<story><title>Why do incompetent managers get promoted?</title><url>https://medium.com/@lancengym/why-do-incompetent-managers-get-promoted-815165a03bee</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>derekp7</author><text>This raises a question in my mind -- do any of these traits actually make the company more successful?  Or more generally, are traits that are undesirable to subordinates, yet desirable to higher management, actually good for the company, and are traits that the subordinates value actually detrimental to the company?&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is that it would seem that natural selection would take over, and if a management style that employees feel good about actually helps the company thrive, then those companies that promote &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; managers would go out of business and be replaced by ones that promote &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; management style.</text></item><item><author>mdorazio</author><text>I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a false definition of “incompetent”.&lt;p&gt;edit: people might ask, so here&amp;#x27;s a list of things that, in my experience, get people promoted at large companies:&lt;p&gt;politics, self-promotion, networking, choosing the right (high-visibility) things to work on, taking credit, delivering new revenue and&amp;#x2F;or new marketable shiny products&amp;#x2F;services, having the right senior leadership mentors&amp;#x2F;wing-people.&lt;p&gt;Note how none of these really require that a person be good at actually managing a team of people effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelmrose</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s common to believe that natural selection leads to an efficient effective result. This is a false and inapplicable. In the first place natural selection just means that the least defective, insofar as survival is concerned, changes that randomly occur pass on to the next generation. There is no guarantee of forward progress along any axis.&lt;p&gt;Secondly a human power structure a created thing needn&amp;#x27;t follow any such law. Success in society often depends more on perception than any objective measure of success. While bad decision making can put one out of business eventually there is no guarantee that the ones that follow will be more rational.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why do incompetent managers get promoted?</title><url>https://medium.com/@lancengym/why-do-incompetent-managers-get-promoted-815165a03bee</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>derekp7</author><text>This raises a question in my mind -- do any of these traits actually make the company more successful?  Or more generally, are traits that are undesirable to subordinates, yet desirable to higher management, actually good for the company, and are traits that the subordinates value actually detrimental to the company?&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is that it would seem that natural selection would take over, and if a management style that employees feel good about actually helps the company thrive, then those companies that promote &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; managers would go out of business and be replaced by ones that promote &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; management style.</text></item><item><author>mdorazio</author><text>I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a false definition of “incompetent”.&lt;p&gt;edit: people might ask, so here&amp;#x27;s a list of things that, in my experience, get people promoted at large companies:&lt;p&gt;politics, self-promotion, networking, choosing the right (high-visibility) things to work on, taking credit, delivering new revenue and&amp;#x2F;or new marketable shiny products&amp;#x2F;services, having the right senior leadership mentors&amp;#x2F;wing-people.&lt;p&gt;Note how none of these really require that a person be good at actually managing a team of people effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pyrale</author><text>The McDonnell&amp;#x2F;Boeing merger is a good example of why the natural selection logic is not a good model to think about human interactions.</text></comment>