

Things Good Bosses Believe - talbina
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/12_things_that_good_bosses_bel.html

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frossie
_Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to
think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my
people to make a little progress every day._

I am not sure I agree with this one, not in the technical field. I think in
software in particular, our overall goals (provided they are well-selected)
inform a lot of the little decisions that translate into small wins. I think
one of the roles of a good geek herder is to keep these things at the
forefront of their mind, so that those small wins don't end up leading you
down a blind alley.

Let's have an example. Let's say your team is doing project X and one of the
goals of X was to be OS-agnostic. However at the shop you only have two or
three related OSes - say Linux and Solaris. Now everybody has been working on
X for years, the goals are a distant memory... and then something breaks, and
the developer rolls out a quick fix that will only work on Unix clones.

It is the boss's job to turn down the small win and say "no you can't do it
this way". It is their job to think of this, when it doesn't occur to anybody
else. _Somebody_ has to keep the big picture in their head - whether that
person is called the boss, or the technical lead or whoever.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I agree, I copied this same line and came back to say I think it's a bosses
job to think about these goals every single day and make sure the team is
making small steps toward them.

A good boss needs to lead the team. That means getting their hands dirty and
making sure the work that is being done is right.

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edw519
Doesn't sound like any boss I ever had. Mine have always been more like this:

1\. My people have a flawed and incomplete understanding of how valuable I am
to them.

2\. My success depends largely getting obvious and mundane things done, in
spite of my people's shortcomings.

3\. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to
expect my people to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small
wins that maximize my own bonus.

4\. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to
strike the delicate balance between being a jerk and appearing not to be.

5\. My job is to serve as a human irritant, to bombard my people with external
intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe - and to avoid letting
them think for themselves.

6\. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge,
but to appear to be humble even though I am not. I aim to fight as if I am
right, and appear to listen as if I am wrong, even though I never am. I
protect my job by teaching my people nothing.

7\. One of the best tests of my leadership is "how quickly do I reprimand
someone when they make a mistake?"

8\. Innovation is crucial in order for me to take credit.

9\. So my job is to encourage my people to get off their lazy asses and do
some work.

10\. But it is also my job to fire them when they don't.

11\. Good is stronger than bad. I am good. My people are bad. That's how I got
to be the boss and they didn't.

12\. How I do things is no one's business. I am the boss. Now stop reading
this and get back to work.

~~~
mberning
Bitter much? Jeez. I've had some good bosses and some bad bosses, but nothing
like what you've written here!

~~~
kylemathews
I think (hope) he wasn't serious but instead acting more as a foil to Sutton's
points.

~~~
scorpioxy
Actually it wouldn't surprise me if he's serious. I've been a witness to at
least 6 of his 12 points. And I am sure many more of us can add to that list.

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CWuestefeld
Good points, all.

I'd like to add one more. My job as manager is to provide the support
necessary so those working for me can do the best work possible. My job is to
enable them, not to use them to support myself. At the end of the day, they're
the ones doing most of the implementation; if I want the implementation to be
successful, I've got to set the stage for it.

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francoisdevlin
If you have a boss like this, your work will be more rewarding than twice the
pay for a jerk.

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talbina
This is what I call an article about true leadership.

~~~
rikthevik
The best boss I've ever worked for did his undergrad at the Royal Military
College in Canada. The idea of leadership as something that can be studied and
taught (and not just paid lip service to by MBA programs) is very valuable.
Finding people to actually know what they're talking about is a whole other
matter.

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walkon
Not sure about this one:

 _Innovation is crucial to every team and organization. So my job is to
encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. But it is
also my job to help them kill off all the bad ideas we generate, and most of
the good ideas, too._

Why reject most good ideas? Seems like that would discourage innovation, not
encourage.

~~~
milod
What if he said prioritize instead of kill? Often the number of good ideas and
resources required to realize them far exceeds what is available, practical,
or realistic. Killing is effectively setting the priority to zero. I don't
think it discourages innovation if thought about in this context because it
encourages innovation on the critical path.

~~~
walkon
I define a "good idea" as something that is possible to realize; practical and
realistic. If it's not practical business decision, it's probably not a good
idea.

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duncanj
I'm not sure what context this one is in: 10. Bad is stronger than good. It is
more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

Does it mean that people don't care whether there is an exercise room if they
are not being paid well? Or am I looking at it the wrong way?

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all_elements
This list is so not relevant for a tech-intensive company. Tech-intensive work
requires a manager to recruit and handle people who are smarter than him/her.
Not the other way around.

> My success depends largely getting obvious and mundane things done, in spite
> of my people's shortcomings.

You mean managerial success depends on managing the power point slides instead
of making sure that your server-side is architected to properly streamline
asynchronous tasks?

~~~
simonk
I think you looked at the joke list in the comments here instead of the
original article.

~~~
all_elements
No. I am commenting on point #2 of that article:

> My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of
> obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas
> or methods.

Follow the URL if you don't believe me;-)

EDIT: Ah! I see why you say that. I copied from the wrong place (from the
comments) but the above quote was what I intended to highlight. Sorry about
the confusion.

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ct4ul4u
I aspire to this, but succeed less than I would like. If you manage people,
this is relevant to you.

