As a project support specialist, taking on some form or another, I have worked with many incredibly smart people. Engineers, scientists, and programmers just to name a few. I have supported many public service projects covering nearly half of the states in the US as well some international territories/countries. I contributed to projects covering public entertainment locations (stadiums), air force bases, hydrography up and down the western coast of America (including Alaska), railway transportation, country wide topography initiatives, major public transportation infrastructure, and electrical infrastructure. Case being, my experience is relatively deep even with the great breath it expands. Through that, not only have I worked with many of the very smart people I mentioned previously, but also for some of those people.
Engineers (and other technically savvy professions as mentioned above) are generally very smart, especially experienced engineers that have been mastering their skills for decades. Their longevity and dedication often make them seemingly good candidates for management. But, their technical intelligence and decades of achievement are often mistakenly assumed to transfer over to management with the same level of success. What is often overlooked is the simple fact that leadership and people management are skills. While it is certainly possible that these highly experienced and valuable contributors can fulfill these roles with success, they have spent the majority of their lives being technical experts. The natural characteristics, interests, and tendencies that are seen in these highly talented people are what helped them become so successful in their field. Those same skills are not the same set of skills that are necessarily desired in leadership and management. So why do they continue to be put in these positions?
There are always expectations and anecdotal evidence that counters any claim. When it comes to putting the wrong person in a leadership/management position it usually comes from a few places. One common occurrence is simply need. An organization needs a manager or leader so, by default they start at the top. There is certainly logic to that, an experienced engineer knows all there is to know about the work flow process. Start to finish, forwards and backwards, and most importantly those unexpected situations and project stopping problems. They have inevitably been a part of them and usually been a vital piece in resolving them. At face value it makes sense to go to that employee first and look to them to take on this new role. As stated, this new role is not what they have been doing for the last 10,15, maybe even 20+ years. At the end of the day the skills required to be an effective leader or manager are not the same skills required to be an effective technical expert.
Another scenario is that this person applied for a management opening and the company feels like they owe it to them. This may be the most difficult scenario to overcome as a company if they know the potential issues of putting a technical expert in a management/leadership position. This employee has shown dedication to the firm, succeeded in their role, and been a vital piece of the company's success. The company likely feels like they owe it to them and the person probably feels like it is owed to them as well. How do you say no? How do you approach this situation so that you don’t possibly push away one of your best technical experts while simultaneously prioritizing the company's wellbeing and sustainability? This truly is one of the most difficult scenarios a company can face when it comes to selecting that right person, because deserving doesn't necessarily mean right.
One more scenario, which is the absolute hands down worst, is the puppet. There are a couple important points that preface this situation. To begin, if a company is utilizing this strategy their operation problems are much deeper than not having the right manager in place. The right manager isn't in place for a reason. Also, you can kiss sustainability and longevity goodbye. These types of decisions are usually not made by one individual. Ultimately you have alternative motives influencing business decisions which will undermine long term success. The puppet hire is one that I have witnessed myself and truly is heartbreaking in a way. The employee given this level of management doesn't even really recognize what is going on which is one of the biggest reasons they are chosen . Their goal is simply to do what they have been doing all along. Provide the best product to their superiors as they can. In this new role the product isn't engineering design or the next million dollar app, it is controlling lower levels of production. With this you will often see trust break down as the new manager begins digging into every minute of every employee's day. They'll likely begin incorporating performance measurements and metrics in ways that do not make sense or are incredibly intrusive to the production process. They do it all at the direction of the ones that hired them under illegitimate “keep busy” goals and initiatives. This scenario is one of those situations where everyone kinda knows what's going on but no one says anything because they know the outcome. All the real skill leaves, voluntary or involuntary, while the younger and less experienced are reeled in with empty promises of opportunity and growth.
