Practice Before the Promotion
Promote people to DO the job, never to learn it — coach the next role before the title arrives
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Most organisations promote a strong individual contributor into management and then expect them to learn the job in the job, where mistakes are expensive and admitting ignorance is career-threatening. Idiodi inverts it: the manager's daily job is coaching, and coaching means creating safe practice arenas for the NEXT role before anyone gets the title. You do director things before you're a director; by the time you're promoted, you've already done the job, nobody contests it, and your early mistakes cost nothing.
Origin
Christian Idiodi, drawing on his SVPG coaching practice and an explicit sports-coaching analogy (he coached his sons' soccer team for eight years). It is his structural explanation for micromanagement and for the Peter Principle in tech organisations.
Core principles
- 01Doing product management is the product manager's job; getting BETTER at product management is the manager's job.
- 02Coaching is the only part of leadership that is a daily activity — vision, strategy and hiring are one-offs.
- 03You do not get mastery by avoidance.
- 04What you do at practice, you do in the game — and product management has no practice time unless a coach creates it.
- 05Mistakes made before you hold the title are cheap and coachable; the same mistakes after the title have leverage and cost everyone.
- 06Most people can't give coaching they've never received — the chain has to be broken by someone showing them an effective alternative.
How to run it
- 1
Accept coaching as your day job
As a manager, treat coaching as the everyday work — like a sports coach on the sideline watching the game and finding ways for each player to get better at their job. Not an annual review, a daily practice.
Watch out If you've never been coached well yourself, you will default to the treatment you received. Idiodi once had to demonstrate to a screaming CEO, in front of his own team, that a calm alternative communicated far more.
- 2
Write a per-person playbook toward the next role
For each report, design a specific playbook that gets them competent at their current job and then prepares them for where they need to go next. Tell them explicitly what the next role does.
Pro tip Idiodi's answer when someone asks to be promoted to director: 'go be a director — you don't need a title, let me tell you what the director does, and we'll work on those things over the next few months.'
- 3
Create safe practice arenas for the next role
Give them real reps of the next job while they still have coverage: sit in on your interviews, then run one with you observing. Draft the performance review. Take a piece of the strategy. Mistakes here are protected — 'he's not a VP, look at him trying to do VP things.'
Pro tip Use group-PM-type roles for what they were designed for: a single direct report so someone can discover whether they even want to manage people.
Watch out Never give someone four direct reports when there is no evidence they can manage one — you've just scaled the bad behaviour by four.
- 4
Practice alongside them, don't outsource it
Do not solve coaching by sending someone to a class or handing them a mentor and calling it done. If a report needs to get better at communication, go to the communication class WITH them so you can create the practice space and give the feedback afterwards.
Pro tip A class is an input; behaviour change comes from repeated practice with feedback in a safe space you create.
Watch out Outsourcing coaching perpetuates the cycle — you never learn to do it, so you can never teach it.
- 5
Promote only into a job already being done
Make the promotion a recognition of work already performed, not a bet. Run succession planning so the coaching happens months before the vacancy, not after it.
Pro tip The added benefit is that the promotion becomes uncontested — nobody argues with someone who is already doing the job.
In the wild
Lenny is a celebrated senior engineer whose picture is on the wall. Feeling stalled, he takes the only visible next rung: engineering manager. Nobody claps for him any more; the recognition rituals are gone. When a big engineering problem lands, he jumps in and solves it himself — because he never registered that his job changed from solving problems to making a team good at solving problems. Unable to say 'I don't know' as a leader, he googles how to run an interview, copies whatever article looks good, nothing visibly breaks, and his reports then inherit that made-up framework as gospel.
→ Idiodi calls this the most common origin story of micromanagement, and of the dysfunctional 'everyone does it their own way' management culture that then replicates itself down the org.
In an executive meeting a CEO began screaming and cursing at his team. Idiodi pulled him outside, learned that the CEO's own boss had done exactly that to him, and asked permission to demonstrate an alternative. He restated the CEO's message to the team calmly and asked them which version was more effective and why.
→ The team said that with the shouting they just went and did the thing; with the restatement they could see four other things they needed to do and gaps they hadn't spotted. The CEO had simply never seen an alternative work.
Common mistakes
Promoting into incompetence
Using the next rung on the ladder as a retention tool for a strong IC, with no coaching beforehand, sets them up to fail. Idiodi is explicit that it is not their fault — the company failed to coach them.
Teaching management only once someone is a manager
Once they hold the title, they can no longer safely say 'I don't know' or 'I need help', so they can't be taught. The teaching window closes at the moment of promotion.
Confusing a training class with capability
Sending someone on a communication course doesn't make them a better communicator; a class attended is an indication of intent, not of skill. Only practice with feedback moves the behaviour.
Giving a first-time manager multiple reports
Four direct reports with zero evidence they can manage one just means the untested behaviour gets practised on four people at once.
Is it for you?
Best for
Engineering, product and design leaders with a succession plan, and anyone who has just watched a great IC struggle after promotion.
Not ideal for
Very small startups with no management layer to practise into, or urgent backfills where there is no runway to coach ahead of the vacancy.
From the transcript
“doing product management is a product manager's job but getting better at product management is the manager's job it's the coach's job”
“I am promoting you to do the job not to learn the job”
“but the best place to learn how to be a VP is when you're not a VP because this is that's where you practice being…”
“why would you give somebody four direct reports if they have proven there's no evidence they can manage one”
“we promote them into incompetence it's not their fault because we are not coaching them what we need to do is create a safe environment…”
“the number one reason most people don't give good coaching is because they've never experienced good coaching themselves”
From the episode
The essence of product management
Christian Idiodi (SVPG)