Have you seen a scenario like this play out before?
The engineering manager retired, and the choice for a replacement was obvious. What happened next surprised everyone.
Andrew was the next most senior engineer with more than 10 years of experience designing our products. He was steady, reliable, friendly and never missed work. There was a token internal job posting but no one else applied. Everyone was happy for him and saw it as a well-deserved promotion.
But it wasn’t long before problems developed. There was a choice that needed to be made; A or B. It was trivial, inconsequential. At first, Andrew just wanted more information and put off the choice. Then it was more and more details, things that didn’t matter. It got to the point where we were asking him just to pick one, we didn’t care anymore. He started avoiding us, his own employees, if he thought we were going to bring it up. We finally got together as a group and made the choice on our own and then set up a fake meeting just to get him in a room. When we told him what the meeting was really for, he looked like he was going to jump out a window. It dawned on him that the choice was already made and he was off the hook. His relief was obvious.
On the other hand, when the shop foremen would come in and demand a change to the drawings or designs, he rolled over, looked at his shoes and mumbled until they left.
It got worse over the next couple months. We all knew something had to change when he started getting sick and missing work.
Management tried to send him to training classes taught by well-dressed outgoing men. “Just step up and be a leader,” they told him. But Andrew just got more and more reserved and retreated into technical problems. He looked worse every day.
Finally, he came in one day with a resignation letter. He had no other job lined up; he was just done.
His manager begged him to stay. We almost couldn’t function without his product knowledge. What would it take to get him to stay?
“I just want my old job back. I don’t even care about the pay increase. Take it back.”
After two weeks back at his old desk, he was back to his old self.
His manager didn’t understand what happened and why Andrew just crumpled when he took that position.
Have you seen this happen before?
Why did such a competent, experienced engineer crash and burn so spectacularly when promoted to management?
I absolutely saw it coming. No one else did. I was brand new at the company, and the boss wasn’t ready to value my opinion yet. But when I explained it to him after the fact, he was dumbfounded that he had missed it. The lightbulb went on. He understood. The next guy we selected for the role exceeded expectations.
Do you want to know how to identify people like Andrew? And like the new, successful candidate? I will tell you what I showed my boss so you can decide how to match your people with their most effective roles.
For more information about a different way of managing your product, processes and people click here: