Scaling Teams

Chapter 5. People Management at Scale

In Chapter 4, you learned how to hire and/or train your first batch of managers and how to roll out a new management structure to your team. After doing this, you should be free to focus on other priorities, right?

Well, it may not surprise you that the team’s continued growth will create new challenges for you and your team of managers. In this chapter, we will cover what needs to happen beyond the initial rollout, and the various ways you can supercharge your people managers to build a highly scalable team in support of your fast-growing business.

Magnifying Your Managers

Talented people managers can enhance the productivity of the entire organization. What can you do to enable and magnify their impact? And what issues are likely to crop up as you move from a handful of managers to several dozen and beyond?

Improving Management Skills

If you’re running a typical startup, your management team is likely to be inexperienced. They need ongoing mentorship and training to really grow into their new career. There are complex issues that take years to master, such as how to build an inclusive work environment, how to communicate difficult issues to peers and reports, and how to recruit the best new talent for the team. And someday you’ll want these managers to help identify and train the next rank of new managers as their team expands in scope. So give them explicit support for growth and learning, and perhaps help them unlearn some bad habits ...