Physician, heel!

There are essentially two types of managers - those smarter than those they manage, and those better at managing than those they manage. The third kind are not qualified, and tend not to be effective, so they can be easily ignored as temporary aberrations to the rule. Over time, such people can become politicians.
Having said that there are two kinds, the worst kind is the intersection, because they are not mutually exclusive sets. Managers who have more skills than their reports, more technical expertise or experience in the field, and have superior management skills might be considered the ideal. In fact, they're a plague on society. They know better than all of those who they should be relying on to delegate to. They can't step down, because no-one can do their job better. They can't be shifted around or moved up because they're too good at what they do. The Peter Principle is rarely applied.
When I find myself leaning towards this sort of role, and I mean that as a function more than as a position, I have few choices - act dumb technically, ignore the management function and hope that someone else takes over, or move on.
I do not like any of those choices. I've gotten away with two of the three in the past, and I'm egotistic enough to not try the third.
That's the position I'm in today. It seems to be a natural one. Brain the size of a planet, as I must have, if I stick around long enough, I gather useless information that makes me seem to know everything, and I naturally replace incompetent management with my own, regardless of authority. Yes, I am full of myself, but it's a rare day when I'm proven too full beyond some facets of my work. I've made mistakes, but I've seen others make the same mistakes, and not many people make fewer. That is also my frustration - I'm happy not to be the most brilliant person around, but I don't find much competition. I am constantly disappointed by the lack of brain-power around me (not skills - I can be beaten on technical skills on an individual level, any day).
I remember having a conversation with a consultant we had here for two days. He was a natural language processing expert from the US, headed for a local conference. He and I had a wonderful chat, mostly because I found myself being the only one with the time to spend with him, which was a shame, because he had a lot to say that was useful. Anyway, I passed FO's office, and he asked me how it was going, and I said it was good to talk to someone within an SD of my IQ, rather flippantly.
He remembered that one. I have nothing against FO, but he's a bulk standard accountant who has, through grind and perseverence, gotten to executive level with a large degree of short-sightedness and industrial deafness. He falls back on the old cost-cutting chestnut every time someone mentions a budget. He has some wonderful industry experience, but he doesn't seem to be learning from his current experience. He thinks like an accountant - what worked then must work in the future.
And working with him is like having a yoke around my neck. Let's look at the rest of the executive, while we're at it. Polo, my friend from the past, is so snowed under with technical management that he isn't given the opportunity to shine as a structural manager, which is where I'd seen him in the past. MadDog is so busy building his empire that he also isn't contributing the kind of strategy I know he's capable of applying to this company. Bubble is a waste of space. There - I've said it. The man is useless in all respects, and probably the least intelligent of the group. His purpose escapes me, his core skills are invisible; and I would do everything in my power to assist in his removal, as long as it doesn't cost us an unnecessarily large pay-out.
But that's the pot-luck of management in a smallish company. Sometimes, you're stuck with what you've got because you can't attract anything better, and the alternatives are sometimes worse. Better the devil? Maybe it's just me having a bitch-session. Maybe it's time to look at those three options again.