Many times over my career so far, I’ve opted to work in roles ‘on the edge’, often between established business units or sectors. Serving as a bridge or interface between them. Collaborating and sharing ideas from one context into others. And/or building new functions to galvanise change. Through experience, I’ve honed skills in identifying what inherent assumptions are being made by different parties and where interaction has broken down. In fact, silos in businesses originally develop for good reasons: the given area needs to become more specialised to extract greater value and efficiency, putting in place more procedures, governance and structure to do so. Over time though, it ringfences itself too much, atrophying in place and unable to adapt to changes around it... 

In this article, I explore how established organisations can change successfully, and the stages a new ‘initiative’ or function goes through as it becomes a greater part of how the business operates. Driving adoption of new technologies or approaches across a business (and/or industry) are examples: too early and the sparkle could fizzle out, too late and you’re left far behind. Becoming data-driven or digital-first, say. Another is product development, introducing new solutions (perhaps backed by new organisational capabilities built or bought) to lead the business into the future. 

Successful collaboration requires that we know enough about each of the disparate worlds to build trust with all of them, encouraging them to look up and outwards in pursuit of new opportunities, to make decisions, and to take sustainable action. Helpful skills to galvanise change include: an ability to connect the dots plus technical depth in one or more areas for credibility, communication, relationship building to cooperate across functions, and critical thinking (especially matching a possible solution with a business problem). At a team-level, you want a multi-skilled group, experts from different domains working together with innovation drivers familiar with design thinking and agile methods. 

A significant part of change in a business is about bringing the people along: evangelising a new direction, shifting mindsets, promoting adoption of the new approach/product/service/technology, hosting training & demos… And, these days, a meaningful proportion of my work involves these ‘change management’, ‘transformation’ and modernisation elements. Many people naturally have anxiety about how changes might affect their own careers, and the effort involved in upskilling themselves. I very much believe human intelligence will continue to be needed (in addition to the automation and speed that artificial intelligence can bring) in order to ask questions, identify problems, think of possible answers – perhaps some not encountered before – and create solutions. The visibility of an ‘innovation’ team, and its ongoing business achievements, is crucial to winning hearts and minds. 

The affected people should be part of the process of proposing new ideas – great ones can come from enhancing existing processes as well as exploring emerging technologies and experimenting. And, it’s not really surprising too that an innovation process shares strong similarities with a product development lifecycle: aspects such as concept, feasibility, exploration, experiment, design, pilot, build, pricing, signoff, launch, ongoing management… Many processes include go / no-go gates too where ideas are shelved to focus resources on more promising ones. 

I’ve seen these thoughts play out in different contexts, such as pricing & product development, financial reporting, investment management, and data science & analytics functions. It’s true that change may be prompted by different drivers (regulations, competitors, technology and more…), however, the organisation needs to evolve new ways of working, perhaps new departments or operating models, to respond. Read more to follow along as I unpack how the functions evolve over time / the different phases organisations go through, from early activity to intermediate to advanced, by which stage it becomes business as usual.

It’s well-known that most of us believe we’re above average drivers… So, I expected that we’d also have inflated views of our own management & leadership skills. But, I didn’t expect the gap to be as big as our polls indicate! 

Sadly some managers have never had training on what great management looks like, instead attempting to learn by observing their own managers, perhaps combined with some trial-and-error. So sorry if you were one of the guinea-pigs who experienced failed experiments! Combine that possible lack of training with our inherent self-belief as ambitious people, and no wonder we’re not as good as we think we are! 

A leader recently told me that part of his role as a line manager is to be a 'Career Logistics Officer' for those in his team, and I agree. A fundamental element of managing or leading others is developing them and their careers – and, is a key part of what we help with at Protagion. 

So, it seemed natural to ask our followers on LinkedIn to hear their thoughts on this topic. We ran two polls. The first was aimed at leaders and managers, both those relatively new to managing others, and those more seasoned at it. It asked them to rate themselves on their skills in developing the careers of their team members. The second was aimed at employees looking to give their managers some anonymous collective feedback, and we asked ‘How good is your direct manager at helping you develop your career?’. In both polls, the options were:
    • A+ (or A* to our UK readers)
    • A
    • C
    • F (or U to our UK readers)

The Results
Around 70% of managers/leaders rated themselves as A+ or A i.e. exceptional or very good at developing the careers of their people. This was about 30% more than the proportion of employees who assessed their manager/leader at the same level – in fact, the gap at ‘fail’ level between their perspectives was also about 30%, implying that 3 in 10 employees have managers who they believe fail at developing their careers, while the managers themselves think they’re great. WOW! 

And, yes, these results aren’t scientifically rigorous. There are definitely selection effects at play i.e. who chose to respond, and perhaps, just perhaps, all the self-identified failing managers have bigger teams?!… But, they do offer interesting food for thought. 

So, what can you as a manager/leader do to improve your people’s experience of your skills? 

Tips & further resources for you
If you want to become a better leader or manager, three tips for you:
1) Talk with your team members, understand what’s important to them, and ask them how you can help them to bring their best to the team
2) Work with a leadership coach (such as those available at Protagion) – they’re trained to support you to build your leadership skills
3) Practice different styles and techniques in real settings to assess whether they feel authentic to you, and what their impact on others is, keeping those that work for you and them 

And, for those of you interested in reading further about this topic, we have lots of resources for you at Protagion, like these:

• Advice for Aspiring Leaders
• Managing Others: Concepts from Sports, and Enhancing your Skills
• Conversations of a 'Brilliant Manager': Advice for New or Aspiring Managers
• Encouraging Career Development as a Manager: a ‘Brilliant Manager’ Conversation
• The Micromanagement Menace: Causes and Tips for Employees and Managers 
• Real-life example: talented superstars vs bureaucracy & lacklustre colleagues 
• Persuasion vs Manipulation and their role in encouraging change
• Celebrating our Humanness (on managing change)
• Leading in a Collaborative World
• How can leaders ignite the best thinking in others?

Remember too that management & leadership skills are not only about reading the material or attending the training course. You must put them into regular practice in order to improve: action is fundamental! 

“How do I, as a manager, develop my people for the long-term?” That’s the question I explore in this article. As a leader and manager, over my career so far, this has been one of the most important aspects, if not the most important. Indeed, it is why Protagion exists today – to multiply that positive impact of professional growth and evolution across organisations and countries as much as possible, and inspire more professionals to actively manage their careers.

This is the third article in the series prompted by The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager* by Alan J Sears. The first article covered my thoughts on the book overall and four of the six conversations: coaching, taking responsibility, addressing performance/behaviour, and performance appraisals. The second article focused on delegation as a manager, and applied that conversation framework to the employee perspective too. Read more for the rest of the third article.