What makes a successful manager?
According to Steve Jobs, one of the reasons for Apple’s success was its managers, who were built from within. You see, Steve recruited professional managers from the outside but knew little about their business. It didn’t work at all, according to Jobs. “They knew how to manage but didn’t know how to do anything.” Rather, they looked for people within Apple who were, in Steve Jobs’s words… “Great individual contributors.” These people had a vision for the future, could articulate that vision and get consensus around an idea. Those were the successful managers at Apple.
Do you have some great individual contributors in your organization? Maybe they are your next manager.