Management Design: The “designs” we have now: You’ve managed a team before? We need you!

The Manager by Design blog advocates for a new field called Management Design. The idea is that the creation of great and effective Managers in organizations should not occur by accident, but by design.  Currently, the creation of great managers falls under diverse, mostly organic methods, which create mixed results at best.  This is the second of a series that explores the existing designs that create managers in organizations. The design discussed prior was, “Hire MBAs and Consultants.”  Today’s design:  Hire someone who has managed before.

In this “design”, organizations solve the problem of finding good managers by seeking people who have managed before.  A more specific version of this is to put in the job description the requirement for people who have managed teams of a certain size:  Have you managed a team of 5 or more people?  10 or more people?  50 or more people?  By seeking this prior experience, organizations are making an effort to eliminate the error of having someone who is inexperienced in the role.  With many management designs, hiring an inexperienced manager is far too risky.

Obviously, hiring managers from a pool of existing managers is an important way to reduce the risk and improve the quality of your management staff, and of course managerial experience tends to be better than lack of experience.  However, overreliance on requiring management experience as the method of ensuring good management has its perils, because on its own, it’s bad design.   Here are the perils: Read more