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Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team membe

Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence? Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework where managers can direct without responsibility or accountability. Set a bar for managers that includes ownership, and the ability to delegate responsibility while persuading staff to willingly take on their own level of ownership. This "manager as peer," approach I have seen in a number of organizations is dishonest and seems to just mean forfeiting responsibility, while opportunistically cherry picking successes to take credit for. Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers, they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence. Of the problems to solve for, improving the quality and selection of managers seems smarter than contorting ourselves into new frameworks to work with ones who avoid responsibility. If you want to be liked, just be nice. If you want to be respected, take responsibility.

watwut 7y ago
First, massive disaffection with typical management is what leads to schemes like this. Especially when it comes to non-technical management, they are not equipped to do any of what you wrote. Not that technical management would be great or something. I am not fan of "everyone is leader" organization, but I am aware that contemporary management is not capable of all that much. > Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers I do actually want my opinions, ideas and preferences to be heard. If I think that I am not being heard, I prefer to change the team so that I am heard. If I don't change team and I am not heard, I work in more checked-out mode - which is pretty normal. It is doing somebodies domain, I cant take full responsibility if all decisions are somebody elses. thinking more about them just frustrates, so it is natural adaptation to avoid doing that. > Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. Not true. For me, I am actually more stressed when I cant make own decisions, cant influence what affects me or dont have autonomy. Even when management takes responsibility for decisions and directions, purely top down management or micromanagement is stresor and demotivator. > they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence Leadership that does not hear people who work on the projects, can not understand the environment those people work in. Nor I see space for "shared competence".
- klenwell 7y ago
  > I do actually want my opinions, ideas and preferences to be heard. If I think that I am not being heard, I prefer to change the team so that I am heard. I think this is a valid expectation. At the same time, it can lead to conflict and confusion if not itself managed effectively. One thing we've done with our team that I think has addressed this pretty well is RFCs (Request for Comments). This is mainly for team practice stuff but also can address important technical questions. We use a Trello board where anyone on the team can add a card and then team members can comment on cards. Team leads then review the board in a 30-min meeting every couple weeks to make sure cards get acted on or otherwise resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Each RFC card is also assigned an owner from the team, a practical example I suppose of everyone being a leader.
  - watwut 7y ago
    The scheme described in the article does much more. It gives you not just ability to express yourself on card, but also ability to make decisions in limited area and have responsibility for them. I don't think being assigned task or issue is same as "being leader". In article it is more about subprojects themselves having responsible people - and people having responsibility for subprojects. So there is not one team leader responsible for everything, but various people responsible for their smaller parts and changing teams. It is not about everyone agreeing with everything and having all they want. It is much more about autonomy and accountability - which are the core motivators in normal people management theory and there is not reason to think IT people are so different that they don't need them.
marcinzm 7y ago
The person who knows you best is yourself. By that token, your manager will have less insight into you than you do. So defaulting to their judgement for everything will lead to decisions that are sub-optimal or upset you.
chrisweekly 7y ago
You make some good points about responsibility and accountability. But team members absolutely need to be, and feel, heard. Also, there's a world of difference between "managing" and "leading". Conflating the two is a root cause of many problems.
- KineticLensman 7y ago
  > Also, there's a world of difference between "managing" and "leading". Conflating the two is a root cause of many problems. Exactly. I think the military distinction between command (leadership) and control (management) is very relevant here. One is setting overall enterprise goals and defining personal missions in this context. The other is checking resources, constraints, reporting, etc. These two are very different, hence the fundamental military distinction between the commander and his chief of staff.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    You could also say one is defining/policing parameters, and the other is being the designated representative of the team’s choices within those parameters. The manager defines the “no” (boundaries of what’s acceptable) the leader defines the “yes” (what will the team do next given the demands). People often try to do both, which means defining a very narrow “you do this now” which ends up feeling authoritarian.
BurningFrog 7y ago
How about the counterargument that 10 heads are better than 1?
- wool_gather 7y ago
  I'm reminded of a quote from The Office: > Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that set sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be...without the Popes. Notice that throughout the article, the author is still in charge of the overall strategy, granting each lead their authority, requiring status updates.
  - discreteevent 7y ago
    "name a country that doesn't have two presidents". A lot of countries are run by a government with a cabinet of ministers. There's a lot of negotiation. Many decisions are collective. In fact many governments are an example of what the article is taking about. The Catholic Church is an authoritarian organisation and that structure has caused it some extreme problems leading to its demise in many parts of the world. That said, it is a good joke.
    - uk_programmer 7y ago
      However there is still a "Prime Minister" which picks the cabinet.
- kempbellt 7y ago
  Not always. In many cases 10 heads = 9 people criticizing/undermining 1. Effective teams are built on people who trust and respect each other. Leadership must be recognized by a majority of group members for any person to take the lead - and any person can lead at any time if they have the group's best interests in mind and are able to demonstrate that.
  - jdmichal 7y ago
crimsonalucard 7y ago
>Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers, they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence. This is 100% the worst advice. It's a sign that you are a bad leader. There are two components of leadership. Managing up and managing down. In order to gain a leadership position all you need to know is how to manage up well. Because there is little need to know how to manage down in order to gain a leadership position you see a lot of incompetent leaders everywhere. The quote above is 100% a sign of someone who does not know how to manage down. Yes you need to take responsibility. This is called managing up. But Team members do need to be heard this is the most critical aspect of leadership and managing down.
