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There's a great scene at the end of Generation Kill where the war reporter asks the commander why he didn't reprimand one of the worst leaders underneath him mo
by ethbr1 2y ago
There's a great scene at the end of Generation Kill where the war reporter asks the commander why he didn't reprimand one of the worst leaders underneath him more harshly.
The commander essentially says that he constantly receives conflicting reports about his leaders' performance, and if he relieved one for unproven reports, his command would disintegrate. Because the good leaders have equal numbers of bad reports about them, from those who don't like them.
Summed up the proper exercise of authority nicely, imho.
- andrewflnr 2y agoThis is why the real answer is that the manager needs to know how to weld too, so they can independently validate Bob's and Steve's work.
- ethbr1 2y agoThat's one answer. Although manager technical expertise has to also come with minimal ego, so you can defer to your people when they know more than you. The alternative is developing an intuition for bullshit. It's rarer, but I've had a few non-technical PMs / managers who were excellent at their job because they could suss out whether someone wasn't being honest.
- andrewflnr 2y agoEverything has to come with minimal ego. I don't see how that has anything to do with managers having technical knowledge. And it's great if a handful of people can smell out bs in a field they're not familiar with, but you can't write policy on the back of a few unicorns like that. (Yes, managing ego is hard too, but I believe it's more common to start with and more trainable.)
- ethbr1 2y agoEgolessness is less important in those without authority. Once it's common for someone in authority to tiebreak on technical arguments, it becomes very important they can set their ego aside.