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."<p>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.<p>"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."<p>The U.S. Army actually uses a Commander's Intent statement, which was streamlined into:<p>- Here's what I think we face.<p>- Here's what I think we should do.<p>- Here's why.<p>- Here's what we should keep our eye on.<p>- Now, talk to me.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-Decisions/dp/0262611465" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-Decisions/dp...</a>
> Having a hierarchy isn't a bad thing. Having no idea who has the final say is a bad thing.<p>This is an absolutely classic rule of managing any organisation where competing priorities must be settled.<p>Chains of command have a very high cost, but they can ameliorate internal politicking and remove uncertainty about what, if anything, has been decided.<p>However, decision making power <i>must</i> come with accountability for the decisions, or it will NOT turn out well.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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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...
"</i><p>Good stuff. I think leaders in general need to be more proactive pruning their employee tree if they want it to bear good fruit.<p>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.
This is an excellent article for any CEO taking their company from about 25 to 60 people.<p>I forwarded it to my VPs of Product and Engineering, swearing I didn't write it myself. :-)
<i>Empowerment does not mean letting everyone do whatever they want.</i><p>A real gem (describes many "ghosts of employers past"). Most employees don't even <i>want</i> 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.
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.
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.
Part of this reminded me of [1]. Most of the book is about how employees can deal with different boss personalities.
[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1564147045/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/186-5844091-1466565" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1564147045/ref=redir_mdp_mobil...</a>
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.<p>The best you can do is try, and ask your employee's forgiveness when you slide back into micromanaging.<p>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.<p>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.
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.