Two Ways to Build Your Empire

Bob and Alice are both smart, personable, ambitious, and determined to climb the ladder fast. For starter managers, they followed the conventional wisdom that nudge them to enlarge their fifedom. It is quite sensible: more resources lead to more opportunities to practice managing: empire building is good for a manager’s career.

I opined before that the size of the organization needs to be big enough. I wrote for the director-level managers, what about first liners? For them, getting more direct reports is a no-brainer: the more, the better. But how?

Bob consolidated some processes and acquired a charter that is pivotal to critical business functions. As other departments piled up requests and lengthened his work queue, he fell behind because he was short-staffed. Since his charter was a monopoly, he received more funding and the strategy worked.

Alice focused on her basic skills: planning, executing, and communicating. She became a proficient and capable manager. Her skills attracted attention and senior managers started to assign her more jobs. Because she was capable, she got more resources. Her strategy also worked.

One of them actually did not work at all. Explain why.

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