Excellent article, well thought out, a parsimonious distillation of the essence of day-to-day management. However it ignores a crucial issue in all management jobs, and that is credibility erosion. "Boss doesn't have a clue about the code". Which leads to "I'm cleverer than the boss" and creates a big management problem. So once in a while the boss has to <i>show</i> why he's boss, that he's amongst the best at the line-functions of the job. Nothing worse for team morale and productivity, than professional managers who do everything Tom Bartel has said here perfectly, but have no operational competence or credibility in the actual domain that the the team operates in.