Section Onenot have sufficient knowledge of the primary business to be
effective.^47 A lesson to be derived from such situations is that
investment in developmental programs is not sufficient for the
avoidance of plateaus. Instead, alternative future strategic
scenarios must be considered in the planning of developmental
assignments in order to have promotable managers.
Another cause of plateaus is related to developmental
programs. Companies sometimes make inflexible decisions
about which employees should continue in management
development pro-grams or those who should be placed on a
fast track. Sometimes, these decisions are based on per-
formance during the early stages of an employee’s career.
Further, the decision may be made in the manner of a single
elimination tournament in which one failure to be promoted or
one unsuccessful performance may cause a manager to be
taken out of the developmental program. Those left out of
developmental programs or fast-track assignments are often
relegated to dead-end career paths and become plateaued. In
essence, the early identification of fast trackers may become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Furthermore, perceptions of being
plateaued tend to have the greatest detrimental impact on job
satisfaction and company identification for employees who have
less rather than more tenure on the job.^48