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Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to

by frossie 16y ago

Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day. I am not sure I agree with this one, not in the technical field. I think in software in particular, our overall goals (provided they are well-selected) inform a lot of the little decisions that translate into small wins. I think one of the roles of a good geek herder is to keep these things at the forefront of their mind, so that those small wins don't end up leading you down a blind alley. Let's have an example. Let's say your team is doing project X and one of the goals of X was to be OS-agnostic. However at the shop you only have two or three related OSes - say Linux and Solaris. Now everybody has been working on X for years, the goals are a distant memory... and then something breaks, and the developer rolls out a quick fix that will only work on Unix clones. It is the boss's job to turn down the small win and say "no you can't do it this way". It is their job to think of this, when it doesn't occur to anybody else. Somebody has to keep the big picture in their head - whether that person is called the boss, or the technical lead or whoever.

jay_kyburz 16y ago
I agree, I copied this same line and came back to say I think it's a bosses job to think about these goals every single day and make sure the team is making small steps toward them. A good boss needs to lead the team. That means getting their hands dirty and making sure the work that is being done is right.
shimon 16y ago
I agree with your example. But I think a good boss realizes that, along with the power bosses have to think about major strategic goals, there comes a risk of getting stuck in the stratosphere, and spending all your time contemplating long-term goals while losing touch with your team's needs. A good boss needs to be able to context switch between putting out fires and thinking about long-term goals pretty frequently, and for me this has always been difficult. Perhaps it is easier for others, but anyone who thinks they should spend most of their time zoomed out (or in) is probably a bad boss.

by frossie 16y ago

jay_kyburz 16y ago

I agree, I copied this same line and came back to say I think it's a bosses job to think about these goals every single day and make sure the team is making small steps toward them. A good boss needs to lead the team. That means getting their hands dirty and making sure the work that is being done is right.

shimon 16y ago

I agree with your example. But I think a good boss realizes that, along with the power bosses have to think about major strategic goals, there comes a risk of getting stuck in the stratosphere, and spending all your time contemplating long-term goals while losing touch with your team's needs. A good boss needs to be able to context switch between putting out fires and thinking about long-term goals pretty frequently, and for me this has always been difficult. Perhaps it is easier for others, but anyone who thinks they should spend most of their time zoomed out (or in) is probably a bad boss.