An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
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An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
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Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#2The challenge with this is when you have a team with members that, by and large, wants to be led for various reasons (lacking motivation, does not want to lead, distracted with other priorities, etc.). In a team like this, there needs to be someone that “calls the shots,” as it were, while giving every team member enough of a voice to feel like they are heard and enough autonomy to do the right thing (provided they have the skills).
Speaking of skills, this leadership approach fails hard when you are handed a team of people that are low-skilled, for whatever reason. Some of these folks can’t be let go (too expensive to do so, usually). Micromanagement usually works in this instance, especially if you can’t train
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#3[deleted]
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#4Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence?
Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework where managers can direct without responsibility or accountability. Set a bar for managers that includes ownership, and the ability to delegate responsibility while persuading staff to willingly take on their own level of ownership.
This "manager as peer," approach I have seen in a number of organizations is dishonest and seems to just mean forfeiting responsibility, while opportunistically cherry picking successes to take credit for.
Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers, they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence.
Of the problems to solve for, improving the quality and selection of managers seems smarter than contorting ourselves into new frameworks to work with ones who avoid responsibility.
If you want to be liked, just be nice. If you want to be respected, take responsibility.
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#5I wonder how this works for large scale engineering architectures and unified approaches. Seems like it'd lead to a lot of disjointed projects and pieces each with a different approach. That in turn adds cognitive overhead to an organization and lowers the bus factor.
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#6It's better for everyone to be a leader than for the company to select the wrong leaders. But if the company is capable of picking leaders well, then that's better. But it's much harder than it looks and most companies get it completely wrong.
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#7My first dev job saw this fad come through the department one season. It went from "Here's your feature for this week, please implement it" to "Here's your feature for this week, you're the leader for development on this! Please implement it.". I understand that middle management has basically nothing to actually do, so it invents shit like this, but it pisses us off that actually do something to have this weird changing layer of bullshit smeared over what is a feature factory job. You can't shine shit with buzz words.
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#8The replies here are so telling, many would not survive on such a team. However, their perspective is critical to understanding who you must exclude to make this system work, and the kind of passion required for people to feel the sense of ownership needed.
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#9Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence? Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework w…
First, massive disaffection with typical management is what leads to schemes like this. Especially when it comes to non-technical management, they are not equipped to do any of what you wrote. Not that technical management would be great or something. I am not fan of "everyone is leader" organization, but I am aware that contemporary management is not capable of all that much.
> Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers
I do actually want my opinions, ideas and preferences to be heard. If I think that I am not being heard, I prefer to change the team so that I am heard. If I don't change team and I am not heard, I work in more checked-out mode - which is pretty normal. It is doing somebodies domain, I cant take full responsibility if all decisions are somebody elses. thinking more about them just frustrates, so it is natural adaptation to avoid doing that.
> Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions.
Not true. For me, I am actually more stressed when I cant make own decisions, cant influence what affects me or dont have autonomy. Even when management takes responsibility for decisions and directions, purely top down management or micromanagement is stresor and demotivator.
> they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence
Leadership that does not hear people who work on the projects, can not understand the environment those people work in. Nor I see space for "shared competence".
Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
#10After thirty years in this industry, I've learned that in a good environment, almost any process or team organization will work, but in a bad environment, nothing will help. :/