Your company is experiencing growth. For several years, you have been a lead carpenter in the company. In fact, some might say you are one of the best lead carpenters around.

Because of the growth, the company needs someone working as a project manager. This is a new position, which will entail more responsibility than being a lead carpenter and less than being the production manager.

How do you make the transition successfully?

A Clear Job Description
Even a good company will promote someone into a new position for which no job description has been written. Often, it’s because the company is too busy to take the time to write one! And one common result is that the employee who is making the transition fails at the new job.

How to avoid this?

The employee can note all that they are doing in the new job which was not part of their previous position. The changes might include more management work and less craft work. Be deliberate and clear when keeping these notes, as they will help the company create a useful job description.

Once a draft is created by one of the administrative staff, the production manager and the new project manager should review it for accuracy and relevancy. Once that is done, the job description is what the new project manager will be held accountable to do.

People Skills
As Michael Gerber put it in The E Myth, a craftsman who becomes a manager often has no training or experience in managing others. The situation can be very frustrating, both for the new manager and those he is managing.

In the case of the new project manager, it would be good for that person and the production manager (or whoever is the project manager’s immediate superior) to meet weekly to discuss how to be a good manager of people. The production manager might suggest a book or two on the subject to read together and share their respective takeaways.

People skills development is essential for the success of a manager. Expecting a new manager to get good at managing people just by doing it is a pipe dream.

Information Management
A lead carpenter is expected to spend some amount of time working with the tools. A production manager is more likely to be successful when he does not work with the tools at all.

The project manager should, more than less, do what the production manager does and not use tools with any regularity.

Why? Because along with people management, information management is the next most important thing the project manager should be doing. Craft work can be delegated.

A manager cannot hold those he manages accountable unless all the information to be managed is being managed well. It is so obvious that this is so, and yet this is ignored frequently.

Staying up to date and expecting those being managed to do the same will make the new project manager more successful.

Feedback
The new project manager requires from the production manager feedback on what is being done well and what could be going better.

Specifics are better than generalities: This situation is happening, with this employee, regarding this decision, and so on.

Both the production manager and the project manager should keep notes so when they meet weekly the feedback discussion is based on real information.

The outcome of each discussion should be encouraging to both the production manager and the project manager. If it is not, then another type of discussion is needed.

Fallback
If the new project manager is not being successful and he was a great lead carpenter ,then it could make sense to have him return to being a lead carpenter.

We faced a similar situation when running our company. We had a great lead carpenter. We also did not have the production manager position filled and were having trouble finding a good candidate.

In frustration, we asked our lead carpenter if he would become the production manager. He said he would. After a month or two, Nina (my wife) and I noticed that our star lead carpenter was unhappy being production manager. We sat down with him and asked him if he would be happier being a lead carpenter. He said he would.

So we made the switch. And we discussed how production would be managed in the meantime and how we could all work together to find a great production manager.

Was it easy? No. Was it worth making the switch? Yes. This great employee was with our company for several decades. He helped us be successful by being in the right position in the company, or as Jack Stack put it in Good to Great, by us working together to make sure he was in the right seat on the bus.

Any time a very good employee is promoted, all involved need to be prepared for things not going as planned. Being open about that possibility reduces the likelihood of the recently promoted employee to quit in frustration.

It’s kind of crazy to kick great people off the team because you promoted them. Be careful and be open to how things can play out. The most important thing is to help your great employees continue to be successful.

As a new project manager (or the like), you have a lot of responsibility for your success. Make sure you stay current with your manager. Keep in mind what brings you the most satisfaction. If you are not doing what does bring satisfaction, you will never be successful.