Management Design: The designs we have now – Promote the one who asks for it

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The Manager by Designsm blog advocates for a new field called Management Design. The idea is that the creation of great and effective Managers in organizations should not occur by accident, but by design.  Currently, the creation of great managers falls under diverse, mostly organic methods, which create mixed results at best and poor results at worse.  This is the latest of a series that explores the existing designs that create managers in organizations.

Today’s design:  Promote the one who asks to become the manager.

In this “design”, the person who asks for the promotion to manager is the one who gets it.  You know the scenario:  A member of the team consistently asks for the promotion to management in their one-on-one discussions; a member of the team states that they expect to be director by the end of the year; a member of the team self-identifies as the one with the most leadership potential.

Using this “design” to generate managers, the hiring manager skews toward the one who has the most moxie, drive, ambition, confidence, and apparent leadership ability.  After all, let’s look at the opposite.  Those who don’t ask for the promotion apparently have less moxie, less drive, less ambition, less confidence and do not appear to have leadership ability.  Case closed—hire the one who wants it the most – the one who asks for it.

But what are the down sides of this design?  Plenty. Read more