As a startup grows some level of organizational management is necessary. A company with every employee reporting to the CEO won’t scale.

Over my career, young professionals have asked me how to move into management positions. My advice has been twofold.

First, I suggest they change the way they think about it. Don’t aspire to manage, aspire to lead. Without promotion, permission or changing jobs you can immediately be a leader through your actions. When the boss is ready to add a layer of management or to promote into a vacant management position, the obvious and easy choice is to promote the natural leader. How often have we heard of someone finally getting the title to match the day-to-day responsibilities?

Second, I try to remind them that day-to-day, their interactions will most often be with their reports and that their success hinges on the productivity of the group. I like to think of a team’s passion for and support of their leader as being measurable on an imaginary scale from foxhole to potholder. Foxhole leaders are the ones who jumped in the foxhole and fought the battle right alongside the soldiers. Potholders are the ones who seem to appear just as the pie is ready to come out of the oven. A potholder uses his position of authority to demand the potholders, with which he removes the pie from the oven and gleefully presents it as though he baked it.

How a leader is perceived is influenced by when he joins.

The earlier you join, even if it means starting out as an individual contributor, the more time you get in the foxhole. The later you join, the more probable it is the pie is already in the oven.

At blist, we’re still a small, flat organization. But we are growing. And we do have a lot of foxholes.