From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
In a recent Post, you described the push-back behavior of Byron, a manager. In a comment on that post, you described Byron as a Stratum III “newbie.” What did you mean?

Response:

As a person grows and matures through their life, people move from one Stratum to the next, each according to their own life schedule. Each Stratum is connected to its own way of thinking, connected to its own skills. As a person grows into their next Stratum, they leave a level of high competence and grow into the next level at low competence.

Example, a great team leader (Stratum I) becomes a newbie supervisor (Stratum II). It takes a while to develop the competencies at this new level.

A great supervisor (Stratum II) becomes a newbie manager (Stratum III). It take a while to develop the competencies at this new level.

Elliott Jaques chronicled this phenomenon, this crossing of Stratum in mid-life as the Mid-Life Crisis. We all saw the movie “Middle Aged Crazy” without knowing we had Elliott to thank for the scientific explanation. -TF