The Accidental Manager: When Competence Outruns Capability
- Rahul Kulkarni
- Oct 20
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 3
What happens when growth promotes people faster than systems can prepare them.
(The People Paradox, Part 2)
The Invisible Promotion
Every business that grows eventually hits the same turning point.`
The founder can’t do everything anymore.
The team expands. The work multiplies. And the people who once held the company together by sheer will are suddenly handed new titles.
That’s how most management layers are born → not by design, but by exhaustion.
At The Workshop … the same design firm we met in the previous part … Meera had just been promoted to lead designer. She wasn’t asking for it, but she had earned it. Her boss said, “You’re the best at what you do. You’ll make the others better.”
She smiled, proud but unsure what that really meant.
Within weeks, she was no longer doing what she loved.
Her calendar was full of meetings, not design reviews.
Her inbox overflowed with questions, updates, and requests for decisions she wasn’t trained to make.
No one meant harm. Everyone meant well.
But something invisible had shifted … and no one had words for it.
That’s how the accidental manager is born: promoted by performance, unprepared for people.
The Founder’s Mirror
Here’s the irony: most founders don’t realize they were the first accidental managers in their own business.
They, too, were promoted … by growth, not by choice.
When you start out, leadership is natural. You lead by proximity, by example. Everyone sees you working, feels your energy, follows your pace.
But then the business expands. Suddenly, the very instinct that made you successful … doing things yourself … becomes the bottleneck that holds everyone back.
You start managing instead of leading.
You’re no longer building systems; you’re firefighting through people.
You feel responsible for everything, yet somehow less effective than before.
That’s the founder’s version of the same paradox Meera lives through → competence outgrowing capability.
You weren’t trained to lead managers. You just became one because growth demanded it.
And when you promote others like you … without scaffolding, without rhythm … you multiply the same dysfunction down the line.
The founder becomes the accidental manager of accidental managers.
The Anatomy of the Accident
Let’s break it down.
Every time a small company scales, three predictable fractures appear:
a. The Skill Trap
High performers are rewarded for mastery, not mentorship.
They move from “I’ll fix it myself” to “I’ll help others fix it.”
But the mind doesn’t make that leap automatically.
So they compensate by overworking, overcontrolling, or overprotecting … all with good intentions that quietly erode trust.
b. The Empathy Gap
Managing peers feels awkward.
Yesterday’s teammates become today’s direct reports. Feedback feels like betrayal; decisions feel like politics.
And because no one wants to hurt anyone, conversations become vague, delayed, or passive-aggressive.
c. The System Void
Every growing team hits the same missing layer: no manager onboarding, no rhythm, no shared definitions of “what good looks like.”
So everyone improvises.
And in that improvisation, culture begins to fray.
How Chaos Gets Institutionalized
The founder looks at the mess and assumes the team has become “soft.”
The team looks at the founder and assumes they’ve become “impatient.”
Both are wrong … and both are right.
What’s really happening is structural adolescence.
The company has outgrown the behaviors that built it, but hasn’t yet built the systems that can replace them.
And like any teenager, it acts out → with intensity, confusion, and misplaced emotion.
At this stage, every new promotion becomes a coin toss.
Some managers succeed by instinct; others drown quietly.
Either way, everyone’s exhausted.
What looks like a people problem is actually a design problem … missing scaffolding around how authority, feedback, and alignment flow.
Without that scaffolding, even the most capable people will fail at leadership simply because they don’t know what it looks like in practice.
The Founder’s Evolution Curve
For founders, the same learning curve repeats … just at a higher altitude.
At 5 people, leadership is visibility: everyone sees you lead by doing.
At 15, leadership is clarity: defining who does what, and when.
At 50, leadership becomes rhythm: creating the rituals that keep alignment alive even when you’re not in the room.
Most founders stall somewhere between clarity and rhythm.
They’re still visible, but not scalable.
They can inspire but not orchestrate.
And this is where burnout creeps in … not from overwork, but from identity fatigue.
You’re still trying to manage the way you built … through control and closeness … when what the company now needs is cadence and distance.
“Most founders don’t delegate late. They delegate emotionally … still attached to how they used to do it.”
That’s what makes leadership hard to scale.
The founder must evolve from operator to architect → from the person who builds systems to the one who builds the people who run those systems.
The Reframe
Leadership isn’t a promotion. It’s a migration → from doing to designing, from speed to stability.
When you promote someone, you’re not rewarding their skill; you’re changing their relationship with it.
They stop being the hero of the work and become the designer of the environment where heroes can emerge.
That requires tools, not titles. Tools which scaffold.
In PPS Consulting’s work with mid-sized firms, we often see that once those scaffolds are installed, tension drops by half … without changing a single person.
Because structure, done right, restores humanity. It gives everyone permission to be clear, not cautious.
