What are the similarities and differences of managing a few or many? What advice would you give to the newly promoted? What will be similar? What is going to change?

The Similarities

Managers always work with and through the cooperation of others. Management at any level counts on a proper organization of work and on the competencies of others to be successful. Management of many simply exaggerates and makes this fact more obvious.

Technology may enhance our power to speak, and we have the means to issue directives to a billion people, but technology cannot make it possible to listen to a billion individuals. We will never listen to, read an email or a book, or see news stories or movies featuring most of the people alive on the planet today. (Do the math! 15 minutes listening time per person multiplied by only 100,000 people takes how many years at a dedicated 40 hours/week???) Proper organizational structure and division of labor makes it possible for leaders of few or many to listen to the right things at the right time.

If the organizational structure is sound, all managers deal with approximately the same number of direct reports and peers. I discussed this with a Parris Island Marine Colonel who put it this way: “The Corp develops leadership throughout the organization, training individuals to step forward into the next tier of responsibility. Although I am responsible for more than a thousand soldiers, I spend most of my time working closely with about a dozen other people, and so does a squad leader.”

The Differences

As managers are promoted to higher and higher levels of responsibility, there will be two key differences:

1. What is directly perceivable or ‘self-evident’ to the junior manager becomes increasingly abstract at higher levels. The reverse is also true! Each must think about what the other simply sees.

The “view from thirty thousand feet” is a metaphor often used to dismiss the CEO’s perspective for being blind to the so-called “facts on the ground”, but the view from four feet has weaknesses as well. The fact is, from the two perspectives, each observer “sees” what the other must understand abstractly.

2. With each promotion, a manager’s role in an organization involves more strategic decisions and fewer tactical decisions.

(1A) Risk Becomes Real

It is difficult for many entry-level managers to incorporate risk-analysis in their decision-making. It is so abstract and it doesn’t seem to possess the power of reality.

Suppose spare tires were options when you purchased your first car. “Take it.” The dealer would advise. “You’ll need it, if you have a flat!” Suppose you don’t buy the spare, and in ten years of 6000 mile-per-year driving you never had the predicted flat tire. What conclusions would you draw?

Good management practices in small organizations often work on the management and reduction of risk; but if risks are small, good habits often go un-rewarded and bad habits often go unpunished.

A capability study, for example, may calculate an increased risk of scrap if a process is operated while SPC analysis shows “out of control”. Some managers choose to flaunt the statistical warnings and press on, avoiding scrap on their ‘watch’ by luck of the draw.

The manager of many is subject to the discipline of large numbers. The abstract “risk” in small numbers approaches a tangible certainty as the numbers increase. Both true and the mistaken principles underlying actions will have many more opportunities to manifest their consequences. This calls for a small revision of an old warning, “Be careful what you ask for, in small numbers you risk getting it; in large numbers you will.”

This “large number” effect applies to the many unlikely but possible adversities and tragedies of life and work. For example, the manager of many will more likely encounter difficult employee issues. Many managers of ten may “dodge this bullet” for a year or even five. The biggest risk for the newly promoted is the failure to deal directly, rationally, and decisively with the unpleasant when it inevitably arises.

(1B) The tangible labors of the business become abstract to the manager of many.

It becomes impossible to understand a very large business by just looking. The work must be conceptualized.

Properly done, process dependencies and management metrics tell the manager of ten what they are seeing with their own eyes, but for the manager of many, conceptual tools are the only way to grasp the current state of the business.

The newly promoted manager must strive to master the appropriate tools of their position, and not simply imitate the motions of their predecessor. They also need to learn to detect flawed "legacy" reports that are actually ‘floating abstractions”; i.e. conceptual fantasies that claim to describe the current state of the business, but actually have no connection to reality.

(2) At higher levels, decisions are increasingly Strategic.

With each promotion, a manager’s role in an organization involves more strategic decisions and fewer tactical decisions. Some reflection on the division of labor in decision-making is in order. Are you ultimately responsible for the commercial success of a product or product family? Do you manage the supporting engineering and project departments necessary to build and modify the processes of your business? Or, are you expected to run the existing processes as correctly and consistently as possible?

The top leadership of an organization is responsible for its Policy, the integrating idea of what the company will be and what it will do. Strategic decision makers are responsible for goals, the evaluation of risk, and for the identification and operational funding of necessary project objectives and process capabilities.

Within the constraints of operational funding, tactical decision makers are responsible for a) the correct and consistent execution of projects, b) the correct and consistent operations of business processes.

A Final Piece Of Advice to the newly promoted manager...

It is a mistake to think that your last job has "prepared" you for the new job. It may have prepared you to succeed in new work, if you are prepared to continue to learn. The competencies you have perfected in your last job are for perfect for just that – your last job. The policy of learning something new every day is increasingly important with each promotion. It can help you can beat the “Peter Principle”, the pattern of promotion beyond productiveness.