Out with the ladder; in with dual-track career paths | Great Workplaces

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We’ve all heard stories about top salespeople being promoted to sales managers, star athletes moving into coaching roles, brilliant engineers rising to management … and discovering they’re ill-prepared for their new job.

Either they don’t have the skills to be a people manager, or they don’t like the role — or both.

These scenarios are outlined in the “Peter Principle” management concept: Employees rise to “a level of respective incompetence.” Meaning, they’re continually promoted based on their success in their current job until they reach a level where they’re no longer competent because, at some point, the skills from the previous job won’t translate to the next.

It’s a longstanding practice in the corporate world: Rockstar individual contributors get promoted or hired to manage a team and earn a higher wage. They earn their new titles based on specific expertise like coding, sales or design, often without consideration of emotional intelligence and administrative abilities, which ideally should be on par with their “technical” skills.

Most business leaders and hiring managers are aware of this pattern but keep falling into it. How else are we going to reward, retain and motivate team members?

Likewise, driven high performers often think they’re supposed to move up the ladder to a managerial role. How else are talented, ambitious team members going to earn greater status and compensation? How can they gain the respect and influence they deserve without managing others?

These questions are more important than ever because managers are more important than ever — and their role has never been more challenging.

Managers make the difference
In today’s complex workplace, many employees work in disparate locations at different times and with rapidly changing technologies. That can make it hard for managers to be effective in the most critical aspects of their job: building individual and team connections, fostering trust and sense of purpose, supporting and advocating for their reports. Even the most seasoned managers may need additional training in this uncertain landscape. Those without experience, coaching and innate ability will likely struggle.

And a struggling manager can put an entire team and even a business on shaky ground. After all, people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers. A Gallup survey shows about half of all U.S. employees have resigned from a job because of their boss. These days, they seem to do so with ease, more often.

In the past few years, younger employees especially have become more vocal about what they expect from a job, and more likely to leave if they don’t get what they want. They prioritize growth and development opportunities, flexible hours and work locations. They want to be valued and trusted and do meaningful work. They want to feel their contributions and opinions matter and their supervisors empathize and invest in them. If their manager doesn’t accommodate their expectations, they may move on.

So, it’s important that managers listen and act. Especially as Gen Z becomes an ever-larger part of the workforce — the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts they’ll make up 32% by 2032 — with the least favorable view of their workplaces. A recent Gallup survey shows this cohort reports the biggest declines in feeling their employer cares about them and values their opinion, provides learning and growth opportunities, and holds progress conversations with their managers. That doesn’t bode well for engagement, contentment and retention.

In addition to their outsized impact on retention, high-quality managers can also boost productivity. A study published in The Journal of Labor Economics titled “The Value of Bosses” shows that an effective boss increases team members’ productivity by up to 50%. The researchers found that replacing an ineffective manager with a high-performing one boosted a team’s output more than adding a 10^th person to a nine-member team.

While we need great managers, not everyone can be a great manager. It takes highly skilled, empathetic communicators with strong emotional intelligence and the desire to coach and champion their team members. Not every exceptional individual contributor has all of those skills innately. Many can gain them with training and experience. Conversely, many simply don’t have what it takes or won’t be happy in the role, and that’s OK!

Another path for individual contributors
The answer might be dual tracks, a career-path model gaining traction as an alternative to outdated hierarchies. This approach offers two growth trajectories: one for individual contributors who want to continue to grow in their role and one for those who want to advance into people management roles.

McKinsey takes it a step further to include middle, line and department managers who want to advance in middle management without moving into executive, director or C-suite roles that separate them from “their people.”

Dual tracks are most common in tech companies like Google, Amazon and Shopify, but businesses like Walmart are also harnessing the advantages. At these organizations, individual contributors can rise through the ranks of their disciplines to more senior-level positions with increased salaries, visibility and involvement in leadership and strategy conversations without having to manage other people.

For example, a highly valued engineer who isn’t cut out to manage other engineers can move up to “senior,” “super senior,” “veteran,” “distinguished” or “lifetime distinguished” roles. At the upper levels, they’re included in high-level strategy conversations, serve on critical committees and task forces, and may mentor, consult and advise leaders throughout the organization. But they don’t manage other people.

You can get creative with the titles as long as the promotions reward and recognize team members’ value and contributions without moving them into management positions. Doing so provides an incentive to superstar talents who want to remain “makers” or “crafters,” as global commerce company Shopify calls its individual contributors.

Shopify
At Shopify, crafters advance on a path parallel to the company’s managers. They both can become leaders and are compensated equally along the way. And because crafters don’t need to become managers to get ahead, they can focus on their primary role and interest — producing the company’s product — and grow their careers.

Since launching its dual-track approach, Shopify now has more crafters and fewer managers, which is more aligned with the company’s priorities. Managers focus on empowering team members to do their best work, offering physical and emotional support, removing obstacles to performance, and providing training and development opportunities.

Remote
Global HR company Remote says there’s less hierarchy and competition with dual tracks because not everyone is competing for a limited number of management positions. Their employees don’t need to switch jobs for greater pay and there’s no limit to how far they can grow doing what they love. They’re also not locked into their track and can switch as they learn about their strengths and interests. With that kind of flexibility and opportunity, it’s no wonder Remote has such a low turnover rate.

Walmart
Walmart has also seen engagement increase and attrition decrease since launching its dual-track program. Through the company’s bi-annual internal promotion cycle, employees on both the technical and managerial tracks can advance to the next level when they’re ready. Highly skilled individual contributors in the company’s technology and business services organization, Walmart Global Tech, can even become senior leaders in the Global Tech fellowship program.

SVP of Global Tech Maren Waggoner tells Digiday’s WorkLife newsletter, “Fellows are driving innovation by taking an enterprise-level lens and serving as leaders to help us drive even greater impact for our customers, members and associates. They are force multipliers having impact through mentoring and influencing others.”

At DS+CO, we don’t have an official dual-track program, but before promoting or hiring a manager, we make sure they embrace the purpose of the role: to elevate each of their people. To ensure they’re able to do this, we train managers to check in with their reports frequently to ask how they’re doing, listen carefully, find out how they can help them do their best work, remove obstacles and show they genuinely care about their well-being.

At the same time, our managers also remain “doers” in some capacity. For their own satisfaction and for them to stay in touch with the day-to-day reality of their people, our managers continue to work in their discipline, but with  a reduced workload so they have time for their managerial duties. I think some companies overlook this critical aspect of a manager’s role, but with technology and processes changing so fast, managers need to keep a hand in the work to stay current with their people.

Similarly, businesses need to keep up with the employment landscape. Right now, that means moving beyond outdated ladders and instead advancing team members on an even plane. We should promote individual contributors based on the value of their contributions, providing increased compensation, influence and status equal to that of managers.

We should give our future managers training, coaching and opportunities to gain experience managing people before they actually manage people. And we should dispel the myth that if you’re talented, you move into management and if you don’t, you must lack talent or ambition.

In other words, what Waggoner says: “We believe there’s a path for everyone at Walmart, no matter where you start or what you aspire to, and we’re focused on providing resources to help associates reach their career goals, whether that’s as an individual contributor or a leader of people.”

Lauren Dixon is board chair of Dixon Schwabl + Co., a marketing communications firm, which has been honored as a Best Place to Work.