Chief Cook or Manager?
February 18, 2008
When I was 16, I worked at The Beach Waterpark. By the end of my first summer, I was promoted to a “Lead Sales” position. This was one step below “Supervisor” and I really wanted to be a Supervisor. In order to move up, I took on any assignment that I was given. I moved around a lot and I learned from my Supervisor all the necessary tasks (like timesheets, money management, scheduling, etc.) and by the end of the second summer, I was promoted. Once I made it to Supervisor, it became my job to start identifying the next person that should become the next Lead Sales.
I worked in the largest food stand in the park. Things that were important in that stand were effeciency, cleanliness and timeliness. Essentially, we needed to serve the customers quickly, get them the right order, and keep the place clean. So, who to promote? Which of those qualities were most important and which would get you promoted quickly. The truth? None! What I learned when I was 17 was that just because you were great at your job, did not mean that you would be great at managing people. By promoting our fastest, cleanest, most efficient cook, we had to teach someone (who wasn’t interested), how to do timesheets, balance a cash drawer and order inventory. Now I had 2 problems:
1. I was 1 cook short and
2. My cook had no interest in cash drawers, inventory and timesheets.
I have found that the IT industry has similar challenges. We want to recognize and reward our best employees with advancement, but the only track available is typically to advance into management. For most technologists, this is not interesting or rewarding and we lose the best architect or developer in the process. Seems to me that we need to recognize that the advancement path for a technical person is not into management (most of the time). So what is the right path? It seems to me that a truly technical person wants to be recognized for their accomplishments and wants to take on bigger technology challenges. How can we make these fit together? Seems to me that there should be a track for that. A track that allows a person to grow into a leadership role that is more creative, challenging and innovative. The trick is to still give them a voice on the senior team, and remove the management responsibility. Is that possible? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
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2 Responses to “Chief Cook or Manager?”
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This challenge is absolutely real, and extremely difficult for organizations. How do you reward your best performers without a.) taking them away from what it is they love and are exceptional at doing b.) losing the front line talent that is helping the company to succeed? Often times talented performers are put into managerial roles only to discover that the skill set and responsibilities of the position are completely incongruent with what they seek. It is tough because on one hand, promotion to management seems to be the natural progression for a career. By not promoting the best performer, you run the risk of losing the best talent. People can feel as if they have been passed over and slighted. On the other hand, promoting someone into a situation that is not a good fit will almost always result in frustration and turnover.
That is where having people deeply involved in the decision making process can be critical. As you say in your post “giving people a voice.” The balance is to find a way to make a job more fulfilling and to continually increase the contribution of the best and brightest, while keeping them in roles that are aligned with their skills. This can only exist in an environment of trust between employee and employer. Both must have an implicit trust that must constantly be reinforced for this to work. It is all about communication. The belief that you can have an open dialog, without fear of negative consequences, is key – star or not. The desire by management to create this blog is testament to LUCRUM’s belief in this idea. Give people a voice, and they will amaze you with what they have to say.
Agreed! I’ve always thought the greatest way to ruin a technology guru is to promote them to management. I’ve often found the bond between stature and direct reports to be mystifying..why can’t a technologist have stature without the burden of delegation?
I agree with your thoughts – an advancement path that does not lead to a management (in the traditional sense) position is optimal. What tech folks want to do:
Learn new technologies
Make decisions on what technologies will be used
Master things
Advise (again – be consulted)
Move technologist out of the cost channel and into the profit channel. Out from under CFO and into the marketing/sales organization. You see, CFO works from a cost perspective – every initiative is about what it costs, and growth to many of these folks is found by way of reduction. Often a scarcity mentality can be found here – generally in sales & marketing you’ll find an abundance mentality – an attitude of ‘Well, if we need it, what will the return be?’ instead of ‘Well, if we need it, what will the cost be?’
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