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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with your example. But I think a good boss realizes that, along with the power bosses have to think about major strategic goals, there comes a risk of getting stuck in the stratosphere, and spending all your time contemplating long-term goals while losing touch with your team's needs.
A good boss needs to be able to context switch between putting out fires and thinking about long-term goals pretty frequently, and for me this has always been difficult. Perhaps it is easier for others, but anyone who thinks they should spend most of their time zoomed out (or in) is probably a bad boss.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
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?
21 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 53.9 ms ] thread1. 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.
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.
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.
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.
A good boss needs to be able to context switch between putting out fires and thinking about long-term goals pretty frequently, and for me this has always been difficult. Perhaps it is easier for others, but anyone who thinks they should spend most of their time zoomed out (or in) is probably a bad boss.
> 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?
> 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.
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.
From the guidelines:
If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
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?