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So I'm curious like if we were to just imagine I took a random M1 or maybe yourself and before you were promoted and you were just a new M1 and I put you in an M2 role and you just said have at it. What are the biggest skill gaps that you would have had? So I think being able to like credibly add value to the people who are reporting to you is probably the the major one. Um I mentioned some ways at which managers have reduced or managers of managers have reduced um kind of options in terms of how they can interact with their teams. And so knowing what those restrictions are and then knowing where to exercise the most important ones uh is something that that's that's hard for like a straight M1 to to recognize. So as an example, you know, you might have a a new M1. They're feeling really good about their understanding of people. they go set up skip levels with um you know all of their indirect reports and they ask them oh you know what do you think of Jim does he say anything that you know you don't like that is he touching on all of the important career pieces and then a week later Jim's going to walk into your office and go you know you talked with Jan and you ask her a bunch of leading questions around whether I was doing my job or not and now she doesn't feel like I'm being I'm supportive enough like why did you do that and then Jan comes to you and she says, "Well, you know, I I I really think that you can help me out a lot with my career because um you know, you seem to have some really good insights that, you know, Jim wasn't able to to see." And so, in that moment, you've just disintermediated Jim. You've demotivated Jan and you've created a host of problems that you now have to solve. It's like a lot of very small things that you can do as a senior leader have these magnification effects and unfortunately you don't really learn about those or you don't learn maybe the small things um until you've either observed them yourself uh where you can kind of introspect and say all right let me think about all the interactions I've had with my senior leadership and where those worked or where they didn't um or you've got like a good mental model for how these things sort of propagate in an organization um but I Subtle mistakes like that end up being kind of like uh the easy ways for an M1 newly in that position to fail. And the expectation in a lot of cases is that they're going to make those mistakes. Just like when you transition someone from an IC to a manager, you're expecting them to make a bunch of mistakes just because it's unnatural. Nobody really knows about this. You can read it in books all you want, but until you practice it, it's a different story. And so, you know, my leadership chain when I was doing the M1 to M2 transition was probably thinking the same thing, sitting very closely with me. This is part of the promotion panel. Like, what kind of support are they going to have? Does the person who they are reporting to have enough acumen to be able to bail them out if things start to go ary, that sort of thing. But bunch of small behavioral things would be the first thing that they would screw up. you know, longer term, you know, there's strategy and org design and a bunch of mistakes that you can make there, but those small things, especially in the first few weeks, are enough to sink you. It's kind of a scary environment to operate in, to be honest. >> You've experienced IC career growth and manager career growth. I'm curious to compare and contrast, you know, IC versus management, I guess, growth paths. What do you think of the differences between the two? And also, I'm curious, do you find that they're both meritocratic? I often hear that there's some, you know, cynical takes on some, you know, one being less meritocratic than the other. So curious your thoughts. >> I think at high levels everything becomes a little bit opaque and fuzzy. Um, one of the things that always kind of like was difficult for me to stomach as a manager sitting in calibrations was very senior level IC's talked a big game about their accomplishments, but I didn't really see the evidence. it wasn't really obvious whether they were just around for these big initiatives that were clearly valuable initiatives or they were instrumental in driving them and the same can be said of managers across the board like that that it it's really hard to do attribution and I think over a long run things are a little bit more obvious like if you have a manager sit in a role for four years and they continue to produce success it's kind of undeniable but on a half to half basis It's pretty dubious. So, I could see why people would feel that way. I think for IC's, especially when you're like sixes, maybe sevens, um it's a little bit more apparent to an external observer whether they're doing that or not. I think for an M1, you can usually look at their team, if you look at it holistically, if you look at some of their deliverables and make a pretty good assessment. But I don't think someone who's outside of their leadership chain or not involved in that minutia would be able to recognize it as clearly at higher levels. I I think that there is there's a bit of unaccountability for a lot of management. Um this is true in the stock market. It's kind of like hard to assess whether you know a leadership team is any good or not. You really don't know until you watch it for a while and then you know somebody might spin up a really great story to say you know it was macroeconomic conditions that sunk my company not you know I failed to actually recognize that my customers were slowly walking away from me. That's true I think at the highest levels. Um, and I think it can be quite frustrating for people who are kind of sitting at a spot of limited visibility with a a group that is really hard to kind of tie directly to any particular deliverable and go this is fair. You you want it to be as fair as you can. Um, but I think at a certain level it is it's difficult to have the data. >> Hey, thanks for watching that clip. If you thought it was interesting, it's part of a longer conversation which you can find right here right now. And as always, if you have any feedback for me, I'd love to hear it. You can leave a comment on YouTube. I read every single one that I get.