How can I move Individual Contributors into management faster?

 Beware! Every executive (2,000+) I’ve worked with has seen a good technical Expert ruined by promotion into management. Beware and Be Aware of the four basic commonly occurring Career Concepts, Linears, Experts, Spirals, and Transitories. (Driver and Brousseau at USC identified these 4+ decades ago, yet amazingly so many manager/executives are clueless about them.

Each Career Concept has associated with it some core VABEs and a definition of ‘success.’ They are for

1. Linears: “I can get more done by organizing others” and “moving up.”
2. Experts: “If you want it done right, do it yourself” and “craftsmanship/artisanship.”
3. Spirals: “I’d rather give up power and status in order to keep learning” and “constant learning.”
4. Transitories: “I work to support my true passion in life” and “having enough to follow my true passion.”

Many firms are full of Experts: consulting, engineering, universities, construction, music, entertainment and more. It’s not that easy to search among all those Experts and find a few who are budding Linears. Don’t be too eager to promote Individual Contributors (from Dalton and Thompson’s work Four Stages of Professional Careers) into management before you assess their ability and desire to do so.

Society/the Media emphasize the Linear model. This is what appears in the WSJ and Fortune as the success we all want. Not true. Linears make the mistake of believing (VABE) that everyone is or should be like them. I had a client once to whom I’d introduced these concepts and the COO slammed his fist down on the table and said, “NO! If the janitor in this company doesn’t aspire to be the CEO we should fire his ass out of here! That’s the American Dream! You pick yourself up by your bootstraps and climb as high as you can!” That’s a mistaken, ego-centric view of management.

Organizations with high proportions of Linears are cut-throat, dog-eat-dog places where collaboration and cooperation suffer. Wise executives will consider the proper strategic MIX of career concepts for their industry and strategies. For example, if one is in a cyclical expand/contract industry, one could appropriately hire X% of Transitories (where X is the industry historical % of contraction and expansion) so that when the next contraction arrived they would know that the X% of Transitories would be happy to leave to pursue their passions (sailing around the world, climbing the Himalayas, whatever) for a while and then come back. I know of a nurse whose passion was seeing the world. She’d work for six months, save up, then hike/hitchhike for months till she ran out of money, then take another nursing (always in demand) job wherever she was.

Each Career Concept adds value to the organization. Linears give ambition, drive, organization while Experts give craftsmanship, quality, productivity, Spirals give fresh ideas, innovation, creativity, and Transitories give flexibility.

No one is all one or the other, rather we all have a mix of Career Concepts. I’ve developed a rough self-assessment tool and posted it on my website in the Managing Careers section:

Managing Careers by Finding Fit

What’s the best way to make your next career decision? Many people make these decisions on a “try-and-see” mindset based on salary and gut feel.  The trial-and-error method can be very costly in terms of finances, time and career growth. These are big decisions, and there is a better way.  The core concept is that career success is a function of goodness-of-fit between who you are and the demands of the jobs you take.  Do you know who you are? How accurate is your gut feel? I learned to teach Self-Assessment and Career Development (SACD) from the award-winning developers of the course at the Harvard Business School. After writing the 2nd and 3rd editions of that book, I have assembled here the theory and the assessments that can guide you to making a data-based rational decision that is a better FIT for who you are.  This is a time-tested, proven process for making much better career decisions. Most students have told me that their Life Themes Lists haven’t changed in 30 years.  Think of your hand as your Life Themes List and a glove as the demands that a job will make on you.  If you fit the glove better, you will perform better. People vary widely in how much they are willing to invest in their career decisions.  So, there are three different levels of investment you can make in your future career decisions: Quick and easy (one day but less accurate and less comprehensive), Moderate (two weekends creates more data and more accuracy), and Thorough (a month of focused effort that produces a solid, data-based description of who you are) You decide how much data you want to generate and analyze. This system is fully available in my book FindingFit at Darden Business Publishing for $6.95.  The book is a 90 page PDF file with active links for about 20 self-assessment tools, a guided description of how to summarize that data into a list of Life Themes that you can use as a template for interviews, for screening employment options, and defining what you want in your career. OR you can purchase the PDF file here for $5.00. Choose the FindingFIT PayPal Button at the bottom, then click FindingFIT Download to download the file. You may have noticed several membership options on the Subscription page If you join the Career Managment Module you will have access to the FindingFIT book, online guidance through the FindingFIT process (see the modules below) plus the text of the 3rd edition of Self-Assessment and Career Development (SACD). Alternatively, you can also download the Career Option Workbook (COW) for free and navigate it on your own without the guidance of the FindingFit Workbook or the FindingFIT modules below. The Career Option Workbook is an Excel workbook with active links and 15+ self-assessment tools.  The COW is a single repository for your career management data and decision-making– and you may need some guidance to work through it. Our Program Philosophy explains the underlying assumptions about this process. Four Modules in the Career Manag

https://nadobimakoba.com/managing-careers/

Open the Career Option Workbook and find the Career Concepts (on-line, Qualtrics, free) instrument.

SO, beware of trying to move independent contributor’s as fast as you can to the next level. Find ways first of assessing every individual’s main career concept and utilizing their talents accordingly. Way too often, wonderful contributors have been ruined by promotion into management. That’s bad for the individual AND the company.

In one client workshop an engineer came up to me after class and asked “Why don’t Linears listen?” Tell me more. “I’ve only been here six months. I worked for our major competitor. Because I did a good job they kept putting me in high-potential leadership development programs. I kept saying I don’t want to be a manager, I just want to do a good job and go home. They didn’t listen, so I came here—and it’s only been six months and here I am again pushed into your leadership development program!!!”

Beware.