The Divisional team as of February 2021 :) We need a new team photo.

When I used to think about career building, it was always “I want to be the best at X”. For me, that’s growth marketing, but for others it might be sales, venture capital, engineering, etc. I looked for opportunities that would maximize my exposure to new problems and new skills (i.e. master the T-Shaped Marketer).

Recently, I realized that being the best at something doesn’t always align with building my career, and that there are diminishing marginal returns in trying to go deeper on a given skill. Very quickly, those looking to build a career need to decide whether they’ll stay as Individual Contributors (IC), or shift to the Manager mindset.

In this post, I’ll break down my transition from IC to Manager. Quick summary:

Gaining responsibility often means managing people
Delegation is necessary due to lack of bandwidth and/or expertise
Your employees need enough context to do their job well, including having the right expectations for what the outcome should look like
Building process is necessary to growing an organization and having parts of the organization (your team) run without you
You don’t need to be a great manager to be successful, but you do need to acknowledge it

Career aspirations: what do you want to be?

Looking back at my college experience, I always thought of career progression as getting more responsibility. I’ll start as a Growth Intern, progress to being a Growth Marketer (IC), and then a Growth Marketing Manager. Eventually, I’ll gain enough responsibility to lead the growth function as the coveted ‘Head of Growth’. One question I asked myself during college was “how could I start as a Growth Marketing Manager VS an entry-level position?”.

I believe this mentality carries weight outside the startup world as well. The goal is always to gain experience, which leads to more responsibility, bigger titles, and more compensation. However, I rarely asked myself “what is required of a Head of Growth?”.

I’ve seen many people make the mistake of thinking that being the 1st growth hire at a startup means that you are, by default, the ‘Head of Growth’. In reality, the idea of being the lead/manager of something implies that there are other components of that function aside from yourself. The ‘Head of Sales’ at an early-stage startup is an Account Executive unless they also manage other people (i.e. a Business Development Rep, or BDR).

Think about a startup that has 50 employees and a Growth team of 4 people. The Head of Growth oversees that team and runs growth for the company — this likely means setting the budget / goals per quarter and the strategy on how they’ll meet those goals. Assuming there are many campaigns required to execute on that strategy, it’s unlikely that the Head of Growth is executing on all of them. In fact, it’s likely that the Head of Growth needs to delegate the execution of those strategies to their team of 4 people.

What makes a good manager?

Delegation is a tricky thing. For a long time, especially as a freelancer, I took pride in executing on strategies. I felt that I could write better copy, manage channels, and overall do better work than other people. However, I realized that I would always be blocked by two things:

Bandwidth — If I have 40 hours in the work week, I can only execute on so many things. Soon, in order to take on more work and grow in responsibility, I would need to rely on other people.
Expertise — The T-Shaped Marketer concept holds true for a reason; it’s hard for someone to be an expert at everything. Sure, I can run a growth campaign that spans multiple channels but it’s unlikely that all elements of my campaigns will be better than if they were execute someone who has expertise in that specific area.

Therefore, delegation is a necessity. To delegate well, I needed to be a good manager. This meant giving the right amount of context, setting expectations, and building process so that my direct reports would be able to execute to the level that I wanted them to. Let’s dive into each of those concepts in more detail.

#1 Giving enough context

Our brains are hardwired in a “do” mentality. You are given a task / problem, and your gut reaction is “how do I execute this well”. In shifting from IC to Manager, you need to ask yourself different questions when looking at a set of problems. This might include:

Who has the skills to complete this task well?
What could go wrong with their execution of this task?
How much time do they need to complete this task?

In each of these areas, there are ways for a manager to make a mistake. Failing to delegate to someone with adequate skills means that the task won’t be completed properly. Forgetting to set fail safes / checks means that even someone who can do the job well is still prone to making mistakes and producing a suboptimal outcome. Lastly, budgeting an insufficient amount of time for a task means that your direct report will have trouble hitting the given deadline, or hit it by producing suboptimal work.

To be a good manager, you need to give enough context. When delegating a task, I usually think through these points and include it in the task summary. Recently, I’ve been making Loom videos to capture my thoughts while going through the task, so that there is a lower chance that things will be misinterpreted.

