Reddit mentions of Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

A lot of the stuff you reference in the first three paragraphs are basically project/milestone dependencies. They are required to start the project or meet the milestone. Those should be identified by the PM but are commonly overlooked so take advantage that you know about the project and spend some time talking with them about expected needs and results. Find the PM, meet with them and talk through their needs "just to make sure you have everything in place".

The most important thing about being a manager is communication and management of the people not the things. Setup a 1 on 1 session with each of your SAs and go through their laundry list. What are they working on now? What will be they working on the next 90 days? What do they have on deck for next year? What would they like to be working on next year? What do we need to fix? What will it take to fix it? Is it something we can plan for now or do we need get budget for it? If so, how much?

After you meet with each of your SAs document the due dates and milestones somewhere visible. A shared calendar. A whiteboard. Something. Let them see it. Review it in every 1-1 just so it is not a mystery as to what is coming.

Outside the 1-1 sessions I use a high level calendar that covers the next 90 days that we review in every staff meeting. How has what milestones/project tasks due and when. This gives the team a high level view of their peers workload. Staff meetings are bi-weekly and agendas are posted the night before for everyone to review. We get in and out of them in 45 minutes.

In addition to Phoenix Project check out this book - Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager. It has focus on Software Devs but a lot of the practices apply across the board. Very easy and amusing read.

Won't directly help with your specific question, but go and buy these books right now :-

https://www.amazon.ca/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engineering/dp/1430243147

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1491932058/

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1491973897

What you need is a mature thinker. Here's how I've seen this successfully done while maintaining a positive democratic/inclusive culture...

Democratic processes for inception of ideas is fine. But someone has to be designated as the driver or mediator of discussion.

That's a responsibility that can be assigned to different people for different areas of the game or even multiple areas of design spread across multiple people.

The key is that you need someone who everyone knows is the facilitator/owner. Someone who's responsibility is to make sure things don't fall through the cracks for whatever they're identified as the driver for.

Then offset that with a culture of collaboration (ie... Leads don't command people directly, they identify work that needs to be done)

You'll find that generally, the more mature thinkers will be more willing to give up authority/power because they understand the limited importance that has. But they still maintain a strong sense of ownership.

The really key thing is that you want to try and cultivate attitudes that help deter ego attachment to ideas. That is the most common hole designers can fall into because an inexperienced designer will have a lot of insecurity involved eith his ideas which will make it very difficult to accept and process feedback appropriately. Most design dysfunction I've seen at multiple studios has revolved around that central issue.

Over time, mature designers learn to identify this trap and avoid it. But if you don't have this element of culture clearly established, you'll be leaving this open to more random chance than you would otherwise.

I would also recommend reading up on leadership from people like Simon Sinek. Also highly highly recommend the book "managing humans"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1430243147?pc_redir=1409134555&robot_redir=1

A lot of what you're talking about also has to do with leadership and understanding how to impell people and understand what is expected of yourself as a leader. Because you're looking for someone that has those qualities to glue your team and your vision together

https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engineering/dp/1430243147

Managing Humans is a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engineering/dp/1430243147