Cambridge Business Association
When They Win, You Win
Podcast

When They Win, You Win

Russ Laraway unpacks his new guide for the modern manager

Russ Laraway
First Round Review, 2022
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

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  • Engaging
  • Insider's Take

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Russ Laraway is the Chief People Officer for Qualtrics, a consultancy in management practices. His book When They Win, You Win provides tools to assess managers and help them succeed. In this interview by the First Round Review, Laraway talks about why good management matters and how companies often mistake worthy individual contributors for standout managers. He addresses attrition rates, what employees look for in a manager and how companies can better support those working in managerial roles. Laraway cuts through the jargon, offering quantitative assessment tools companies can use in the real world, in real time.

Summary

The best performers are not automatically the best future managers.

Russ Laraway is the Chief People Officer at Qualtrics, which helps companies such as Twitter and Google train better managers. He cautions against the common practice of promoting top performers to managerial positions. He points out that your top salespeople, for example, are not automatically going to be the best managers; in fact, they are likely to be poor managers because they often have too much self-interest at stake to manage their previous colleagues and departments.

In Laraway’s opinion, managers have been fed too much anecdotal theorizing about best practices. He is more interested in quantitative measurements that tie directly to a company’s bottom line.

How can an organization identify, promote or recruit worthy potential managers, train them well and make sure they succeed? To answer that question, Laraway provides simple frameworks that leaders can use to select the best managers. These frameworks examine the top qualities managers should possess.

Executives can use the metric of employee engagement to assess a manager...

About the Podcast

Consultant Russ Laraway is the author of When They Win, You Win: Being a Great Manager is Simpler Than You Think. First Round Review is a publication of First Round Capital, a venture capital company that provides seed-stage funding to technology companies. 

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