This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage companies execute faster and cheaper. Check out his linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenleaver/
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
Have you ever had a manager that protected you? I bet you remember this manager very fondly.
I definitely had a couple of managers that protected me in the past and it is a good feeling to know that your manager has your back.
But I’ve also seen some managers who almost felt like their core value add was this protection.
Because they are very strong relationship people with good communication skills and so they essentially leverage this asset to move up in the organization.
The problem is that their strategy and execution skills are often lacking. At least with a couple of the examples that I have experienced.
And so today I want to delve into this topic.
Why do managers need to protect their team members?
Have a think about this question. Think about some instances in your past when your managers protected you.
What was the situation? What were the circumstances that led to them needing to protect you?
I thought a bit about this recently for myself.
For example one time there was a big tech project that ran late. And so I communicated some of the reasons for why it was running late to my manager. Who in turn communicated it up to the CEO.
Could I have communicated it directly? Yes.
Would it have made much difference? Probably not.
But in some organizations the CEO is a pretty aggressive type and so only a certain type of person can report direct to them. A person with thick skin and confident, clear communication.
So what happens is that only the people with these characteristics even want to report to a CEO like this. And a person who might be more intelligent and make better decisions will happily report to a person like this in order to avoid having to report to the CEO direct.
The problem with this is that the less intelligent person who is reporting to the CEO because of his communication is still typically the one making the decisions.
So you essentially have a situation where the most qualified people are not making your most important decisions.
Don’t think it happens? Trust me…. that shit happens ALL THE TIME.
But why was this indirect communication necessary?
Generally, the answer is because managers do not typically have more than 6-7 direct reports. And therefore the less directs someone has, the more layers the organization has.
It’s just math.
But what if instead of 6-7 direct reports, each manager had 40 reports. Well let’s see.
Say your organization is 250 people. Then with an average of 6 direct reports per person, you will have a situation that looks like this:
CEO > 6 directs > 36 directs > 207 directs
But imagine an org that instead has 30 direct reports per person. A 250 person org will now look like this:
CEO > 30 directs > 219 directs
You have removed a layer. And as things get larger you will often have removed another layer or two.
Meaning that each communication up happens more directly.
And note that with each layer communication will get slightly scrambled like in the child’s game of telephone. In fact, it will probably get even more scrambled because managers will have their own biases (trying to make themselves look good, etc).
So which CEO do you want to be? The one that has biases from a single layer of management or from three?
Obviously less is better!
What if you had a system where this wasn’t necessary?
If you agree with me to this point that less layers of management means less distortion in communication, then the question becomes how do you achieve it without having other negative repercussions?
Well, what are these repercussions? Let’s define them.
The assumption of most experienced managers will be that it is impossible to manage 30 direct reports well. And so the quality of management will drop off a cliff.
But this is where I will disagree based on experience. Quality of management will drop off a cliff if you don’t have a great system of management.
If, however, all the tasks of all your reports were in a system like Clickup and organized into a nice layered structure… than I have found that managing 30 directs is more than manageable.
You just need to be following the tasks that are relevant to you and keeping your inbox clean. Plus you need to pull yourself out of all the useless recurring meetings in order to give yourself the time to stay on top of it.
And if you’re the CEO and you have 30 directs who in turn have 219 directs… then you need to be following all of the relevant tasks of your 30 directs.
Basically your directs can use their judgment and tag you on everything that they think is relevant to you.
Then as they do their work they will comment on these tasks with updates and sometimes ask questions of the CEO to help get direction. The CEO cleans his inbox several times a day ensuring that every question gets a response within a couple of hours.
I bet it sounds absolutely nuts to most traditional managers to try to manage like this.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work my friend.
My experience is that not only does it work.. but it blows the old way out of the water!
I now consider organizations where managers need to ‘protect’ their teams to be dysfunctional
So back to the main theme of the article about managers that protect their teams. If you think about the system I’m proposing you will begin to understand how this is absolutely not necessary.
The entire nature of the CEO has changed.
The CEO is a person that is sitting by himself behind his computer clearing notifications on his Clickup inbox the majority of the day. LOL
He is not a guy that you need protection from.
If something is relevant to him, you just tag him in. He sees it within a couple of hours and responds.
No waiting for the update meeting the following week. You address bad news as soon as it starts.
And if he wants to understand what is going on a level below him better.. he just clicks into the kanban of that team and sifts through it himself.
Complete transparency because everything is a task in this org!
Sayonara dinosaur manager!
Think of the manager who had a solid career ‘protecting’ his team members in the past and is now forced to manage according to this new flatter system.
His old function of ‘protection’ has essentially disappeared.
And he will be evaluated for what truly counts. Does he make good decisions and does he get shit done with his team consistently?
That is all. The smartest, most efficient warrior wins.
Not the warrior who knows how best to talk to the King.
Not convinced?
Well.. this is one of those things that are very hard to convince a person till they have actually tried it.
So be brave. Give it a try.
It will be hard at first.
But after you get it working, I think you’ll conclude the same thing I did.
That it just works much better.
