Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: leadership

  • Role of Leaders in Startups

    Who should be a leader of a startup? An easy question. One of founders. Or even better each of them. They are naturally predestined to leading role. They got the idea. They own the company. They keep all things running.

    Now the more important question: what kind of leaders are they?

    Why is it so important you ask? Well, having a great idea, being a CEO of a company and managing it on a daily basis tells you nothing about leadership. You can end up working either for a great leader or for a sick asshole. No matter which one is true as far as the startup has money leaders won’t change anytime soon.

    Because of a small size of the startup role of leaders is defined a bit differently. Not only they motivate their teams and set up a strategy of the company but they’re also personally responsible for building company culture and enabling company growth.

    In a big organization one asshole doesn’t make much difference – you either work for dozens of them or he’s going to be the only low-performer among great leaders. In a big organizations company culture is already set and it takes a lot of effort and a lot of people to change it (for better or worse). In a big organization one person won’t hamper growth even if that’s CEO who believes leadership is all about yelling at people.

    In a startup one person makes a difference if he leads the company. If he’s a sick weirdo don’t expect healthy atmosphere all over the place. If he makes working for him a hell you won’t see many long-runners in the team as everyone comes and goes as soon as they realize things just won’t change with that kind of boss. In small organizations poor leaders are the main reason why companies suck.

    If you worked for a person who is physically unable to build anything bigger than a couple dozens of people or creating healthy atmosphere at work you exactly know what I’m talking about. Big corporations can be filled with these types and they’ll manage. Startups don’t have luxury to be lead be them.

    That’s a final post of Entreprenurs Time series. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Please leave your feedback and let me know whether I should post this kind of series in the future.

     

  • Difference between Managers and Leaders

    When talking about managers people often confuse two terms: a manager and a leader. The difference is pretty simple however.

    Management is a job while leadership is an attribute.

    You can be promoted to a manager role, but you can’t be promoted to be a leader. To become one you need to work your butt out showing your leadership in the battlefield. You have to inspire people, make them believe they can achieve a goal and motivate them to work harder. Or smarter. Whatever. That’s definitely not enough to tell them “go and get that and better be quick.”

    In normal situation managers, who aren’t leaders, usually end their work when they tell their teams what to do. Micromanagers go even further. They tell what and how exactly thing should be done. Anyway they’re barely a kind of task-dealers.

    Leaders not only point goals and give out tasks but also encourage people to show their own initiative and creativity. They take decisions when it’s needed and are always ready to face any problem team can encounter. You’d willfully follow the leader while you wouldn’t follow the manager if you didn’t have to. Not that you often have a choice.

    Good manager is always a good leader while poor manager is barely a white collar.

  • A Measure of Good Management

    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.

  • Team Management: Find Your Way

    As you probably know, my view on management is rather classic – nothing very far from whatever you can find in a respected canon. I’m against micromanagement, but I try to care about details which are important for people. I try hard to be honest with the team and praise them when they deserved. I believe good performance reviews are important. Just old-school, boring management techniques.

    I believe that’s the way the whole management thing should be done. However it fascinates me every time I read about Bill Gates’ style of management or One Google Management Way.

    Bill, the builder of the greatest company in nineties was considered as bully and the one above isn’t the only example. OK, you can find a lot of bullies in high management around, but somehow many people in Microsoft saw in there a way to improve people’s performance. Everyone had to be superbly prepared, ready to discuss every detail of their opinions and able to resist pressure. Bill’s charisma was essential in building company’s power and his attitude was an integral part of it. You can say it’s weird and it doesn’t work anywhere else, but with Microsoft results speak for themselves.

    When you take current decade and look for its symbol you probably see Google. And you see another strange approach to management. More than 50 people in teams, when 7 people are considered as the optimal group to manage. Famous 20% of time for pet projects. Extremely tough recruitment process with more than 7 meetings on average before hiring. Engineers as sacred cows. All of those, and many more, combined in one place create unique management culture, which is against anything you could learn during an MBA course. And it builds the success of the company.

    I’m impressed. But I’m not going to follow. There are of course some ideas I’d like to implement but, in both scenarios, model as a whole isn’t copyable. As Tom Evslin writes, a barely-graduated hire won’t be as smart as Bill Gates only when he’s as rude. Typical organization won’t achieve a stunning success only when they spend one day in a week for employees’ pet projects.

    I think that organizing a company in a way which allows people to like (just like, nothing more) their employer is tough enough to doom the management to failure in vast majority of cases.