Author
Vlad Tudorie
Every so often, a conversation opens your eyes to something you hadn’t fully seen before. That’s exactly what happened when I spoke with Marelys L Garcia, co-founder of Mindslines, a company focused on helping a forgotten group in many businesses: first-time managers.
Now, these aren’t executives or seasoned leaders. These are the people recently promoted, often high performers in their previous roles, now suddenly responsible for guiding teams, giving feedback, and shaping culture, all without any formal preparation. And this is where Marelys and her team step in.
“We focus on emergent leadership or first-time managers… They haven’t had a lot of experience. So we call them tomorrow’s leaders today because… you should invest in future leadership early on, so you create the right culture, the right habits.”
This philosophy struck a chord with me. Because when companies treat new managers like they’ll figure it out on their own, what they’re really doing is building culture by accident, not by design. And the long-term costs? They add up quickly.
In fact, managers have been called “corporate America’s most neglected employees.” And the numbers tell the same story. Only 28% of companies prioritise developing their managers, and almost half receive less than two hours of training in total. Even more alarming, many don’t receive any meaningful development until they’ve been in leadership roles for nearly a decade. By then, the damage—burnout, miscommunication, disengagement—is often already done.
That idea really stuck with me. Because if we treat new managers like an afterthought, we end up shaping our culture by accident, not intention. And that’s a risk no growing business can afford to take.
Why first-time managers matter more than you think
New managers are often dropped into leadership roles with little more than a title change. They’re still individual contributors, but now they’re also supposed to give feedback, resolve conflict, and rally a team.
The irony? These early leadership roles touch more people than upper management ever will.
“Most companies just aren’t structured, or sometimes even interested in investing in first-time managers. But now we’re finally seeing clients take steps to build something specifically for that layer. It’s the first time we’ve seen that shift happen inside a company.”
And the knock-on effects? They’re not just anecdotal, they’re measurable. In the UK alone, a whopping 82% of managers start their roles with zero formal training. We call them “accidental managers”—folks promoted for being great at their job, not necessarily for being great with people. Unsurprisingly, around 60% of them stumble in those first two years. Why? Because leading people is an entirely different game, and without training, most are left guessing through conflict, feedback, and team dynamics.
Even companies that do invest in training tend to miss the mark. As Marelys told me:
“When I was first made manager… the focus of management school wasn’t to tell me how to deal with conflict or how to give feedback… It was about how to deal with the applications that I never used before… I learned nothing about managing people.”
That quote stopped me in my tracks. It says a lot about how training is often more about compliance than capability. It also explains why so many new managers feel completely unprepared the moment they step into leadership.
The challenge: Selling a product most don’t realize they need
Mindslines has developed both structured and custom programmes aimed squarely at this under-supported layer of first-time managers. Their challenge, however, is both widespread and frustratingly persistent: most companies don’t fully grasp how critical this leadership layer is until they experience significant pain, whether it’s soaring turnover rates, disengaged teams, or costly promotion failures.
“A lot of times what ends up happening is these companies say, ‘Yeah, I want leadership development,’ but it’s a mixed bag of people… not necessarily first-time leaders.”
This insight from Marelys underscores a broader issue: companies often lack a clear internal strategy for supporting new managers. They may throw together a training initiative with middle managers and seasoned leaders, but miss the ones who truly need tailored guidance. As a result, Mindslines is constantly adapting, shifting gears, recalibrating their curriculum, and reworking delivery to meet the actual people in the room.
In response to this, they’re building a smart, data-driven tool called Ascend. It’s not just a training app, it’s an assessment-based platform that tracks how managers grow over time, measuring knowledge acquisition, practical application, and crucially, self-confidence.
“We measure knowledge, we measure application, and we measure confidence… Because if you’re not confident, you won’t go and do something.”
That final metric, confidence, is a powerful differentiator. Because knowing how to lead and believing you can lead are two very different things. Ascend aims to bridge that gap, turning abstract development into something tangible and measurable.
