Being a manager role isn’t just about a pay bump. In fact, many of our professional roles are paid more highly than our manager roles. It’s important for a person in a manager role to be interested in the role itself—which involves helping their team members to succeed and grow beyond one’s own capabilities—versus becoming a manager “to be in control” or “for the money.” A good percentage of your time will be spent on helping team members to be happier and better at what they do, often to the point where they may outgrow you in terms of skill and pay.
Competition happens at the product level. Customers don’t care about the plotting or strategy of managers and leadership. They care about the product and how much progress it will bring to their goals. In addition, they care about how convenient it is to use something, which again, is at the product level, i.e. the front lines. The front lines know more about the product than anyone else. They are closer to the customer, too. Success is all about the product and about the people who are closest to it.
At Tofugu, at least right now, management is one layer above those front lines (the independent contributors who are building said product for our learners). The manager’s job is to create more value than they cost, by supporting and helping the front lines to do more of what they do, better. This comes in many varieties, but the message is clear: a manager’s job is to create more value via their colleagues than they are costing, otherwise the management role probably doesn’t need to exist yet. That’s why some teams can be smaller, or self-manage, while others may get managers. We think that by adding a manager to a team, there is a potential to increase value by that much or (hopefully) much more.
Although we expect all of our manager roles to have competency in some of the areas they’re working in, and to be able to fill in for team members when needed, a manager’s role is inherently less hands-on.
Instead of just doing the work, the goal as a manager should be to help team members to do more, and to do those things at a higher and higher level. You want your team members to specialize and improve their skills beyond your own. If your skills start to fall behind those of the colleagues on your team, that’s a good sign you’re doing a good job in the manager role.
Manager roles are not just about training people how to execute a task. You’re developing them to represent Tofugu’s values and principles, and produce at our high values.
Your goal is to make sure that all the things that don’t bring progress to the team’s work are getting done. This can be matching team members with the right kinds of work, based on their talents and knowledge. It can be helping teammates to gain knowledge or skills that they don’t have. It’s writing documentation. It’s a lot different things.
Manager roles deal with varying levels of HR-related issues as well. It’s an inevitable part of the work, and it’s complex. If you’re doing your job right, someone will likely disagree with a decision you made that directly affects them. Or, someone will have an issue with someone else. It’s up to you to figure out how to navigate those kinds of problems while representing Tofugu and its values and principles.
You have to be able to say no to a lot of things so that everyone stays laser focused on the things that will bring the company and team progress. Being able to distinguish between what is progress driving and what is not is an important skill you’ll need to develop. You’ll also need to make decisions about where a team is spending its time. By spending time in one area, you’re not spending it in another. So what will bring that progress?