“Give your best individual contributors somewhere to go besides management” This! Not every good worker wants or is cut out to be a manager. And management is a huge responsibility that takes away half of your time at least, so turning a good worker into a manager can actually be a very bad decision
Fully agree; most organizations though are not equipped to train/develop managers... and also lack options for their ICs. If thats the case, better to help someone move on than to move up into a role they'll be unhappy/unsuccessful in.
Came to make similar point :) And if we want people to become managers and leaders, let's be intentional about helping them learn to be effective ones.
Really appreciate your point about addressing "the real problem before the org chart." I think a lot about how managers suffer from a loss of resonance: they're interacting a lot, but the interactions are deadened. Correcting structure problems, as you're proposing, might do a good job of addressing acoustical deadness in work and on teams.
“Give your best individual contributors somewhere to go besides management” This! Not every good worker wants or is cut out to be a manager. And management is a huge responsibility that takes away half of your time at least, so turning a good worker into a manager can actually be a very bad decision
Fully agree; most organizations though are not equipped to train/develop managers... and also lack options for their ICs. If thats the case, better to help someone move on than to move up into a role they'll be unhappy/unsuccessful in.
Came to make similar point :) And if we want people to become managers and leaders, let's be intentional about helping them learn to be effective ones.
Really appreciate your point about addressing "the real problem before the org chart." I think a lot about how managers suffer from a loss of resonance: they're interacting a lot, but the interactions are deadened. Correcting structure problems, as you're proposing, might do a good job of addressing acoustical deadness in work and on teams.