The Coaching Model (Coaches, Not Managers)
Replace managers with same-specialty coaches whose only job is your skills and your next level
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Canva runs without traditional managers. Instead every employee has a coach drawn from their own specialty who continuously works on the person's skill development and identifies when they're ready to move to the next level. Performance and cross-functional feedback are handled separately by a collegiate circle of peers doing 360 reviews, so growth coaching stays uncontaminated by evaluation.
Origin
Cameron Adams says the model 'was driven actually by a formative coaching experience that we had as founders quite a few years ago from an external coach and we decided to bring that into Cana as a whole philosophy.'
Core principles
- 01Separate growth coaching from performance evaluation — the coach develops you, the peer circle judges you
- 02A coach must share your specialty so they understand your craft, your possible trajectory, and the structures you can slot into
- 03Coaching is about spotting pivot points — when to stop doing the individual work and start leading others in it
- 04Growth is a skill most people at the company should learn to give, not a role reserved for a few professionals
How to run it
- 1
Assign a same-specialty coach to every person
Pair each employee with a coach who is a lead in the same specialty (a PM coaches PMs, an engineer coaches engineers) so they know the skills, the growth trajectory, and the org structures the person can grow into.
Pro tip Canva has ~800-1000 coaches across the company — coaching is a broad capability, not a scarce title.
- 2
Run continuous skill and trajectory check-ins
The coach holds regular sessions and one-on-ones focused on improving each individual skill and on the person's actual work, constantly asking what they're doing well and where they could stretch.
- 3
Name the pivot points
The coach's distinctive job is spotting when it's time to move up a level — e.g. from building a product yourself to coaching other PMs who build products. Understanding these pivot points is the core value.
Watch out Telling someone to 'please grow' does nothing. Growth comes from giving opportunity plus support, not exhortation.
- 4
Handle evaluation with a separate peer circle
Keep formal performance review out of the coaching relationship. A collegiate managerial circle of colleagues runs 360 feedback on a regular cadence (every six months) that the coach feeds into but does not own.
- 5
Teach coaching as a skill at scale
Invest in training the broad circle of coaches in the skills of coaching — how to build a growth mindset in others — rather than relying only on a handful of dedicated professional coaches (Canva keeps ~5 of those for special situations).
In the wild
A product manager at Canva is coached by another product manager who knows the PM skill set, the trajectory a PM could grow into, and the structures they could slot into at the next level. The coach helps all the PMs get better at the craft of product management.
→ Growth conversations are grounded in real craft knowledge, and skill-building stays separate from the 360 performance process.
Common mistakes
Merging coaching with performance review
If the person developing you is also the one grading you, honest growth conversations get compromised. Canva deliberately splits the two.
Assuming coaching means telling people to grow
Exhortation is ineffective. What drives growth is giving concrete opportunity plus support and a small push past comfort.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and leaders at a scaling company who want to decouple people-development from performance management and build growth into the culture
Not ideal for
Small early teams where a single founder-manager can still develop everyone directly, or orgs unwilling to invest in training a large pool of internal coaches
From the transcript
“we don't really have managers um so you're coach is the person who thinks uh about you in a specialty sense”
“if you're a product manager they're a product manager so they know the skills that you have to uh use they know the trajectory that…”
“and then we have probably more of a I would say Collegiate managerial circle of uh colleagues who help you who do 360 feedback all…”
“it was driven actually by a formative coaching experience that we had as Founders quite a few years ago from an external coach”
“so we focus a lot on teaching them the skills of coaching how to build a growth mindset in their coaching”
From the episode
Inside Canva: Coaches not managers, giving away your Legos, and running profitably
Cameron Adams (co-founder and CPO)