The way we promote people to management is broken

1975 — The Factory

Imagine you’re in a GM car factory back in 1975. Around you are the various managers and workers that make this factory work. Most of them are workers. They’re dressed on overalls, they work 9 to 5 and they will probably work here as a rank and file employee for the rest of their lives. They will likely never rise to the ranks of management nor would they think of that as a career possibility. At best, they might rise up to shift supervisor and retire in 40 years with a gold watch.

The managers here are easy to spot. They’re the ones wearing slacks and a button down shirt or perhaps a dark blue suit. They’re one of the few Americans who went to college and they probably majored in something like business or management. They knew they were on a management track from the moment they went to school and the company is investing in them to train them as a manager. Not all of them will make it to the hallowed ranks of the executive boardroom, that’s reserved for the ivy leaguers, but these mid level managers know they are a separate group from the rank and file and have probably never worked on the factory floor. This is a problem because it alienates them from their employees and means they lack a basic grasp of the work they are managing. Still, the system seems to work for now.

1995 — The office

Now put yourself at an IBM office in 1995. The rank and file are far more educated. They probably have bachelors degrees and they’re dressed a bit more formally than those old office workers in slacks and a polo shirt or button down shirt. These folks have a choice of staying as individual contributors or they can choose to proceed down relatively defined management track. Which brings us to the other group of people in this office, the managers.

Unlike the factory managers of 1975, these managers were probably once individual contributors. They made a conscious decision to become a manager and either took a two year break from their work to do a full time MBA or they proceeded down some defined management academy that the company offered. Either way, these managers have the best of both worlds, they are formally trained in how to be a manager and have the experience to connect with their employees and gain credibility.

Today — The start up

Now let’s move to today, to the average San Francisco start up. There is an executive team which probably came from those 90’s management ranks, there’s a large group of individual contributors who are probably their 20’s and then there are the middle managers. These folks came from the ranks of the workers and are also relatively young. This could be their second or third job out of school and they may only have 5 to 10 years of experience. They were promoted to being a manager because they were good at their job. A good sales person becomes a manager of sales people and a good engineer becomes a manager of engineers, and that’s where the problem lies.

We are literally taking our best engineers and sales people (marketing, finance, support and the rest of the company works the same) and telling them “this thing that you’re good at, I want you to stop doing that and start being a manager, something you’re completely not qualified for and that I will not provide you any training in.” And then we wonder why so many new managers fail. At least back in that GM factory we trained folks in how to be a manager. These days we throw them in completely unprepared and watch them sink or swim.

Making Management Great Again

Now I’m not sure we can go back to the days of MBA’s and management programs but I would like to recommend an alternative approach. In this new world, it is up to us, the executives and senior managers, to recognize that we are asking folks with no management experience to become managers. We need to recognize that management is not a genetic skill and needs to be learned and we need to provide new managers with the support to learn it. To do otherwise is to shirk our responsibility.

Specifically, we need to train new managers in the following areas:

1. You cannot do the work for your employees — That’s the whole point of being a manager. You’re managing people and they’re doing the work. Yes, you were a great sales person but now your job is to make your team into great sales people. If someone on your team is failing, you cannot just step in and do the job for them. Instead you need to take the time and explain to them how to do the job.
2. You will succeed or fail based on the people you have on your team — This is why hiring is so important and why we need to teach new manager that putting together their team is the most important thing they can do. How do you find good candidates? How do you interview to make sure you’re hiring the right people? When do you make the decision to fire people? These are skills that managers today are lacking and, as a result, they’re putting together teams that will cause them to fail.
3. You cannot order your employees around, you have to motivate them — Unless you’re still working in a factory, you’re probably in the same kind of environment I am, where you can’t order people to do something and have to motivate them instead. That’s a pretty tough thing to do if you know nothing about it. How do you communicate goals to someone? How do you help them set and achieve their own goals? How do you motivate a whole team without sounding like a hollow corporate cheerleader? Again, these aren’t skills you pick up naturally and they’re ones the manager needs to learn to be a good manager.

And yes, there are a dozen other things the manager needs to learn, how to work with other teams, how to budget, how to set team goals and quite a few more. But the above three items are the basics. Without them, the manager and their team will fail. So let’s start by teaching those three skills. Once they get their team running smoothly, we can take the time to teach them how to create a budget and play at corporate politics.