Why New Managers Fail in Year One

A hidden system of corporate self-sabotage is derailing careers and destroying team productivity. Companies routinely promote their best individual performers into management, only to watch them fail spectacularly within their first year. Why does this predictable disaster happen over and over again? This book uncovers the "Maker's Curse," a profound identity crisis that strikes new managers. Drawing on case studies from the video game industry's Ion Storm to the high-stakes world of the Cleveland Clinic, it exposes how the very skills that lead to top performance as a "maker" become liabilities in a leadership role. The reward for competence is a sudden, violent career change that nobody is trained for. The investigation dives into landmark research, including a Yale study that found the best salespeople consistently become the worst managers, causing their teams' performance to plummet by 7.5 percent. It then reveals the alternative path, pioneered by figures like HubSpot's Mark Roberge, who built systems that decoupled individual success from managerial eligibility. Why New Managers Fail in Year One provides the blueprint for navigating this treacherous transition, showing how to shift from a "hero" who does the work to an "architect" who builds a machine that runs itself.