Getting off the management track

Why should career growth imply management progression?

Over time I’ve asked many job candidates and employees what they want from their careers. Almost inevitably the talk turns to the management track.  The perception that career growth is only achievable on the management track is so hardened in our thinking that I’m never entirely sure whether the desire is sincere, or if this is just considered the right thing to say.

To prepare for a recent talent review session, I asked a group of managers to submit names of employees who could be candidates for management development. During the discussion, the managers admitted that several of the names belonged to employees who were either indifferent about or uninterested in a management role.  So, why did the managers want to consider these employees for management development? The answer was that these are great employees, and their managers want to recognize them and retain them.

I left the meeting puzzled by the managers’ logic. But then came my Eureka moment: the managers were using the only tool they have for recognizing, rewarding and investing in their employees. Although I had initially thought the managers limited in their thinking, it was actually I (… and the company and culture I represent…) limiting them.

Our culture largely defines business success in terms of where you are on the corporate organization chart, which is itself defined by management and executive hierarchies.  Your success is positively correlated to the number of direct and indirect reports you have.

The interest, skills and talents required to manage and lead others are not distributed equally amongst the population. Sadly, there are far more managers than great managers. Consider all of the managers you’ve known in your career:  how many have been truly skilled and talented in the role? If your experience is anything like mine, excellent managers are a small fraction of the total. This may be something of an anomaly: I can’t easily think of any other job that is often held by people who lack the necessary interest, skills and talent to do their job really well. This is partly because standards are very high for managers; a merely good manager really has to be exceptional. A role that impacts others' livelihoods must require the highest possible standards.

I think this is an outcome of an assumption within the business culture that progression means promotion. It is also a holdover from a much older cultural assumption that divides the work environment into labor and management: people who do the work, and the people who direct and supervise them. This division of labor is based on any number of assumptions: that people who perform work are incapable of shaping, directing and monitoring their own work, that formal leadership is preferable to informal leadership amongst work groups, that the direction of work is more highly valued than the work itself.

In all of these assumptions, some things are useful and some things are not, and each business works out for itself what is and isn’t. For instance, most businesses find that designating a small group of leaders with shared goals enables the alignment necessary for the business to achieve its goals. Although it is probably not impossible to align a large population of self-directed employees, it’s surely much more difficult.

I’m not interested in discarding these assumptions, or even trying to disprove them. I do want to point out, though, that these are decisions that people have made or unconsciously accepted. If there are consequences we don’t like, it is within our power to make other decisions.

Like any assumptions, these can be challenged. What would be possible if we did?