
Three signs you have a management problem. And that problem might be you - philipDS
http://www.businessinsider.com/three-signs-you-have-a-management-problem-and-that-problem-might-be-you-2011-4?page=1
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bretthopper
Great point here: "One simple jewel of advice given to me by one of our senior
software engineers, Joseph, was that if we shared our motivations as decision
makers (e.g. "We're working on this project to generate revenue in the short
term, instead of infrastructure improvements because we're trying to hit a
short term revenue goal of X") it helped him understand why he was working on
a project, and which aspects of that project to spend time thinking about
improving."

Sources of Power by Gary Klein[1] is a great read about decision making and
there's a whole chapter about communicating intent and motivation.

"When you communicate intent, you are letting the other team members operate
more independently and improvise as necessary. You are giving them a basis for
reading your mind more accurately."

The U.S. Army actually uses a Commander's Intent statement, which was
streamlined into:

\- Here's what I think we face.

\- Here's what I think we should do.

\- Here's why.

\- Here's what we should keep our eye on.

\- Now, talk to me.

Obviously this can be applied to any organization. It's always in your best
interest to tell someone why they should be doing something and not just what
they should be doing.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-
Decisions/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-
Decisions/dp/0262611465)

~~~
jacques_chester
I second _Sources of Power_. A truly fantastic read.

As a adjunct to learning about "Commander's Intent", the USMC's _Warfighting_
provides a fairly simple background of theory.

------
jacques_chester
> Having a hierarchy isn't a bad thing. Having no idea who has the final say
> is a bad thing.

This is an absolutely classic rule of managing any organisation where
competing priorities must be settled.

Chains of command have a very high cost, but they can ameliorate internal
politicking and remove uncertainty about what, if anything, has been decided.

However, decision making power _must_ come with accountability for the
decisions, or it will NOT turn out well.

A purely flat organisation will wind up with de facto bosses, minus any
institutional constraints on their activities and minus any accountability. If
you're dealing with a sociopath the damage they can wreak will be magnified by
the lack of structure to constrain their power.

~~~
Debugreality
How does a purely flat organization lead to no constraints or accountability?
In a flat organization every member needs to be responsible for actively
upholding the organizations vision in the same way that this article is
advising the managers need to actively uphold their companies vision.

It's the lack of an active vision that creates problems not the hierarchical
or flat structure of the organization.

For example a democratic process can be used to maintain an organizations
active vision including resolving disruptive people and processes.

~~~
jacques_chester
It leads to unconstrained, unaccountable behaviour because nobody has any
clear procedure for punishing divergence from the group's interest. There is,
if you like, no "immune system". In such an environment parasites thrive --
and indeed a major driver of both evolution and civilisation is adaptation to
parasitic behaviour.

The idea of a democratic process presupposes an _institution_ , which includes
_explicit divisions of power_ , which is independent of the individuals taking
part.

It is still a hierarchy as _someone_ will hold the power. It is an _explicit_
hierarchy because those powers are enumerated. That the process of replacement
is democratic is slightly besides the point (though not entirely, as it
prevents all-or-nothing power acquisition).

Whereas a loose, "flat" organisation with no differentiation between the
rights, responsibilities and power of members is utterly vulnerable to the
first sociopath who happens upon it. Such a person will wind up with an
informal dictatorship and everyone else will be stuffed.

~~~
Debugreality
I was more referring to a democratic process like -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy>

I agree that a loose "flat" organization is prone to serious problems :)

~~~
jacques_chester
The problem with direct democracy is the same as for voluntary voting: voters
on the fringe, who are more highly motivated, will come to dominate the
polity.

------
Hominem
Oh god, that is the worst. I have seen this plenty of times. Boss won't give
direction because either he is intimidated or, he is the "idea man" who
shouldn't have to be bothered by implementation. It's fine if you want the dev
to just wing it, but you have to align expectations constantly. I ping senior
management at least every couple days with screen shots or questions asking
for input, even if they never read my emails, I want to be able to say that I
informed them of exactly what direction we were taking and that they had
input.I keep my PM looped in on almost every email I send just incase someone
pops into his office he won't have to say "I don't know" if someone asks him
where the project is.

Even then, we still run into "misfeatures". I have no idea how you could tell
a dev to wing it, let him work for months with no oversight and then be
shocked when he came back with something unexpected.

~~~
IDisposableHero
_I have no idea how you could tell a dev to wing it, let him work for months
with no oversight and then be shocked when he came back with something
unexpected._

I _hope_ he's exagerating the examples for effect. It can't really be that
idiotic, right?

------
Stormbringer
_" Instead, get rid of people you don't trust enough not to micromanage. If
you look around and that's everyone, then the problem is probably with you...
"_

Good stuff. I think leaders in general need to be more proactive pruning their
employee tree if they want it to bear good fruit.

