About halfway through this article I got to thinking: what if we measured reward as not just pay, but also responsibility. But no, I don’t mean “give this person more agency over others.” I mean “give this person more ability to execute on their own terms within the company.”
Let’s say I’m an employee at company X. And I notice employee Anna is not just good at her work but also seems to have a keen understanding of working on things that deliver real, actual value to the company. I, along with others, say “this one… this one ‘gets it.’”
What should an exec want to do with her? Give her more projects? Well, no, because she probably won’t like to work on the stupid bullshit execs or PMs come up with.
How about make her a manager? In all likelihood, she won’t like that either, especially if she’s competent. We bring in PMs to deal with collaboration and coordination when the engineers get too busy doing actual work.
So let’s just let her build shit. Let’s trust her to dig into the product, grab some people, and make things that customers will love.
Let’s make her the CEO of her own little startup within the company. She can provision services and hardware. She can get licenses. Basically take roadblocks out of her way so she can just keep making to her heart’s content.
That’s how you promote. That’s how you build value.
Let’s say I’m an employee at company X. And I notice employee Anna is not just good at her work but also seems to have a keen understanding of working on things that deliver real, actual value to the company. I, along with others, say “this one… this one ‘gets it.’”
What should an exec want to do with her? Give her more projects? Well, no, because she probably won’t like to work on the stupid bullshit execs or PMs come up with.
How about make her a manager? In all likelihood, she won’t like that either, especially if she’s competent. We bring in PMs to deal with collaboration and coordination when the engineers get too busy doing actual work.
So let’s just let her build shit. Let’s trust her to dig into the product, grab some people, and make things that customers will love.
Let’s make her the CEO of her own little startup within the company. She can provision services and hardware. She can get licenses. Basically take roadblocks out of her way so she can just keep making to her heart’s content.
That’s how you promote. That’s how you build value.