Episode 87 · 4 April 2024 · 43:59
87: Why managers fail (and how to become a world-class manager) with Dave Kline, MGMT Accelerator
Featuring Dave Kline
87: Why managers fail (and how to become a world-class manager) with Dave Kline, MGMT Accelerator
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The unconventional path to management
interview#management#career-path#leadership
Meet Dave Kline: from bad engineer to management guru
The ultimate goal for managers: efficiency and impact
interview#management#efficiency#impact
The challenges and realities of being a new manager
interview#new-manager#challenges#promotion
What employees really want: purpose over paycheck
The Peter Principle — and why it's unfair to blame the promoted
Red flags of a bad manager
interview#bad-manager#red-flags#management
Why one-on-ones are the 'minimum viable management' essential
Making time for the meetings that matter
interview#time-management#meetings#priorities
Recruiting vs. hiring: building an A-team
interview#recruiting#hiring#talent
The surprising value of community among managers
interview#community#managers#peer-support
The Elon Musk debate: what should we admire in leaders?
interview#elon-musk#leadership#admiration
Show notes
Why Managers Fail (and How to Become a World-Class Manager) — with Dave Kline
Guest: Dave Kline — co-founder of MGMT Accelerator, former engineering leader at Google, and self-described "recovering bad engineer" with over 1,000 performance reviews under his belt.
We promote our best individual contributors into management — and then watch them flounder. Why does this transition go so wrong, and what separates managers who thrive from those who burn out?
Dave joins Al and Leanne to unpack the uncomfortable truth about management: that being great at the work is almost irrelevant to being great at leading the people who do it. Drawing on his journey from struggling engineer to engineering director at Google, Dave shares why the "Peter Principle" is only half the story, what employees actually want (spoiler: it's not a paycheck), and why the "minimum viable management" approach beats heroic over-management every time.
They also get into the difference between recruiting and hiring, why peer learning among managers is the most underrated development tool in business, and — inevitably — whether Elon Musk's leadership style is worth admiring.
Top 3 Takeaways
Management is a new career, not a promotion. Being a great engineer, salesperson, or analyst tells you almost nothing about your ability to lead people. Treat the transition as starting from zero, not as a reward for past performance.
Your job is to enable, not to do. Great managers create environments where people feel valued, understood, and motivated to contribute to a shared mission. If you're still doing the work yourself, you're not managing — you're just doing the work with a new title.
Minimum viable management wins. You don't need to be everywhere, on every call, reviewing every piece of work. What you do need is the right structure — especially regular one-on-ones — that gives people clarity, autonomy, and a sense of progress.
More From Dave Kline
- Follow Dave on X/Twitter: x.com/dklineii
- Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidkline
- Enroll in MGMT Accelerator: maven.com/dave-kline/mgmt-accelerator
- Subscribe to the MGMT Playbook newsletter: mgmt.beehiiv.com
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Dave KlineWe pick our absolute best salesperson, software engineer, A-player. So this person has been wildly successful. That's why we're thinking, oh, wouldn't it be great if they could sprinkle some of their success fairy dust on the rest of the team and we make them a manager? And a lot of times we think of that promotion as the destination, when in reality it's actually the beginning of an entirely new occupation. And the manager sat me down and said, hey, have you, uh, you seen the Godfather trilogy? First question, like, not even like, hey, nice to meet you. But I thought, that's an odd question, but sure, I've, you know, I'm of the age where one would have seen the Godfather trilogy. And he sits back totally relieved. And says, that's so good because 100% of my management philosophy is premised on that, on The Godfather. And it was very much power and loyalty and keeping things within the family. And I thought, I kept waiting for the punchline and it never came. He was dead serious. That's like at a Fortune 500 company. And I'm thinking to myself, wow.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Work podcast. podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottYes, yes, welcome back. If this is your first time, or if you've not listened to us for a couple of, uh, for a couple of weeks, real quickly, you just said Truth, Lies and Work, not Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture. Give us a skinny.
Leanne ElliottSubtle name change, The conversation, 2 episodes a week. Go listen, you'll figure it out.
Al ElliottYou'll also see there's a Tuesday episode, which is a little bit more informal. It's more me and Leanne just shooting the proverbial about, about what's going on in the world of work. Whereas today it is, we're showcasing an expert.
Leanne ElliottYes, we talk a lot about leadership on the podcast, but what about management? Well, today's guest is a thought leader and influencer in the world of management. You can find him on Twitter, or X, dispensing gold to his 100,000 followers. He's a top leadership voice on LinkedIn, and 15,000 leaders and managers get his regular newsletter, the MGMT Playbook, which is packed with practical management insights. And you get that every Wednesday. He is a co-founder of MGMT Accelerator. Is it MGMT or management?