- motohagiography 7y ago
  Can appreciate the reaction, but management and leadership aren't therapy. There is only one component of leadership, and it is the definition: it is the effect of being followed. You can't fake it because it is an effect, not a result. It only happens with willingness in others that is the result of trust, earned through establishing legitimate authority. Management is literally the effect of compromise between competing factors, with feedback into influencing those factors, and %80 of your effort spent on maintaining the ability to influence them. In this sense, the difference between management and leadership is like that of a thermostat and the weather.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    I'd argue that good managment can often be quite close to therapy (albeit a little less personal). Getting the best out of people starts with understanding where they are coming from, what their needs and desires are, and ensuring that as a group, they are meeting each others. Leadership is a different thing.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Aside from severe competency issues I would agree. But I don't think classical "leader" properties are important. I agree that a manager may need a certain distance, but that depends on the team. Engineering is a creative process and too much structure kills innovation. A manager should be the slightly less annoying customer that ensures customer perspectives are not neglected and work is prioritized in a matter that ensures project viability and success. And can clearly tell what he needs. Granted, that is quite rare in the industry. Especially those that can organize and take responsibility.
hrktb 7y ago
I am not sure on which part you are reacting. For instance from the article: > The first thing I settled on was to have one publicly announced engineering lead per project. I did this to make ownership clear It seems to be very close to what you are advocating, short of the leader being a manager. If it's the leader not being a manager that you see as misguided, I'd raise two points: - you need people to progressively get experience in leadership before becoming dedicated leaders. I am a proponent of people growing into a role before getting labelled with it. Taking ownership of a single specific project seems to be a good way to achieve this. - a single manager overseeing a multitude of projects is good only if the projects don't matter or the manager doesn't do much on each of them. Otherwise a person focused on the subject will yield better results in my experience (and if the manager doesn't do much, they shouldn't take responsibility or ownership)
addicted44 7y ago
The article doesn't suggest that. The article suggests having a single lead per project. But each project is led by a different engineer. You still have 1 leader per project, but everyone on the team gets the leadership opportunity and experience.
honestoHeminway 7y ago
I would prefer less responsibility taken by now. Managers assigning all the work to themselves (im the only one competent) and then getting nothing done is the most widespread phenomena i currently see.
madrox 7y ago
I say this as an engineering director and someone who takes a lot of pride in my ability to do all the good things you describe: what's wrong with it is that bad management is hard to dislodge. Bad managers will never admit they're bad; they have bad employees. It's really hard for upper management to tell the difference. The early signs of bad management look a lot like bad employee performance. It takes time for a pattern of behavior to emerge, and in the meantime projects and employees are getting ruined. That said, traditional management, like democracy, is the worst form of management, except for all the others.
- GreenJelloShot 7y ago
  I have never seen a "bad" manager exist under a "good" manager/director. Every single "bad" manager was able to survive and thrive because the environment was set up to encourage and reward the "bad" behavior. If you are hiring and managing bad people, then the problem is not with them. It is with you. If you are unable to identify bad people under you, then you are failing at your most basic responsibility.
  - madrox 7y ago
    Taking your argument to its conclusion, if there's a bad manager, then the director is bad, then the VP is bad, all the way up to the CEO. A single bad employee means the CEO is bad. I think we can both agree that stretches the definition of bad so far as to be meaningless. Personally, I've seen bad managers under good directors. It's complicated. Anyone can make a bad hiring decision. My point is that even if you are able to identity bad people under you, that identification process takes time. The higher you go in a hierarchy, the longer the time horizon you tend to be evaluated on. To say it should be obvious on a very short time horizon is disingenuous and only covers the most egregious cases.
- 6nf 7y ago
  > Bad managers will never admit they're bad; they have bad employees. It's really hard for upper management to tell the difference. Speaking from upper management, I don't care for managers who blame their employees when things go wrong. They should have replaced those bad employees before things went wrong. That manager is on the way out if he's working for me.
crystaldev 7y ago
> If you want to be liked, just be nice. If only it worked that way.
GreenJelloShot 7y ago
> Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. This right here. I will lead if you want. But then stop second guessing my decisions, and stop taking credit for my successes. If you want to lead, fine. But then stop blaming me for failures, and admit when you screw up. I am sick of being micromanaged and then blamed for when things go wrong.
yibg 7y ago
There is a spectrum though between the leader taking all the accountability and team members taking all the accountability. The leader can be accountable for pointing in the right direction and providing sufficient resources while the team members can be accountable for the execution. Reality is no single person is going to know enough to solely be responsible for everything. A manager of a sizable team is not going to know the details enough to know the right approach for everything. I’m a big fan of providing context to team members and having a dialog instead of just delegating everything top down. But in this kind of environment accountability can still be made clear.
proc0 7y ago
Top down management doesn't work in software engineering unless you are in an industry that does not value creative solutions (which is possible, some industries want extreme reliability and this means less exploration for solutions). In other words, what is the point of giving instructions/directions to someone who is supposed to be a problem solver (a.k.a. engineer)? There is no point to hire problem solvers and then give them specific solutions to your problems.
koonsolo 7y ago
> Team members don't need to be "heard," For leadership, correct. For management, false. In software engineering, the people who know are at the bottom, so you better listen to them when you need estimates, technical solutions, architectural insight, etc. Throw away your 1-on-1's at your own peril. As a manager you should make sure your team members can do their job, and that includes listening to the problems they face. As a leader you set the course, so day-to-day operational things are indeed less relevant.

