How a Promotion Killed a Function
She was marketing's best IC. Eight months after the VP promotion, the function had stopped shipping. Why the IC-to-manager step fails so often.
Angle
Management
9 posts
The 1:1 I Stopped Doing
Weekly thirty-minute slots with seven directs for two years. The first month I deleted them, nobody noticed. The second month, the team got faster.
Your one-on-one is a status meeting in disguise
Thirty minutes a week for eighteen months, opening with the Q3 rollout. The manager had built a standing meeting that wasn't management.
The director with no direct reports
The title was real. The headcount under her was zero. She'd been promoted to run a function she was the only person inside of.
When Everyone Passes, the Review Failed
Forty-seven reviews. Forty-three 'meets,' four 'exceeds,' zero 'below.' The cycle was a calibration exercise that had stopped calibrating.
The PIP Nobody Believed
Sixty days of check-ins and three signed documents produced an outcome the team called on day one. The plan wasn't improvement — it was a record for the file.
Don't promote your best engineer
He was the strongest engineer on the team. You made him a manager. Six months later he's unhappy, the team is slower, and you've got a tier-three manager.
The manager who couldn't fire anyone
He gave the same person the same feedback for fourteen months. The team learned that consequences were a rumor.
The hire who stops asking questions is gone in nine months
A new hire who stops asking questions in week three isn't adapted. They've started running the math on leaving.