Al ElliottUm, Dave did say this, and he said you can call it management, you can call it management, you can call it MGMT.
Leanne ElliottSo he co-founded MGMT Accelerator with his wife, Marsden, where he runs regular interactive and live sessions to help you develop your own management playbook. So, let's go and meet our guest, Dave Kline, and find out what he is famous for.
Dave KlineWell, I think you were about to tip what I was famous for, which was doing over 1,000 performance reviews at Bridgewater, which, um, I don't know whether I am proud of that or horrified of that, but I know that I have all the battle scars to show for it. So, I don't know, 20 years leading teams. And for the last couple of years, my wife and I, much like you and Leanne, started a business and have been training managers and leaders in the practical tactics to operate teams and get home to see their families.
Al ElliottI think whenever we hear of someone as an expert, we often wonder, do they really know what they're talking about? After all, as Leanne and I were talking before we pressed record, anyone can say they're an expert. But Dave does know what he's talking about. He trained as an engineer, but was always destined to be an amazing manager and leader.
Dave KlineWell, I was a bad engineer. You know, barely, I don't think I quite cracked 3.0 in my university GPA, but I was a pretty good presenter. I was the person who wrote the papers, who did the speaking when we had to do projects. And so, like all good people in 1999 who could turn on a computer, and present well, I went into consulting. And I think if you flash forward through that, it was a progression through being an analyst, being a project manager. Then I went to Moody's. I was there for 10 years and worked myself from the technology side to the business side and grabbed an MBA while I was there. And then probably the part that's most interesting to people was the decade at Bridgewater, which for people who don't know, is the world's largest hedge fund. Ray Dalio is a relatively Yeah. Famous founder, at least in the financial space, the hedge fund space. And if nothing else, it was this idea that he had built from within investing, which is this idea of we systemized investing. It started from when he wrote down early '80s, he was writing down all the trades and bets he was making, then saw, well, what worked and what didn't, distilled those into investment principles, folded those back into a system that compounded over time and became the world's largest hedge fund. And then the thinking was, well, if we can figure out something as complicated as how all money in the world moves around so that we can trade on that intelligence, couldn't we also just systemize management? Couldn't we think about how to assemble teams, how to orchestrate teams, how to measure performance, how to give feedback in ways that were wildly public, et cetera? And so I sort of came in, you know, in sort of years 30 through 40 where That was a big focus and got to move around different parts of the organization and work on a different subset of those tools. How do we develop executives? How do we go find people off of university campus at 22 and turn them into the next CIO 15 years later? Yeah. How do we look at every single psychometric test ever created and try to predict the success of employees? So for me, it was like a second MBA. In terms of what I think has now become a bit of the future of management. Like, a lot of the concepts, while maybe not applied fully in the way that Bridgewater did, you're starting to see them in other companies, right? You're seeing the similar concepts in Netflix and Amazon and others. So, I think it was a great place to really sort of like level up what I was capable of as a leader.
Leanne ElliottDave's MGMT Accelerator builds the capability of managers to be the best in the industry. And he thought he would be attracting established managers. But that turned out not to be the case.
Dave KlineBut we interviewed a few of them. And they were like, no, you have to let me in. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. I've been faking it for half a decade. I've never had a good manager to show me the right way to do things. So I'm just making it up as I go. Back to our point on time, I'm like, I'm still drowning and underwater. And so we, like good engineers, in our very first cohort, we just did an A/B test. We had half brand new managers, And half experienced managers. And the results spoke for themselves on the backend. The NPS scores were exactly the same for new and experienced managers. The value that they got, both groups said 25 times what they paid. And so we sort of scratched off new, called it the Management Accelerator, and went from there. So I remember us sitting around and saying, well, what's the dream outcome for a manager at the typical company, whether that's a startup or or one of the large corporations. And we really kicked around a lot of ideas. Oh, I wanna get promoted. I wanna make more money. Some people, we even polled people and they said like, oh, I wanna have more impact. But what it seemed like it really came down to was all of them had this common bond of not having enough time, that they just, they couldn't quite get the work done they wanted to get done. They couldn't quite invest in the people the way they wanted to. And usually it was their loved ones outside of work who were paying the price for that. And so we thought, well, wow, that would be an amazing dream outcome. Could we make you more impactful and more efficient at work and get you home on time.
Al ElliottSo I wanted to know what Dave actually did discover were the challenges of being a new manager.
