Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

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A Measure of Good Management

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Pawel Brodzinski

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One of measures of good management is a number of situations when people, not a manager, decide how to do things. When the manager allows people to make their decisions. Let them become accountable.

I’d like to see technical design document, but you decide what should be in, what out and how the whole thing will look like. Hey, you guys will be working on that later, not me.

We need formalized risk management in the project, but it’s you who decide how to run whole thing. You know a project team better. You know what will and what will not work.

We have some emergency in server room in another city and it has to be dealt with. Find a way to fix the problem and to minimize impact on other tasks. I don’t have all the data to make the best choice.

The more you hear those kinds the better manager you work with.

Comments

  1. Mike C Avatar
    Mike C

    Hi,
    A number of project failures can be traced to poor estimates. One way to reduce that is to get the people on the team to own their part of the project. With ownership comes commitment.

    While you, as the project manager, still need to “trust but verify”, it is easier to talk about milestones and deliverables when they are based on information provided by the people doing the work.

  2. Pawel Brodzinski Avatar
    Pawel Brodzinski

    Sure, it’s easier to talk with people about deliverables when they feel accountable for work they do. It’s easier to manage them. However you don’t see many managers allowing their people to take responsibility for work they do. They just don’t let them decide on anything important.

    And yes, I agree that working with people who aren’t accountable is straight line to increase a number of failures.

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