Your A Players Don't Want a Manager

Your best people don't want to be managed. They want to be led. Here's what six great leaders, from a submarine captain to Nelson Mandela, can teach any founder or CEO about the difference.

In Scaling Up we talk a lot about A players, and one truth sits underneath all of it: A players expect more than B and C players. More challenge, more clarity, more trust. And more from their leader.

I saw this first-hand back when I was Chief Operating Officer and also leading the HR function. We were preparing to scale, and scale in numbers of people, so whatever we built in the function had to let us do that without onboarding everyone manually, over and over again. I gave the team that direction and let them build what they thought would be needed.

My operations manager went off and built an onboarding system for new hires, plus an intranet so people could learn everything about the company before they even joined. She didn't ask permission. She just did it, getting the IT team to help her and showing it around, and she didn't want to tell me about it until it was done.

When she finally showed me, she said, “I was a bit afraid to show it to you. But I've got it done.” I was so impressed with that initiative. I told her it's always better to ask for forgiveness than permission. It showed me that if I gave her the right vision, she'd work out how to make her own life easier. And she did.

I'm not immune to it either. I can still get bogged down in the detail, so I keep reminding myself of one thing: I don't care how you do it. My job is to show you where the flag is. Your job is to take the hill and get the flag off it. The route is up to you.

Part of that is because I don't like being managed either. Picture someone standing over your shoulder, telling you to do every task in a particular order that suits their style. It ignores your experience and your ability to get there on your own.

Here's the uncomfortable bit. Most leaders never set out to be managers. They drift into it, and how it happens depends on whose business it is.

Founders usually start out leading. It was their idea, they know the why in their bones, and early on everyone can feel it. Then the business grows and they hit the Founder's Dilemma: the thing that got them here, being across everything, is now what's holding the business back.

Hired CEOs face a different problem. They sometimes can't see the founder's intent, so they have to imagine how they'd lead if it were their own. It's a big reason so many are paid with alignment in equity. When that ownership mindset doesn't quite land, it's easy to fall back on managing: checking, approving, controlling.

Either way, the result looks the same. Good people bring decisions to you out of respect or caution, you say yes, and a few years later the whole place runs through your inbox.

Your A players notice. They don't want someone checking their work. They want to know where you're heading, why it matters and what good looks like. Then they want room to get on with it.

Some of the best leaders in history worked this out, often the hard way. Here are six of them, and what they'd say to any founder or CEO today.

1. Give intent, not orders

In 1999 David Marquet took command of the USS Santa Fe, the worst-performing nuclear submarine in its fleet. He'd trained for a different boat. Early on he gave an order that the Santa Fe physically couldn't carry out, and the officer passed it straight down the line anyway. Because the captain said so.

That was his wake-up call. A crew that only follows orders will follow the wrong ones too.

So he changed how the ship talked. Instead of asking permission, the crew said “Captain, I intend to...” and he'd reply “Very well.” The Santa Fe went from worst in the fleet to first, and ten of its officers later went on to command submarines of their own.

For you: every “can I?” that lands on your desk is a decision someone else could have owned. Start asking your team to tell you what they intend to do, not what they'd like permission for.

2. Share the whole picture

When General Stanley McChrystal led the special operations task force in Iraq, his forces were better trained and better equipped than the enemy, and they were still losing. The problem wasn't skill. It was speed. Every decision climbed up the chain and back down again, and by the time an answer arrived the moment had passed.

His fix sounds almost too simple. He opened up a daily briefing to anyone who needed it, eventually thousands of people across agencies and countries, so everyone saw the same information at the same time. Once people understood the whole picture, he could push decisions down to the people closest to the action.

He called it shared consciousness, empowered execution. In plainer words: you can't trust people to decide well if you've kept them in the dark.

For you: if your team only hears about the numbers, the strategy or the board's concerns second-hand, they'll keep bringing decisions back to you. Give them the full picture and you'll get better calls, faster.

3. Humility sets the standard

The All Blacks are one of the most successful teams in any sport. And after a match, some of the most senior players in the world pick up a broom and sweep out the changing room. Nobody asks them to. It's just what All Blacks do.

In the mid-2000s the team went through a culture reset. Coach Graham Henry and his staff handed real leadership to a group of senior players, who shaped how the team trained, behaved and held each other to account. Their line was “better people make better All Blacks.” They went on to win back-to-back World Cups in 2011 and 2015.

