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Three-Managerial-Superpowers

4 min readStatus:Seedling

What It Is

In Chapter 17 of Managing Humans - Lopp - 2019, Michael Lopp identifies three resources that managers hold which individual contributors (ICs) do not: information, time, and money. He calls these “superpowers” — not because they are magic, but because they are asymmetric levers unavailable to the people a manager leads. Used wisely, they make the team faster and more aligned. Used carelessly, they erode trust and create dysfunction.

This framing connects directly to Henry Mintzberg’s empirical taxonomy of managerial roles (1973), which includes the Resource Allocator decisional role: the manager alone determines who gets organisational resources and in what proportion.

The Three Superpowers

1. Information

  • Managers receive organisational context that doesn’t reach ICs: strategy discussions, leadership sentiment, upcoming changes, budget plans, competitive signals
  • The superpower: using that information selectively to unblock, motivate, or protect the team
  • Well used: proactively sharing relevant context before it becomes rumour; translating leadership intent into team-level meaning
  • Poorly used: hoarding information as status, creating anxiety through silence, or leaking sensitive information to signal insider access

2. Time

  • Managers control how the team’s time is allocated across projects, meetings, and operational work
  • The superpower: shielding the team from low-value interruptions and directing attention toward high-leverage work
  • Well used: blocking calendar time for focused work, refusing to add meetings without removing others, prioritising ruthlessly
  • Poorly used: scheduling excessive reviews and standups that fragment flow, creating the illusion of productivity through high meeting volume

3. Money

  • Managers influence compensation, bonuses, budget for tooling, conferences, and headcount
  • The superpower: using financial signals to communicate what the organisation values; retaining people who deserve retention
  • Well used: advocating for fair compensation, funding the tools that remove friction, rewarding exceptional contribution visibly
  • Poorly used: allowing pay equity issues to fester, using budget as a political tool, failing to fight for team members at performance calibration

Why ICs Don’t Have These

Individual contributors typically:

  • Receive filtered information from their manager
  • Cannot protect their own time from external demands
  • Have no authority over their own or others’ compensation

This asymmetry is structural, not a reflection of capability. It means the superpower responsibility lands entirely on the manager.

Risk of Misuse

  • Information asymmetry: Selective disclosure creates in-group/out-group dynamics; see also Manager-as-Communication-Hub
  • Time taxation: Excessive meeting load signals the manager values presence over output
  • Compensation politics: Allowing market drift or internal inequity generates hidden resentment and eventual attrition

Liz Wiseman’s research (2010) on multiplier vs. diminisher managers shows that poor use of these levers reduces team output by up to 40%, while effective use can double team contribution — a 2× multiplier on human capital.

Future Connections

Related atomic notes planned for creation: Information-Starvation

Sources

  • Lopp, Michael (2019). Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager. 3rd ed. Apress. ISBN: 978-1-484-23712-4. Available: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-3713-1

    • Chapter 17 “Three Superpowers”: primary source for the information/time/money framework

  • Mintzberg, Henry (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work. Harper & Row.

    • Empirical study of CEO behaviour; identified the Resource Allocator decisional role and Monitor/Disseminator informational roles as core to actual managerial work — directly supports the structural basis of all three superpowers

  • Wiseman, Liz and Greg McKeown (2010). Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. HarperBusiness. ISBN: 978-0-06-196439-6.

    • Research on 150 leaders across four continents; multiplier managers extract 2× more from their teams; diminisher managers suppress team intelligence through misuse of authority, information control, and decision-making power

  • Mintzberg, Henry (1979). The Structuring of Organizations. Prentice-Hall.

    • Formalised the relationship between managerial authority and resource control; establishes that formal authority over budget, time, and information is what differentiates managerial roles from specialist roles structurally

  • Pfeffer, Jeffrey (1981). Power in Organizations. Pitman Publishing.

    • Classic analysis of how managers derive and exercise organisational power through control of information, resources, and decision premises — provides academic grounding for why the three superpowers generate leverage and why their misuse creates political dysfunction

Note

This content was drafted with assistance from AI tools for research, organization, and initial content generation. All final content has been reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author to ensure accuracy and alignment with the author’s intentions and perspective.

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