watwut 7y ago

First, massive disaffection with typical management is what leads to schemes like this. Especially when it comes to non-technical management, they are not equipped to do any of what you wrote. Not that technical management would be great or something. I am not fan of "everyone is leader" organization, but I am aware that contemporary management is not capable of all that much. > Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers I do actually want my opinions, ideas and preferences to be heard. If I think that I am not being heard, I prefer to change the team so that I am heard. If I don't change team and I am not heard, I work in more checked-out mode - which is pretty normal. It is doing somebodies domain, I cant take full responsibility if all decisions are somebody elses. thinking more about them just frustrates, so it is natural adaptation to avoid doing that. > Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. Not true. For me, I am actually more stressed when I cant make own decisions, cant influence what affects me or dont have autonomy. Even when management takes responsibility for decisions and directions, purely top down management or micromanagement is stresor and demotivator. > they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence Leadership that does not hear people who work on the projects, can not understand the environment those people work in. Nor I see space for "shared competence".

klenwell 7y ago
> I do actually want my opinions, ideas and preferences to be heard. If I think that I am not being heard, I prefer to change the team so that I am heard. I think this is a valid expectation. At the same time, it can lead to conflict and confusion if not itself managed effectively. One thing we've done with our team that I think has addressed this pretty well is RFCs (Request for Comments). This is mainly for team practice stuff but also can address important technical questions. We use a Trello board where anyone on the team can add a card and then team members can comment on cards. Team leads then review the board in a 30-min meeting every couple weeks to make sure cards get acted on or otherwise resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Each RFC card is also assigned an owner from the team, a practical example I suppose of everyone being a leader.
- watwut 7y ago
  The scheme described in the article does much more. It gives you not just ability to express yourself on card, but also ability to make decisions in limited area and have responsibility for them. I don't think being assigned task or issue is same as "being leader". In article it is more about subprojects themselves having responsible people - and people having responsibility for subprojects. So there is not one team leader responsible for everything, but various people responsible for their smaller parts and changing teams. It is not about everyone agreeing with everything and having all they want. It is much more about autonomy and accountability - which are the core motivators in normal people management theory and there is not reason to think IT people are so different that they don't need them.

