Leadership
Leadership
Multiple eyeballs
In larger organizations, as pressure for improved business performance escalates, it is not unusual for leaders to throw experts at problems. They then often apply pressure until the improvements they hope to achieve are reported to be taking hold.
The underlying assumption behind this strategy appears to be that adding people to a project will accelerate progress. That strategy has been thoroughly debunked, of course; If it were the only choice available to projects which are having problems, the tendency towards taking action over inaction could be forgiven; yet plenty of more effective alternatives exist for getting troubled projects back on track.
There is a nugget of truth behind the desire to throw people at problems. When applied correctly, two heads can indeed be better than one. However, additional redundancy may not be helpful; too many people in a communications channel can degrade throughput, obscure insights, increase noise, and cause too much time to be spent explaining things to intermediaries. Read more »
Managing people, not things
Managing Humans is a selection of the best essays from Michael Lopp's web site, Rands In Repose. Drawing on Lopp's management experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland, this book is full of stories based on companies in the Silicon Valley where people have been known to yell at each other. It is a place full of dysfunctional bright people who are in an incredible hurry to find the next big thing so they can strike it rich and then do it all over again. Among these people are managers, a strange breed of people who through a mystical organizational ritual have been given power over your future and your bank account. Whether you're an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just wondering what the heck a manager does all day, there is a story in this book that will speak to you. You will learn: Read more »