Dave KlineOftentimes when you first get promoted as a manager, you got promoted because what you've done really well is say yes, right? Here's a new project. Yes, I'll do it. Here's more work. Yes, I'll do it. Will you stay late? Yes, I'll do it. And I think it's a totally wise strategy. What they don't tell you when you become the manager is that your job is now to say no. And no comes in many forms. No comes in the form of prioritization, right? There's tons of things coming at your team. You have to be the one to say, is this helping our strategy or not? When your boss dreams up this new idea that has nothing to do with the committed plan, you have to be the one to say no, or, hey, yeah, we can take that on, but we're going to now take this thing that was a yes last week and it's going to move out. You still want to do that. And so I think that that would be one thing, which is like, don't underestimate the power of no and realize that's now your job. And then it's almost like a close cousin of saying no, which is I would say to those people, like, it's really hard to change people's character. It's why I think I'm so passionate about getting the recruiting piece right, because you can train skills, People can shadow and figure out functions, and there's lots of that thing you can change. But is someone biased to action? Is someone— do they have that ownership mentality? Are they caring? Are they energy raisers versus energy drains? There's all these things that you can't change that. I think you can't change it in business time. And so, I think the other thing I would say to that early manager is you have to be willing to Size that up and act with conviction and recognize that if you can bring in someone who has the aligned character and those behaviors, you will usually raise the element— raise the game of your team much higher. But I was very, like a lot of people, I was very slow. I wanted to give people the benefits of doubt. I thought I could change them. And in reality, it has proven to not be the case in 99% of the instances I've run into it. So, I would've liked to have learned that much faster.
Leanne ElliottGreat managers know that their job is to enable the performance of others, and where possible, provide an environment that meets the needs and motivations of their people. But what do employees actually want? Are there any trends, and how can managers help them get it?
Dave KlineThey want to know the work they're doing has impact. They typically want to grow and develop really fast. They want to contribute meaningfully. They want to be super efficient, right? If they can get their hands on technology to have more impact, they want to do that. And all of those things start to add up to sounding like leaders, not managers, right? People don't want to be controlled. They don't want to be told exactly what to do. They don't want their entire day to be a standard operating procedure that they just mindlessly check the box. Increasingly, you can just use computers to do that. One of the things I I'll write a lot is that people want a purpose, not a paycheck. Like, yes, people want a paycheck. People have to feed their families. They have to pay for their homes. Like, I'm not taking anything away from that. But once you've reached that threshold, then they want to be part of something bigger. And again, I'm mostly talking about how do I build high-performing teams? So I'm also looking at people who have sort of self-selected into being hardworking, biased for action, capable at a certain level, et cetera. So we're into a a subset where the thing that's going to really motivate them isn't just going to be a slightly bigger paycheck. It's going to be like, am I contributing to something that is important? And there's dimensions to that. One, do I personally believe it's important? I don't personally believe— I mean, I can appreciate getting to Mars, but it doesn't light me up. I don't think I'm uniquely suited in this world to go contribute to that in the way that Elon is.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Dave KlineSo is it personally meaningful purpose to me? Then the next part is like, well, am I— is it a game that I'm uniquely suited to win in alignment with that mission that I'm excited about? Again, I could go help leaders and managers in a wide range of organizations, but I get really excited, especially for the earlier stage business owners, because they're the ones who will create the next round of jobs. They're the ones who are creating all these new innovations and opportunity. And so like, okay, that's now— and am I uniquely suited based on what I've done in the world? Like, I've been lucky to work with lots of great managers. My wife and I combined have probably worked at 6 brands that most people would love to work at one of. We've worked at 6 of them. So we looked at like, well, what are the common capabilities across all of those? And if it works at all 6, it works at Goldman and Google and Compass and Bridgewater and Moody's and PwC. It will probably work in most organizations. And so can we distill those fundamentals and basics in that way? And so for me, that's the thing. It's like, do you really care about the purpose? Are you uniquely suited to contribute to that purpose? And then, you know, if you're then surrounded by other people who are like-minded in that way, it becomes a pretty joyful place to spend time. And we can endure the trials and tribulations and we can be resilient and consistent, all the things that we know will add up to success. If we sort of have all those parts in alignment.
Al ElliottThere's an old saying, probably more from the '80s than it is actually from now, that you get promoted to the level of your incompetence. In other words, if you're good at sales, then your next stop is probably going to be sales manager. But being an exceptional manager is very different to being an exceptional individual contributor.
Dave KlineIt's the Peter Principle, but I think it is unfair to strictly lay that at the feet of the people being promoted into those positions. Like, if you sort of play out the typical lifecycle, we stare at a function, we pick our absolute best salesperson, software engineer, A-player. So this person has been wildly successful. That's why we're thinking, oh, wouldn't it be great if they could sprinkle some of their success fairy dust on the rest of the team? And we make them a manager. And a lot of times we think of that promotion as the destination. When in reality, it's actually the beginning of an entirely new occupation, right? Like, when you are an individual contributor, it's all about, do I have the answers? Can I build up mastery of a specific concept? Can I deliver and hit deadlines? When you become a first-time manager, now it's, can I have more impact through other people? Can I prioritize what matters and what doesn't so my team focuses on the right things? Can I delegate? Can I evaluate work? Can I give feedback? That allows them to succeed. And that's just a very different set of capabilities. And when companies just think of that as the destination, I sort of call that management by hazing or leadership development by hazing. It's like, well, I figured it out because you're one of the people, probably the person promoting you is one of the people who are on the right side of that 60% number and they figured it out. And so why shouldn't you? When in reality, There's just a handful of fundamental concepts that you could gift these new managers on day 1 that would massively increase their odds.
