WHY DO GREAT MANAGERS FAIL

WHY DO GREAT MANAGERS FAIL

There are so many managers that are and have been on the road to success list every year since the beginning of their career with organizations. They are moved into different roles, taking on different responsibilities and succeeding and getting great results each and every time.

 They are recognized as strong leaders because of their ability to get results create relationships both inside and outside the organization. The one thing that happens is that upper management begins for whatever reasons to either feel or see a threat coming their way and things begin to change. Suddenly everyone begins to ask questions such as:

What is going on? The truth of the matter is that sometimes upper management does not have the skills to manage knowledge and so become afraid of knowledge and of course you will have a clear example of the Peter Principle. Their teams begin to become contentious and morale begins to waver.

 I did a research paper on the Peter Principle in college and what most people do not understand is that this move can be used either to promote someone who has no skills for the promotion or to set someone up for failure who is a great leader but does not have familiarity with a new role thus trying to ruin someone’s career but of course they will be told that this is a great career move for them. 

This is the funniest and worst move when upper management does this to a person who understands both because it will back fire showing upper management’s incompetence to deal with the issues at hand.

What is the Peter Principle you might ask? Well here is the definition?

In an organizational structure, the assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion  is often based on their performance in the current job ( Great at paperwork)but has no people or management skills or well liked because of special friendships or otherwise which results eventually in their being promoted to their highest level of competence and potentially then to a role in which they are not competent.

This will cause morale issues throughout the organization or department or will have someone else to do their work until either they leave or get demoted but in some cases like nonprofits keep them  because they are ready to retire and nothing can be done due to the structure in place and unions involved is referred to as their "level of incompetence".

 When a great leader is moved or promoted to a new role and has no familiarity nor the skills to deal with a bad situation that has been established either by another incompetent person The employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching their career's ceiling in an organization thus becoming black listed for a long time and thus upper management who moved this person into that role can now say that the issues at hand are what they are due to the incompetence of the manager they promoted when in fact it is upper managements incompetence.

 Does this mean that the person who is moved into a new role is no longer a great leader?

Doing a seminar on the Peter Principle

  Of course not!! They didn’t lose their ability to lead.  Their abilities and skills had not just simply vanished but other parts of the situation had changed which was to be moved to a role of no familiarity.

Now of course there ways and techniques to avoid these things from happening that either  the human resource manager if they are competent can do or upper management can do if they are competent and here are a few methods that organizations can use to mitigate the risk associated with the Peter Principle:

• Refrain from promoting workers based on their current performance without proof of their abilities to succeed in the desired role.
• Provide in-service training for the desired roles for those being considered for promotion or moved into unfamiliar ground.
• Provide a parallel career path for good technical staff, possibly with the offer of additional pay, perks or recognition without requiring promotion to management,

Here is a great article written by friend of a good friend of mine who is an excellent leader herself.  

By Edith Onderick-Harvey on March 5, 2015 

I’ve seen five common reasons why a leader who has been effective in the past is now failing.

1. Some critical skills were overlooked before. Let’s talk about the obvious reason first.  Some leaders have not developed key skills that they need to be successful.  Just like brilliant students who breeze through school, sometimes people climb to positions of leadership because they are brilliant marketers, brilliant scientists, or brilliant (put your profession here). But along the road to success, the people around this leader choose to overlook a key skill (or two or three) until it can’t be overlooked any more and causes huge issues.  For example, if we go back to Jessica, throughout her career it was noted in talent reviews that she could be abrasive and often got things done through force of will rather than by building relationships and coalitions.  She thought of herself as ‘results-focused.’  When she moved into her Operations role, it became imperative for her to build relationship with peers in other parts of the organization to get results.  Interestingly, her ‘results-focus’ is what got in the way.

2. Cultural mismatch. This is a common reason why leaders who have been wildly successful in one environment for a long time, fail miserably in a very short time in another.  The way a person operates and becomes successful in one culture can be very different from another.  For example, a leader may have been very successful in a culture that a valued quick decision making and risk taking.  Put that same leader in an environment driven by consensus and a desire to explore issues from every angle before moving forward and wait for the results.

3. Process and system mismatch. In the 1800’s, some people did very well in the wild, wild west and others went back home to the security of their established communities.  Some leaders are very adept at working in environments with less defined processes and systems.  They either work without them or really enjoy putting them in place.  Others thrive in environments where processes and systems are clearly defined.  Think of the serial entrepreneur who is put into a large, complex organization that has acquired his firm.  Change was a way of life in his entrepreneurial firm but isn’t in this large organization.  Leading change in the former was easy; everyone thrived on it.  In the new organization it takes real work. The processes that exist are meant to maintain the status quo not change it and people in his new organization wonder why he was once perceived as someone who drove change.

4. Lack of management support. Even the most seasoned executive needs people in her corner.  She needs people who support her success.  She may need coaching and mentoring to navigate the new role.  Even the best CEO won’t succeed if the Chairman of the Board decides she is not the person for the job and needs to go.

5. Organization structure. We all have been in situations where roles aren’t clear, responsibilities are redundant, unnecessary internal competition is the norm, resources aren’t available or decision making is lost in layers of management morass.  Leaders can find themselves in the same situations.  I worked for an organization once that routinely pitted leaders against each other by giving them the same issue to address or initiative to lead in different parts of the organization without each leader knowing about the other’s charge.  There could only be one winner in this situation so one of them automatically was going to fail.