Delegate level placement to each direct report - Peter owns the scheme, managers own who sits where

Situation

In the Sept 10 weekly 1:1 with Steve Wallace, Peter walked through the new four-level engineering scheme and explicitly refused to place anyone. He told Steve he is not going to put people places - Steve is - and that he will not do that out from under him. The map Peter shared was framed as a diagnostic rather than a proposal: it represents his take on how people are actually functioning today, shown only to his direct reports, and is not a suggestion that this is what CIQ should do. He attached a condition to the delegation: if Steve places someone at principal, Peter will want Steve to demand that they perform as a principal, autonomously, driving change across the entire organization proactively. Peter said the one thing he would force is the move to a much simpler level structure, and that beyond that Steve owns his org and Peter will not define it for him or for anybody else. He offered to be a partner in the conversation but not the decider, set no deadline, and said it is not something he is attacking with urgency. He also noted he is not cutting comp for anyone slotted lower, with one exception he flagged for a separate conversation if that person is slotted down.

Reasoning

The structure is Peter problem because inconsistency across the whole engineering org is what he is fixing; the placements are the manager problem because a manager who did not choose a level will not enforce it. So he compressed the scheme centrally and pushed judgment down. The real payload is the price he attached to the delegation - assigning a level is a commitment to demand that level of performance - which converts titles from a comp artifact into a performance contract without Peter having to adjudicate any individual case. Deliberately setting no deadline is part of the same logic: forced speed would produce placements managers do not actually believe, which would defeat the accountability the exercise exists to create.

Additional Context

Extends the Sept 7 decision to collapse nineteen engineering titles into four groups. Peter said he had already run this process with Nathan Blackham. He noted that expectations per level differ by group and that he expects to suss out the implicit expectations in a manager head from where they place people, so the map is also a diagnostic of the manager rather than only of the staff.

Observed Evidence

Four direct quotes from the 1:1 transcript establishing the refusal to place, the diagnostic framing of the map, the accountability condition attached to each placement, and the single thing Peter would force.

Matching Patterns

Confidence Breakdown

Reasoning Depth Analysis