Your IC Prime

Transitioning to management is one of the more complex transitions you can make in your career, and I’ve been thinking recently about the mindset shift required to pull it off successfully. Actually, I read about inversion (see references), and started thinking about what themes were common among ICs (individual contributors) that weren’t able to make it work as managers. One issue kept cropping up as I went over past colleagues who switched and stumbled: they thought they were still in their IC prime.

What is your IC prime? It’s a concept I made up, but basically think of it as the period in your career when you, as a directly responsible inidividual (DRI), had the most impact. As a PM it might be the biggest product you ever launched. As an engineer it might the most complex system you ever architected. As a salesperson it might be the biggest deal you ever closed. Basically, it’s the peak of your powers as an IC.

So what does this have to do with jumping into management? Well, the mo…