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Complex or not?

Alaïa

Sunny greetings! 

we have a situation where a newly appointment manager who has stepped into an “acting” director role on a trial period isn’t performing well and the ceo would like to revert them back to their role which they are better suited for then the hope for the acting role, which they are half way through eventhough they have been provided with areas to improve they have stepped up to the requirements of that role. 

in the midst of that, with them being in the acting role they took on in new reporting lines; employees who are reporting into them have also recently been failing in performance and will likely be placed on a PIP. 

If the acting director role streps back into their previous role and no longer manages them under performers with someone new stepping into the business to take over but have the acting director remain in the role for a few weeks for a handover (pending discussion/agreement of course)

is this complicated, messy or am I overthinking it?has anyone else been in this or similar position to deal with? 

  • It seems as though the idea of the Peter principle has at least some degree of truth to it. I know this may seem like awful advice but it looks as though you and your team are thinking about this in the right way. What indicators were there that the ‘Acting’ Director was not performing to the best of their ability in their newly appointed role? Looking forward to your response.

  • To quickly explain Alfred's allusion, if you're not familiar: the Peter Principle states that, in any hierarchical organisation, an employee will be promoted to the point of incompetence. That is, people who are competent in their roles will be promoted, and will only stop being promoted when they are promoted to a role in which they are incompetent, at which point they will stop. This is said to explain why most senior managers are idiots.

    Now, to the question.

    No. If the Acting Director is not competent in their role, they should be reverted to their substantive role as soon as possible. Their Directorship will then be vacant until a replacement is recruited and the a/D's direct reports will instead report upwards to the CEO, meaning that the CEO will need to take over the performance management of those of the a/D's reports who were put on PIPs.

    This will place a significant additional management burden on the CEO and that is by design. If the CEO doesn't feel that they can take on that additional burden then, whilst the a/D isn't up to the standard the CEO needs, they are at least fulfilling a useful role, organisationally, and should be retained in post while a permanent appointee is sourced. If, on the other hand, the a/D is doing so poor a job that the CEO is prepared to take on that additional burden while sourcing a replacement, that is your sign that the a/D definitely should be reverted to substantive.