5 ms·

I have experienced leaderless teams in my career (46 years) a handful of times. They formed around a problem that was unrecognized by Management (thankfully) bu

I have experienced leaderless teams in my career (46 years) a handful of times. They formed around a problem that was unrecognized by Management (thankfully) but need to be solved. My best example was at a large SW dev firm in the late 80s. World wide electronic communications was need and faxes and leased lines connected to Decwriters were not good enough. I was assigned to the task as just one of my responsibility. A Single 1200 baud access to internet email at a university solved the problem. The problem expanded many people wanted the same service so we need someone (team member 2) who had access to a UNIX systems. Eight serial ports and 2400 internet connection to the first local ISP. Rinse repeat 5 years later 10 people, part time, supported all internet connections and intranet/internet web-servers including application without management sanction. Everyone had a service role in there own department. Being connected to the others meant we performed at a high level. We didn't have a leader per se but we all moved in a common direction. It lasted 8 years and finally several Directors discovered we existed as a team. Like sharks they each took a bite out of us, each one trying to become the dictator of the internet. Procedures were imposed. We were not allow to speak to each other with out going through the directors. Our individual productivity dropped. Angry internal clients screaming for the old way. Nothing got done. Three months later the director that won got half the people back together but we were not the same any more. I still found interesting work for 2 more years before finally leaving. Leaderless teams can work under the right conditions. I have tried to create them when I moved into management and it worked to some degree a few times. I did not lead or participate in the teams I just suggested people talk to each other know that the might click. I fed them problems (and resources) that I knew that they could solve that I knew would take more effort/time if we did it though channels. The individuals got recognition and I got my problems solved.

macfarbt 4y ago
Grat experiences, thanks for sharing. You experience with directors is a clear example I suggest of where their desire to control obliterated the autonomy and ability of the team to function effectively. Mature and self aware senior leaders restrain the natural impulse to control. I'd love to learn more, maybe even write a teaching case study if you're interested. Write me at info@brettmacfarlane.com Thanks again for sharing your experiences.
keyle 4y ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing that bit of history. I wonder what "Everyone had a service role in there own department." means?
- prosaic-hacker 4y ago
  Each department had a person service their internal or external client. The could provide the service the old slow way or our way. EG You ask the Tech Pub dept for the 5000 page Word perfect documents and wait a month to get it printed and shipped through formal channels. Or a couple of days through our team to have it on a secure download location on our public server. Marketing, New Business, Sales and Engineering each had a rep. If you want a Schematic out of engineering, several weeks until it was plotted or a day or two to get the right Autocad or Bentley Microstation cad file into the secure down load. I was the goto guy if you needed data off our Mainframe. It was a massive data sink but it was hard to get anything out. Web dev let me turn the MF into a FTP server were I could pull data down to the Web servers. Web application were written for each need. Oh if you did have your own departmental server I would ask H/W services to get me some old PC hardware and have a machine up and ask the Computer center to host it. None of this had official sanction. Expectations were low as the competition were Green screen MF program. The problem was there was 3 to 5 year waiting list for new MF projects. I could do new apps in a week. It was written prototype level code with no expectation of maintaining it. One subcontract tracking app stayed up for 7 years (3 years after I left). The alternative was to talk to someone who got a monthly 1000 page printout and manual marked up the updates that were being sent to Daily Data Entry. I download the big monthly output once and each Daily update and merged them. Probably less the 50 lines of Perl. Set up a Perl backed web page the searched the file and display matching records.

macfarbt 4y ago

Grat experiences, thanks for sharing. You experience with directors is a clear example I suggest of where their desire to control obliterated the autonomy and ability of the team to function effectively. Mature and self aware senior leaders restrain the natural impulse to control. I'd love to learn more, maybe even write a teaching case study if you're interested. Write me at info@brettmacfarlane.com Thanks again for sharing your experiences.

keyle 4y ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing that bit of history. I wonder what "Everyone had a service role in there own department." means?

prosaic-hacker 4y ago
Each department had a person service their internal or external client. The could provide the service the old slow way or our way. EG You ask the Tech Pub dept for the 5000 page Word perfect documents and wait a month to get it printed and shipped through formal channels. Or a couple of days through our team to have it on a secure download location on our public server. Marketing, New Business, Sales and Engineering each had a rep. If you want a Schematic out of engineering, several weeks until it was plotted or a day or two to get the right Autocad or Bentley Microstation cad file into the secure down load. I was the goto guy if you needed data off our Mainframe. It was a massive data sink but it was hard to get anything out. Web dev let me turn the MF into a FTP server were I could pull data down to the Web servers. Web application were written for each need. Oh if you did have your own departmental server I would ask H/W services to get me some old PC hardware and have a machine up and ask the Computer center to host it. None of this had official sanction. Expectations were low as the competition were Green screen MF program. The problem was there was 3 to 5 year waiting list for new MF projects. I could do new apps in a week. It was written prototype level code with no expectation of maintaining it. One subcontract tracking app stayed up for 7 years (3 years after I left). The alternative was to talk to someone who got a monthly 1000 page printout and manual marked up the updates that were being sent to Daily Data Entry. I download the big monthly output once and each Daily update and merged them. Probably less the 50 lines of Perl. Set up a Perl backed web page the searched the file and display matching records.