Leanne ElliottThis leads to a lot of managers being replaced quickly.
Dave KlineThere were studies by Gartner, Korn Ferry, Harvard, McKinsey. They've looked at entry-level managers, mid-level managers, C-suite. They've looked across geographies, and plus or minus, call it 50 to 60% of managers fail and get replaced within 18 to 24 months. Which is an outrageously bad set of odds, right? Imagine flipping a coin and saying, it's probably gonna land on the wrong side in terms of you succeeding over the next 18 months. And for those of you who do succeed, we'll probably promote you and flip the coin again.
Al ElliottSo what are the red flags of a bad manager?
Dave KlineOh man, we, it's funny, very early in our program, we ask all the leaders in there, you know, just give me the characteristics of the worst managers you've ever had. And it's always the same things. It's like they're indecisive. They take credit for other people's work. They take credit and give blame, right? That's like, well, when it works, it's my fault. And when it doesn't, it's somebody else's. They're totally inaccessible, right? You can't ever get them when you need a question answered. You can't get the resources you need, et cetera. In the most extreme versions, like they are toxic, they're emotionally abusive, they're rude. You can also sort of look at where they stand in the organization. Like, are they progressing? Are they respected? Because the easiest way to sort of accelerate your career is to be behind a star, right? If they're rising, they're creating space and opportunity behind them. If they're stuck, you're stuck too. Just like one version of that where it was a reorg and the manager sat me down and said, hey, have you seen the Godfather trilogy? First question, like not even like, hey, nice to meet you. But I thought that's an odd question, but sure. I'm of the age where one would've seen the Godfather trilogy. And he sits back totally relieved. And says, that's so good because 100% of my management philosophy is premised on that, on The Godfather. And it was very much power and loyalty and, you know, keeping things within the family. And I thought, I kept waiting for the punchline and it never came. Like, he was dead serious. And that's like at a Fortune 500 company. And I'm thinking to myself, wow. Like, if that's what I'm experiencing, imagine how terrible management is in the world. Now, interestingly, I would say my, my, the favorite was also at the same company. So good news, bad news. And I think the characteristics that he had that I sort of encourage other people early in their career, like if you can go find one of these, you should do it, is number one, he was very challenging to me. Again, it was a funny reorg and I didn't know this person. And for the first 2 weeks, I was like, this is terrible. He is rough. He is pushing me hard. I remember bringing him a deck at one point and he tore— I had 15 pages printed out and he tore page 13 in half and handed me back the half. He's like, this is the only thing worth keeping. Try again. And I thought, oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into? But we've gone on to be great friends. I grew more in the couple years working with him than probably the previous five years combined. Very quickly, as I sort of passed those initial pushes and challenges, we became you know deeply connected. Like I could tell he cared. You know he was giving me opportunities. He was giving me feedback. He was pushing me hard. And so it was this it was this duality that like I can care and elevate you and push you, and at the same time. I can hold you to really high standards because I believe that you can achieve them. And, and I think if you can sort of find that, especially early on, it is a massive career accelerator.
Leanne ElliottMy management career led me to a national role, and I had accountability for a team of about 40 across the UK. And it was here that I learned from my manager and mentor and was able to apply the power of the one-to-one meeting. Dave had a similar situation, but in his case, He had to work it out on his own.
