All,

Quite a few examples have popped on our desks recently where folks want to progress to people management or leadership positions. 

A few considerations if you’ve aspirations on that front: 

1) The first, for the first few years especially, generally the leader needs to be one of the first in the office in the morning, and one of the last to leave in the evening. Sets the tone for the team, and team members are very turned into the dynamics. The team will follow your “lead,” do as I do, not as I say.” You need to walk the walk and set the tempo. 

So, simply lots of people want to be the leader, but not so many people want to be in the office first every morning. 

The best guide for us in selecting the future leaders is to look around and see who is in the office first thing.. 

2) The second, leadership is by definition a people management gig. Great people managers tended to start by managing one team member, then three, then five, often for a few years, before progressing to larger teams. 

Generally most people don’t want to be people managers, it can be a proper pain. So the first question is whether this is even for you? 

There are some nasty aspects also, some people can’t help but resent “management” and what it represents. You’ll no longer be one of the gang. 

The second consideration, going straight to managing a larger team without a few years with small teams almost guarantees failure. So being too impatient isn’t a good thing. Some really simple things like holiday approvals and managing cover are mine fields that can blow up a manger’s career if not navigated skilfully. 

If your headline goal is to become a manager, best start with one junior or apprentice and go from there. 

The next guide for us in selecting future leaders is to see who is standout at managing smalls teams of 1-5. 

3) Great execution management (and all management involves getting stuff done) tends to follow simple patterns. The ability to squeeze out easy wins daily to move things forwards. Ability to close out projects. Collaboration between teams. Prioritisation on closing out the top handful of things on a given week vs juggling a hundred balls. 

There tends to be a huge range in ability to execute depending on the person’s skills across these areas. 

In terms of a very simple guide, apart from one or two natural savants, all the top execution managers have read “The Goal” and “Critical Chain” and can apply the underlying principles day to day. 

So, the 3rd guide post, has the person read “The Goal” and “Critical Chain”..

4) Closely related to 3, is the person coachable and willing to put the work in to learn their art? Ties in with this morning’s MEMO.

Developing managers from the ranks can be thought off as spotting natural ability, or diamonds in the rough, then providing a lot of opportunity and coaching to get the person up the learning curve fast, in 3 years instead of 10. Hugely powerful for the company, equally lucrative for the successful manager. 

Really simple indicator, has the person read “The Goal” and “Critical Chain”…

5) Ultimately we’re a tech company and various powerful forces apply in tech economics. Understanding the principles of technology leverage gives any manager in tech a huge edge. 

The best way to develop an appreciation of technology leverage is to experiment with scripting, programming, automation, workflows and the like, while reading widely, There are mountains of great books that came out of Silicon Valley in over the last 30 years. Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Paul Graham, etc,, etc., quite a few are on the reading list. 

My own specialist area of expertise was earlier, Fordism, mass production, lean manufacturing, 

There are also lots of great podcast interviews with people like Musk, Jenson Huang, Morris Chang, so mountains of content that money couldn’t buy 15 years ago. It is generally a very good idea to be up to speed with contemporary tech waves, Python, LLMs, etc. 

One of my all time top tech career development and management podcasts was by Sarah Friar, from Strabane, now CFO of Open AI. 

My strong advice here is to separate the engineering from the politics. Henry Ford was considered a bit of a right wing nut job in his own era, never mind by today’s standards. Still he is likely the best thinker, at least pre-Musk, if you want to understand how to get 100x more output per person from a complex production system. 

Musk’s assertion that “every manual intervention is a bug” is just recycled Fordism. 

Final simple indicator, does the person appear naturally curious and well read…

To finish, in my own personal journey, aside from loosely managing small teams on the farm growing up, I didn’t have a single “report” in the traditional sense until I was running Wombat at age 32. I’d never been involved in an interview process either. 

That said, when I first started my career at First Derivatives I was the first person in the office four days out of five, and last one out four days out of five. I’d done a full five year industrial scholarship, read every book in the business library (including “The Goal” and “Critical Chain”, and built and lead the New York sales office for a global company as the “first person in”.. 

Don’t be too impatient, and if anything my key advice is don’t try to circumvent the apprenticeship process. 

Hope this helps., 

Please drop me a note if you’d like to get a first foot on the management ladder but don’t feel you’re being afforded the chance. 

Cheers,

Danny 

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