if you get to manage forget doing the creative stuff, you are there to give strategic leadership, organize, schedule and optimize the output of your department... a lead still does the fun and cretive work but he has to manage to get the time to manage its group and attend to meetings.... on the other hand,shit tends to go downards so if the lead of the peon 5 department didnt either solved it somehow or told the manager that they werent going on schedule so that he could make an strategical decision(like hiring a merc or assigning someone that is goldplating something else on other department to help Peon5 task to get on schedule again) it will be very unlikely that the head of the manager will be at stake but that of the lead or that of Peon5... and in the event it is the manager´s head the one to start to roll, then everyone else down the chain is screwed too...