( Continued from: Management: The job of a manager… )

Their division volunteered for every project and everyone there “sometimes” worked on any or all of the projects. Their manager collected teams and subordinates unrelated to any business purpose. The division grew and grew and they proudly touted how many projects they had and how many people. The company praised them and raised them up as an example to other divisions. When an economic downturn occurred, coupled with strong competition, management showed up looking for things to cut. When they looked at this “wonderful” division, they found much that the company could live without. They cut it by two-thirds and then, a couple of quarters later, disposed of it entirely. Many people on the team were shocked: They had stayed with this group for years being unproductive and, in many cases, their skillsets became unmarketable. Now they had to find a new job.

My overall model for deciding what to do with my teams is to think “am I using these folks’ skills and brain matter as effectively as possible?” This means having them help create the goals, solve the problems, make the plans, make most of the decisions, come up with the ideas, come up with the processes, and get the credit for the work. The more that I find myself doing those things for a team, the more I feel like I’m wasting their abilities. The more engaged a team is in the whole process, the more productive and efficient they become. This involves trusting your team and being prepared to back them, even when they make mistakes, but it pays off every time. If you focus on the roles I described [ see Management: The job of a manager ], and give the people in those roles good information and guidelines, coach them and give them feedback, and give them the team members they need, they will take over and drive these things better than you ever could on your own.

Always be looking for emerging leaders on your team, and work to support and empower them. They don’t have to have a leadership title; they can just be the person who provides the drive to get stuff done. Reward that behavior and feed that inclination. Then when your team grows, you already know who to turn to when you need to fill leadership roles.

The company didn’t have a process that you could name; they had a couple of people who indoctrinated new team members in “the way.” When you did something that wasn’t “the way,” one or more old timers would correct you. We sat in a circle and coded together and released the software when we thought it was ready. We released very high quality, high performance software on a regular basis...

I have deliberately not made any specific references to formal processes, because I don’t think they matter much. As long as your process provides the basic elements of a software development life cycle, and gives you as a manager the information you need to evaluate your team and give them feedback, it’s a fine process. It does need to be a process that the team buys into, documents, and follows. A process that changes every week or every release is not a process. Ownership of the process is key, for as soon as the team feels the process is imposed, you have lost a large amount of engagement and productivity. The other thing to guard against with a formal process is that it ends up replacing customer value, business value, and the product as the goal that the team is driving towards. I’ve seen scrum teams with the “perfect” burn-down chart that produced nothing of value to the business for multiple sprints. It’s easy to succeed against artificial metrics that mean nothing to the product.

The manager’s flying monkey came into my office and shut the door. “You’re making a big mistake,” they said. “It’s going to be the end of your career if you don’t get on board…” I had spoken up at a review meeting saying that I didn’t think a product that they desperately wanted to ship was ready. I had a track record of delivering excellent results and doing it fast, while bringing the rest of the team along with me. I laughed at them; it was the most ridiculous and transparent bullshit I’d ever seen. I said, “please do your worst. I can always get another job. Now get out of my office.” Three months later, they were giving me a $40,000 bonus to try to entice me to stay on their team.

I talk a little about politics in passing in order to highlight the things that give you as a manager the most political leverage. Delivering value for your company—and being able to point to it and a cadence of delivering value—can protect you against the worst of incompetent executives. It is very hard for greedy CEOs to ignore your team producing things that make money for the company and listen to a cranky executive that you’ve annoyed tell them you aren’t a “Team Player.” Focus on delivering value and motivate your team around that, and the rest will follow. Or it won’t: Some companies are so profoundly broken that they are entirely driven by ego and vanity. Deliver value while you look for another job—that’s what sounds the best in your job interviews. It does you no good to say that you spent all your time arguing with (and resisting) venal executives and that you failed to lead your team to produce results.

“Don’t manage your peers’ teams” is another corollary in this vein. Figure out which of your peers is good at their jobs, then determine whether you can trust and/or defend your team from the rest. Trying to correct your peers’ flaws, organize their people, etc., is a self-defeating process: It ends up with your team not delivering and you’ll get no thanks for interfering with another team. Sometimes, however, it’s the lesser of two evils to have your team building things or solving problems that aren’t their stated goals, because it protects them from depending on failing teams. If you are asked for feedback, give it: be honest, be factual, be constructive, but don’t volunteer to solve their problems.

“Don’t be greedy or possessive” is another guideline. If you have people on your team that can be utilized better somewhere else, offer them up. Don’t grow your team for the sake of growing it; make sure that the folks you hire will deliver for the company. If something extraordinary comes up in the business cycle and you’re called on to disrupt things to fix it, don’t complain: just do it and get back to normal cadence as soon as possible. These aren’t “your” people; their contract is with the company, and so is yours. If you remember this and act with integrity, you will gain influence and trust.

When I talk about having a contract with the company I don’t mean to suggest blind allegiance, but a recognition that you’re taking money from folks and they have a right to expect you to do what is reasonable for your role. Things like lying, committing crimes, defrauding the company, covering up mistakes, supporting the abuse of employees, enabling abusers, participating in a discriminatory process, etc. are NOT part of that contract. Depending on the company, these things may come up to a greater or lesser extent, and should be prepared to do the right thing. You cannot recross the bridge of doing something unethical regardless of the pressure from above: Once you do it, everyone knows it, and you’ve lost trust and respect. Again, you’re better off looking for another job than ever compromising on these things.

Also, companies are sociopaths. That doesn’t mean that they’re evil, they just don’t care about anyone’s emotional state or livelihood but their own. Part of your job as a manager is to discourage folks from engaging in magical thinking about the company: “We’re all a big happy family”, “we’ll take care of you”, “we’re all in this together,” for example. Employees are worth what they generate (or what they are perceived to generate) in revenue for the company, so I always encourage folks to consider their productivity and where it is being directed. When a project seems like a fantasy boondoggle that will never make money, nine out ten times it is, and the people who go to work on it end up looking for a new job. They might learn great things on that project and get great experience, but they should be cold-blooded about the likely outcome. Every company goes through ups and downs, sometimes very dramatically. Having a loving and caring culture while on the upswing is easy, but the downswing is usually where the reality of being a sociopathic business entity with detached investors becomes evident. Again, the best thing you can do as a manager is to encourage your people to be flexible, productive, and skillful; this will make them the most attractive employees to retain in any restructuring.

Finally, you’ll note that I mention incompetence. It’s part of the reality of large groups of humans doing anything together. You should always approach anyone you work with with the initial belief that they are competent at their job, and continue like that until they prove that false. Incompetence gets into organizations because people often make hiring and performance decisions based on things other than fitness for the role or actual job performance. Basing these decisions on personal loyalty, nepotism, friendship, giving titles to justify pay increases, and other motivations promotes incompetence. It often gets into management because folks become managers by default; I can’t tell you the number of manager candidates I’ve interviewed who said “nobody else wanted to be manager so they picked me.” In good organizations, it eventually gets exposed and corrected, but that process can take a long time. You should be aware of incompetence and where it exists in your organization, and keep your team and its projects from being damaged by it. Also, if you’re not competent, do better—or remove yourself and do something you are good at. Life is too short. Recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses, and being honest with yourself about them, allows you to build a team that compensates for your shortcomings, and lets you focus on your strengths.