Developing From Manager Into Executive - Step #1
In this first post of a three-part series, I dig into the most critical areas of development for Managers who want to move up into a Director/VP role.
Show me the strength of a company's product and show me the vigor of its front-line managers, and I'll tell you if that company is going to win.
I love working closely with front-line managers. They are most directly responsible for the output of the company. They lead the people who build and sell the product. They are the feet on the street— the coaches. They make hundreds of small decisions each month that drive the culture, productivity and momentum of the organization. They are the first to identify a real problem (with people, process, or product) by seeing patterns across their team and the company's customers. On top of all of this, people rarely quit companies— they quit managers, making them critical to recruiting and retaining the team.
So to sum it up: Front-line managers have their fingers on the talent, productivity, and overall output that determines your startup's success today. While also best understanding the factors externally (product and market) and internally (team and culture) that will determine your startup's future success.
All this responsibility means that front-line management at a startup is challenging work. You get squeezed between your team of ICs who regularly ask for more resources to get their job done and your Manager (VP or C-Suite) who is pushing for more results month over month. This feeling of being "stuck in the middle" only increases as the company grows.
As startups scale north of ~30 people and begin to build out their Executive team (VP of Sales, VP of Eng.), front-line managers become middle managers. At this stage, things get interesting. Depending on the VP's competence, the company's culture, and the caliber of the company's managers, Startups can take two paths: 1) Building up their middle managers and preparing them for Executive roles (internally or externally) or 2) Grinding their middle managers until they either get promoted, leave, or turn into dust.
I believe that startups should take path #1. To do this, VPs must articulate the areas of development that are most important for front-line Managers to successfully step into a Director/VP role and scale with the company. The path isn't easy. Managing ICs is different from managing managers. Moving into an Exec role broadens an individual's responsibilities - they now must develop and drive strategy, make high-impact decisions that affect the entire organization and work effectively cross-functionally.
To all the front-line Managers who are reading this, if you have your eye on a promotion— I have outlined three areas in which you must excel to be in the conversation for Senior Leadership positions.
Step #1 - Make your team automatic, more than once.
Your first step on the path to an Exec role is to get your "day job" done by building up your team, so they deliver results in a self-sustaining way. Any front-line manager's dream is hiring, training, motivating, managing, and leading a group such that you are no longer needed. By doing this, you can begin to invest your time in areas that help the entire company.
The expectation is that top managers can make their team automatic not once— with a single cast of characters— but can do so time and again, even as top-performers get promoted into other roles. To accomplish this, managers must build a system for developing individuals and the team that can be applied as their group evolves. This system becomes invaluable once they are an Exec and are responsible for partnering with Managers to develop their teams.
Put another way, if a Manager builds a high-performing team only once, they will have a limited view of how to replicate that success. If they have done it multiple times, they will better understand the principles and processes required to build an "A" team and apply them in appropriate circumstances.
Entire books cover this topic, so here is my short version. Top managers make their teams automatic by excelling in 4 areas - the Who, What, How, and Why.
Who
You must be adept at filling your team with the right people (the Who). To do so, you must develop proven principles for evaluating current and existing candidates. Depending on the Management position, excelling at "the Who" will involve recruiting, interviewing, training, developing, managing performance, and managing out. Managers can only make their teams automatic if the team is adequately staffed. Hiring the wrong people and indecisiveness around developing an IC or parting ways— wastes cycles. Average managers leave these decisions up to their Director/VP. Top Managers learn how to own it.
What
Your team should always know what (specifically) they should be doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. They should have overarching goals and subgoals that light a path to success. They should understand what a productive week/month/quarter looks like and have a system to track their progress and productivity. Teams can only be automatic if they know what to do without needing Manager oversight and micro-management.
How
If you hire and fire the right people, you will spend most of your time as a Manager on the "how." Your team must not only know "what" to do and "what" their goals are but also "how" to achieve them. Top Managers don't tell; they teach. They empower their teams to be successful by teaching them "how to fish," meaning an individual learns the principles behind the approach and understands how to handle a situation successfully (on their own) next time. The "how" is where a Manager bridges the gap between hiring a group of talented ICs and leading a team of self-sufficient top performers.
Why
Teams that are automatic understand what to do and how to do it, AND they know "why" it matters. Furthermore, they understand both "the why" for themselves, which drives their motivation, and "the why" for the business, thus connecting their contributions to the organization's overall success. When a team or individual falls off track, if they fully understand the why behind their work, they will proactively address the situation with self-motivation. If they do not understand the why, it will be left to their manager to get involved, address the problem, and hopefully get them back on track.
Great leaders not only tap into "the why" that is inside each of us, but they draw additional motivation out of us by having a vision for what we can accomplish, by believing in us more than we believe in ourselves. This type of leadership is evident when you see it but impossible to fake.
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There you have it, step #1 on the road to a Director/VP role is to make your team automatic (more than once), which often takes years. If you nail this step, you can move on to steps #2 and #3.