Apr

Manager – Create obstacles for your team

Eli Lopian Category

I asked before about how to manage self directed teams, most responses where that the manage should remove obstacles in the way of the team.

I think the opposite. A great manager should never remove obstacles, big or small, on the contrary, a great manager must create obstacles and challenging his employees to grow every day. A great manager helps his team grow, this can be done only by raising the bar.

So to answer my question: How to manage agile teams?

Spend most of your time with your best people, Show them that they can do better, show them that they can become experts, raise the bar and create a place where employees grow.

I love taking examples from sports. Team Sport is mostly made of self managed teams. Think about it, when the team is on the field – they are self managed and they take decisions without the manager. So how would you manage this ‘self directed’ team?

Here is how I would. I would raise the bar, practice and make sure that the players are in shape. I would use integrity to help the players commit to working out, commit to kicking/throwing the ball 100-200 times so that they practice and work on their best shot. That is what separates the pro’s from the Joe’s

5 Comments to “Manager – Create obstacles for your team”

Chris Holmes April 16, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Athletes, particularly football players, often talk about “being put in position to win” by their coaching staffs. It’s sort of an athlete’s coded way of saying, “My coach has figured out what my strengths are, and they put me in a position to use my strengths to succeed.”

To me, this is the value of a good manager on any team, be it football or software. The manager has to first figure out what each employee is good at. What are the employee’s strengths? Then they have to put that employee in a position to utilize their strengths to be successful.

You talk about obstacles, but I think the more appropriate term might be “challenges”. Obstacles tend to be thought of as things you have to get around, or remove; stuff you have to avoid. Challenges are things you use your strengths to defeat; to tackle head-on.

A great manager will know the strengths of each employee and he’ll “manage” them by tasking them with challenges that play to each employees’ strength.

It’s kind of like a super-hero team. Like the Fantastic Four or something. You don’t task The Invisible Woman with a challenge that requires incredible strength; you hand that one off to the Thing.

A self-directed team might have enough knowledge of each others’ strengths to do this sort of tasking, but a great manager will be more astute at this.
Eli Lopian April 16, 2009 at 7:42 pm
@Chris
You are correct, challenge is a better term, but isn’t every obstacle a super-challenge? I think so.

Your comment is exactly what a great manager should do, find the correct positions and challenge the team, practice and get better. Although I have been surprised many times and have seen people who’s weak sides have turned to be great sides.

I think that in software development and in business in general, we put too much emphasis on positioning and not enough on the practice-practice-practice, challenge and growth of the team.
Positioning is only the first stage.

I have yet to see a self directed football team without a coach, I am sure that managing the self-directed team in the proposed way, with hard work, will lead to amazing results.
Chris Holmes April 16, 2009 at 9:51 pm
“we put too much emphasis on positioning and not enough on the practice-practice-practice”

I think you’re probably correct in that assessment.

One thing I’ve noticed is that it makes a big difference whether there is a constant coaching presence.

Some employees can be taught a certain technique or pattern and they’ll immediately “get it” and utilize it in applicable scenarios. But those employees seem few and far between. The more common employees seem to be the type who, upon being presented with the next opportunity to apply their newly learned technique, revert back to the old standbys (like cut-and-paste). These employees, it seems to me, benefit a lot more from the presence of a constant coach and mentor. I think these folks benefit (and can thus grow) with tools like pair programming, code reviews, unit testing, etc. Left to their own devices they’ll just do whatever they know best and move on.

So I would say that while practice-practice-practice is critical to growth and success, it can’t happen without the appropriate guidance (and I think that further backs up your point on why self-directed teams need a manager).
Eli Lopian April 17, 2009 at 7:14 pm
The point I am still trying to figure out, is what and how to practice. In sports, the manager is not as professional as the player, yet he knows what the player needs to do become better, he knows where the player needs to practice.
What and how do you practice software development?
Development and Integrity Management by Eli Lopian » Employee Motivation Myths Debunked June 23, 2009 at 8:40 pm
[...] Make sure that your #1 priority is the growth of your employees. Make sure that they are challenged every day [...]