The fact that management dictates the future of a company is relatively obvious and at the same time could be the topic of a whole book.
But it is really important to ask the question: what kind of managers are needed?
And for that, it is necessary to decide as early as possible what metrics should be used to evaluate managers.
There is not one perfect answer to that question because that will depend on what the company is trying to achieve, and it is good to keep in mind that every style will come with advantages and disadvantages.
The metics I tend to use are the following:
- Proactive hiring
- Hiring hidden gems (meaning people not obviously incredible)
- Training those employees to quickly moving them to the next level
- Keeping employees in the company
- Employees meeting objectives
- Employees having Cross team work (above and beyond accomplishment)
- Rebellious activities
The last point is because it is harder for a manager to deal with that type of employee. However, innovation usually comes from people that are rebellious, obsessed, weird and emotional in his/her work.
As a manager it is definitely harder to deal with a rebel that will dare to question a task or a direction, and the easy road is to shut them down. But by doing so, any creativity will also be shut off. And once it happens, it is complicated to get it back up.
This means that there may be a choice between having something extremely organized but without creativity or something a bit more disorganized but with more creativity. And that will depend on your employees but also and definitely on your managers and how they react in this kind of situation.