marcinzm 7y ago

The person who knows you best is yourself. By that token, your manager will have less insight into you than you do. So defaulting to their judgement for everything will lead to decisions that are sub-optimal or upset you.

chrisweekly 7y ago

You make some good points about responsibility and accountability. But team members absolutely need to be, and feel, heard. Also, there's a world of difference between "managing" and "leading". Conflating the two is a root cause of many problems.

KineticLensman 7y ago
> Also, there's a world of difference between "managing" and "leading". Conflating the two is a root cause of many problems. Exactly. I think the military distinction between command (leadership) and control (management) is very relevant here. One is setting overall enterprise goals and defining personal missions in this context. The other is checking resources, constraints, reporting, etc. These two are very different, hence the fundamental military distinction between the commander and his chief of staff.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  You could also say one is defining/policing parameters, and the other is being the designated representative of the team’s choices within those parameters. The manager defines the “no” (boundaries of what’s acceptable) the leader defines the “yes” (what will the team do next given the demands). People often try to do both, which means defining a very narrow “you do this now” which ends up feeling authoritarian.

BurningFrog 7y ago

How about the counterargument that 10 heads are better than 1?

wool_gather 7y ago
I'm reminded of a quote from The Office: > Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that set sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be...without the Popes. Notice that throughout the article, the author is still in charge of the overall strategy, granting each lead their authority, requiring status updates.
- discreteevent 7y ago
  "name a country that doesn't have two presidents". A lot of countries are run by a government with a cabinet of ministers. There's a lot of negotiation. Many decisions are collective. In fact many governments are an example of what the article is taking about. The Catholic Church is an authoritarian organisation and that structure has caused it some extreme problems leading to its demise in many parts of the world. That said, it is a good joke.
  - uk_programmer 7y ago
    However there is still a "Prime Minister" which picks the cabinet.
kempbellt 7y ago
Not always. In many cases 10 heads = 9 people criticizing/undermining 1. Effective teams are built on people who trust and respect each other. Leadership must be recognized by a majority of group members for any person to take the lead - and any person can lead at any time if they have the group's best interests in mind and are able to demonstrate that.
- jdmichal 7y ago

crimsonalucard 7y ago

>Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers, they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence. This is 100% the worst advice. It's a sign that you are a bad leader. There are two components of leadership. Managing up and managing down. In order to gain a leadership position all you need to know is how to manage up well. Because there is little need to know how to manage down in order to gain a leadership position you see a lot of incompetent leaders everywhere. The quote above is 100% a sign of someone who does not know how to manage down. Yes you need to take responsibility. This is called managing up. But Team members do need to be heard this is the most critical aspect of leadership and managing down.

motohagiography 7y ago
Can appreciate the reaction, but management and leadership aren't therapy. There is only one component of leadership, and it is the definition: it is the effect of being followed. You can't fake it because it is an effect, not a result. It only happens with willingness in others that is the result of trust, earned through establishing legitimate authority. Management is literally the effect of compromise between competing factors, with feedback into influencing those factors, and %80 of your effort spent on maintaining the ability to influence them. In this sense, the difference between management and leadership is like that of a thermostat and the weather.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  I'd argue that good managment can often be quite close to therapy (albeit a little less personal). Getting the best out of people starts with understanding where they are coming from, what their needs and desires are, and ensuring that as a group, they are meeting each others. Leadership is a different thing.

raxxorrax 7y ago

Aside from severe competency issues I would agree. But I don't think classical "leader" properties are important. I agree that a manager may need a certain distance, but that depends on the team. Engineering is a creative process and too much structure kills innovation. A manager should be the slightly less annoying customer that ensures customer perspectives are not neglected and work is prioritized in a matter that ensures project viability and success. And can clearly tell what he needs. Granted, that is quite rare in the industry. Especially those that can organize and take responsibility.