#2 Setting expectations

I’d like to think I have a pretty high bar for the work that I do. Some might relate to the scenario where you do a task, feel like you did a bad job, and then get praise for it being done well. This is a very dangerous feeling to have when shifting to a managerial position. It often leads to outcomes like:

Deliverable A needs to be done in a couple of days but I’m not sure that Person A will do it as I want. I think I’ll just do it myself. If it’s done poorly, I’ll just waste time having to correct it anyways.

Work delegated will often be done worse than if done yourself, especially if it’s the first time. There are many reasons for this, but often it boils down to lacking the right context (see #1) or knowing that people in junior positions to you don’t have the same level of experience, so it won’t be done the same way.

This doesn’t mean that it can’t be done to a certain standard. Good managers know how to set expectations that are reasonable, and give feedback so that suboptimal work can be done better in the future. It may take more time up front, but it’ll pay off in the long run — it’s likely that the person you delegate work to will master it, and even become better at completing it than you are!

#3 Building Processes

I run a growth agency that has grown (haha) to being 12 people. We’ve taken on 6 interns to help with execution, and will be hiring a couple of full-time people in the coming weeks. That’s almost 20 people working as a team.

I won’t be in every Slack message, Zoom meeting, or Asana task card. In fact, one of the biggest challenges was removing myself from client-facing work entirely, by hiring Growth Managers I could trust to lead the engagement. But there’s a crucial mistake that I made early on in this transition: even people you trust won’t do what’s stuck in your head.

I’d like to think of most work like cooking. Let’s say I have an amazing recipe for pork belly tacos (I do). I know all the steps by heart, including how to marinate the pork, the extent to which to blend the chili-lime sauce, and when to start heating up the tortillas so that it’s a perfect meal.

I then tell the recipe to a good friend, who is a talented chef. I explain the recipe and how great it tastes, and encourage that friend to make it. I even buy the ingredients for them, so that they can make it right now!

My friend looks at the ingredients and back at me, putting on an uneasy smile. It’s likely the outcome will be nothing close to what I’m expecting, and worse yet, I won’t be able to explain why since I didn’t given any instructions.

This is similar to management, but not nearly as tasty. A good manager invests in process: writing down how to do something, building checklists, and testing that process with their respective direct reports. The manager gives feedback on areas that can be improved, and tweaks the original process to accommodate for areas they missed (lost context, #1) or what the end product should look like (expectations, #2).

We’re in the middle of this with Divisional, my growth agency. What started as building process for project management in January has blossomed into building process for other members of the team, so that the project management processes are followed. My original Project Manager is our Head of Operations, and manages our Project Manager, who manages the rest of the team. I’d like to think I was a good manager, but managing people who manage other people is a whole different ball game!

Do I need to be a good manager to be successful?

A lot of people suck at management. Everyone complains about having a boss they don’t like, for a multitude of reasons. Some amazing ICs hit career snags when they’re promoted into management positions and can’t keep the team on track. This is the sad reality for most organizations: we tell people that good performance will be rewarded with more responsibility, but don’t teach them how to handle that responsibility.

Thankfully, you don’t need to be a great manager to be successful; but you do need to realize that it might not be a good fit for you. Some of my friends who run other ‘agencies’, actually run ‘consultancies’ — outsourcing 80% of the work but still being the core brains of the operation & client facing. A consultancy can make lots of money and give the freedom that a lot of people crave; your hourly rates go up until you’re strictly advising people for a LOT of money.

Similarly, there are pathways in organizations that reward phenomenal ICs. I learned about Toucan last year, and their ‘Engineering Growth’ system. Great engineers can either progress into being managers / directors, or continue to get more compensation / responsibility as Architects / Chief Architects. I’ve heard recently that this is a more common structure than you’d think (Coinbase, Stripe, other large orgs have them) — accommodating talented people who have different skill sets is key to a successful organization.

Conclusion

I believe that shifting from IC to Manager is the hardest thing to do. While there are many shortcomings in our education system, it usually at least teaches you the theory of how to master a given craft. However, I’ve never seen programs that teach you how to be a good manager. Even MBAs, to my understanding, are meant to give you the fundamentals in business and not how to manage people.

Are you a manager or looking to make the shift? I’d love your feedback on this article and other areas you’d like to read more about.