Dave KlineI was a relatively new manager. I had, I think I had 2 people at the time. And it was easy, it was easy managing in hindsight, right? So I'm managing these 2 people, my boss sits me down and is like, hey, I have some news, you know, we're doing a restructuring, there are a few people who are leaving. But congratulations, you know, we were promoting you and you now manage 17 people in 5 countries. And I was like, oh, okay, like, that's, that's not sort of the logical progression of like 2 to 5 to 8 to, 15, maybe 5 years down the road, but like the young ambitious fool that I was, I was like, oh, let's do it. And I was doing one-on-ones at this point. And so I thought, well, this would be great, but I was doing them backwards. I was doing the part where like I was setting the agenda. It was my meeting. And I thought, holy hell, like how am I going to have, to your point, how am I going to have 17 one-on-ones in time zones around the world? Like I'm going to be working all time. I'm never going to do any actual work. And I tried it for a couple of weeks and I was just burning, drowning. Like, I was getting nowhere. The meetings were terrible. People were frustrated. And eventually, I don't know, it just sort of like clicked for me that I'm like, well, why don't I just flip it? Why don't I just be like, this is your meeting? Like, I don't know your areas. This whole reorg just happened overnight. Let's flip it. Can you answer some of these questions? And I've refined them over time, but some of those questions we talked about earlier, like, show up to the meeting and like, you brief me. Like, tell me what's going on in your world. What problems do you have? How can I help? What do you need? And the energy, like, went through the roof. My leverage, like, I went from having no time to just having to be in these meetings. You know, we were able to, like, quickly figure out, I was using that to also figure out, like, well, who can I promote? Because I can't manage 17 people. Like, I'm going to need folks to lead in each of these countries. And so seeing who could step in and, like, be the owner, yeah, just gave me an awful lot of data. It gave me an awful lot of leverage. And that then became, like I said, the cornerstone of how I've been managing the last 15 years. I would love to say that someone had trained me on that and I had found it through this perfect framework, but it was more necessity is the mother of all invention and I needed something to change. If I were pruning the tree of meetings in my organization, that would probably be the last one to go. And I guess this starts from a few different points. So, If I think about, okay, I've done all this hard work to go into the world and find stars to be on my team. Well, the first thing I want to do is make sure that I keep them, that I get the most out of them, that I help them grow and develop and have more impact. And this particular meeting, if run well, now I think a lot of people run them terribly. They're like live status reports because everyone's too lazy to do any preparation for them and they focus on the wrong things. But if you run them well, they're much more focused on those things, which is— Are we still aligned on the goals that you're going after? Are you tracking well, both quantitative and qualitatively? Do you have your arms around the problems of those goals? I don't expect people to be perfect. I expect them to be doing daring, challenging work, and they're going to run into problems. And so, do they see the problems and can they solve them? Or if not, can they bring me in? And then if they're leading other people, do they have the team they need and how are they doing? And if you can answer those 5 questions in a one-on-one with me, then we can go really into the meat, right? We can go into places where I'm going to provide you support. I can remove blockers. I can give you coaching. I can give you feedback, both positive so you keep doing the things and catch yourself winning, or constructive where you can get better. And I think that becomes such a massive accelerator. So if I, again, if I'm trying to hold onto that talent, they want to know their work is important. And so, if I cancel that one-on-one meeting, I'm basically telling you your work's not that important, or at least there were 50 hours a week of other work that was more important. If I cancel that meeting, when am I giving them that development and coaching and feedback? Are we having enough interactions? Increasingly, especially in the remote world, right? Those organic interactions that I might have been able to paper over with earlier no longer exist. So, if I cancel that meeting, I'm not getting that opportunity either. And ultimately, I think people want to be part of something where, not necessarily like a family, right? I don't think people have illusions that they are part of a long-term Godfather-like family, but that they want to be connected to an organization, to a mission, a purpose. And again, I think if you are not— when is that happening? When are you reiterating for them how their goals fit into the other goals? Or when are you making the adjustments so that they're doing work that is no longer as impactful as it could be, you get to sort of tweak it 30 degrees and get them there. And so I, again, I think this is probably the most important thing. And I'll often say to people, if you can't make 30 minutes a week for the people who report to you, what the hell are you managing? One of the characteristics of high performers is this deep sense of ownership. And so all I'm really doing is inverting that meeting and saying like, you're the owner. Like you are the CEO of your area. That area could be just You doing graphic design projects because you're an individual contributor. It could be you are running North America sales. Either way, you are the CEO of that area and I'm your board. And the way that boards work are not like, we're not dictating everything. Yes, we're aligning on what the right strategy should be. We're aligning on what the goals should be. You should be using me where you need help. Right? If you think of yourself as the chess master, and I'm one of the biggest pieces on your board that you can move around as you need. And if I get 4, 5, 6 people reporting to me operating that way, well, I'm getting pointed in all the most important directions, and they feel deeply empowered. Like, they feel like they have to solve their own problems, or at least come with solutions and proposals. They feel like they have autonomy and agency, which again, stars, they don't tolerate not having that for very long. And so this sort of ties back to like why I don't think you can be a manager anymore. Like, that is leading. Not managing. It's harder, but it's required.
Al ElliottSo, let's just stop for a second, because I want to ask the question that our listeners are probably asking. This sounds like a lot of work. How the heck am I going to find time to do all these one-to-one meetings?
