Your First 60 Days After Inheriting a Bigger Team
Bigger scope exposes weak systems fast — here's how to stabilize execution, manage senior leadership expectations, and build leverage before chasing more influence
Hi, it’s Ethan & Jason from Level Up: Make career breakthroughs with AI-proof leadership skills.
For those who like learning live with us, here are our courses this month:
(July 11) High Quality Decision Making for Senior Leaders & Executives
(July 12) Managing Up and Across — Communicate effectively with leaders
Today’s Level Up: Inside Executive Coaching (your peak behind the curtain of Ethan’s actual coaching discussions) scenario spotlights the hidden challenge of bigger scope and why the leadership habits that got you promoted may now be the habits holding you back.
During a recent executive coaching session, Batraz (Director of Data Engineering at a Canadian fintech) had just inherited a newly expanded organization of roughly 40 engineers across North America and Europe.
Some teams worked in Eastern Time, others in European Time, and leadership expectations never seemed to sleep. The organization was growing, new functions had recently been absorbed, accountability was inconsistent, and delivery issues kept resurfacing.
His challenge was not unusual.
Like many leaders moving into larger roles, he was trying to do three things simultaneously:
Manage down into the organization (his primary job)
Manage up to senior leadership
Manage across to peers and stakeholders.
The problem was that each of these management tasks seemed to require a different version of him.
When he focused on execution, he worried he was micromanaging.
When he delegated, things slipped through the cracks.
And when he tried to think strategically, a new tactical fire would appear somewhere else in his organization.
So he came to me with a pretty common question.
The Question
Batraz: “I’m trying to effectively manage down and manage up at the same time. How do I operate at the right executive altitude while still maintaining enough visibility into execution to prevent problems?”
I told him it was a classic leadership problem.
Ethan: “You’re responsible for reliable execution down, but you’re also responsible for clear communication and strategic thinking up. That’s the job.”
Then I asked a few questions about the organization.
Too Many Layers
Ethan: “You have 40 people?”
Batraz: “About 40, yes.”
Ethan: “And how many management layers below you?”
Batraz:“Two.”
I paused.
Ethan: “That’s part of your problem.”
He laughed.
Batraz: “I was wondering if you’d say that.”
Ethan: “Every layer creates distance and opportunities for information to get distorted. It’s like the game of telephone.”
This was not the heart of his challenge, but it mattered.
Many leaders spend years trying to solve communication problems that are actually organizational design problems.
Every unnecessary layer slows feedback, weakens accountability, and creates ambiguity about ownership.
I told him that while he might not be able to flatten the organization tomorrow, he must treat reducing unnecessary layers as a long-term goal whenever opportunities arise.
But then we got to the real issue.