Picture this. You have spent enough time managing a team directly, delivered positive outcomes to your team and company, have gotten positive feedback from your peers, your reports, and your stakeholders that you are an awesome leader, and are now wondering how to clamber up the next rung of the managerial ladder. Getting there would mean more responsibility, more opportunities (internal and external), a bigger paycheck, a seat at the big people's table, and keys to the executive bathroom where somebody will hand out warm towels for you. OK, the last part is not true.
If your company is like most companies, when you ask your boss how to get to the next level, the answer is: You have to showcase that you can grow and lead through other managers. This is part 1 of a two-part post about how to grow and lead effectively through managers.
Scope much?
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the title of the leader aspiring to grow a manager is Director. So, Director and Manager are the two key players in this equation. Got it? OK, good.
The first thing a Director should assess is whether they have enough scope to carve out and hand off to a new manager. Newer Directors often confuse people with scope when figuring out what to give to the new manager. Let's say they have ten direct reports. Just move three of them under the new manager, right?
The correct way to do it is to figure out natural lines of isolation and carve it out. The question to ask is-
Will this new team be able to ship software independently, or will they need to coordinate with one or more teams consistently? Would this new leader be able to make decisions without always needing approval?
If this new team has to coordinate with another team for almost everything they want to ship or needs approval from the layer above for most things, either the lines of ownership have been drawn incorrectly, and/or there isn't enough scope to keep another manager busy. Every new layer of management is an overhead, and I encourage Directors to be honest with themselves before adding another layer. In those moments, I know it will be hard to ignore self-interest. Who doesn't want to move up? But if you doubt that adding a manager to your reporting chain will cause more harm than good, err on caution. I usually hold off adding another manager until it is painfully clear that a sub-team with a dedicated manager is required for the business to grow. If the lines of ownership are unclear, and you force a new team and a leader into existence, the people most affected will be those on this new team, including the new manager.
Another easy way to determine whether this team can operate independently is to imagine its future state. Given your company's current trajectory and goals, can you see a future where this team could add long-term value? Could it get additional investment, including a dedicated product manager, to create dedicated roadmaps? What would this team's success metrics look like? How would they ladder up to company metrics?
One of the exercises I ask Directors to do (with their future manager) is to write down the charter of this future team before making any organizational changes. In the charter, I ask the Director to write down their responses to the thought exercises we discussed. Finally, I ask them to get feedback from their peers (across product, engineering, and GTM), stakeholders, and leadership. If the feedback looks like that one time your math teacher destroyed your term paper with red ink, it's probably not the right time to create another sub-team.
OK, so you have alignment on the new team within your organization and are now ready to put someone in charge. If you are hiring somebody from the outside, the rest of this section doesn't apply to you. Read on if you are growing someone from within your team or company.
The Gom Jabbar
The first thing to do is for you and the future manager to figure out if they are ready to become a manager. Here is a quick test to figure that out. I can't stress how important it is to be brutally honest with the future manager and arm them with the truth to ensure they are not making this decision while looking through rose-colored glasses. If the future manager doesn't take a few days to think about this, either you haven't educated them about all the downsides of becoming a manager, or the future manager has committed to not taking off the rose-colored glasses.
A common rose-colored (OK, I will stop with the rose glasses after this) viewpoint is to look at management as a way to move up the career ladder. Management as the 'next step' in people's careers has stopped being true since the dawn of high-tech software companies two decades ago. There are very senior folks in very large companies with very fancy titles and salaries who are individual contributors. Ugh, too many 'very's. Anyway, you all get my point.
Another common, rose colo….dang it, I did it again. Moving on. Another big misconception future managers have is that getting into the management club will give them more authority than an individual contributor. Somehow, all the things they couldn't do before without requiring alignment and approval will now become easier. This cannot be further from the truth. Yes, you will have authority to put together the machinery (process, staff assignments etc) of 'how' to get things done, but the 'what' will still require alignment. Building alignment will now be harder and more complex. As a manager, you will now be expected to build alignment with teams and stakeholders who might not understand your vocabulary. E.g., an ex-engineer turned manager trying to convince a product team to sign off on a code-cleanup project.
These discussions will and should be intense. But if the future manager still wants to pursue this path, then it is time to move to the next phase.
The Gauntlet
The next step is to allow the future manager to wet their feet gently and put them through a test run of sorts to see how they perform. Three things you should look for as success criteria for the trial run.
Can they deliver something non-trivial through others?
Can they resolve conflicts?
Can they manage high and low performers?
I recommend picking a complicated and critical initiative and making this person responsible for the success of that project. It will be tempting to give them a simple project to deliver, but it will be a disservice to them. A complex project will mean multiple forks in the road, giving you a sense of how the future manager makes decisions. A complex project will also mean navigating through and resolving conflicts. Lastly, a bigger project means longer delivery timelines, which will allow the manager to settle into their new role and not feel rushed. Aim for projects that will take longer than three and less than six months. You need to give them a taste of the future and figure out if they like that future or not.
Have anywhere from three to five individual contributors soft-report to this person. Soft-report means that the individual contributors will treat the future manager as their manager for their day-to-day needs, but the manager won't have access to anything sensitive like salaries, previous performance reviews, etc. I also wouldn't change their titles. In short, from an HR standpoint, they are still an individual contributor, but they operate as a manager for that small team for the duration of that project.
Giving them the most junior people to manage as part of the trial run will be tempting, but I don't recommend it. I recommend a mix of junior and senior people and include people who might be close to a promotion or need some coaching. I typically ask the future manager to put together promotion documents, coaching plans, etc, to figure out if they have the aptitude and the interest to do so. Another reason I say three to five individual contributors in the previous paragraph is to figure out how the manager navigates interpersonal conflicts.
At the end of the project, look at the evidence collectively with the future manager and decide whether you want to make it official. Some of the things I look for -
Was the project successfully delivered? If it was delayed, what tactics did the manager use to prevent the delays?
Do the people who soft-reported to the manager see them as a leader? Will they be comfortable reporting to them permanently? Do they see this person helping with their career?
Do the project stakeholders see the manager as a partner they want to continue working with?
Was the manager successful in resolving conflicts?
And the most important question of all: Does this person still want to become a manager?
If yes, it is time to hand over the reins, which will be the next post! Stay tuned!
Quick Book Update: The book has a real name AND a final cover design, which we picked out as a family :) Heading into production soon!
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