Just found a very good article on delegation by Jurgen Appelo.
Here’s a very concise summary. The main idea is that delegation is not a binary decision where you either delegate or don’t delegate. There are other levels of delegation between those 2 extremes and each of these other levels should be used depending on the context, i.e., the issue to be solved and who will be working on the issue.
The seven levels are:
The author made a nice image to illustrate the 7 levels:
The 7 levels of delegation
Here’s the author explanation on why he created the 7 levels of delegation:
The Seven Levels of Authority improve upon the four “leadership styles” of Situational Leadership Theory by clearly distinguishing between informing and consulting (as suggested by the RACI matrix). It also adds an extra final level which is not covered in Situational Leadership Theory, because in Agile Management this final level is the ultimate goal.
If you have time, the article is worth the time investment. It gives more details on each level as well as provides examples that show where and how to apply each level.
I just found an interesting presentation by Lloyd Taylor. He was Director of Global Operations for Google for 3 years and after that he was VP Technical of Operations at Linkedin for another 3 years.
His presentation was done during one of the SVDevOps meetup in the beginning of the year, but it has lots of elements of organizational culture, which he based on the book “The Character of a Corporation: How a Company’s Culture Can Make Or Break Your Business“. The presentation is quite short, only 26 slides long and the culture related slides where he talks about the 4 types of company culture are only 13 (from 3 through 16).
For those interested in watching Lloyd’s presentation, there’s an 1 hour video at Vimeo:
Lloyd Taylor: “Hacking Your Organization” from dev2ops.org on Vimeo.
In last 2 weeks I had a chance to review and reinforce my understanding of responsibility, accountability and authority.
One can only be responsible and accountable for something she has the required authority to deal with.
For instance, a product manager cannot be responsible for defining revenue projections of a product if she doesn’t have the authority to drive the revenue generation strategy and tactics, which normally falls under marketing and sales. Note that I’m not talking about authority in the sense of being the “boss”. I’m talking about the authority a product manager uses to lead her product. The product manager has the authority to drive the product strategy and tactics even not being the boss of anyone. This is part of her job description.
When we implemented agile methodologies at Locaweb, the same way that some developers asked to leave because they were not willing to adapt to some of the agile principles that we decided to embrace, some of the existing managers also didn’t adapted well to the changes in their roles and responsibilities and asked to leave.
At the time, I discussed this topic with people from other companies and they mentioned that it’s not unusual to have developers and managers leaving the company when moving to agile. I remember even someone mentioning that in average 10% of developers leave. That was back in 2007 / 2008. I’m not sure if this tendency have lowered lately, since agile is becoming more and more mainstream.
I also read – and continue to read – a lot about the topic. One of the sources I’ve been reading and enjoying is Jurgen Appelo’s posts about agile management. I’ve been reading his posts for a while, since the time he was the CTO of a dutch company. I really like the way he connects agile methodologies and complex adaptive systems theory.
Now he is 100% focused on his agile management coach career. He recently launched a book entitled “Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders“.
He also provides Agile Management courses that seem to be quite interesting:
Checkout also his presentations on slideshare. Checkout this presentation on authority and delegation:
Just found an interesting short presentation – 12 slides – about the mistakes to avoid when we try to change a behavior. By “behavior change” think in terms of your own behavior regarding something or the behavior of your team or even the behavior of your customers!
I just read two very good articles on roles and responsibilities of a management team.
A CEO does only three things: Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.
A CEO does only three things:
Source: What A CEO Does
Create an environment for success: Do people like to come to work every day? When they get there, do they know what they’re supposed to do, and how it connects to the company’s mission? Are people learning and growing? Are you building an enduring organization beyond you as a leader? Nip problems in the bud, or prevent them entirely: Are you spending enough time thinking about your business’s vulnerabilities? Do you go into a dark cave of paranoia once in a while and make sure you’re cognizant of all the main potential threats to your livelihood? What can you do to spot smoke as an early warning detection of fire? Exploit big opportunities: Do you know the top 5 things that will make your company successful? Are you constantly on the lookout for signs that it’s time to invest more heavily in them? Are you nimble enough to make those investments when the time is right…and have you developed the intellectual or infrastructural underpinnings to make those investments matter?
Source: The Three Functions of a Management Team
These posts reminded me of the two main leadership roles I try to do everyday:
I just read a very good article entitled Our Priorities Reveal our Values from Simon Sinek. I already mentioned Simon in my article Purpose beyond profit. Here’s a part of the article that got my attention:
I listened to a presentation given by top executives of a large firm recently. In their presentation, they listed the company’s priorities: Top line growth Enhance shareholder value Focus on global expansion Enhance customer satisfaction Our people I think it’s safe to say, they don’t really value their people. Or at least they don’t put their people before growth. Ironically, the best organizations I’ve ever seen, the ones that are actually more profitable for the long-term, all put people before growth on their list of priorities. As Lou Gerstner, the man who reinvented IBM, said, “culture is not an aspect of the game. Culture is the game.”
I listened to a presentation given by top executives of a large firm recently. In their presentation, they listed the company’s priorities:
I think it’s safe to say, they don’t really value their people. Or at least they don’t put their people before growth. Ironically, the best organizations I’ve ever seen, the ones that are actually more profitable for the long-term, all put people before growth on their list of priorities.
As Lou Gerstner, the man who reinvented IBM, said, “culture is not an aspect of the game. Culture is the game.”
People are People (source: Flickr)
Note that Simon wrote that “the best organizations I’ve ever seen, the ones that are actually more profitable for the long-term, all put people before growth on their list of priorities.” and in the list of priorities he presented put people in the last two positions.
When we talk about business, we’re talking about people. A company is made of people inside the company (employees) and people outside the company (customers and suppliers). In order for a company to be successful, the people inside the company must always be focused on the people outside and inside the company. The people inside the company need to understand the needs, values and culture of the people outside and inside the company to be able to interact with them in a helpful way. That’s the mission of any company. All the rest – revenue, profit, market share, stock price, etc. – is consequence.
Jason Yip just reminded me about the “under pressure” situation:
When people are pressured to meet targets they have three ways to respond: Improve the system Distort the system Distort the data
When people are pressured to meet targets they have three ways to respond:
Fonte: Jason Yip’s blog
Yip is reading what seems to be a very good book on variation, Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos. In this book the author Donald J. Wheeler, according to an Amazon.com reviewer, “provides managers a rational way to look at daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly figures and tell whether the actions they take have resulted in improvement”. It seems to be a very interesting book from what Yip’s been posting:
Understanding Variation
Well, another book for my future reading list. Hopefully it will have a Kindle version soon.
Going back to the “under pressure” topic:
That’s a good way to see the possible outcomes of a group of people under pressure.
I like to use balloon as a metaphor to help understand under pressure situations.
Balloon
Here’s why:
