There's a saying in team sports along the lines of, "Players play the game; Coaches coach." Employees play the game (ie do the work), but I think a good manage

There's a saying in team sports along the lines of, "Players play the game; Coaches coach." Employees play the game (ie do the work), but I think a good manager/leader can make a big difference. Sure, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player who had good teammates, but Phil Jackson must be doing something right in order to extract the talent out of his players in just the right way to win year in and year out. And that is hard. Perhaps there's just not very many good coaches or managers, which is why there's such distaste for "management." But every good team, organization, or company has a great "manager" or "managers". In the case of 37signals, it seems that person is Jason Fried (he is the CEO).