Congratulations. Your promotion depends on a hot dog
In Beach Games, Michael Scott turns succession planning into a hot dog contest. What happens when managers mistake enthusiasm for competence?
Building Stronger Teams · Potential & Development · Self-awareness
Most job descriptions fail to specify how many hot dogs you must eat to demonstrate strategic thinking. Michael Scott addresses this gap. In “Beach Games”, he takes his employees to Lake Scranton and uses a series of challenges to help choose his successor. It is succession planning with a concerning relationship to digestion.
This article reflects on fictional events in the US version of The Office. The workplace examples outside the programme are imagined illustrations, not accounts of real people, companies or events.
Michael is confident that a corporate job could be his, so the branch will need another leader. Naturally, the sensible way to identify that person involves competition, physical discomfort and his own detailed supervision. The staff expect an outing. Michael has brought an assessment centre that appears to have lost its insurance.
The hot dog contest and the coal walk are wonderfully ridiculous measures of managerial potential. That is also what makes the episode useful. It exaggerates a question that can be harder to spot when everyone is wearing normal shoes: what, exactly, have we decided counts as evidence that someone is ready?
An excellent candidate, once the costume arrived
Imagine a team with two people interested in progressing. One handles difficult handovers, develops colleagues and notices small problems before they become expensive ones. The other is competent too, but also happens to love every activity the manager organises. They lead the quiz team, volunteer for the role-play and remember the name of the motivational speaker.
By the end of an away day, the second person feels more visible. They have shown energy. They have put themselves forward. There is even a photograph of them holding the company values while dressed as an enormous banana. The first person’s contribution to making work easier for six colleagues is, regrettably, less photogenic.
None of this makes enthusiasm a fault. Someone can enjoy a team event and be excellent at their job. The problem would be letting the ease with which I notice one kind of contribution crowd out the evidence for another.
Michael makes that preference explicit by inventing the tests himself. The desirable successor is someone who will succeed at being assessed by Michael Scott. There may be some overlap with running a paper business, but it is difficult to establish while everyone is chewing.
When optional becomes a personality assessment
The same confusion can enter activities that are supposed to be fun. Picture a manager explaining that the evening event is entirely optional, then asking why someone is not coming with the tone of a parent discovering an abandoned musical instrument. Attendance remains voluntary. Explaining your personality has become compulsory.
The absent colleague might have caring responsibilities, another commitment, an accessibility need or simply no desire to spend Thursday evening competing against Accounts. None of those possibilities tells us how they will handle an awkward conversation or make a sound decision with incomplete information.
Yet the language can quietly shift. A person becomes less engaged, less visible or less of a natural fit. These are sufficiently soft descriptions that the manager may never have to identify the behaviour they are actually assessing. The evidence is a feeling, and the feeling was formed near a karaoke machine.
I would not want to take all spontaneity out of how people work together. Relationships do develop outside formal tasks, and shared enjoyment can matter. But I would want to notice when enjoyment starts issuing career recommendations.
What the competition leaves out
One of the revealing details in “Beach Games” is that Pam is assigned to take notes. She later walks across the coals and speaks openly to the group. The person recording the exercise ends up doing something significant that Michael’s planned contest has not made much room to recognise.
I do not read that as proof that walking on coals is secretly a good promotion criterion. It is more interesting as a reminder of how much a manager can miss while carefully measuring the wrong thing. An elaborate process still reflects the assumptions of the person who designed it.
If I were making a development decision, I would want examples that connect to the work ahead. How does this person respond when a colleague disagrees? Can they make a decision, explain it and revise it when necessary? What happens to the team’s capability when they are involved? Those questions need more attention than whether somebody looked confident while holding a plastic trophy.
They also make room for gaps. Someone might be excellent at the current job and need support before leading others. Another might show real potential without yet having had a chance to demonstrate it. Neither situation becomes clearer because the manager enjoyed sharing a bus with them.
The awkward part is accepting that my own comfort is information about me too. If I find someone especially easy to notice, I would want to ask what is making them visible. Their judgement might be excellent. They might also laugh at precisely the moments I had hoped were funny.
By all means, organise the outing. Let people eat something that has not been assigned a competency score. When the conversation turns to progression, I would want the person who skipped the games to have just as clear a way to show what they can do. Otherwise, we may be running Michael’s assessment centre with better catering.