Dave KlineI think you've got to rewind earlier in the process. Being able to have the time for the meetings is sort of way down the chain, right? So, if I go back out, And I'm thinking about, you almost think of it as like, what's minimum viable management, right? For these 30 to 40 person companies, they probably aren't people who were like, oh, I've always dreamed of managing. They probably were product people or marketing people or software people who all of a sudden one day woke up and have a team to manage. And so for me, I'm like, well, what's the minimum viable management? That's not because I'm settling for less than excellent, but like, how much can we cram that down and like, Strip out the bureaucracy and the stuff that doesn't move the needle and focus on the things that do. The easiest place to start is hiring. If you are recruiting people who are excited about your mission, who are aligned to your behaviors, who naturally operate in the way that you believe your team must operate to win that mission, that's point one. And so a lot of times people are drowning because they've hired poorly and they're trying to make up for it by changing everybody, and that never works. So you got to start hiring well. Then I think once you have them come in, the second thing, if I had sort of my cornerstones beyond the one-on-one, another cornerstone is setting clear expectations. You need to have a visualization of that role and that job vividly. This is what it takes to win. When we tell the story, and I will risk revealing that we're Arsenal fans, when we talk about setting expectations, we talk about the what and the how. And when I think about the what, We'll talk about 5-year-old soccer, 5-year-old football for your crowd. And the what, the goal is super easy. Take this ball, go stick it in that goal, prevent the team in the other colored shirts from putting it in your goal. That's a clear alignment on goals, and these 5-year-olds all get it. But the net result of what you get is a ball and 22 kids swarming around it in a big beehive. Now, you flip over. I mean, yes, Arsenal fans, but we're going to talk about Man City. There's this beautiful graphic of Pep Guardiola's system at Man City where he's divided the entire pitch into a bunch of channels and lanes. Everybody knows that there should only be 2 people in any channel or lane at any point in time. There's this zone 14 right at the top of the box on the inside that they know they want to pass the ball into that zone as many times a game as possible because it has the highest expected goals. And if they do that, they win. Same exact goal, put ball in goal, prevent people from putting in your goal, but now they have a system, they have a how. And so that is why I go to setting expectations becomes so clear, right? That you sitting down and saying, okay, this is what I need you to do in your new role, or this is what I need you to do leading your team, and this is how we're going to do it, right? That could be your cultural behaviors, that could be processes you run, that could be experiments you want to Run at. That could be the budget, whatever those things are. But everyone skips over this how, and that's how we end up in a place of secret expectations where I expect you to do something, you do something totally different, probably sensible, but different. And then at the end, we're unwinding like, how could you possibly have gotten there? That doesn't make any sense. I would've gone here, but I never told you any of these assumptions I had before we got there. And so I think if you do that, if you sort of Tie, get the right people, set really clear expectations. Then you're meeting with them to support and enable them. And the last thing I'd put into that nuclear element is giving them clear feedback, right? Because everybody wants to win. That's why we set the expectations, but they need small adjustments along the way in order to have that happen at a higher rate. And I don't know a better way to do that other than giving feedback, both when they're succeeding and when they need to adjust. So, If I were going minimum viable for your 30, 40-person company crowd, I think if you can do those things, you'll get there. And the epilogue is, if for some reason you have 30 or 40 people reporting directly to you, you probably need to have a couple people start managing on your behalf, because then you'll never really do the things I just said. Like, that really works when you have, you know, 3 to 7 people who you are responsible for in the day-to-day.
Al ElliottOkay, coming up after this very short break, we've got more from the incredible Dave Kline. Stay tuned.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)And 2 out of All 3 of us are devilishly good looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Dave KlineSeamless. Seamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioral science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)It can.
Leanne ElliottAnd I really enjoyed Can You Drink Beer While Driving? And are we all just status-seeking monkeys?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottOne of the questions I get a lot is this: is systematising management and putting in structures not dehumanising management? Well, no, because as humans we like a little bit of structure because it creates a more predictable environment where there is less ambiguity. Ambiguity causes stress. It creates environments where there are more transparency. We like transparency. It supports confidence and engagement into the organisation. It builds trust. Done well, structure can also provide a coaching framework for constructive feedback, creative discussion, and professional development. And Dave agrees.
Dave KlineNo, I don't, I don't think so. One of the biggest signals back I have on that, Al, is that people will come back to us. They're very skeptical. You know, like they'll come to our program and they'll say like, oh yeah, your one-on-one thing seems good, but my people don't want to be micromanaged. Or your feedback, your approach to feedback, that wouldn't work in my organization. And then what we sort of encourage was, hey, just give it a shot, give it a try, see what happens. And we get a lot of signals back where not only do people tolerate it, they celebrate it. They come back and they're like, oh my gosh, I was waiting for that direction. I appreciate the clarity. It's so much more helpful for me to know what you're expecting than to try to keep guessing. And so we try to separate for folks the difference between micromanaging and managing, right? Or micromanaging and leading. Micromanaging is like, I'm over your shoulder telling you every single thing you need to do. And yes, nobody wants to do that. But leading and having some sense of like, well, what's the scoreboard and what are the rules? I want to know the scoreboard so I can win. I want to know the rules so I don't get kicked out of the game. And the scoreboard and the rules are the system. I think, I don't think it's dehumanizing.
