How can we predict management potential in research scientists?

The success of an R&D operation depends on selecting the right speciailists to occupy management positions. Errors of selection mostly arise because the choice is made on the basis of the candidate's current performance as a scientist or technologist. However, the author makes the point that persons likely to make good Rand D managers differ qualitatively from good researchers. Good scientists adopt an innovative, unconstrained, independent approach to their work, have high self-esteem, are not much interested in people and, above all, prize technical soundness. R&D managers are interested in people, active, enterprising and want to manage.
The organization's problem is therefore to find reliable ways of predicting management potential with sufficient but not exclusive regard to current performance. The author recommends the use of a Career Aspirations Programme, based on exposure to the processes operating in an Assessment Centre. This is a systematic procedure using an array of personnel evaluation techniques through which a person is made aware of the demands of a management job and managers made aware of the likelihood of that person's meeting them.
At the end of the process a course of personal development is agreed upon. In concrete terms this means for the potential manager that promotion may follow. Especially important if the verdict is that he or she is to continue as a technical specialist, the job may be re-designed to give it more scope and impact, or the person concerned may be retrained or placed under the care of a senior colleague acting as a mentor.