I used to work for a company in which employees in some departments would do 2 or 3 year "shifts" as managers. When your shift was up, you went back to a regular employee in the same department, and someone you had been managing took over. It was not uncommon to have a young manager, but not everyone was eligible, obviously.
I think it prevented the "us vs. them" mentality from creeping in, and I got the impression that most managers were eager to return to production work. There were dedicated managers higher up the ladder, of course.
They're still doing exceedingly well, so it must not have hurt them. I think it takes a small but stable company to pull it off. Maybe they have stopped doing it by now, I don't know.
These people cared about their work a lot, and they enjoyed doing it. Not sure which way the causation goes though...
Edit to add: the rotating managers I'm referring to were doing budgets and performance reviews, not creating business strategies.
I’m also intrigued. I’ve seen this happen several times but always de facto: someone would become a manager as an experiment, try it for a few years, and then (usually) decide to stop.
I think it prevented the "us vs. them" mentality from creeping in, and I got the impression that most managers were eager to return to production work. There were dedicated managers higher up the ladder, of course.