The bottleneck: Sales and marketing
What struck me most was this: Mindslines has survived (and grown) through sheer persistence and passion. But Marelys was incredibly transparent about what they don’t have yet—a consistent sales engine. Despite their robust programmes and a highly relevant product, the operational heart of business development—prospecting, pipeline building, and closing sales—remains mostly external.
“We are outsourcing a part of a core of any business… We never had it to begin with and we cannot buy it on a permanent basis to be our own, at least not yet.”
It’s a tricky paradox: they’re delivering exceptional value, but they lack the infrastructure to consistently tell that story to the right people. Without an internalised marketing and sales system, Mindslines is caught in a cycle of reactive outreach and opportunity-based growth. That’s not sustainable when trying to scale.
They’re not alone in this. Many founder-led companies hit this same bottleneck. The founders are often the best salespeople because they carry the passion and the product knowledge, but they’re also the busiest people in the business. So when sales is something you do “when there’s time,” it never really gets the momentum it needs.
That resonated deeply. Because in my work at Serenichron, we help companies build internal systems for prospecting, marketing, and sales. Systems that don’t just scale lead generation but also protect founder time and reduce randomness in revenue. What I saw in Mindslines wasn’t a lack of value. It was a mismatch between a powerful offering and the systems to consistently deliver it to the right people—week in, week out.
The good news? This is a solvable problem. But it starts with recognising that sales isn’t a side task, it’s the backbone of growth.
What’s next: Human-first systems with a tech twist
After listening to Marelys describe how they operate, with a tiny core team and a web of trusted contractors, it clicked for me:
“You are the core. It is sort of the irreplaceable core, and then almost everything else has been plugged in as an externalized service… You retain that knowledge within your systems, your knowledge base, your prompts.”
This approach isn’t just clever, it’s resilient. Mindslines has crafted a modular business model that scales through collaboration, not bloated headcount. With just three co-founders at its heart, each bringing a different but complementary strength, they’ve turned their limitations into leverage. One partner brings the psychology expertise, another brings HR and organisational insight, and Marelys herself draws on decades of experience in engineering and operations. Together, they’ve built a dynamic system where core knowledge stays central while delivery flexes to fit.
They’ve managed to create a powerful hybrid: deeply human-centred learning, powered by AI-backed measurement, and delivered through scalable partnerships. Whether it’s coaching, content creation, psychometrics, or LMS delivery, they bring in specialists who slot into the system without breaking it.
This decentralised structure allows them to stay lean, focused, and agile, yet highly effective. It also means they can respond quickly to client needs and market shifts without dragging a giant team behind them. In today’s business climate, that kind of flexibility is more than a perk, it’s a survival strategy.
So if you’re in a company that’s struggling with retention, team morale, or unclear leadership paths, I’d start by asking: how are we supporting our first-time managers? Because the cost of ignoring them shows up in every metric that matters.
Final thoughts: A quiet crisis worth solving
What this conversation with Marelys made clear is that the first layer of leadership is both underserved and misunderstood. These new managers are asked to lead without tools, juggle dual roles, and build culture with little support. Yet they’re the ones who interact most with the rest of the organization, the ones who shape whether people stay or leave.
We also saw how even great companies often don’t have the structure, budget, or awareness to invest at this level. And without systems to track impact, even well-meaning programs risk becoming “training theater.”
But there’s a way forward. With platforms like Ascend, personalized development paths, and smarter systems for marketing and sales, companies like Mindslines are showing that leadership development can be both deeply human and measurably effective.
This isn’t just a story about training. It’s a reminder that your future leaders are already here. The question is whether you’re giving them a fighting chance to thrive.
Because if your first-time managers aren’t set up for success, neither are your teams. And if your teams aren’t thriving, your culture, retention, and results will suffer, quietly at first, and then all at once.
