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
More and more you hear about leaders having lots of direct reports. For example, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (which is now valued at >$3 Trillion), has 40+ direct reports.
Brian Chesky proudly states that he tries to manage most of Airbnb’s teams more or less directly so that he can provide direct input without too much getting lost in translation.
It is a trend. And it’s a trend that I consider myself to be a part of. I’ve managed 40+ people direct at various points in the past few years and having experienced how it works… and I can say honestly that i’m a major fan.
But it does require systems and a different way of managing.
Plus it completely changes the notion of a ‘manager’.
And rather I think the traditional notion of a manage is dead and we should put the RIP headstone on it. Because the tools and way that modern companies operate has changed a lot.
In this article I will explain what I mean and make my argument.
What is a manager?
Think about this question… what is a manager?
Most folks would answer something like… “It is the person that sets my priorities, gives me feedback, and evaluates how I perform.”
This is more or less what I would have said years ago.
Now ask yourself…. do you really need one?
What would the world look like if you were to get rid of most of them?
Your gut reaction will probably be to assume that everything would fall into chaos in a company. And if you used the same old systems than I would agree that you would be right.
What are the advantages/disadvantages of having managers?
First think about what are some of the advantages of having a manager? I would list things like:
- Each person in the company is responsible for less people and therefore can focus on each person more
- The people being managed get more direct feedback and mentorship
- There is a check & balance involved in the work that helps improve its quality
- There is a single person that is responsible for understanding each person’s work and evaluating their performance
Now let’s think about some of the disadvantages:
- Managers add a layer of communication that acts a bit like the childhood game of ‘telephone’. Meaning as a top-level strategy gets translated downwards, it will change its form with each manager it gets translated through.
- Managers have their own agendas and have some incentive to shield or take credit for the work of talented folks underneath them
- A bad manager will reduce the quality of the work of the folks underneath them because they have leverage over them
- Generally more managers slow execution down as it adds layers
Can you create a system that keeps the advantages while removing the disadvantages?
This to me is the key question when you think about this whole thing from pure first principles.
And I think you can.
I’ve been iterating on systems that aim to do exactly this. And while they are not perfect, I do think they have gotten very close to achieving exactly this.
Meaning that you remove layers of management, but keep the benefits of having managers.
Also, I would add that this is particularly relevant to the companies that have taken the step of going remote.
The way that you manage in a remote world where your team is spread across numerous time zones needs to be quite different from traditional management methods.
The system I use to remove managers
I’ve talked a lot in the past about how I use the ‘everything is a task’ method with Clickup. Basically literally everything anyone does in the company is represented by a task that describes why and what it is that we are doing.
These tasks are assigned to someone and are organized into a tree-like structure of folders and lists.
Also, very important is that you add all relevant followers to the task and they get notifications each time it updates.
So I like to view each of these followers as having different roles from which they provide inputs on.
An example of removing managers
Let’s take the example of a tech product (eg. building SAAS) and a product manager is the owner of the task.
And let’s say that it is my company and I consider myself the product visionary or the ‘CPO’.
Then I will comment on the task from this perspective and make sure that the task, which is perhaps a new feature, will be executed in a way that fits my vision.
Meanwhile there might be a designer, or head of design, who is following the task and will provide feedback from a design perspective.
Then there might be the engineer that will execute it who is commenting from an engineering perspective.
None of us are really the person’s ‘manager’ but rather we are all providing feedback from our unique perspectives. And I have found this to be so much better than having a single ‘manager’ who is in a leveraged position to dictate things.
So how do you make up for what you lack by not having a manager?
Well think about it… each person is getting a ton of high quality feedback.
And there is a very strong ‘check & balance’ on each person’s work because all of the key stakeholders that are copied in are expected to chime in on a card if they don’t think it is done well.
Each person is also getting plenty of direction as to their priorities. For example, if it is my company everyone will just align with me directly on what they should be working on.
And therefore alignment is amazing because I know exactly what everyone is working on and can easily keep us aligned to a single direction.
You also don’t have middle managers ‘re-interpreting’ what the priorities are.
How to evaluate someone’s performance
In terms of performance evaluation, I typically drive this process but it is made very easy via transparency.
For each person you just do a filter in Clickup for all of the tasks that they completed in a given time period and perhaps assign points to them.
Then you count up all the points by person and calibrate against other team members, while also taking into account their level and the quality of the work that was completed.
Plus in some cases I might want to also account for some metrics that reflect the results, and I will just make this call myself.
Another one that I use is ‘responsiveness’, which reflects how well the person responded to others’ comments in a timely way. Something that is very clear when you look at the comment history on tasks.
Ok, but can this scale?
You are probably thinking… “Ok Ken.. I can see how you manage a team of say 40-50 people like this… but I don’t think this scales beyond that.”
And of course I would need to fully disagree with you.
I think this stuff layers beautifully.
You can have a CEO / Founder that perhaps manages 30-40 people direct… but then you create additional leadership roles for areas where the CEO is not strong.
For example I am a product person and would probably want to manage the product & engineering team direct. But I don’t like spending that much time in areas like Finance or Marketing.
So I can hire functional leaders for those areas that will also start to have up to 30-40 people they are managing directly.
The key is a senior, strategic leader having direct oversight over an area where they are relatively strong/passionate. But having as few management layers as possible.
When you only have a few key leaders in an org of say 150 people that have everyone else reporting direct to them with complete transparency on all the tasks… you will be surprised at just how lightning fast that org can move and shift directions.
If you do this correctly… I think you will end up agreeing with me.