The broom matters because standards aren't set by what leaders say. They're set by what leaders are seen doing when they think it doesn't count.

For you: your A players are watching what you do far more than what you say. If you want a team that owns outcomes, let them see you own the small stuff too.

4. Your job is the people, not the plan

In 1915 Ernest Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, was trapped and crushed by Antarctic ice. The plan, to cross the continent on foot, was dead. What was left was 28 men, a long way from anyone.

Shackleton changed his goal on the spot: get every single one of them home. He kept routines going so people had something to hold onto. When the crew split into tents, he put the men most likely to cause trouble in his own tent, so their grumbling couldn't spread. Eventually he sailed a small lifeboat 800 miles across the Southern Ocean to get help.

Nearly two years after they left, every man came home alive.

For you: when the plan falls over, and at some point it will, your team doesn't need a new spreadsheet first. They need to know you're looking after them. Keep the people steady and they'll help you build the next plan.

5. Let purpose do the managing

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, is famous for a policy that sounds like a joke: when the surf's up, go surfing. As long as the work gets done, nobody needs to ask.

It isn't a perk. It's trust, backed by people who care deeply about why the company exists. Chouinard hired people who shared the mission and then stayed out of their way. In 2022 he went a step further and handed ownership of the whole company to a trust and a not-for-profit, so its profits fund the fight against climate change.

When people genuinely believe in the work, you don't have to watch the clock for them. The purpose does a lot of the managing for you.

For you: purpose isn't just for charities. If your people joined because they believe in what you're building, stop managing them like they only turned up for the paycheque.

6. Lead through what you do, not what you command

In 1995, South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup, barely a year after its first democratic election. To many black South Africans, the Springboks were a symbol of apartheid, and there was real pressure to scrap the name and the emblem altogether.

Nelson Mandela could have ordered it. Instead he argued to keep them, built a relationship with the team's captain, François Pienaar, and asked the players to become a team for the whole country. On the day of the final he walked onto the field wearing a Springbok jersey with Pienaar's number 6 on the back. A stadium full of mostly white fans started chanting his name. The Springboks beat the All Blacks, and a nation had a moment it still talks about.

Mandela had the power to make rules. He chose to go first instead, and let people follow.

For you: the biggest shifts in your organisation won't come from a new policy. They'll come from what you're seen to do, and who you're seen to stand beside.

The honest catch

None of this means handing over the keys and hoping for the best. Look closely at every one of these leaders and you'll find a tight rhythm underneath the freedom.

Marquet only let his crew decide once they understood the goal and knew the technical detail cold. McChrystal's freedom ran on a briefing that happened every single day. The All Blacks' leadership group held each other to standards that were anything but relaxed. Freedom worked because everyone knew exactly what they were aiming at.

This is where Scaling Up earns its keep. It starts with a Vision Summary: your core values, your purpose and where you're heading, all on one page, so everyone can see the intent without having to ask. It's also how a founder's intent gets out of their head and onto paper, which makes life a lot easier for a hired CEO. Then come clear priorities for the quarter, one owner for each, a few numbers everyone watches, and a meeting rhythm that keeps it all honest. That's what makes it safe to step back. It's not control. It's the thing that lets you let go.

A players don't hate structure. They hate being micromanaged inside it.

So, where do you start?

A submarine captain, a general, a rugby team, an explorer, a surfer and a president. Very different worlds, same lesson. They made their people bigger, not smaller.

You don't need to do all six this week. Pick one. Maybe it's changing “can I?” into “I intend to.” Maybe it's sharing the numbers you've been keeping to yourself.

Here's a question to sit with: what decision landed on your desk this week that someone else should have owned?

Sources and further reading

• Noam Wasserman, The Founder's Dilemmas (Princeton University Press, 2012)
• L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around! (Portfolio, 2012)
• General Stanley McChrystal, with Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell, Team of Teams (Portfolio, 2015)
• James Kerr, Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life (Constable, 2013)
• Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (McGraw-Hill, 1959)
• Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing (Penguin, 2005)
• Patagonia, Patagonia's Next Chapter: Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder (14 September 2022)
• John Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (Penguin Press, 2008)
• Verne Harnish, Scaling Up (Gazelles, 2014; revised edition 2022)