Always Hire People Smarter Than You

I am surprised how frequently I see managers at every level including vice presidents surrounding themselves with people that are less technically competent than themselves. We all were once great technical individual contributors. That’s probably how most of us got our first shot at management. But to develop as a leader, you first have to let go of being a subject matter expert. You must hire people or develop existing staff to take that role. If you insist on being the smartest guy in the room, you will never learn how to grow as a people manager. You will be so busy trying to hold onto your technical expertise that you will stifle the very people who you need to develop so you can be a better leader. This will lead to great frustration within your organization because you will be so busy wearing an old hat that you don’t focus on setting the strategic direction of your department. And by stifling the people on your team, you will lose talented people who don’t see career growth and that causes you to take more control of the technical situation which then leads to greater and greater attrition. This is the true definition of a vicious cycle.

Assess your organization. If you are the leader and the subject matter expert, you are setting up your department for failure.