I'm amazed how difficult it is for managers to admit that they made a hiring
mistake, even if the person that needs to go is just a contractor.

~~~
tobtoh
Most managers I know would love to have the ability to prune and rehire staff
to rebalance teams and optimise skills, enthusiasm etc. However in many cases
(particularly in big companies), managers have very little say in their
headcount numbers - most of it being controlled by HR who in turn are watching
the bottom line.

As a result, HR can often make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to
hire backfills or additional staff and hence managers quickly learn that it is
better to retain a 60% effective person than have no-one at all.

This lesson is even further reinforced when managers are forced to sack staff
to hit some corporate cost take-out target which means they have to cut staff
regardless of the teams actual resource needs and without the 'low performers'
in the team, you would have to cut the good performers.

It's a sad state of affairs, but one I've seen on so many occasions.

~~~
gaius
_Most managers I know would love to have the ability to prune and rehire
staff_

I bet they would, but such a system would be wide open to abuse. So the market
has fixed it: contractors. You can get rid of them easily when no longer
needed, but you pay a premium while they are.

------
davidu
This is an excellent article for any CEO taking their company from about 25 to
60 people.

I forwarded it to my VPs of Product and Engineering, swearing I didn't write
it myself. :-)

------
joe_the_user
_Empowerment does not mean letting everyone do whatever they want._

A real gem (describes many "ghosts of employers past"). Most employees don't
even _want_ to do "whatever they want" since they know at the end of the day
they have a job to do and if they're doing "whatever they want" it means
they're flying blind and hoping they don't crash.

------
mattdeboard
This article hit a lot of buzzers for me from my last job. Especially the
signs there may be a problem. Burnout was rapid and high, confusion abounded,
and so on. If I still worked there I'd email it to my coworkers so we could
ruminate on how spot-on it described the office.

------
uuilly
Justin, what a great story about self-realization and growth. This is a very
common problem among young, successful, technical entrepreneurs. But it seldom
turns out as well as it did with you. Good luck and Godspeed.

~~~
Deestan
Your comment is condescending and uninformative.

~~~
uuilly
Was not meant to be at all. Hang around the valley long enough and you'll see
this happen a million times. I've been that technical founder and I've worked
for the same type of guy. Self realization is difficult as is forced growth.
Justin struck me as a real leader and a real example to technical founders.
Job well done.

------
waynecolvin
Part of this reminded me of [1]. Most of the book is about how employees can
deal with different boss personalities. [1]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1564147045/ref=redir_mdp_mobil...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1564147045/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/186-5844091-1466565)

------
pointtaken
One simple sign that you might have a management problem, you feel like you
can't trust anyone.

------
portentint
Yes, good points all. It's also one of the hardest things to do when it's your
business. I've been running my company for over 15 years. It's STILL hard to
let go sometimes.

The best you can do is try, and ask your employee's forgiveness when you slide
back into micromanaging.

One good way to move the process along: Never let an employee come to you with
a problem unless they have 2 possible solutions. The solutions can be
ridiculous, but they need to have 'em.

It gets them involved in the decision-making process from the get-go, and
tends to prompt discussions among team members before you, the manager, has to
get involved.

------
GaryOlson
Although great points were made in the article, I find this to be a failure on
the part of the CEO and COO. Their individual profiles on justin.tv are both
vague and lacking in focus; public statements often reflect management styles
and objectives. If the key directors of a company don't direct, the whole
company will suffer regardless of the number of management books they read.

~~~
jerrya
"Vague problem definition: "Create an automated test suite for the website.""

This is not a vague problem definition. And "Create an automated test suite
for the website." is not "I just wanted something that pinged five URLs and
checked for 500s."

~~~
Confusion
The problem definition lacks concrete measurable goals that identify when the
problem solved. Without those, there is much room for interpretation and
disagreement and the actual problem isn't well-defined. It only seems well
defined, because you instantly fill in the gap in your mind.

It's unclear when the manager would consider the website 'tested'. If a
manager said something like this and the first thing that came to mind was
'Selenium, full test-suite, 1 month', then the next thing to come to mind
would be "that's probably not what he meant, since he doesn't want me gone for
a month'.

~~~
jacques_chester
This is a case of where "commander's intent" would have been useful.

"We need to ensure that the site remains up. It would be helpful to know very
quickly when it goes down. I need you to write a test suite to do that."

Without the framing of knowing _why_ something is asked for, the risk is that
the work will zoom off in unexpected directions, or, just as bad, get stuck on
a triviality.

Staff can do their bit by _asking_ for intent, if the corporate culture allows
it.

