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The Accidental Manager: A British Workplace Tradition That Needs Rethinking

 

There’s a New Yorker cartoon (credited to Kendra Allenby) that nails a truth I’ve seen play out too many times:

“At this point in your career, your only possible promotion is to management, where you will stop doing the work you love and use a skill set you don't have and we don't teach.”

 

It’s funny in a bleak sort of way. And painfully familiar for anyone who’s ever found themselves promoted not because they were ready to lead – but because they were good at the job they were already doing.

This article is about that all-too-common workplace species: the Accidental Manager. It’s a phrase that’s cropped up more and more in recent years, but it’s a phenomenon as old as British industry. It’s about what happens when people are moved into management without training, support, or even desire. And it’s about what we need to do to break the cycle.

 

Let’s start with a real example. My last PAYE role is a textbook case.

I stepped into a vacancy left by someone who’d been promoted. He’d learned on the job – shadowing someone else, doing what they did. Plenty of ‘sitting next to Nellie’. But the trouble is, Nellie never taught how to do the job – just what to do. He’d absorbed the tasks, the routines, the admin, the process. But not the purpose.

Bless him, he meant well. But he couldn’t see that he was focused on ticking boxes, not delivering outcomes. His role had become an exercise in paperwork, not progress. And he didn’t know it. No one had helped him see the difference. No one had supported him to grow into the job. They’d simply handed him a title and wished him luck.

It’s not his fault. It’s the system.

 

That system – the one where we promote people for doing their current job well, not for being ready for the next one – was given a name back in 1969: The Peter Principle.  Laurence J. Peter suggested that in a hierarchy, employees are promoted based on their competence until they reach a level where they’re no longer competent. And then… they stay there. Permanently. Often miserably. Sometimes making others miserable too.

 

Now, think about the scale of that across a company. Across an industry. Across the whole economy. That’s a lot of people doing jobs they’re not good at. Not because they’re lazy or unmotivated – but because they were never set up to succeed.

 

We’re still running organisations where the only way to progress is out of the work someone excels at – and into a role they’re not prepared for.

 

That’s not just a shame. It’s expensive.

 

So where did this all come from?

 

The UK has a long, proud history of industry and innovation. But it also has a long history of top-down, rigid, class-based structures. The kind that says if you’ve been around long enough, or know the right people, you deserve to move up – regardless of whether you’re the right person for the job.

 

These hierarchies date back to Victorian times. And in many ways, they haven’t changed. Promotion based on tenure. Deference to authority. Fear of making mistakes. Structures where the title matters more than the talent.

There’s a Victorian theme town not far from me. It’s a fascinating place – old blast furnaces, brickworks, a school, factories… a snapshot of how things were. You can walk through the old classrooms and marvel at the order and discipline. And you realise: we wouldn’t dream of running schools like that now. But we do still run a lot of workplaces that way.

 

The difference? No one’s doing guided tours of Victorian management. Because too many people are still living it.

 

There are some stubborn myths we need to address if we want to do better:

1. Good workers make good managers.
   Not necessarily. The skills are completely different. Doing the work and leading people to do the work are different disciplines.
2. Management is a promotion.
   It shouldn’t be the only form of advancement. You shouldn’t have to leave your skillset behind to earn more money or respect.
3. Leadership is innate.
   Rubbish. It can be taught, developed, nurtured. But only if we invest in it.
4. Everyone should aim to be a manager.
   Why? Leadership is just one type of contribution. We need experts as much as we need strategists.
5.  

So – how do we undo a century and a half of ingrained habits? It starts with changing the conversation. Then it moves into action.

 

Here’s what we can do:

 

Recognise strengths and allow for weaknesses: Use personality profiling (like Belbin DiSC, Insights Discovery) to build balanced teams. No one needs to be brilliant at everything. The real power is in recognising what each person is brilliant at – and letting them shine.

 

Reward expertise without requiring management: Not everyone wants to be a leader. Create alternative progression routes that value deep knowledge, technical skill, or innovation. Make it as prestigious to be a senior practitioner as it is to be a senior manager.

 

Invest in leadership development: Before promoting someone, give them access to mentoring, training, and coaching. Help them choose leadership – don’t just drop it on them and hope for the best.

 

Support people with information and systems: Give managers – and their teams – the tools to find and use information efficiently. Invest in knowledge management systems. Don’t let valuable time be lost searching for things that should be easy to find.

 

Encourage different leadership styles: We don’t all need to be commanding or charismatic. There’s space for servant leadership, quiet leadership, collaborative styles – as long as they’re effective and aligned to the needs of the team.

 

Modernise structures: Ditch the rigid hierarchies. Build flatter, more agile organisations. Promote based on readiness, not just time served. Encourage cross-functional learning.

 

 

When we stop creating accidental managers, we build organisations where:

• People are set up to succeed
• Teams are led by people who want to lead
• Experts are valued and retained
• Promotion is meaningful, not automatic
• Culture becomes healthier, stronger, and more human

And perhaps most importantly: we stop wasting talent. We stop grinding people down. We stop asking people to become someone they’re not in order to succeed.

Instead, we create workplaces where everyone has a path – and where leadership is earned, not inflicted.

 

 

The Accidental Manager is not a failure of the individual. It’s a failure of the system. And systems can be changed.

Let’s challenge the traditions. Let’s question the assumptions. Let’s stop pretending that ticking boxes is the same as delivering outcomes.

And let’s finally put Victorian management where it belongs – in a museum.