Best managers never actually want to be managers.

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Jan 14, 2023

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steve-jobs-managers

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career-development

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37 Years Ago, Steve Jobs said the best managers never actually want to be managers. Science says he was right.

Last updated

May 6, 2023 08:42 PM

Steve Jobs obviously didn’t build Apple on his own; when he died the company had approximately 40,000 employees. Since Jobs reportedly interacted with only about 100 employees, Apple naturally employed hundreds of managers.

Here’s Jobs, in 1985, on the early process of recruiting and hiring managers:

We are going to be a big company, we thought. So let’s hire “professional managers.” We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn’t work at all. They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to do anything.

According to Job’s the best managers are the greatest individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager, but decide they want to be a manager, because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.

We don’t need someone to manage for the sake of managing. We need someone frustrated by the current level pf productivity. Someone irritated by the current level of quality. Someone annoyed by the fact every few employees from within the organisation are being promoted to higher level roles.

We need someone who wanted to get product out the door more effectively and efficiently, and who had the technical skills to make that happen. As for the leadership skills? Those could be learnt.

Plus, his employees would have likely overlooked his lack of professional manager skills. A 2015 study published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review found that having a boss who excels at "ability to get the job done" has by far the largest positive influence on employee job satisfaction.

As the researchers write, "If your boss could do your job, you're more likely to be happy at work."

The next time you make a promotion decision, make sure you consider the great individual contributor who may not want to be a manager, but desperately wants to get things done. Because success always comes down to what your business accomplishes. Not what it manages.