Case in Point: Two Versions of Growth
Take two companies … both 30 employees, both doubling revenue.
One treats management as a title; the other treats it as a skill.
In the first, the founder handpicks “natural leaders.” Chaos follows.
In the second, they invest two hours a week teaching managers how to set expectations, run reviews, and document decisions.
Six months later, the difference is visible.
In Company A, the founder is back in every meeting.
In Company B, the founder is back in strategy.
Training didn’t just create better managers; it created more leadership bandwidth.
Because the goal isn’t to make managers tougher.
It’s to make the system predictable enough that people don’t have to guess what good leadership looks like.
Key Concepts
Accidental Manager
A person promoted for performance, not prepared for people.
They’re the backbone of every growing company → the ones who deliver so consistently that leadership becomes the next logical step.
But the skill that got them promoted (doing things right) is not the one they need next (helping others do it well).
Example: Meera … brilliant designer turned overwhelmed team lead … discovers that authority without rhythm only multiplies confusion.
Skill–Role Gap
The space between what you were good at and what you’re now responsible for.
Every promotion widens this gap … and if it isn’t closed by structure or mentorship, competence starts to feel like failure.
Example: A star sales lead who closes every deal struggles as a manager because coaching requires patience, not persuasion.
Founder Drift
When founders oscillate between operator and leader, exhausting both roles.
They built the company by doing everything themselves, but scaling demands they build others instead.
This transition isn’t about letting go … it’s about learning a new form of control: through design, not directness.
Example: A founder says, “I’ve delegated it,” yet still rechecks every outcome … trapped between faith and fear.
Leadership Scaffolding
The rituals and rhythms that convert authority into stability.
These are the systems that teach managers how to lead → check-ins, decision ladders, feedback loops.
They don’t kill culture; they protect it from mood swings.
Example: A weekly one-on-one replaces emotional reassurance with structured clarity … turning anxiety into alignment.
FAQs
Q1. How do you prevent accidental management in small teams?
By building rhythm before hierarchy.
Don’t wait for titles to teach structure. Even a 10-person team can adopt simple rituals → weekly check-ins, shared dashboards, decision logs. These act as early leadership scaffolds.
When growth comes, those rhythms mature naturally into management systems instead of emergency fixes.
Prevention isn’t training; it’s cadence.
Q2. Can founders themselves unlearn accidental management?
Yes … but not by working harder.
Founders must first admit they were the first accidental managers … promoted by success, not structure. The cure is rhythm, not willpower.
When founders replace instinct with process → scheduled reviews, predictable delegation loops, transparent scorecards … they regain clarity without losing control.
Systems don’t reduce entrepreneurship; they preserve it.
Q3. What’s the first signal that a team is slipping into accidental management?
When initiative starts shrinking and decisions start circling back up.
That’s not laziness … it’s uncertainty. People act cautiously when expectations are invisible.
Look for the telltale signs: meetings that end in confusion, tasks re-checked by three layers, managers who sound exhausted but vague.
These are not attitude problems; they’re design symptoms.
Q4. What’s the first fix?
Name the pattern. Then create one visible rhythm that everyone can follow.
It could be a weekly 1:1 cadence, a 15-minute daily sync, or a “decision journal” where choices are documented and reviewed.
Clarity scales faster than charisma … and once rhythm replaces reactivity, leadership stops feeling accidental.
Q5. What happens if this stage is ignored?
Nothing catastrophic … at first.
Work still gets done, but slower. Morale dips quietly. The best people start self-managing while the rest wait for direction.
By the time attrition begins, the culture has already normalized fatigue as loyalty.
You don’t lose talent suddenly. You lose trust gradually … until even good news feels heavy.
Final Reflection
Back at The Workshop, Meera stayed late again one evening.
Her laptop was open to a design she hadn’t touched since her promotion.
She looked at it for a long moment and said quietly,
“I miss being good at my job.”
That line could’ve been spoken by a founder too.
Because every founder, at some point, feels the same → promoted by success, haunted by competence.
The accidental manager isn’t a mistake.
They’re a mirror … showing us what happens when growth moves faster than preparation.
If The People Paradox began with emotional drift, this is its functional twin: the moment when good people … including founders … lose rhythm not from failure, but from evolution.
Next week, we’ll follow that drift into Part 3: The Culture Mirage … when warmth starts hiding fatigue.
Read more deep-dive insights at www.ppsconsulting.biz/blog.
(PPS Consulting helps organizations scale without chaos through structure, governance, and people systems that grow with their teams. Views are institutional.)
The People Paradox series:
The People Paradox : Why every modern business must rethink what “culture” really means.
The Accidental Manager : What happens when growth promotes people faster than systems can prepare them.
The Culture Mirage : Why good intentions don’t always make good cultures.
The Talent Mismatch: Why growth always tests the people who built it.
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