10 ms·

‘Give away your Legos’ and other commandments for scaling startups

141 points by alihm 5y ago

ChrisRR 5y ago
https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912 https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912
motohagiography 5y ago
Such an insightful article. The definition of politics being at the inflection point of when people switch from indexing on the interest of the organization to individual and team interest was very helpful. One thing I might add about scaling teams and growth in general is a bit more meta, which she talks about in a few ways, whereas I would estimate a sense of security is valued at upwards of 30% of your comp. Some people weight it differently, but when you re-examine wealth as the ability to reasonably plan into the future, it's not just a linear effect of marginal dollars. Working in a high growth environment means giving up the real wealth that is a sense of security. Your "legos," in the article, are the levers you have that you percieve as securing your ability to plan to still be working there in 6, 12, or 18 months. The growth mentality is that there is no stability and you just learn to manage and extract value from dynamic situations, but that mentality and talent are not always present. To work in startups, you need to source your sense of stability and your ability to plan from somewhere outside the office. This can be a constructive attitude, or it can be frugality, or just maintaining your openness to opportunity elsewhere, but what seems to cause that inflection point during growth isn't so much the speed of growth, but whether you can provide your teams with the ability to maintain that security to plan for themselves as individuals. It's similar to offering her colleague something with a multiple on importance to what she was working on to get her to delegate her current queue. That let her plan, and secured her perception of her future.
ferdowsi 5y ago
The ability for people to give away their Legos is one of the most important ways I guage an organization's health. If I'm in an established organization and I see a VP or director prescribing technical solutions to engineering problems, it's usually an indicator that: - the leader cannot emotionally bear to give up engineering work and focus on leadership work. This signals a lack of maturity. - there is some other serious organizational problem preventing delegation from happening (weak engineering IC hires, lack of clear processes and ownership patterns, etc)
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > If I'm in an established organization and I see a VP or director prescribing technical solutions to engineering problems That 'established' part is key because early stage companies require wearing so many hats. And knowing when and to whom to let something go it's crucial IME.
- colordrops 5y ago
  You've got musk prescribing technical solutions at the CEO level, so clearly it's not true in every case.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    And I'd say Tesla is successful despite and not because of that. Examples include: Tesla's shot at an in-house ERP and the drive to fully automate production. Both cost them a lot.
    - afarrell 5y ago
      Also https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-to-ex-worker-over-hostile-work-environment-racism.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t... The ability to say "this is no longer my job" is crucial if a leader is to focus on what is their job.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bobsomers 5y ago
    I've talked to some folks from Tesla whose stories absolutely reinforced the parent's point. Some of the silly things Musk has dictated turned into massive wastes of resources for the engineering team.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      But not to Musk, who writes the check. Not always about engineering team resources.
toast76 5y ago
LEGO is an adjective. Never call it Legos.
- bigsausagepizza 5y ago
  I think you meant acronym? Either way, this is an irrelevant comment to make.
  - tom_ 5y ago
    Adjective, apparently: https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912 https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912
    - OJFord 5y ago
      The unfortunate thing about that is that it's wrong. I don't mean the usage, I'm British so I'm firmly 'lots of Lego', but it's obviously a noun. Using it to describe a brick etc. doesn't preclude that. (It's 'attributive', or 'adjunct'.)
      - mekkkkkk 5y ago
        Is "SQL" in "SQL server" also a noun? Not trying to argue one way or the other, I honestly don't know (non-native english speaker).
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        In “SQL Server”, “SQL” functions as an adjective modifying “Server”; its not unusual for what are normally nouns to do that, distinguished only by position(e.g , “hat” in “hat rack”.)
        mekkkkkk 5y ago
        So when the LEGO™®© folk are arguing that "LEGO is always an adjective", they might mean that using it as an adjective noun is the correct thing to do, rather than claiming that "LEGO" by itself is an adjective? I suppose that since "LEGO" is the name of a real concept (the LEGO system) it's unavoidably a noun in essence.
hanoz 5y ago
> "There are so many Legos!" There really aren't. There's just the one Lego. So many Lego bricks.
- bigyikes 5y ago
  Since we’re being pedantic, there’s actually so many LEGO™ bricks.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hanoz 5y ago
