Hi Chak,

 

Since you are in India, I would not expect that an American model of self-organized teams would be the only model of leadership that you might consider.  Here are some additional successful models (and these are not the only ones):

 

1)       The open source model. In this model, the kernel of capability is tightly controlled and managed by a core – often self-managed – group. In this model, the main role of management is to figure out how to create an environment in which people are motivated to contribute to the commons. The best managers are the ones who know how to organize volunteer efforts.

 

2)       The military model. In this model, small units have appointed leaders who know that “you can’t manage men into battle, you have to lead them”.  Good small unit leaders are deeply committed to the people in the unit, to keeping them safe, to sharing the purpose of the mission, etc. The senior leaders communicate “command intend” and the small unit leaders – often in consultation with the members of the unit– make local decisions to achieve the command intent.

 

3)       The reciprocity model. In this model, people contribute their best efforts to the company because they feel the company will take care of them over time and help them reach their personal goals.  When this model is operative, people respond to a line manager who works to develop the full potential of every employee. Not a good model for India, because this model is based on long term, reciprocating relationships.

 

In every case, good leadership means figuring out what motivates front-line people to contribute their best efforts, and aligning those efforts (and associated motivation) with the short and long term good of the larger organization or community. This is not always going to mean self-organizing teams, which are mainly a reaction to bad management practices (practices which do not respect the workers).

 

Mary Poppendieck

952-934-7998

www.poppendieck.com

Author of: Lean Software Development & Implementing Lean Software Development

 

From: leandevelopment@yahoogroups.com [mailto:leandevelopment@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Robin Dymond
Sent: Friday, July 03, 2009 11:45 AM
To: leandevelopment@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Management value proposition was Re: [leandevelopment] Re: FW: Sailing a Straight Course in a Time of Variances

 

Hi Chak,

These are great questions. George has pointed you to some great resources from Esther Derby on self organizing teams, Esther is an authority in this space so I recommend you start there.

Let's talk about the manager value proposition for a moment.

Jack Welch, CEO of GE would regularly assign Vice Presidents to various plants and facilities to make improvements. He was very clear about one thing with all of them - make yourself redundant. If you are still doing the same job in two years I will fire you. He saw management's role as system's thinkers who could go in, analyze the system, find the urgent things that needed fixing and work within the organization to fix them. This philosophy fed the growth of Six Sigma in GE, because it gave a toolset that could be used across plants/products/markets by managers to analyze a manufacturing system, find issues and make improvements.

I view a manager's most effective role as someone who is continually looking for opportunities to improve the system in which people work so that it is more effective for the manager, their co-workers, and the customer. Just as the teams should continually learn about the tools and business domain to deliver a quality product, an effective manager will also be reaching for ideas/tools that make them more effective in improving the system. In this again we see GE's leadership. GE setup GE University with tough courses that challenged managers with new ideas (like Six Sigma). They were expected to apply these ideas in their organizations. Most of us aren't lucky enough to have a corporate learning agenda, so it is up to us to find our own ways to learn and apply that knowledge.

In the past 17 years, GE has increased its market value from $12 billion to some $280 billion. For all that time of stupendous enrichment, the management training centre at Croton-on-Hudson (known as Crotonville) has been central to the company's vaunted management system. The three-week development course for high-fliers is so important in GE's scheme of things that CEO Jack Welch (who is even more vaunted than the system) goes to Crotonville every month to teach its 700-odd students.

http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/management/management-training.php

When we watch the Olympics or a master artist perform on stage it is amazing to see what they have accomplished. Athletes often put their lives and careers on hold to perfect that one skill, usually with little reward other than the satisfaction of the process of training and improving. Even if they set a world record, how long will it stand before someone else breaks it?

What is the perfect company? Can we make one? Think of all the moving parts required to deliver a non-trivial software product to market. What would the perfect company look like to its customers, its employees, shareholders? If we take the customer as the first stakeholder, then I am sure they would have opinions on what the perfect company would be. Applying Lean thinking to the process from a customer request to request fulfilled gives us a long list of work we need to do to become better at what we do. Asking the same question of the people who work there will also provide a long list of things we can improve. These are not trivial things on the surface, but core issues that impact the activity of work. Consider the athlete. If you thought of yourself as a coach, and everyone who reported to you as athletes looking to experience the satisfaction of the process of training and improving, how would that change your perspective? How would it change theirs? How do we measure our improvement?

The specific steps you take to become a great manager are the same things one would do to be good at anything, learn, practice, reflect on the improvements, what is working, what isn't, repeat. Lean, Scrum, XP, are all inspirational sources of learning about what works. None of these methods are comprehensive, so the learning never really stops. :) I just took Luke Hohmann's course on Innovation Games. Luke has built some very useful tools for collaboration on product vision and process. These are complementary to Agile ideas, teamwork collaboration. However they are not specific to Agile, for example they are regularly used by a company that manufactures airconditioning (HVAC) systems.

cheers,
Robin.

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:44 AM, George Dinwiddie <lists@...> wrote:

Chakravarthy R wrote:
>
>
> Hi Robin,
>
> As a newbie to this entire philosophy, i still dont get one thing. How
> exactly does an Agile Manager train his team to be self managing ?

One way is http://estherderby.com/workshops/secrets.htm

> How
> does he know this self managing team is in line with the quality
> standards and other objectives of the company ?

Can you not see the quality being produced?  And what other objectives
do you mean?  Are these not observable?

> How exactly does an
> Agile manager strike a balance between a 'free for all' delegation on
> the one hand, and command and control autocracy on the other ? If he
> delegates to these self managing teams then what exactly does he do with
> his time, and justify his presence in the company ? If he only coaches
> these teams, then what does he do after they have been coached and ready
> to carry on ?

There's still management to do other than telling other people how to do
their work.  Esther Derby's blog has a bunch of stuff on this.

> I had asked the same question in a different way and got a lot of
> specific steps, but even if this question is  naive, could you please
> point me to some resources on how to be hands off and yet be hands on ?
> Okay so the manager can build an atmosphere of agile and lean . He sees
> the big picture and teaches his people to do so. . However the bottom
> line is that if this team fails, he is accountable to his seniors. So he
> needs to keep an eye without being intrusive. How does he do it ?

Maybe
http://www.estherderby.com/weblog/2009/06/when-to-stand-back-when-to-step-in.html
will be of help.

 - George
--
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  * George Dinwiddie *                      http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
  Software Development                    http://www.idiacomputing.com
  Consultant and Coach                    http://www.agilemaryland.org
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------



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