Job Architecture is Your Friend

TL;DR: A simple job architecture can create clarity for both employees and managers around what to expect from individuals, how to best help them grow and what will happen as the team expands.

Titles should not be emotional

Here are some words I have come to regret: “I don’t care about titles. Pick your own.”

As an early leader in a startup, if you don’t set roles, you invariably get Megatron, Chief Wizard or Fixer (the latter being the title I chose for years to my shame). These titles might get a smile and make you feel like you joined the type of place that values everyone equally, but they also nullify and ignore the whole point of titles. Titles provide valuable information.

Titles create clarity around responsibilities and capabilities. That clarity helps your team scale and helps each individual grow.

Let’s say your title is ‘Ninja.’ Does your manager or do your peers understand how to structure feedback and give you projects that help you learn? If you decide to move to a new job, do potential employers understand your capabilities? Do potential customers or team members you are trying to recruit know what questions to ask or whether you have the authority to make a decision? Do you even understand your next development milestone and what is expected at that next phase of your career (i.e. how do you become a Senior Ninja?)

So why are titles such an emotional topic? I have had many difficult conversations about titles in my career. But those conversations really weren’t about titles, they were about leveling. And most of those hard conversations about leveling weren’t at established organizations but at early ones.

Titles and leveling are particularly difficult in early stage companies because leveling is a relative exercise and in small teams, there are limited points of reference. So it becomes easier as a young leader to give all five of your first employees C-level and VP-level titles. At one point if your company is successful, you will have to go through a painful job architecture exercise and correctly level all your employees. I have gone through multiple leveling exercises and they are never fun and they always lead to conflict and even people leaving the company.

What if you implemented a job architecture from your first employee? Why wouldn’t you?

Clarity does not need to be precise

A job architecture is the system and hierarchy of jobs in an organization. A good architecture clearly articulates roles, responsibilities and titles, the latter being more of a derivative.

I find that when I suggest implementing a job architecture from inception, the largest point of friction is not knowing or understanding job architecture. The main push-back I hear is that it creates unnecessary bureaucracy and structure. I believe a simple job architecture, instituted at the very beginning of a start-up, actually simplifies and creates an enormous amount of clarity as you scale.

If you choose to use a job architecture at your early stage company, KEEP IT SIMPLE to start. Remember that you are trying to create a framework to create clarity. At an early stage company, clarity requires simplicity.

Try not to create an architecture to be precise. You can’t. The first issue is that any ‘level’ in an architecture is taking something that is a continuous spectrum of growth and responsibility and forcing it into discrete intervals. Can you say for certain what day you became a ‘6th Grader?’ Yes. Can you say for certain the day you reached ‘6th grade reading proficiency?’ No. The second problem is that each level encompasses a variety of different skills from communication to attention-to-detail. No one is exactly the right level at every skill. They are usually advanced in some areas and lagging in others.

When thinking through these issues, make a simple model that is (1) easy for employees to understand and (2) easy for managers to use when giving feedback. When I created the job architecture for my last company, I took everything I learned and read from people far more knowledgeable than myself and created a framework centered around problem-solving. When leveling people and deciding on promotions, we review how the individual breaks down problems, finds solutions and executes.

If you are worried that titles create hierarchy, remember that people create hierarchy.

Either you take an active role in shaping the company and how you want it to grow, or a shadow architecture will emerge that can not be controlled and can not scale. You will become trapped not understanding the power dynamics in your company and how to manage your team.

A simple job architecture

Below is a general architecture for a business team. You will also need more technical architectures for engineering, product, etc that are more specific to that type of career progression, but they can still loosely map to this general framework around problem-solving and execution.

Analyst / Associate (1–2 yrs experience): Able to execute a set of tasks with resourcefulness

This role is an entry level position and can support all levels in the organization as needed. The individual must be equipped with the relevant analytic skills to be effective but will learn tools and frameworks on the job. This hire is an investment by the team, and comes with a commitment to help this person learn and grow. While this position is expected to contribute in many ways to particular tasks and projects, typical responsibilities include the following:

• Information gathering and organization
• Analyzing project requirements and drafting considerations
• Monitoring progress of projects

Manager (3–5 yrs experience): Able to draft project requirements, breaking them down into a list of sequential tasks that include internal and external dependencies

This role contributes ideas and research to the development of the long-term direction of projects with some supervision. Managers play a key role in contributing to an organization’s profitability and viability. This role develops expertise in certain areas and is exposed to other pieces of the organization through collaborative projects. In general, managers

• Translate and simplify problems into possible solutions
• Organize project requirements and projects
• Manage project requirements and communication to internal and external partners
• Break down projects into sequential tasks
• Develop new ideas for individual work

Senior Manager (6–9 yrs experience): Able to proactively uncover strategic opportunities , gather info, create project proposal, obtain buy-in and execute

This role may or may not be responsible for managing direct reports. They contribute broad scope of ideas and research to the development of the long-term direction of projects with minimal supervision. They manage the development of strategy and direction for their assigned projects or areas of responsibility. They possess a thorough understanding of how decisions impact other parts of the company. They influence strategies based on expertise and understanding of industry trends and competitors. They use company knowledge and creativity to identify connections between seemingly unrelated issues or initiatives. They understand company-wide implications of decisions.