    No. Lego bricks. We don't have to speak about everyday things in terms of trademarks.
    - mirekrusin 5y ago
      You must say it with smile on your face, thumbs up and a blink - otherwise it's incorrect – I hear they say.
- labster 5y ago
  What about all of the non-brick-shaped pieces like trees and people? Better to just call them Legos since it’s more appropriate.
  - hanoz 5y ago
    Lego trees and Lego people. You call them all Lego.
    - labster 5y ago
      Close. I call each of them Lego, but I call them all Legos.
hammock 5y ago
Any advice on how to find the "new job" to replace the one you gave away?
- xet7 5y ago
  That "new job" is picking up new legos. Looking at what problems there are to solve. Which legos would fit the best. In that article, point about "Fire people. Just do it!" means, that if there is some part of business that does not generate enough profit or other success, those people need to be "fired" or they should find another job in same or other company, so that job would generate enough profit. If those people are not "fired", then company will get less profit or go bankcrupt. That "new job" depends, what customers actually need the most. Customers could say "faster horse" but can not imagine "auto" or other most efficient, easiest to use solution. Sometimes with those legos, it's about picking only most important in use legos, making them work together, and then making many groups of legos working together, and groups of groups, while each lego has a failsafe way to recover from possible error scenarios. Sometimes it's looking at what some most advanced competitors are doing, and imagining what way it could be hugely improved and simplified. Even better, going in completely different direction with more advanced solution, and leading the way. Point with legos is, to not be too emotional about changing legos, job contents, etc. If there is a way to solve something completely, automate oneself away from job, and move to bigger different role with more advanced legos, just do it. With more advanced legos, it's possible to solve bigger problems.
  - itronitron 5y ago
    The irony with that view is that what looks from the outside as a single lego may be viewed from the inside as something much more complex, because we're not talking about actual legos here.
    - xet7 5y ago
      Yes. Maybe some more concrete examples would help: 1) I built one company infra. At first, I figured out what software, servers, etc there was, documented it, upgraded various software, migrated email, etc. I was fired for some nonsense reason, but anyway, we are still friends. 2) I was doing some coding at some another company. Coding did not progress well, so they fired me. Good, it's OK for me. 3) I built Open Source software for many years. Maintaining, merging pull requests, etc. Adding new features, dependencies, etc. When adding each feature, fixing corner cases, so it all works together, many parts are intendependent of each other. Now I'm thinking which dependencies are not deprecated yet, is it possible to figure out how to upgrade all dependencies and upgrade to newest version of web framework. Or should I just figure out how to take in-use code, figure out what newest dependencies there is available, and rebuild whole stack again.
1235711 5y ago
It can be a bit of a double edged sword, especially in startups. I've been on the leadership side of this where you suddenly realize it's vitally important to your growth that you can give away the things you're doing day to day - unblocking people when they get stuck has a higher ROI than doing it yourself even if you'd do it better/faster because it scales more. But I saw this very differently at an early stage company where our being successful led to people being hired to do all the interesting areas I had been growing into - if someone has Legos anxiety it may very well be because they've realized that this growth is not going to work well for them.
- wanderer2323 5y ago
  Today the startup CEO wants you to "give away your legos". Tomorrow he would like to quickly "fire someone for the basic reason that you don't need this role any more" [0]. Double-edged sword indeed. To be fair to the OP, they seem to be writing from the position inside the FAANG, and there it's a much safer proposition. [0] https://paygo.ghost.io/why-did-i-leave-google-or-why-did-i-stay-so-long/ https://paygo.ghost.io/why-did-i-leave-google-or-why-did-i-s...
  - nikanj 5y ago
    The author of [0] seems like an utter tool. They seem to wear their HR complaints like a badge of honor, and complain that people are not willing to make personal sacrifices to help the company gain.
    - wanderer2323 5y ago
      I always thought he wrote a great ad for Google. "Look, there is this company where your director cannot just fire you on a whim. This company where you can decline a meeting because you are taking a personal day. This company where there is good food in the cafeteria" etc.
notjustanymike 5y ago
You have to be careful as some people give away ALL their Legos, and simply watch others build until it's time to take credit.
- xet7 5y ago
  Yes, if others can build well. Or alternatively: 1. Give one Lego away to someone. 2. That someone messes up something immediately. 3. Take that one Lego back. 4. Repeat 1-3 many times. Thinking, how to help somebody to not just mess up everything? And, is it possible to delegate or grow?
rglullis 5y ago
It is an interesting article, but the hardest thing to me is accepting the premise: why do we want "scaling startups" in the first place? As a consumer, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a company that can make my life better or deliver better services because of its size. As an engineer, I'd rather work in an organization that can be more efficient and profitable by being super-focused in the core business and commodifying/outsourcing/open sourcing everything else. I get depressed thinking about all the brainpower that we waste by having these huge corporations competing for market share in areas that would benefit immediately from collaboration/interoperability/open standards. Google and its 20 different messaging solutions come to mind, but I also don't forget that Skype was sold by 7 billion dollars and then wasted away. And history likely repeating itself with Discord. As an entrepreneur, I'd rather have a Basecamp-style company with < 50 people and constantly profitable over an unicorn where I'd have little to no control and would be dependent on VC money. Every day I am getting more and more convinced that the problems of Capitalism could be mitigated by not allowing corporations over a certain size. Over 150 headcount? Instead of fighting to get the company culture in place, just break it apart.
- toomanyrichies 5y ago
  > As a consumer, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a company that can make my life better or deliver better services because of its size. Please let me know if I'm mis-understanding this sentence, but there are quite a few companies that confer benefits to consumers as a result of their size. Think of Walmart, Amazon, any ride-sharing company, any airline, any carmaker, etc. Those are all examples of business models whose value proposition is predicated on the scale of their operations. Granted, not every industry or company depends on scale, but plenty of them do. Business is a big tent, and different industries have different requirements for entry. It's exceedingly unlikely that the COVID mRNA vaccine could have been invented by a company with the scale or capitalization of a Basecamp. Again, let me know if I'm misunderstanding the point you made.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    No. All the examples you listed at best make things cheaper, not better, and in some cases they can only do so by sacrificing quality (airlines, walmart) or by destroying profitability in one sector and funding the business somewhere else (carmakers only make money via financing, ride shares only survive due to Softbank, Amazon's "your margin is my opportunity" and AWS, etc) > It's exceedingly unlikely that the COVID mRNA vaccine could have been invented by a company with the scale or capitalization of a Basecamp. Certainly not. It would take several of these smaller companies, working in different parts of the research chain and all collaborating organically (without any central planner). The real question is whether it would be faster or slower to develop it in such a scenario, and also if the trade-off is acceptable.
romanhn 5y ago
This is a fantastic article and I have shared it with many, many engineers in the past. It's one of those totally counterintuitive things about career growth. It's all about accumulating scope as one grows into a senior-level role. Then everything flips, and one's seniority tends to grow proportional to the amount of scope one gives away (therefore enabling others to work on larger-scope initiatives). Applies to managers as well as individual contributors.
- ISL 5y ago
  This article was shared with me in an organization that was scaling incredibly quickly; it was extremely helpful. The mantra, "give away your legos" has echoed for me since.
muglug 5y ago
Needs a (2015) label.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
The first time I was in management, I failed because I couldn’t give away my LEGOs. I wanted to continue to micro-manage and still do the stuff I had done as an IC and wasn’t ready to trust the team to do things in my place. My fear was that things wouldn’t be done as well (which may have been true, although that doesn’t mean that wouldn’t have changed over time) and I wasn’t able to let go and focus on the stuff I needed to focus on as a leader. I failed. I learned from that experience and the next time I was in management (and continuing today), I was so much better at letting things go, trusting my team to get stuff done, and focusing on the next challenge. That doesn’t mean you aren’t sometimes wistful or nervous, but I know for me, I had to learn to trust people to get things done and be OK even when things weren’t done exactly as I would do them.
travisgriggs 5y ago
As a group grows, what is the general size, time, or other markers of maturity where this transition to “LEGO disavowal” begins to pay off? I’m on a small team in ag automation that is growing/maturing slowly, and I'm curious when this needs to happen in earnest. Frankly, we’ve struggled with the little turnover we’ve had.
flemhans 5y ago
Who else is mad that the blocks in the second picture aren't LEGO bricks but some other product?
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
The Lego's worth keeping either impossible to give away or working with the recipient of the Lego is going to be far more rewarding than the Lego itself.
data_ders 5y ago
What are signs of over-delegation?
- jmchuster 5y ago
  When you have completely given away everything you are responsible for, then you are now free to pick up all of your boss's responsibilities. So i guess the sign is, your boss gets promoted, you get promoted into their job and so on.

