Typing vs Tapping
“I’m trying to ascertain where you stand in your managerial abstraction ability.”
Huh? Who talks like that?
The above is from a job interview I had several years ago. The interviewer was trying to assess my management skills. When I asked him to elaborate, he explained that a professional (in his view) went through 3 stages (and 2 evolutions) in their career:
individual
manager
managing managers
There was some truth in there, but it felt like an over-simplification. In my mind, management was a spectrum, and you could dial the knob in either direction depending on the context. But I didn’t have a better framework for explaining my point of view, so I just said I was level 3 and left it at that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Until now.
we were talking about the spectrum of typers to tappers…typers are hardcore workers, hands-on-keyboard people…they generally have less leverage, but then my buddy, he was with the CEO of a firm and he said that his biggest insight from spending a bit of time with him was that he was a tapper and that he had so much leverage on his time that his career could all be done by tapping on a phone screen…and the fundamental takeaway was that he's directing the flow of a gushing river…
This is an excerpt from a podcast (linked below). The spectrum I’d envisioned fits cleanly on this range of typers and tappers.
As an individual contributor you are all about typing (code, specs, designs). As a “lead” you vacillate back and forth between typing and tapping. As a manager, you’re supposed to be tapping but you can end up typing in a pinch. And as an executive, your tapping should be brief, firm, and sporadic.
I like this analogy because it can help you catch yourself when you are drifting into a mode that doesn’t align with the expectations of your role / team.
I’d love to hear from readers on how they think about the management spectrum - please chime in via comments👇. And if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing.
further reading / references
David Perell and Kevin Kwok talking typers & tappers on the North Star podcast
Bezos on why executives should focus on a small number of quality decisions
my post on Every Decision Ever, which offers some templates for framing
childish drawing / interpretation
If a tapper misdirects the gushing river, the typers will pursue that wrong path until failure is manifest or there's a redirection. Yet, would the accountability lie with the executive manager, who plotted the course, or the executors who made it so...? With great power comes responsibility, and also accountability. A manager can (and should) delegate responsibility, but never accountability. Another great post, Ibrahim! Thank you.