Director (9+ yrs experience): Able to run a piece of the business through an effective team

This role is responsible for leading a team of analysts, associates and or managers. Leadership qualities and previous experience in the career development of individuals and or strategic partnerships are a must in order to excel at this position. They must also possess the ability to concisely communicate upward to executive leadership and to foster an environment whereby direct reports can communicate upward and across to management and colleagues alike in a productive manner. They understand the art of delegating tasks and responsibilities while instilling a sense of ownership to their direct reports.

The primary role for this position is to serve, assist and remove blockers for team members with the end goal in mind — to achieve team/ department/ company goals and key objectives. People trust this candidate due to their ability to facilitate ideas, recognize challenges, and articulate a vision or strategy for their respective areas of responsibility within the company.

This role may also include individual contributors who have deep experience leading and managing key external partnerships.

And then…

As you scale and your organization grows, subsequent levels include Senior Director, Vice-President and Executive Vice President, which is equivalent to a C-level position in other companies. I generally prefer keeping C-level positions to CEO, CFO, CTO and COO.

NOTE: the above framework will likely require more detail once you have a dedicated human resource department and over 50 employees

A note on IC track versus management track

More specialized frameworks (engineering, design, etc) have separate management and IC (individual contributor) tracks. This is very important. A great technical leader should never feel ‘forced’ to become a people manager in order to keep moving forward in their career and increase compensation. That’s how technical organizations end up with a terrible layer of incompetent middle management that slows the org and creates enormous employee churn.

However, there is a certain point for MOST individual contributors where they will hit a wall in career trajectory and comp compared to managers that can keep scaling. Someone responsible for the output of a hundred people can do things a single person can’t do alone. If a management-track individual keeps growing the org under them, they invariably will have a larger impact and take on more responsibility with more compensation.

The good news is that I believe management is a learned skill. You may never be the best manager, but you can become a very competent one. My gentle advice to individual contributors is to not ignore the more traditional management skill set for too long. Even as an individual contributor, understanding how to manage workflow, motivate people and mentor talent are all important skills. Even if every individual on your team of five is 50% as good as you, together, they are 2.5x more efficient than you are alone. With your help they might reach 80% of your output. Imagine four of you! Leverage is power.

THE OUTLIERS

There are certain off-the-chart ICs that change the world. If you are one of those, keep doing what you are doing and find a place that understands your contributions. Even better, find a great manager that understands your contribution and become an unstoppable duo. If your management partner can find people that can learn from you without slowing you down — wow.

Below is a general outline for a simple job architecture.

Not playing with a full set

The major challenge when instituting a job architecture early in a company is that you have very few employees and each one might be responsible for an entire practice. You are not yet playing the game with a full set of pieces and each of your pieces is asked to do a lot. However, don’t call a bishop a rook just because you don’t have any rooks.

At my last company, I had a difficult conversation with a young man who was our first employee. He came into that meeting thinking he was going to be VP of Operations and instead I offered him a Senior Manager role. Based on his experience, even senior manager was generous. However, because we were early, he would be in charge of all of transportation operations (half our line).

That is the difficulty when your team is small! Not giving people titles that feel important to them seems like you are withholding and, even worse, seems like you are not enabling them to do their jobs effectively by having the mandate that comes with the title.

The consequences of title inflation might feel years off; only felt when the person moves on or when you have to layer them. However, over the same time, your employee feels the pain of not being promoted and actually leveling up. The consequences of title inflation are years off for you, but for your employee, the problem starts compounding immediately.

Level correctly and you clarify expectations and create a blueprint for feedback and ultimately individual growth.

How do you correctly level while still giving your employee the right internal and external mandate to lead a practice? I use ‘head of x’ as an external title. You can be a Senior Manager in a job architecture while simultaneously being the Head of Transportation Operations on LinkedIn.

A roadmap for your people

The job architecture above is not just a way to give titles, it is a map for development conversations, promotions and hiring plans.

The number one reason to institute job architecture early is to protect employees from issues that will affect their work as the company scales. Taking the time to understand someone’s capabilities provides employees with the necessary self-awareness of where they are on a more global spectrum. This eliminates “leveling” surprises as the company scales.

Job architectures also introduce a neutral vocabulary for managers and direct reports to talk about what they are doing well and where they need to improve. There is a general rubric to discuss instead of what might seem like individual issues.

Job architectures also help ensure employees are compensated fairly. I will tackle compensation in another post, but fair compensation REQUIRES a job architecture.

Finally, as an employee…

Regardless of what your title is at your current company, understand where you would be leveled by the market. If you are a Director-level at your company, could you get the same title at a much larger company? At a similar-sized company? What is the delta? Understand what are market expectations so you make sure you are learning the skills that you need to progress along your chosen career path.

I want to acknowledge a lot of the people that helped me through some tough times figuring out job architecture and how to think about compensation: Clayton M. Christensen, Ryan Linton, Patrick Lencioni, Eric Hutchinson, Adam Christian, Lacey Salet, Katelin Holloway

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.

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