141 points by alihm 5y ago

https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912 https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912

Such an insightful article. The definition of politics being at the inflection point of when people switch from indexing on the interest of the organization to individual and team interest was very helpful. One thing I might add about scaling teams and growth in general is a bit more meta, which she talks about in a few ways, whereas I would estimate a sense of security is valued at upwards of 30% of your comp. Some people weight it differently, but when you re-examine wealth as the ability to reasonably plan into the future, it's not just a linear effect of marginal dollars. Working in a high growth environment means giving up the real wealth that is a sense of security. Your "legos," in the article, are the levers you have that you percieve as securing your ability to plan to still be working there in 6, 12, or 18 months. The growth mentality is that there is no stability and you just learn to manage and extract value from dynamic situations, but that mentality and talent are not always present. To work in startups, you need to source your sense of stability and your ability to plan from somewhere outside the office. This can be a constructive attitude, or it can be frugality, or just maintaining your openness to opportunity elsewhere, but what seems to cause that inflection point during growth isn't so much the speed of growth, but whether you can provide your teams with the ability to maintain that security to plan for themselves as individuals. It's similar to offering her colleague something with a multiple on importance to what she was working on to get her to delegate her current queue. That let her plan, and secured her perception of her future.

ferdowsi 5y ago

The ability for people to give away their Legos is one of the most important ways I guage an organization's health. If I'm in an established organization and I see a VP or director prescribing technical solutions to engineering problems, it's usually an indicator that: - the leader cannot emotionally bear to give up engineering work and focus on leadership work. This signals a lack of maturity. - there is some other serious organizational problem preventing delegation from happening (weak engineering IC hires, lack of clear processes and ownership patterns, etc)

paulryanrogers 5y ago
> If I'm in an established organization and I see a VP or director prescribing technical solutions to engineering problems That 'established' part is key because early stage companies require wearing so many hats. And knowing when and to whom to let something go it's crucial IME.
colordrops 5y ago
You've got musk prescribing technical solutions at the CEO level, so clearly it's not true in every case.
- hef19898 5y ago
  And I'd say Tesla is successful despite and not because of that. Examples include: Tesla's shot at an in-house ERP and the drive to fully automate production. Both cost them a lot.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    Also https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-to-ex-worker-over-hostile-work-environment-racism.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t... The ability to say "this is no longer my job" is crucial if a leader is to focus on what is their job.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bobsomers 5y ago
  I've talked to some folks from Tesla whose stories absolutely reinforced the parent's point. Some of the silly things Musk has dictated turned into massive wastes of resources for the engineering team.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    But not to Musk, who writes the check. Not always about engineering team resources.

toast76 5y ago

LEGO is an adjective. Never call it Legos.

bigsausagepizza 5y ago
I think you meant acronym? Either way, this is an irrelevant comment to make.
- tom_ 5y ago
  Adjective, apparently: https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912 https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912
  - OJFord 5y ago
    The unfortunate thing about that is that it's wrong. I don't mean the usage, I'm British so I'm firmly 'lots of Lego', but it's obviously a noun. Using it to describe a brick etc. doesn't preclude that. (It's 'attributive', or 'adjunct'.)
    - mekkkkkk 5y ago
      Is "SQL" in "SQL server" also a noun? Not trying to argue one way or the other, I honestly don't know (non-native english speaker).
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        In “SQL Server”, “SQL” functions as an adjective modifying “Server”; its not unusual for what are normally nouns to do that, distinguished only by position(e.g , “hat” in “hat rack”.)
        mekkkkkk 5y ago
        So when the LEGO™®© folk are arguing that "LEGO is always an adjective", they might mean that using it as an adjective noun is the correct thing to do, rather than claiming that "LEGO" by itself is an adjective? I suppose that since "LEGO" is the name of a real concept (the LEGO system) it's unavoidably a noun in essence.

hanoz 5y ago

> "There are so many Legos!" There really aren't. There's just the one Lego. So many Lego bricks.

