Thinking about a Blog which my colleague Jack recently wrote about skill gaps within Food Manufacturing and where the next generation has gone, left me thinking about more about the challenges with the here and now’s over the future.

What Jack describes are real problems. However, I see there's a quieter one we sometimes come across too, a level down. It’s inside factories that already have good people on the floor. It’s how some businesses choose who leads them today over tomorrow’s new talent.

To be clear, this isn't every business, or even most.

Plenty of manufacturers get this right. But it's a pattern that comes up often enough in our conversations that it feels worth talking about.

Here's roughly how it goes. Someone has spent years running a line, knows the process, knows the kit, knows every way a shift can go wrong before it happens.

They get made up to supervisor or shift manager. A while later they're burnt out, struggling with a team they used to stand alongside, or quietly looking elsewhere.

Not because they weren't good at their job. Because their job changed completely and they didn’t have the tools or experience to deal with this alien part of their new role.

Knowing the process isn't always the same as leading the people who run it

It's an understandable decision to make, and not always an easy one to unmake.

When a management vacancy opens, the safest-looking option can be the person who already understands the process.

No ramp up time.

No risk of hiring someone who doesn't "get" the operation.

It's a reasonable instinct; it just doesn't always account for one thing.

Running a line well draws on technical judgement, consistency, physical stamina. Leading a team draws on something else. Difficult conversations, holding people accountable, reading a room, coaching and leading rather than doing.

One skill set doesn't automatically bring the other with it. The softer skills are harder to spot in an interview or appraisal than "can this person run the equipment" so they can end up going unassessed.

The UK's Chartered Management Institute has found that nearly half of managers believe their peers were promoted for the wrong reasons. Internal relationships or profile, rather than genuine leadership capability.

Where this happens, it's sometimes called the "accidental manager", someone managing tasks well, simply because nobody ever had the chance to teach them how to manage people.

Where it tends to show up

When it does happen, the cost rarely shows up on the new manager's own performance review. It shows up in their team.

A shift that once had a trusted, excellent colleague can end up with a manager making calls they were never quite trained to make. Feedback becomes inconsistent or goes quiet altogether.

Good operators with options may start looking elsewhere. Often not because the company treated them badly, but because they're being managed by someone who was never properly set up to lead.

It's an uncomfortable irony for a sector already thinking hard about where its next generation of operations leaders will come from. In businesses where this pattern exists, some of that gap may be self inflicted rather than a genuine shortage of candidates.

What the businesses who avoid this tend to do differently

The factories that navigate this well tend to treat "moving into management" as a genuinely different job, not just a reward attached onto the old one.

That can mean testing leadership appetite and aptitude before a promotion is confirmed. Mentoring a new starter. Covering a shift lead's holiday. A chance to find out before the title is signed off, not after.

It can mean setting aside real time and budget for people management training, rather than a single induction day workshop.

It can mean being upfront that some brilliant technical people simply don't want to manage anyone. Potentially looking at building a specialist track that rewards them without forcing a leadership title on them.

None of this means promotion from within is the problem. Factory and process knowledge is hugely valuable in an operations leader and always will be.

It's more about treating "do they know the process" and "can they lead the people running it" as two separate questions, rather than assuming a yes to one answers the other.

Where I come in to the conversation.

If this sounds familiar, I’m happy to compare notes. I have spoken with a number of senior leaders within the companies I work with about this.

If it doesn't sound familiar at all, that's a good sign. Get in touch either way.