Episode #198: Bad Business Battlefield Promotions

In the military, junior officers are the equivalent of middle management in business. In times of warfare these middle managers are often wounded or killed in battle. There are no replacements from officer school, so the most capable member of the team is promoted on the battlefield, as the replacement leader. It makes no sense in business to have this as the model. Yet, this is often what happens.

The current middle manager is poached by a vigilant recruiter or they jump ship for greener pastures. The organisation has had no capacity or has given no great thought to the issue of succession planning and there is no opportunity to transfer in a seasoned manager as the replacement. The most capable member of the team is tapped on the shoulder to step up into a leadership role. How are these individuals judged to be the most capable? Usually, this is never based on their leadership capability, because they have never had an opportunity to display their latent talent. It is mainly based on their technical expertise, functional experience or longevity in the team.

Having selected the most likely leader, they are now thrust into the job and given the opportunity to learn how with OJT or On The Job Training. The “training” however is the self-paced, pick it up as you go along variety. The previous boss didn’t understand the importance of delegation as a way to groom successors, so no one got a taste of what being the boss was like. The new boss’s reporting line going up are too busy with their own work, to spend much time coaching the newbie boss. Trial and error is now the established curriculum of leadership.

Going from one of the team, to the leader is no easy task. Your colleagues have a broad range of reactions to the new order from incredulity, to disdain, to jealousy, to support. The new leader wonders how to project their authority with the former colleagues? They also discover that while variety amongst colleagues was previously an amusing observation, now that they have to lead them, they discover they are all quite disparate in their thinking, desires and expectations. They can’t be led as a mass group, like a herd of sheep. This lot walks on two legs and talks back to the boss.

The new leader also discovers that they are responsible for the results of the whole team. They are still working on their on their own tasks, because there was no replacement for them, once they moved up. The team is one down in fact and so the same amount of work has to be done by less people. Punching out the results requires a player/leader combination role. For the first year this works, because the new leader is capable of doing the work required, to get their own numbers. The team also shuffles along pretty much as before.

The new leader has no idea about how to leverage the team to get higher results. Delegation is an unknown. There is the perennial fear that the delegatee won’t be reliable. The delegatee in fact may be highly resistant, because they believe they are already busy, busy with their own work and they don’t see why they should be doing “the boss’s work” as well. No delegation capacity puts excess strain on the time management of the new leader. Actually, their time management wasn’t much chop before, but it was sort of containable. Now the pressure is on and the cracks start to open up.

With the new financial year comes the inevitable higher targets. Now the new leader finds that the team is still one short, the hours in the day haven’t increased, the team is working as they always have, producing what they have always produced. The difference is that the new leader has to produce both the team numbers and fulfill the tasks required by the organisation. These include exciting new tasks like reporting, carrying our performance reviews, handling the team administration, plus still doing their own job. This is now becoming unsustainable.

Their time management and leadership skills haven’t improved, so they are now stressed and run ragged. They don’t produce the numbers, the employee survey pastes them for their “poor” leadership ability and the organisation fires them. The machine then whips out another battlefield promotion and we start the same process once again.

The moral of the story? Have a succession plan developed, give your new leaders training on the difference between doing and leading, set them up to succeed and assign a senior leader as an active mentor to coach them through the minefields of middle management.

Action Steps

Ensure that all leaders in the organisation are delegating tasks to subordinates, as a way of exposing them to issues before they step up into leadership positions
Work on the time management skills of all the leaders, so that they can do delegation properly
Help the new leaders by giving them formal training
Assign a mentor and hold the mentor accountable for their success as a leader