bigyikes 5y ago
Since we’re being pedantic, there’s actually so many LEGO™ bricks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hanoz 5y ago
  No. Lego bricks. We don't have to speak about everyday things in terms of trademarks.
  - mirekrusin 5y ago
    You must say it with smile on your face, thumbs up and a blink - otherwise it's incorrect – I hear they say.
labster 5y ago
What about all of the non-brick-shaped pieces like trees and people? Better to just call them Legos since it’s more appropriate.
- hanoz 5y ago
  Lego trees and Lego people. You call them all Lego.
  - labster 5y ago
    Close. I call each of them Lego, but I call them all Legos.

hammock 5y ago

Any advice on how to find the "new job" to replace the one you gave away?

xet7 5y ago
That "new job" is picking up new legos. Looking at what problems there are to solve. Which legos would fit the best. In that article, point about "Fire people. Just do it!" means, that if there is some part of business that does not generate enough profit or other success, those people need to be "fired" or they should find another job in same or other company, so that job would generate enough profit. If those people are not "fired", then company will get less profit or go bankcrupt. That "new job" depends, what customers actually need the most. Customers could say "faster horse" but can not imagine "auto" or other most efficient, easiest to use solution. Sometimes with those legos, it's about picking only most important in use legos, making them work together, and then making many groups of legos working together, and groups of groups, while each lego has a failsafe way to recover from possible error scenarios. Sometimes it's looking at what some most advanced competitors are doing, and imagining what way it could be hugely improved and simplified. Even better, going in completely different direction with more advanced solution, and leading the way. Point with legos is, to not be too emotional about changing legos, job contents, etc. If there is a way to solve something completely, automate oneself away from job, and move to bigger different role with more advanced legos, just do it. With more advanced legos, it's possible to solve bigger problems.
- itronitron 5y ago
  The irony with that view is that what looks from the outside as a single lego may be viewed from the inside as something much more complex, because we're not talking about actual legos here.
  - xet7 5y ago
    Yes. Maybe some more concrete examples would help: 1) I built one company infra. At first, I figured out what software, servers, etc there was, documented it, upgraded various software, migrated email, etc. I was fired for some nonsense reason, but anyway, we are still friends. 2) I was doing some coding at some another company. Coding did not progress well, so they fired me. Good, it's OK for me. 3) I built Open Source software for many years. Maintaining, merging pull requests, etc. Adding new features, dependencies, etc. When adding each feature, fixing corner cases, so it all works together, many parts are intendependent of each other. Now I'm thinking which dependencies are not deprecated yet, is it possible to figure out how to upgrade all dependencies and upgrade to newest version of web framework. Or should I just figure out how to take in-use code, figure out what newest dependencies there is available, and rebuild whole stack again.

1235711 5y ago

It can be a bit of a double edged sword, especially in startups. I've been on the leadership side of this where you suddenly realize it's vitally important to your growth that you can give away the things you're doing day to day - unblocking people when they get stuck has a higher ROI than doing it yourself even if you'd do it better/faster because it scales more. But I saw this very differently at an early stage company where our being successful led to people being hired to do all the interesting areas I had been growing into - if someone has Legos anxiety it may very well be because they've realized that this growth is not going to work well for them.

wanderer2323 5y ago
Today the startup CEO wants you to "give away your legos". Tomorrow he would like to quickly "fire someone for the basic reason that you don't need this role any more" [0]. Double-edged sword indeed. To be fair to the OP, they seem to be writing from the position inside the FAANG, and there it's a much safer proposition. [0] https://paygo.ghost.io/why-did-i-leave-google-or-why-did-i-stay-so-long/ https://paygo.ghost.io/why-did-i-leave-google-or-why-did-i-s...
- nikanj 5y ago
  The author of [0] seems like an utter tool. They seem to wear their HR complaints like a badge of honor, and complain that people are not willing to make personal sacrifices to help the company gain.
  - wanderer2323 5y ago
    I always thought he wrote a great ad for Google. "Look, there is this company where your director cannot just fire you on a whim. This company where you can decline a meeting because you are taking a personal day. This company where there is good food in the cafeteria" etc.

notjustanymike 5y ago

You have to be careful as some people give away ALL their Legos, and simply watch others build until it's time to take credit.

xet7 5y ago
Yes, if others can build well. Or alternatively: 1. Give one Lego away to someone. 2. That someone messes up something immediately. 3. Take that one Lego back. 4. Repeat 1-3 many times. Thinking, how to help somebody to not just mess up everything? And, is it possible to delegate or grow?

