8 ms·
How do managers get stuck? (2017)
- kyberias 7y agoDefine stuck, please.
- paggle 7y agoWhen you want to move but can't.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- munchbunny 7y agoWanting to move up or get promoted within the current role, but not getting promoted after several years. "Stuck" is in the mindset of the individual. Edit for clarification: I mean that a person is "stuck" when they feel/think they are stuck.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- PorterDuff 7y agoJust to play grumpy old guy for a sec., I can't say that I've ever seen this in action. In my experience. . Line managers rarely make the leap, if anything they jump laterally or go into 'new opportunities'. . Actually escaping the gig and advancing, and I'd say that being a manager manager is a far more desirable line of work, seems to be more tied to selling yourself and to being associated with high visibility/profitable/successful projects which often has little to do with your own personal skills. The article sounds quite plausible though.
- santoshalper 7y agoI've definitely seen managers get promoted into senior management and executive jobs, but not always linearly (they become their old boss). I do agree that the skills of a senior manager are materially different than just "be a better manager". Failing at any of the things listed in the article can prevent your progress, but doing them all well doesn't guarantee you advancement either.
- hef19898 7y agoIn my experience that comes mostly down to politics, in the worst cases including outright abuse of your team's performance. Not always but often enough. Selling yourself well enough and advance by changing gigs is also working nicely, just jump before any issues catch up with you in your old gig. And then there is the luck part, to always be at the rigzjt place at the right time. The rare few higher managers that achieved their positions also through domain knowledge and competence were a delight to work for and with. The others not so much.
- pm90 7y agoI wonder how a well meaning manager can avoid falling into this sort of situation though. I know that that many managers are well meaning and do want their team to succeed but have the unsavory job of getting their teams to do shit on time, by force if necessary since the business depends on it. It’s possible that there is no good answer I guess. Managers might just be the bogeyman bringing bad news but it’s the business (and execs) that ultimately make these choices.
- cosmie 7y agoWell meaning or otherwise, it's impossible to avoid falling into this sort of situation at some point or another. What makes or breaks a manager is how well they navigate it. Pushing your team to do shit on time by force may work, but it's a risky and generally unsustainable strategy. And the immediate repercussions of doing so are largely opaque higher than you as the immediate manager (and potentially your boss). Strategic failure or missed deadlines can generally get the visibility you need to ensure you get the consideration or resources going forward to prevent it from becoming a norm. But that also has political costs and considerations, so you have to have a firm grasp of your position in the org, your positioning and messaging on the issue, and how well you capitalize on the follow up before the window for change/resources closes. Business executives may not understand what you or your team do, but their decision making process is largely similar to a systems engineering problem. When joining the company as a manager, you have to rapidly understand the general structure of the legacy system that is your new company, where your team fits into that architecture, the integration points and dependencies your team and reporting structure has with the wider company (which is as much personal and political as it is technical), and approach the maintenance, oversight, and positioning of your team as appropriate. It's a very active process, and without the benefit of source code, documentation, or logging you may have when getting up to speed on a technical system. A passive manager just acts as a message bus passing through demands from the business until the service that is their team becomes overloaded and things only get better if the upstream demand decreases. An active manager attempts to influence the overall system in such a way where those spikes are rare enough to be manageable, trigger the appropriate alerts (from an organization perspective), such that the upstream demands and downstream capacity to service those demands are in alignment.
- human20190310 7y agoIn my experience, managers who step into a role that someone else has already occupied tend to get stuck. Those who grab territory and take newly created roles as a company expands tend to move quickly.
- badfrog 7y ago> In my experience, managers who step into a role that someone else has already occupied tend to get stuck. Those who grab territory and take newly created roles as a company expands tend to move quickly. Sounds like that could just be because the latter case indicates the company/org is growing quickly and making room for people to grow.
- o-__-o 7y agoOr it sounds like the Gervais Principal to the T[0]. On one side Ryan climbs the ladder and has opportunity for getting the director title in front of him within weeks of joining. The other hand, Michael Scott almost put Dunder-Mifflen out of business with his tenacity to do better or growth. What I’m trying to say is that sociopaths are still on top.. they are just a bit nicer these days thanks to the liberalization of drugs [0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
- ed312 7y agoIf you feel you're doing all three of those categories reasonably well, and there just are no open roles to advance in your company, what do you do? Does an MBA help you "level up" in the eyes of HR etc.?
