I was deleting my unread TOA emails en masse the other day when a little blurb caught my attention. In spite of my better instincts, I clicked open the note and read it. It was a post was about Peopleware, a book I thought would go right over TOA’s head about building strong work teams (and for the most part, it did). However, he did make a rare insightful comment into how most firms struggle to promote new managers based on their aptitude for management.
This is a common refrain among the many business bro books I read. They point out that most firms simply promote their top performers into manager roles and hope for the best. Is this a good strategy? The authors of these books – and I suppose TOA – would probably say no, and say so with the same smarmy, eye-rolling, know-it-all exasperation of a regular Dilbert reader.
However, the only way for a firm to value performance is to reward performance. If employees are never promoted despite strong performance, it sends a very clear message to employees that performance does not matter. This raises another question – is it better to work in a firm with some unfit managers or in a firm that does not care one iota about performance? I’d go with the former here, reader. A bad manager might be tough to work for but a firm that does not care about performance probably isn’t going to stay in business very long.
I think the solution is pretty simple. First, create a promotion track entirely devoid of management responsibilities. This will allow a firm to promote based on performance without forcing top employees into manager roles they are unfit for. And if a top performer wants to ‘try’ managing but it becomes clear after some time that they are not a good fit for the role, the parallel track allows for easy reassignment.
Then, make sure to look for the right skills when promoting new managers. The single biggest skill is probably time management for two reasons. First, a manager’s main function is to make the most out of available resources. Second, time is generally the only resource an individual performer is fully in charge of. So, if an individual performer is good at managing time, it is a strong signal of managerial capability (1).
Finally, if a firm is going to promote non-managers into management, then it must take the time to train them. The specific skills a new manager needs to learn will vary by the size of the organization and the scope of the work. The firm must take responsibility for identifying these skills and teaching them to the new manager.
Signed,
The Business Bro
Footnotes / rampant speculation
1. Editorial comment here… but I feel right about this…
I think this ‘time management’ aspect gets lost in the assessment when top performers are misidentified as manager material. From my experience, the top performers in any individual role are those who tend to work longer hours and take on more assignments than their peers. It would be accurate to say these employees produce more than their peers.
However, this volume-based measure of production does not account at all for how well someone uses time. A good rule of thumb for this skill is to ask – does the top performer get things done on-time? If yes, make sure to follow up by asking whether the work completed on-time required a Herculean effort in terms of late nights or early mornings.
A new manager with poor time management skills is going to really struggle to do some of the role’s most important tasks – such as implementing process improvements, training employees, or gathering information – because all of these tasks are best completed within standard business hours. If the manager needs more time to complete these tasks, the skill required is knowing how to make better use of time, not the willingness to stay late or come in early.