hrktb 7y ago

I am not sure on which part you are reacting. For instance from the article: > The first thing I settled on was to have one publicly announced engineering lead per project. I did this to make ownership clear It seems to be very close to what you are advocating, short of the leader being a manager. If it's the leader not being a manager that you see as misguided, I'd raise two points: - you need people to progressively get experience in leadership before becoming dedicated leaders. I am a proponent of people growing into a role before getting labelled with it. Taking ownership of a single specific project seems to be a good way to achieve this. - a single manager overseeing a multitude of projects is good only if the projects don't matter or the manager doesn't do much on each of them. Otherwise a person focused on the subject will yield better results in my experience (and if the manager doesn't do much, they shouldn't take responsibility or ownership)

addicted44 7y ago

The article doesn't suggest that. The article suggests having a single lead per project. But each project is led by a different engineer. You still have 1 leader per project, but everyone on the team gets the leadership opportunity and experience.

honestoHeminway 7y ago

I would prefer less responsibility taken by now. Managers assigning all the work to themselves (im the only one competent) and then getting nothing done is the most widespread phenomena i currently see.

madrox 7y ago

I say this as an engineering director and someone who takes a lot of pride in my ability to do all the good things you describe: what's wrong with it is that bad management is hard to dislodge. Bad managers will never admit they're bad; they have bad employees. It's really hard for upper management to tell the difference. The early signs of bad management look a lot like bad employee performance. It takes time for a pattern of behavior to emerge, and in the meantime projects and employees are getting ruined. That said, traditional management, like democracy, is the worst form of management, except for all the others.

GreenJelloShot 7y ago
I have never seen a "bad" manager exist under a "good" manager/director. Every single "bad" manager was able to survive and thrive because the environment was set up to encourage and reward the "bad" behavior. If you are hiring and managing bad people, then the problem is not with them. It is with you. If you are unable to identify bad people under you, then you are failing at your most basic responsibility.
- madrox 7y ago
  Taking your argument to its conclusion, if there's a bad manager, then the director is bad, then the VP is bad, all the way up to the CEO. A single bad employee means the CEO is bad. I think we can both agree that stretches the definition of bad so far as to be meaningless. Personally, I've seen bad managers under good directors. It's complicated. Anyone can make a bad hiring decision. My point is that even if you are able to identity bad people under you, that identification process takes time. The higher you go in a hierarchy, the longer the time horizon you tend to be evaluated on. To say it should be obvious on a very short time horizon is disingenuous and only covers the most egregious cases.
6nf 7y ago
> Bad managers will never admit they're bad; they have bad employees. It's really hard for upper management to tell the difference. Speaking from upper management, I don't care for managers who blame their employees when things go wrong. They should have replaced those bad employees before things went wrong. That manager is on the way out if he's working for me.

crystaldev 7y ago

> If you want to be liked, just be nice. If only it worked that way.

GreenJelloShot 7y ago

> Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. This right here. I will lead if you want. But then stop second guessing my decisions, and stop taking credit for my successes. If you want to lead, fine. But then stop blaming me for failures, and admit when you screw up. I am sick of being micromanaged and then blamed for when things go wrong.

yibg 7y ago

There is a spectrum though between the leader taking all the accountability and team members taking all the accountability. The leader can be accountable for pointing in the right direction and providing sufficient resources while the team members can be accountable for the execution. Reality is no single person is going to know enough to solely be responsible for everything. A manager of a sizable team is not going to know the details enough to know the right approach for everything. I’m a big fan of providing context to team members and having a dialog instead of just delegating everything top down. But in this kind of environment accountability can still be made clear.

proc0 7y ago

Top down management doesn't work in software engineering unless you are in an industry that does not value creative solutions (which is possible, some industries want extreme reliability and this means less exploration for solutions). In other words, what is the point of giving instructions/directions to someone who is supposed to be a problem solver (a.k.a. engineer)? There is no point to hire problem solvers and then give them specific solutions to your problems.

koonsolo 7y ago

> Team members don't need to be "heard," For leadership, correct. For management, false. In software engineering, the people who know are at the bottom, so you better listen to them when you need estimates, technical solutions, architectural insight, etc. Throw away your 1-on-1's at your own peril. As a manager you should make sure your team members can do their job, and that includes listening to the problems they face. As a leader you set the course, so day-to-day operational things are indeed less relevant.