- thinkingkong 7y agoYour feeling of how youre doing isnt the goal in these circumstances. You get promoted based on the opinions of 3 separate groups the least weighted is your own.
- majormajor 7y agoIf there are no open roles, and MBA won't open those roles for you. If advancement is your primary goal in that case, you need to find the open roles at other companies. An MBA may be a positive for that, it depends on the desired sort of role/destination.
- chase-seibert 7y agoI've done both roles, but my sense is that manager of managers is essentially a more risky role -- chances of being laid off are higher, with accompanying risk. Line managers virtually never get laid off. Compensation seems similar, as well.
- hinkley 7y agoI wonder sometimes if the almost-military model of business hierarchies is intentional, unintentional, or emergent behavior of the system. The line manager and lead developers are not unlike non-commissioned officers. They are supposed to be able to talk to the grunts, and even though they don't do the "shit", getting shit done is not abstract for them. They know how to do it in a more concrete way. If they didn't, nobody below them would respect them. (Though I have heard tales of new NCOs being sweated by their reports because they clearly did not know anything in a concrete way. They were either going to learn or they were going to be forced out.) For everyone else there's a lot of up-or-out. If you've been a middle manager for 20 years there must be something wrong with you.
- SaltyBackendGuy 7y ago> If you've been a middle manager for 20 years there must be something wrong with you. In my experience, the Army was the same. If you saw a 18 year E-6 he/she probably had a problem staying out of trouble or were just incompetent. Edit(context): Active duty in a combat MOS.
- walshemj 7y agoReally isn't that about the top of the tree for NCO rank as it in the UK - as there are not that may RSM's or even warrant officer roles.
- walshemj 7y agoehem "officer class" is the norm for all professional development roles - its a social class thing. Its not obvious but the laundry files occasionally has a few mentions that might pass unnoticed by a non brit. I have worked at an ex civil service place and there was a direct mapping between grade and the equivalent rank in the forces.
- test1982 7y agoLack of empathy
- aj7 7y agoIt’s at least 50% appearance and image.
- dlphn___xyz 7y agoin other words - its politics.
- cosmotic 7y agoThis list seems largely biased toward thriving in a highly-political organization and largely biased against Actually Getting Things Done.
- raz32dust 7y agoProbably true. But then, I think all organizations achieve these characteristics beyond some critical size. Good executive leadership can help somewhat, but politics and difficulty in getting things done (a.k.a. coordination overhead and communication loss) is part of any large org. So these tips are definitely good to know unless you are planning to always be in small companies (< ~100 employees).
- stormking 7y agoWhen it comes to promotions, there is one simple rule: A promotion is not a reward for doing a good job in your current role. For a company, promoting people is an optimization technique. Good employees are hard to find and if you already have one and he or she shows the potential to do even more valuable work, you promote them. It's as simple as that.
- eitally 7y agoI disagree. Well, I agree, but with nuance. A promotion for a knowledge worker role is typically a recognition of already having been operating at a higher level than the employee is currently mapped to. This is not the same as promoting someone because you recognize potential, but those two concepts do usually coexist.
- stormking 7y agoI'm sorry but I fail to see the difference, except "shows the potential to do more valuable work" and "having been operating at a higher level" being not quite the same. But this doesn't change my main conclusion. Can you please elaborate?
- ExBritNStuff 7y agoUsing something like Helpdesk as an example; "having been operating at a higher level" is a Level 1 person who does Level 2 work, and "shows potential to do more valuable work" is a level 1 person who only does level 1 stuff, but knocks it out the park and looks like they will succeed doing higher level work.
- aerophilic 7y agoThis analysis resonates with my experience. It also (somewhat) correlates with the Peter principal [0], people get promoted to their level of incompetence. That said, I still remember “the rules” my High School math teacher told me about “Corporate Life”: 1. Be able to do your Boss’s job 2. Make sure you have someone that can do your job 3. Dress/act the part of your boss 1. Is important because the best way to prove you can do the role is to actually do it. If you can “step in” while your boss is elsewhere, it proves your ability. 2. Conversely, if you don’t have anyone that can take over your role, you are “stuck” especially if your role is critical 3. As mentioned in the article, your boss/their management needs to feel like you will be able to represent them appropriately. If they have any doubts, there is no way you will get the opportunity to prove you can. [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp
- taneq 7y agoI can see 3) coming across negatively if your boss feels like you’re treading on their toes, which could be career limiting.