rglullis 5y ago

It is an interesting article, but the hardest thing to me is accepting the premise: why do we want "scaling startups" in the first place? As a consumer, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a company that can make my life better or deliver better services because of its size. As an engineer, I'd rather work in an organization that can be more efficient and profitable by being super-focused in the core business and commodifying/outsourcing/open sourcing everything else. I get depressed thinking about all the brainpower that we waste by having these huge corporations competing for market share in areas that would benefit immediately from collaboration/interoperability/open standards. Google and its 20 different messaging solutions come to mind, but I also don't forget that Skype was sold by 7 billion dollars and then wasted away. And history likely repeating itself with Discord. As an entrepreneur, I'd rather have a Basecamp-style company with < 50 people and constantly profitable over an unicorn where I'd have little to no control and would be dependent on VC money. Every day I am getting more and more convinced that the problems of Capitalism could be mitigated by not allowing corporations over a certain size. Over 150 headcount? Instead of fighting to get the company culture in place, just break it apart.

toomanyrichies 5y ago
> As a consumer, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a company that can make my life better or deliver better services because of its size. Please let me know if I'm mis-understanding this sentence, but there are quite a few companies that confer benefits to consumers as a result of their size. Think of Walmart, Amazon, any ride-sharing company, any airline, any carmaker, etc. Those are all examples of business models whose value proposition is predicated on the scale of their operations. Granted, not every industry or company depends on scale, but plenty of them do. Business is a big tent, and different industries have different requirements for entry. It's exceedingly unlikely that the COVID mRNA vaccine could have been invented by a company with the scale or capitalization of a Basecamp. Again, let me know if I'm misunderstanding the point you made.
- rglullis 5y ago
  No. All the examples you listed at best make things cheaper, not better, and in some cases they can only do so by sacrificing quality (airlines, walmart) or by destroying profitability in one sector and funding the business somewhere else (carmakers only make money via financing, ride shares only survive due to Softbank, Amazon's "your margin is my opportunity" and AWS, etc) > It's exceedingly unlikely that the COVID mRNA vaccine could have been invented by a company with the scale or capitalization of a Basecamp. Certainly not. It would take several of these smaller companies, working in different parts of the research chain and all collaborating organically (without any central planner). The real question is whether it would be faster or slower to develop it in such a scenario, and also if the trade-off is acceptable.

romanhn 5y ago

This is a fantastic article and I have shared it with many, many engineers in the past. It's one of those totally counterintuitive things about career growth. It's all about accumulating scope as one grows into a senior-level role. Then everything flips, and one's seniority tends to grow proportional to the amount of scope one gives away (therefore enabling others to work on larger-scope initiatives). Applies to managers as well as individual contributors.

ISL 5y ago
This article was shared with me in an organization that was scaling incredibly quickly; it was extremely helpful. The mantra, "give away your legos" has echoed for me since.

muglug 5y ago

Needs a (2015) label.

filmgirlcw 5y ago

The first time I was in management, I failed because I couldn’t give away my LEGOs. I wanted to continue to micro-manage and still do the stuff I had done as an IC and wasn’t ready to trust the team to do things in my place. My fear was that things wouldn’t be done as well (which may have been true, although that doesn’t mean that wouldn’t have changed over time) and I wasn’t able to let go and focus on the stuff I needed to focus on as a leader. I failed. I learned from that experience and the next time I was in management (and continuing today), I was so much better at letting things go, trusting my team to get stuff done, and focusing on the next challenge. That doesn’t mean you aren’t sometimes wistful or nervous, but I know for me, I had to learn to trust people to get things done and be OK even when things weren’t done exactly as I would do them.

travisgriggs 5y ago

As a group grows, what is the general size, time, or other markers of maturity where this transition to “LEGO disavowal” begins to pay off? I’m on a small team in ag automation that is growing/maturing slowly, and I'm curious when this needs to happen in earnest. Frankly, we’ve struggled with the little turnover we’ve had.

flemhans 5y ago

Who else is mad that the blocks in the second picture aren't LEGO bricks but some other product?

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

The Lego's worth keeping either impossible to give away or working with the recipient of the Lego is going to be far more rewarding than the Lego itself.

data_ders 5y ago

What are signs of over-delegation?

jmchuster 5y ago
When you have completely given away everything you are responsible for, then you are now free to pick up all of your boss's responsibilities. So i guess the sign is, your boss gets promoted, you get promoted into their job and so on.