“When did you notice the slowdown in throughput?” Catherine asked. The response from the client was consistent and overwhelming.

“Right after we promoted Duncan to manager.”

“And what was Duncan doing before he was promoted to manager?” she wanted to know.

“Duncan is an engineer. He was doing engineering. Best engineer we have, so we promoted him to Engineering Manager.”

Catherine knew engineers and the worst decision was to make an engineer a manager. She interviewed the team and documented her observations. Her initial report was so precise, so descriptive that it climbed the ladder to the client’s executive team, in charge of engineering integration with every other function in the company. She did not expect the email, but there it was in front of her. “We know we had a small budget for this project, but we want to expand deployment across all teams. What could we expect?”