I was inspired to write this post based on a concept — Management Debt — from Ben Horowitz’s book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” (http://www.bhorowitz.com/management_debt). If you haven’t read the book, I implore you to stop reading this right now and go get it. Here’s the gist of it though:
Thanks to Ward Cunningham, the metaphor technical debt is now a well-understood concept. While you may be able to borrow time by writing quick and dirty code, you will eventually have to pay it back—with interest. Often this trade-off makes sense, but you will run into serious trouble if you fail to keep the trade-off in the front of your mind. There also exists a less well-understood parallel concept, which I will call management debt.
He lists three main causes of management debt, but I believe there is a fourth major cause that is very common in rapid growth organizations: under-equipped senior individual contributors being placed in management positions. Akin to the Peter Principle, this anti-pattern arises when a high-performing member of the team is given a position of leadership without the necessary training, mentoring, or guidance required to be successful in their new roles. “She’s doing a great job! We should promote her to a manager so that she can do even better things!” Management trainings, mentorship opportunities, and strong 1:1 coaching go a long way towards redefining what success means, acknowledging the fact that individual’s careers are directly affected by their day-to-day decisions, and laying the groundwork for their own personal management philosophy.
To make things even more complicated, the implicit or explicit “seniority” tends to transcend the role change. As the instigator of such a role change, senior management needs to adjust expectations that the new manager will be leaving behind (nay, delegating) certain responsibilities that made him/her very successful in their “senior” role and taking on new responsibilities that will inevitably make him/her feel very junior. Even more importantly, the senior manager will need to convey that this feeling is healthy and that performance expectations will also be adjusted for the new responsibilities. A manager who does not shed the old, albeit comfortable, responsibilities risks becoming overloaded, stagnating other members of the team who wish to grow, and earning the label of a micromanager.
All of this is to say: if you are the one making the decision to transition one of your leaders into a management role, you are accepting the responsibility of teaching empathy, dependence, and humility. And if you are the one transitioning into a manager, be mindful not to conflate this move with a promotion. In the eyes of the organization, you may have just moved up the ladder, but you must now acknowledge that you are the new kid on the block again.
Beard and Bourbon 