Coach Pāṇini ®“Learn, unlearn, relearn. Never be right about everything. Remain humble. Always be open. Show up excited to learn. Don't treat your team like a bunch of serfs. And remember, what people say about you when you're not in the room is more true than the annual company survey.”
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https://www.linkedin.com/posts/geoffreycolon_the-one-sentence-i-used-to-hear-all-the-time-activity-7328125772051705856-KqSB
The one sentence I used to hear all the time that will continue to shrink… | Geoffrey Colon
The one sentence I used to hear all the time that will continue to shrink over time is: "I want to be a manager." I think people will want to continue to manage people but the opportunities? Becoming few and far between now. With the layoffs and cuts across companies targeting middle management and the recent one from two tech companies basically making it so senior titles have to have 15 to 20 direct reports in their new "spans and layers" model, the day of becoming a manager operating a team is diminishing. I have two tales of this from the recent past and it may help many of you reading this. 1. Manager A. Good manager, kept the team to a minimum of headcount, prioritized what the company had to do in terms of revenue and perception. Was an IC themselves leading by example that you can't just "manage" in a world of AI and automation. You have to contribute too. Great team morale and really helped keep things moving. Said AI would make everyone have to "experiment more." When I asked them if they ever could be an IC again by default they said, "Whatever I need to adapt to, I'll adapt." 2. Manager B. Terrible manager. Maybe the worst in my career. Never showed up to the meetings they were invited to. Just wanted a fiefdom where they kept acquiring headcount for a possible promotion. Toxic. Was not an IC and could not speak to the higher level areas of subject matter expertise. Was at the company for like 30 years but still had no clue what they sold. Had their admin do everything for them. Said AI would be a gamechanger but never tinkered with any of it. Terrible team morale. Said one time in a meeting, "I'm a manager, I don't do the work, I manage the people." What you can takeaway from this is this: when we say agile, think of Manager A. Go with the flow. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. Do the work. Have skin in the game. You're a true manager just not by old school definitions. You may not be managing any direct reports but people will look up to you across the business. Manager B is a prime example of what Yuval Noah Harrari noted as a member of the "useless class." Don't be that. Learn, unlearn, relearn. Never be right about everything. Remain humble. Always be open. Show up excited to learn. Don't treat your team like a bunch of serfs. And remember, what people say about you when you're not in the room is more true than the annual company survey.
