Ethan Evans: observation

Transcript context

…Yeah, I think that your point about your goal doesn't have to be promotion. It could be work on a different part of the org, try something totally... Maybe transition to a new function that could be part of your goal. Awesome. Okay, so along the same lines of career progression, you work with a lot of senior manager types, kind of the level of L7 and one M2-ish, and you share with me that one of the most frustrating parts of their job in that specific portion of their career is they get stuck at that level and they don't move up, and it becomes really annoying, and they're not sure how to break out of that. What advice you share with folks like that, that may be listening? Yeah, so it's common to get stuck there, and there are a few reasons for it. First, there are a lot of senior managers. If you think of your average director, they may have six to eight reports. How many more directors are needed? So there's a choke point. Second, that choke point is worse in the current economy, and in the past maybe a lot of companies, Amazon, Google, apple, etc., were growing very rapidly. And so it wasn't just you were waiting for some other director to leave. The teams were getting bigger. I experienced this at Amazon, where over a nine-year period I went from managing six people to 800. And so I went from a senior manager all the way to a vice president, and I described I was, in some sense just riding the elevator. The elevator was going up, and as long as I managed to stay on it, I was going to arrive at vice president. But the other thing that causes people to get stuck is the difference between a senior manager and a director is how you lead and the work you're doing. And you can get as far as senior manager by being really strong in your function and being really good at getting things done. As a director, and as a VP beyond that, it becomes much more about influence, coordination with others, and letting go of being in all the details yourself. And so senior managers really have to change some behavior. I often reference the book by Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Not only because it's a great book classically on this problem, but because the title tells the story. All the great traits that got you to this one level won't get you to the next level where you're more expected to be thinking in strategic terms, thinking longer term. So to someone that may be in that role today and they're not moving up, is there anything they can do? This point about just there's no roles for you, there's only so much you can do there, is the advice just wait until an opportunity arrives? Is it run this Magic Loop until something happens? Is there anything you can do?…

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