Aside from the puppet scenario, the vast majority of the time the decision to place this higher level of management in the hands of these more technical savvy employees is done with good intention and will. Though, for every outstanding skill and technical ability usually comes the opposite in areas that are more meaningful. That is why this can be a real business operations issue. The issues that do ultimately arise stem from a lack of experience with the interpersonal skills that are needed paired with strong technical mindset that has been running on all cylinders for decades. When a technical problem is discovered it generally can determined when it started, what it has affected, what needs fixed to fix the initial problem, what needs fixed due to the errors, and what the expected outcomes will be regarding time and effort. Very staged, very pointed, very clear resolutions. People on the other hand are exact opposites. Effectively handling a people problem can be difficult. In the mere fact that at times people don't even know what they want or fully why they are disgruntled. A very technical minded problem solver may conclude that an employee is upset due to wage. Their logical mind expects that if they give them a raise, it will resolve said problem. But if the employee doest feel valued and they miscommunicate that then 6 months after their raise everyone will be in the same boat.
These kind of interpersonal hurdles are also seen strongly in client negotiations. Because technical problem solvers generally resolve problems in linear and logical fashion, unless there are technical impossibilities that need talked through, negotiation and consultation are undermined by just offering direct solutions. While direct solutions have their place and are sometimes the answer, it can cause problems down the road when maybe that feature wasn't expressed exactly right or maybe that deadline didn’t quite fit with our internal schedule. When issues like these arise unfortunately they tend to compound when the usual answer is to just fix it. Not only are there the clear financial and labor hurdles that need to immediately be overcome, but there are so many other secondary problems that pop their head up further down the line. Opportunity costs, cuts in efficiency, team morale, and more. Ultimately it comes down to the business and people management side of problem resolution. Which can be downright tough even for experienced business managers.
Fortunately in our modern world, real solutions are relatively simple. There may be a little shifting around and “restructuring” (which I even hate to say). But, as much as firms don’t need technical experts in traditional management leadership positions, they are still needed. As much as good managers are needed, they’re generally not technical experts either. 2 simple things need to happen. The mindset of hierarchical management needs to change and partnerships need to be incorporated. What I mean by that is senior technicians can and should be utilized as consultants and managers on a team of decision makers that also includes roles like business or operations consultants. We live in a world where technology provides us the capability to communicate and operate like never before. We need to move away from the pyramid style hierarchical business management structure. There are many ways to utilize the individual's strengths without inherently integrating the weaknesses. For example, how often is there one and only one project manager for any given business sector or initiative. Its rare, there are almost always a handful and if not there is at the very least a senior PM and regular PM. With that, how often is the decision making factor set to one person? Always.
One project manager has 5 projects and another has 6 and the senior has 3. They all compare year over goals, margins, profits, multipliers, and more against themselves and each other. But why? If the goal is to run a profitable, sustainable, and effective business then why not have a team of PMs who each contribute their individual strengths and specializations to each project. At the end of the day is that not the goal? Businesses are a unit, a collection of people all working toward one goal. The adage that things have operated in a certain way because that's how we've always done it and it's been successful doesn’t mean it's reached its peak. The graphic below represents a very slight change to the traditional corporate hierarchy structure. Banding the roles around the business and each other adjusts the perception of how the roles should be viewed, the weight they carry, and the proportion of the company they make up in numbers. The structure is based more off decision making responsibility and overall impact. Every decision that is made has a direct impact on any greater circle. Furthermore the colors represent the major business sectors, which can be tailored to whatever the specific business needs. For example HR, Operations, Sales, Projects, and R&D. Additionally each level could hold more specific layouts that sit at client or sector levels in the center, just as examples.
The biggest difference in the layout that I have created and traditional, as well as the point of the article, is that it takes that collaboration of specialties to come to a true solution. The current structure and hierarchy is too linear, relying too much on one person to be expected to fulfill all aspects of very complex business operations. That system is what leads to all the problems mentioned above. While real world experience and capability is important in any individual field, interpersonal skills are just as important but often afterthoughts. I've seen it time and time again; job requirements listing 5+ years in a technical role with experience in management support, or something along those lines. It is an opportunity for growth and efficiency gains that is often overlooked because of how hierarchy structures look.
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