Al ElliottLet's finish up with a quick discussion on the difference between recruiting and hiring. Now, there's a great video of Dave. I'm pretty sure I saw it on LinkedIn where he's on stage and he asked the audience, who here is currently recruiting? The response demonstrates that most leaders and managers don't really know the difference between recruiting and hiring.
Dave KlineAnd what you'll see is sort of half the crowd puts their hand up, kind of, maybe a few people are like really growing and they slam their hand up and the other ones just sit there looking at me like I'm crazy. And then I tell them that if you didn't raise your hand, you're wrong. And that usually gets them like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I asked who's recruiting, not hiring. Like hiring is when you have an acute need, Right now, and you're going to take the best available who's floating in the world, right? That is the, uh, someone left, I go on LinkedIn, I post a job, I interview 3 people, I take the best I can get. And you know what? Sometimes you have to do that. Totally fine. Uh, but it's not the way to make an amazing team. It is not. To your point of whether, you know, your Arsenal and all these soccer teams with academies who are literally growing talent from 12 years old to 22 years old, like a decade investment, kind of like we were doing with the CIOs. Or whether you're saying, I am missing a key piece and I need to go into the world. Do you want to get the best available piece or do you want to know in advance the types of pieces you might need, nurture relationships with them, and be able to call upon them and bring them into your organization at the right time? I just read The Who Method by the folks at GH Smart. And they were saying the CEO of Aon, giant billion-dollar consulting company, the CEO says he wants to himself be personally responsible for bringing in at least 30 people a year. So not that he like participated or not that he used agencies, that he's so actively in the world nurturing relationships. And I think what his ratio was something like 10 to 1. So I need to be nurturing 300 relationships to yield 30 high-performing stars to come into this leadership team. He's spending, you know, like most of the folks I think are spending 25 to 50% of their time just doing that. It's a crazy number. But at the end of the day, it goes back to what we were saying a minute ago. Like, if you get the recruiting right, if you bring in, you know, A-players who are thrilled about your mission and who have the behaviors that will like click into that system, then the actual managing and leading of them becomes really easy. And so, it makes sense. It's like, do you want to make it— do you want to spend your time recruiting well as an investment, or do you want to spend your time as an expense being frustrated, correcting, and trying to change people who aren't going to change?
Leanne ElliottDave's MGMT Accelerator has had hundreds of managers go through the program. We asked him what surprised him most about getting a group of managers in the same room at the same time.
Dave KlineI think the biggest surprise has been How the leaders actually get a tremendous amount of value from each other. That when we run this, it's wide open. It's 50 people from 50 companies. We don't really say that you have to be a new manager or an experienced manager. We do very little to filter. And these folks all come together and usually by hour 1, so it's a 12-hour program, usually by the end of hour 1, they're starting to coach each other. They're starting to, and they realize that these things that felt very lonely, that they thought, I'm the only one having this challenge, that a not-for-profit in South Africa and a finance VP in Europe and a software engineering manager at Amazon are all going through the exact same problem. That the, that the, just the human condition sort of repeats itself and it rhymes. And that's really all we're doing. We're trying to like, orchestrate people to have more impact together than we can have alone. And that sort of interesting connection has surprised us the most. Like, we really thought they were coming to sort of go through our tactics and templates, but what they end up coming for, what they end up getting a lot of value from, is like the community, the connection, the commingled problem solving. So that's really surprised us a lot. I'd say it's about a third of our— the leaders we work with overlap exactly the thing you're describing. Like, they show up, in our program at that 25 to 50 employee range for exactly the reason you're describing. Like they maybe they started an e-commerce side hustle and all of a sudden they're like, I've got a business. Or they were a product person with a great idea and then they got a couple million in funding and they ended up with 20 employees to scale it. And also they're like, holy crap, these people need care and feeding. What is this? I didn't sign up for this. And you did actually. You signed up exactly for this. And so they show up and are like, can you just give me like, what's the, what's the entry-level operating system? Like, what are the 5 things I have to do so I can kind of get back to what I really wanted to do, not get sucked into the morass that is professionalized management? So we get a bunch of that. And then I'd say the other 2/3 are anybody from scaling companies to highly mature companies. They're just drowning still, that they don't have the systems to stay on top of it all. They can never quite get it all done. They're always late for getting home with their families. And they're just like, there's got to be a better way. And no one has trained them. No one has taught them. No one has sort of said, hey, I made mistakes for 20 years, try these 5 things instead. And so, that's sort of our primary avatar, is just people who, like, with a little bit of help, training, and systems, can actually become pretty good leaders.
