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Now that I’ve completed three posts on The Management Team over the last three MBA Mondays<\/a>, it’s time for four or five guest posts on this topic. The first one is from Matt Blumberg<\/a>, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path<\/a>. I’ve been on Matt’s board for over a decade and I’ve watched him develop into one of the finest managers I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Here are Matt’s thoughts on this topic.<\/p>\n When\u00a0Return Path<\/a>\u00a0reached 100 employees a few years back, I had a dinner with my Board one night at which they basically told me, \u201cManagement teams never scale intact as you grow the business.\u00a0 Someone always breaks.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m sure they were right based on their own experience; I, of course, took this as a challenge.\u00a0 And ever since then, my senior management team and I have become obsessed with scaling ourselves as managers.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 We are over 300 employees now and rapidly headed to 400 in the coming year, and the core senior management team is still in place and doing well.\u00a0 Below are five reasons why that\u2019s the case.<\/p>\n 1. We appreciate the criticality of excellent management and recognize that it is a completely different skill set from everything else we have learned in our careers.\u00a0 This is like Step 1 in a typical \u201c12-step program.\u201d\u00a0 First, admit you have a problem.\u00a0 If you put together (a) management is important, (b) management is a different skill set, and (c) you might not be great at it, with the standard (d) you are an overachiever who likes to excel in everything, then you are setting the stage for yourself to learn and work hard at improving at management as a practice, which is the next item on the list.<\/p>\n 2. We consistently work at improving our management skills.\u00a0 We have a strong culture of\u00a0360 feedback<\/a>, development plans, coaching, and\u00a0post mortems<\/a>\u00a0on major incidents, both as individuals and as a senior team.\u00a0 Most of us have engaged on and off over the years with an executive coach, for the most part\u00a0Marc Maltz from Triad Consulting<\/a>.\u00a0 In fact, the team holds each other accountable for individual performance against our development plans at our quarterly offsites.\u00a0 But learning on the inside is only part of the process.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0We learn from the successes and failures of others whenever possible.\u00a0 My team regularly engages as individuals in rigorous\u00a0external benchmarking<\/a>\u00a0to understand how peers at other companies \u2013 preferably ones either like us or larger \u2013 operate.\u00a0 We methodically pick benchmarking candidates.\u00a0 We ask for their time and get on their calendars.\u00a0 We share knowledge and best practices back with them.\u00a0 We pay this forward to smaller companies when they ask us for help.\u00a0 And we incorporate the relevant learnings back into our own day to day work.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0We build the strongest possible second-level management bench we can to make sure we have a broad base of leadership and management in the company that complements our own skills.\u00a0 A while back I wrote about the\u00a0Peter Principle, Applied to Management<\/a>\u00a0that it\u2019s quite easy to accumulate mediocre managers over the years because you feel like you have to promote your top performers into roles that are viewed as higher profile, are probably higher comp \u2013 and for which they may be completely unprepared and unsuited.\u00a0 Angela Baldonero, my SVP People, and I have done a lot here to ensure that we are preparing people for management and leadership roles, and pushing them as much as we push ourselves.\u00a0 We have developed and executed comprehensive Management Training and Leadership Development programs in conjunction with\u00a0Mark Frein at Refinery Leadership Partners<\/a>.\u00a0 Make no mistake about it \u2013 this is a huge investment of time and money.\u00a0 But it\u2019s well worth it.\u00a0 Training someone who knows your business well and knows his job well how to be a great manager is worth 100x the expense of the training relative to having an employee blow up and needing to replace them from the outside.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0We are hawkish about hiring in from the outside.\u00a0 Sometimes you have to bolster your team, or your second-level team.\u00a0 Expanding companies require more executives and managers, even if everyone on the team is scaling well.\u00a0 But there are significant perils with hiring in from the outside, which I\u2019ve written about twice with the same metaphor (sometimes I forget what I have posted in the past) \u2013\u00a0Like an Organ Transplant<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Rejected by the Body<\/a>.\u00a0 You get the idea. \u00a0Your culture is important.\u00a0 Your people are important.\u00a0 New managers at any level instantly become stewards of both.\u00a0 If they are failing as managers, then they need to leave.\u00a0 Now.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure there are other things we do to scale ourselves as a management team \u2013 and more than that, I\u2019m sure there are many things we could and should be doing but aren\u2019t.\u00a0 But so far, these things have been the mainstays of happily (they would agree) proving our Board wrong and remaining intact as a team as the business grows.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n James Ferguson @kWIQly<\/a> added:<\/p>\n I find it really helps thinking to invert the “management pyramid” …<\/p>\n At the top is the sales funnel – representing your clients. Interesting that Demote sounds like demut (german for humility) and humility like humus comes from earthliness.<\/p>\n Bottom line – if management have their heads in the clouds rather than being well grounded \u00a0they aren’t in touch with the roots that feed nourishment.<\/p>\n Of course I say this from a team of three – but I may as well be ready \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n This article was originally written by Matt Blumberg and Fred Wilson on January 23, 2012 here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that I’ve completed three posts on The Management Team over the last three MBA Mondays<\/a>, it’s time for four or five guest posts on this topic. The first one is from Matt Blumberg<\/a>, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path<\/a>. I’ve been on Matt’s board for over a decade and I’ve watched…<\/p>\n
\nFrom the comments<\/h3>\n
\nOne tier down is your front-line staff – supporting your clients.
\nBelow that is back office, HR, IT finance – pretty much everyone you would swap out before you would swap out your client base.
\nThen there is the management team – sole role to support the rest.
\nFinally there are the founders – their role is to demote themselves further.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n