The hardest leap to make in leadership

By First Round Capital

Categories: VC, Startup

Summary

The hardest leap for leaders is going from a frontline manager to a manager of managers. To succeed, you need to design a system, identify key metrics and leading indicators, and empower your team to be excellent individual contributors - not just become a 'super IC' yourself.

Key Takeaways

1. Frontline managers have 7 direct reports on average and are very hands-on, but managers of managers need to shift away from being involved in every deal and product review.
2. Identify the key metrics and leading indicators you need to track to know when things are off track, and design forums to regularly review them.
3. Understand who your key people are and find ways to keep a pulse on what's actually happening through them, rather than trying to be involved in everything yourself.
4. Avoid the trap of just continuously becoming a 'super IC' - instead, empower the people around you to be excellent individual contributors as well.
5. The shift from frontline manager to manager of managers requires designing new systems and processes, rather than just scaling what has worked for you individually so far.
6. As a manager of managers, your job is to oversee the system and key people, not get involved in every detail - you need to trust and empower your team.

Topics

• Scaling Leadership
• Management Transition
• Metrics & KPIs
• Empowering Teams
• Organizational Design

Transcript Excerpt

One of the biggest leaps in leadership to make is going from a frontline manager to a second line manager. Frontline manager, you got to learn to delegate and got comfortable with that. But you're going to, you know, seven direct reports on average, like you're pretty darn hands-on. When you get to manager of managers, you can't now go and be in every deal, be in every product review, all that type of stuff. And so you now have to design a system. You have to understand what are the metrics that...