Leanne ElliottSo, there you have it, a masterclass in management from Dave Kline. Go follow him on Twitter or X immediately. Are you putting Twitter because you refuse to download the new app?
Al ElliottI've still got the old Twitter with the blue, with the blue bird, and I will stick with it until they tell me I have to update or upgrade.
Leanne ElliottSo yes, go and follow Dave on X, connect on LinkedIn, and if you want to become a great manager, then go and check out his Management Accelerator. The link is of course in the show notes.
Al ElliottBefore you go though, I had one more question for Dave, and this is a recurring theme, I think, on the pod. But I had to ask him, does he think Elon Musk is a good leader?
Dave KlineI generally don't know, is the, is the answer. I, but I put it in 3 buckets. Do I admire the outcomes that he has been able to produce in multiple domains? Absolutely. And I think that puts him in an exceptionally elite class of entrepreneur. There just aren't that many who get to scale and success of true innovation. Not once, but twice, but 3 times, but 4 times, but 5 times. Like, it's a very small list. And so he must be doing something right. I, like, humbly submit to that. I also— so bucket 2, I also think that we are going through probably the most meaningful evolution of business management in a decade, or sorry, in a decade, in a century.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Dave KlineYou know, like, there was the Industrial Revolution, all of that. But I think the introduction of AI, of automation, of remote work. Like all these things I think are going to be reassembled into a new way of working, like gig work. There's just so many different components that are moving. And my hunch without any insight, I don't, other than having a couple students in our program from Tesla, I don't have any like real window in there. My hunch is like he's starting to reassemble those pieces in ways that are differentiated and may inform sort of the next operating system norm. That comes up. And then the third, where I would just say, like, I don't know, but like the caricature that he paints of himself online, it reminds me a little bit of like the caricature that Ray becomes in public. We had another student from Apple, and sort of she described the caricature that Steve Jobs became, that there was a difference between how the public perceived them and how the people within the walls admired them. And so my hunch is probably he's a pretty good leader. It would be hard to sort of stack all those pieces together and say no. But I also bet that he's magnetic in the way that there's certain people who would be deeply drawn to both his missions and his style, and a probably much larger group of people who would be violently repelled by how he approaches things. And the same was true of Ray, and the same was true of Steve Jobs and, and others.
Leanne ElliottI think we could probably do an entire episode on Elon Musk and his— the questionable ethics behind his leadership and management practices. It does come down to, I guess, can you separate the work from the individual? And in terms of organisational life, I find that very, very, very difficult. But we will see how, how history favours him in the end.
Al ElliottYeah, he definitely seems to be a little bit more of the Steve Jobs school of leading than perhaps Someone else. But it's just interesting because he's just everywhere, and so you can't have a conversation about leadership or management without speaking about him or the other T-word, which we're not going to bring up. Anyway, if you enjoyed this—
Leanne ElliottI see now why you're not as comfortable to talk about the T-word. Because of the innovation? Because of what it's contributing to society? Does that make it ethically better because it's part of a bigger cause? Arguably, supporters of Trump could say the same about him.
Al ElliottThat's a fair point, actually. Thinking about it, that's a fair point because the reason why I don't laud the way that Steve, uh, Steve Jobs did or managed people, but I do feel that the world was left in a much better place, um, with him in it. Um, and I suppose there are some people who say that he's not. So yeah, good point. Good point. I do think that overall Musk is net positive for the world. Um, it's just some of the way he does things don't seem to be the more traditional route if, uh, Another discussion to pick up another day, I think. Definitely. If you enjoyed this sort of, this banter or discussion, then you're probably gonna like our Tuesday show where we round up the latest news in the world of work. We have a little chat, we bring the experts of tomorrow, and Leanne holds the workplace surgery where she answers all your work culture questions.
Leanne ElliottYes, if you have a question, then email us. What have we had on recently? We've had questions around toxic bosses, about some dodgy interview practices, We've had questions around, is it okay for my member of staff to be drunk and, and call me up at the weekend, tell me to fuck myself?
Al ElliottUm, that's true.
Leanne ElliottWe do.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Leanne ElliottSo if you've got anything along those lines or indeed something new, send it in.
Al ElliottYeah, we definitely will. We can either read it out if you do a voice note, we'll read it out, or if you email it, we'll keep it anonymous if that's what you want. Okay. Anything else to add, my love?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)No.
Al ElliottOkay. Well, bye for now.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye-bye.
Leanne ElliottRight, the work, whether it be art or business, from the individual. It's, um, anyway, maybe cut that out now because I'm not entirely sure that, uh, Elon Musk won't come for me for that.