Many small and mid-sized manufacturers confuse administrative reliability with true leadership.
Over time, this breeds a culture of reactive management — where planners and coordinators evolve into “accidental managers” without ever learning to manage people, only processes.
They insert themselves as bottlenecks, acting as gatekeepers because trust is scarce. Directors often mistake this for diligence, when in truth it’s dependency — a fragile model that collapses when that single gatekeeper is unavailable.
Succession planning often reveals how few true leaders exist within such systems. As automation and AI continue to embed into manufacturing, it’s crucial these flaws aren’t reinforced by the very systems we build.
How do we prevent that — and what does effective leadership development really look like at the small-business level?
#leadership #manufacturing #management #systems #engineeringmanagement #careerdevelopment
