, across multiple teams, in Finance, Media, and Tech — making every early mistake a new manager makes, and slowly building a framework that actually held up in the real world. This is the operating system I run my team on today. It's the only thing in this playbook you won't find anywhere else — because I developed it from the inside out, not from a case study.
Most management content tells you what good managers do. The C2P System explains why what you're currently doing isn't working — and gives you a structure to fix it at the root, not the symptom.
People
You cannot set direction for a team you don't actually understand. The Foundation gives you a diagnostic system for mapping each person's strengths, gaps, motivations, and capacity — before you try to delegate, develop, or direct anything.
The Management Cycle
The cycle that runs your team whether you're aware of it or not: setting direction, building ownership, giving feedback, and adjusting course. The Engine teaches you to run it deliberately — not reactively.
Trust
The multiplier on everything else. Direction lands differently when people trust your judgment. Feedback is received differently when people trust your intent. This layer teaches you to build trust through specific repeatable behaviors.
Four parts. The complete foundation for your first 90 days.
The Core Shift
Understand what actually changed about your job — and why your IC instincts are working against you.
- The IC-to-Manager identity shift — what to stop, start, and reframe
- The 80/20 Time Audit to see where your time actually goes
- The Stop Doing List — what to transition off your plate and how
- The most common early mistakes and how to avoid them
Know Your Team
Build a real picture of who you're managing before you delegate, develop, or direct anything.
- The Team Map — strengths, development areas, capacity, and motivations
- How to identify ownership gaps and bottleneck dependencies
- Running effective 1:1s — the 70/30 rule and 10 questions that surface what's really happening
- Matching tasks to team member readiness
Build Trust
Establish the credibility and psychological safety your team needs to follow your lead.
- The trust-building behaviors that compound over time
- Consistency, transparency, vulnerability, and care in practice
- How to have honest first conversations with your team
- Managing former peers without losing relationships
Your 90-Day Plan
A structured week-by-week roadmap so you're not guessing at what to do next.
- Weeks 1–4: Audit your state, map the team, start building trust
- Weeks 5–8: Deepen understanding, hand off IC work, address structural issues
- Weeks 9–12: Set direction, establish cadence, build development plans
- Checkpoint frameworks to assess your progress at each phase
By the end of this playbook, you'll have:
A clear understanding of every person on your team — their strengths, development areas, capacity, and what actually motivates them
A redefined role — you'll know exactly what your job is as a manager and what you need to stop doing
A concrete plan to transition IC work off your plate without things falling through the cracks
A structured 1:1 framework so your meetings surface what's actually happening — not just status updates
Established foundations of trust — your team is more likely to tell you the truth and give you the benefit of the doubt
A week-by-week 90-day plan so you're operating intentionally, not reactively
Written by someone still actively in the room.
I'm Andrea. I started my career as a senior analyst at one of the world's top investment banks — a pure IC role. When I made the jump to people manager, I did it overnight, without training, without a playbook, and without a single conversation about what leading people actually looks like day to day.
I spent years figuring it out through real teams, real mistakes, and a lot of pattern recognition — eventually becoming a Group Manager at one of the world's largest tech platforms. Every framework in this playbook came from working through something the hard way first.
Seven years in, I'm a Group Manager leading a technical team right now — not retrospectively, not in theory. The C2P System is what I actually run. This playbook is what I wish someone had handed me on day one.
The patterns that made you a great IC are the same ones quietly working against you as a manager. Awareness is step one — but you need a system to replace the old defaults. That's what this playbook gives you.
— Andrea, Code to PeopleFrom people I've managed directly.
"Andrea helped me work through a difficult piece of feedback — and then followed up to make sure I'd actually incorporated it. She didn't just tell me what to do differently. She checked back in, helped me make a plan, and held space for me to grow into it. That kind of intentional development is rare in a manager."
"Andrea provides clear and systematic planning that keeps the team aligned. A genuine willingness to coach and give constructive feedback that has directly supported my professional growth. And an encouraging, approachable style that makes it easy to ask for help without hesitation."
The complete playbook — and everything inside it.
Your First 90 Days
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If you read it and don't find at least one framework you can apply immediately, email me and I'll refund you. No questions asked.
A few things worth knowing.
I'm already past my first 90 days. Is this still relevant?
Yes — the "first 90 days" framing is about a starting point, not a deadline. The foundation this playbook builds applies to any manager in their first 1–5 years. If you're still figuring out what your role actually is, trying to transition off IC work, or building trust with your team, the playbook covers exactly that. Most people who use it are 6–18 months in.
How is this different from the management books I've already read?
Most management books are written retrospectively, for a general audience, designed to feel comprehensive rather than immediately actionable. This playbook is written by someone currently managing a technical team, specifically for technical professionals making the IC-to-manager transition, structured around a single operating system (C2P) that you run this week — not concepts to sit with.
What exactly do I get? Is this a course, a PDF, a template pack?
It's a structured PDF playbook — frameworks and templates embedded throughout. You read it, apply it, and reference it when you hit a specific situation. Built to be used, not just read once.
Why is it priced at $27 if the value is $97?
This is the introductory price for the first cohort of buyers. I'm building Code to People and want to get this playbook into the hands of as many new managers as possible. The price will go up as the audience grows. There's no artificial deadline — but $27 is where it starts.
You already know what managing by instinct costs you.
The system is right here.
Every week without a framework is another week as the bottleneck, another week guessing at delegation, another week avoiding the feedback conversation. The playbook won't make management easy. But it will make it systematic — and that changes everything.
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