ANCDU:
Why is there such a lack of pilots and engineers being promoted to positions like this within airlines? Lack of people applying or is it that senior managers just have no respect for us anymore? Seems to be the case that if your actually have something to do with aircraft at an airline these days your not management material!
Dear Oh Dear ANCDU!! You just don't understand do you?
The reason pilots and engineers aren't promoted is because then they would be a threat to existing management!
They are very rightly perceived as a threat [b]because then they would combine
Formal authority with
Informal authority.
Formal authority is a title. You can give anyone Formal authority.
Informal authority comes from being recognised by your peers as a natural leader because you have superior skills and experience.
When you get your MBA and get appointed to manage something that you have never done yourself, then all you have is formal authority. If the group you are managing has a natural leader with natural authority, and you don't immediately co-opt them, while learning as fast as you can about the business to give yourself a little informal authority, then you are setting yourself up for conflict. The normal response is to fire the person with the informal authority as quickly as possible, branding them a "trouble maker".
The exchange basically goes like this:
Manager (M): "I want "X" to be done this way like it says in this manual".
Informal Leader (L): "We can't do it that way. It doesn't work. It never has worked, the manual is BS. This is how we do it."
Manager: "I don't care what you do, I want it done like the theory says."
Informal Leader: "Listen Sonny........."
It's all downhill from there.
I've watched it done around Boardroom tables too. The last thing a know nothing manager or Board member wants to have to deal with is a someone who has the informal authority that arises from having detailed operational and technical knowledge of the subject under discussion because the manager will lose every time.
This experience was acquired through great pain as a once "know nothing" manager myself. Fortunately I realised and got the hell out of there.