Ask HN: How to manage a team when you don’t know the tech

I recently started as a manager at a smallish company working on <complex tech>. I inherited a team of mixed skill level and tenure.

I think I’m pretty good at people management and generally organizing work and protecting the team. But I’m having real trouble delivering more value because I just don’t have domain knowledge either as a domain-specific developer or end user.

I’ve managed teams before but I was somewhat, or very familiar with the domain, allowing me to engage in much deep conversations with stakeholders up to unblocking the team by taking on design or architecture work that enabled others to come in behind me with a solid scaffolding in place.

I am reading and studying outside of work when I can but with 3 small kids I can’t do much. It seems like I need months of dedicated study and a couple of practical projects under my belt to get up to speed and feel useful instead of just asking for status and estimates like a useless middle manager.

What do you do? Have you had a manager in this position that handled it well? Should I just keep plugging away?