Managing up, down, and across — the executive's real job description.
The higher you rise, the less your job is about doing the work. It's about creating the conditions where the work gets done — in three directions at once.
Nobody hands you a job description when you become an executive. You get a title, a budget, and a diary that fills itself. Somewhere in year one, you realise the actual role is not written down anywhere — and it is nothing like the role you were promoted for.
The executives who thrive learn, usually the hard way, that the job is managing in three directions at once. Up, down, and across.
Managing up: give your principal fewer surprises
Your CEO, your board, or your investor is not paid to chase you for information. Managing up is the discipline of making sure the people above you always know the two or three things that could go materially wrong — before they read about them somewhere else.
The strongest executives I've worked with share a habit: a short, honest note to their principal every Friday. No dashboards, no fluff — what shifted this week, what I'm watching, what I need.
Managing down: your job is to remove obstacles, not to be one
The team you inherit does not need you to prove you're the smartest person in the room. They need you to clear the path, defend their calendar, and make the difficult calls they don't have the authority to make.
If your team spends more energy managing you than serving customers, you are the bottleneck. Fix it.
Managing across: your peers are the real leverage
Every major initiative I've led — from partnership rollouts to brand overhauls — succeeded or failed at the peer layer. The colleagues who don't report to you, but whose cooperation you need, are the single greatest predictor of executional velocity.
Invest in them relentlessly. Take the coffee. Share the credit. Return the favour before it's asked for. Peer capital is the currency that quietly compounds across a career.
The takeaway
The executive who only manages down is a good manager. The executive who manages up, down, and across is a leader. The distinction is not seniority — it is discipline, practised in three directions, every week, for the length of a career.
