Why does the best technician still frequently end up as the person promoted to run the team? I really would have thought we, as an industry, would have worked this one out by now and stopped this automatic process because the best techie is frequently by far the worst candidate for the job.
Most typically this can be seen in teams that are populated by uber-techies: network teams, Linux sysadmin teams, etc. The techies look upon the uber of uber-techies in the team as their silver-back gorilla. The senior management team spot it and reward that uberuber-techie by following the Peter Principle and promoting to incompetence. Indeed it's a double wammy because the promotion also reduces team productivity: the uberuber-techie is no longer doing uberuber-techie things, instead they are stuck in a world of people management and task allocation, sitting in management meetings bored out of their brains and generally not very happy with the result.
How wrong can it get, literally brimming with wrongability.
If I've not seen a spark of leadership capability, and frequently I don't, bringing in an outsider to manage the team is by far the best option. The only problem with this method is that the techie team usually fails to realise what's good for them and resent the imposition of someone with a management/leadership skill-set having had mis-guided expectations of promotion from within. So, if you do bring in an outsider, you MUST have methods in place to recognise the silver-back in your organisation and use techniques other than promotion to leadership to give them their continued growth outlet.
I've got one chap who's very happy being an uberuber-techie and just wanted to choose his own job title and get good salary increase each year. Well, that's an easy one - done and done! Others have aspiration to leadership, but have yet to demonstrate the skills, again that's not a problem. Provide them with opportunities to see if they really do have those latent skills - this can be done in minor, reasonably safe ways, for instance by providing project management opportunities or sending them on a leadership course or whatever. Finally if a non-management route to increased responsibilities is available then many will recognise that uberuber-tech is what they're good at and give up on the idea of leadership.
Simples!
