There is a lot of management literature and advice out there, and when I scan it I always look for empirical evidence behind claims made. It is surprisingly hard to find. Most management books are based on anecdote or on selection bias. Things like "I made a bundle using these techniques and so can you", or "here are some claims from pop psychology that we can use to prop up my opinions on how to manage". I took "management science" courses at a couple of canadian universities, as part of my professional training later in life, and asked one of the professors if there were citations or references to some of the claims made in a course about how management culture affects outcomes, and he deflected the question. The course was, in effect, an extended opinion piece.
This may be historical, especially in North America, where there is a strong tradition of self-help preacher-based advice. The Tony Robbins', Norman Vincent Peale's, Billy Graham's, and now some social-media savvy successors, that have large followings. There is also the cargo cult mimicking of the big winners, like Google, Facebook and Amazon's leaders, not to mention the financiers, Buffet, and Dario, and their ilk, unless of course they are a bit left leaning like Soros.
In the UK, there is a more ironic and sometimes sarcastic tradition, the counter example is seen as more instructive, perhaps because the audience is more sensitive (and rightly so) to condescension. Examples are the Peter Principle, and Parkinson's Law. To be fair, the US has Scott Adams, but I would argue that he has become a victim of his own success, and now takes himself way to seriously on matters like politics.
I would like to see management treated like a branch of applied psychology, with a blend of sociology thrown it. The military treats it that way, but does not generally publish advice on how to train troops to the general public. There are very good derivative texts based on that knowledge, the one that comes to mind is Simon Sinek's "Leaders Eat Last", which takes the best aspects of team building, and trust models, and leaves behind or at least downplays the intent, which is to make people do dangerous and possibly brutal things, even against their own self-interest.
It is all about manipulating people's natural inclinations for the benefit of some cause, be it corporate, defensive, or cultural. This is Sartre's common pursuit, when we feel part of something. Is there an inherent contradiction with the traditional American ethos of rugged individualism? Is this why North American management books always strike me as somewhat conflicted, hypocritical even? I have written here about the UK version of this conflict, which is culturally very different when discussing C.P. Snow's career and writings.
What I want to add to the discussion are some anecdotal data points taken from many years of being managed and managing, not really advice, mostly data associated with successful and less successful outcomes. In particular I want to address the management of software teams, because there is a large data set out there that can be mined for results, and this can become more of a scientific discussion. I am thinking of surveys done when books like "The Psychology of Computer Programming" were written, all the way to Stack Overflow's periodic states of the nation.
Some random thoughts about what seems to work, in effect, some hypotheses to investigate and validate:
This may be historical, especially in North America, where there is a strong tradition of self-help preacher-based advice. The Tony Robbins', Norman Vincent Peale's, Billy Graham's, and now some social-media savvy successors, that have large followings. There is also the cargo cult mimicking of the big winners, like Google, Facebook and Amazon's leaders, not to mention the financiers, Buffet, and Dario, and their ilk, unless of course they are a bit left leaning like Soros.
In the UK, there is a more ironic and sometimes sarcastic tradition, the counter example is seen as more instructive, perhaps because the audience is more sensitive (and rightly so) to condescension. Examples are the Peter Principle, and Parkinson's Law. To be fair, the US has Scott Adams, but I would argue that he has become a victim of his own success, and now takes himself way to seriously on matters like politics.
I would like to see management treated like a branch of applied psychology, with a blend of sociology thrown it. The military treats it that way, but does not generally publish advice on how to train troops to the general public. There are very good derivative texts based on that knowledge, the one that comes to mind is Simon Sinek's "Leaders Eat Last", which takes the best aspects of team building, and trust models, and leaves behind or at least downplays the intent, which is to make people do dangerous and possibly brutal things, even against their own self-interest.
It is all about manipulating people's natural inclinations for the benefit of some cause, be it corporate, defensive, or cultural. This is Sartre's common pursuit, when we feel part of something. Is there an inherent contradiction with the traditional American ethos of rugged individualism? Is this why North American management books always strike me as somewhat conflicted, hypocritical even? I have written here about the UK version of this conflict, which is culturally very different when discussing C.P. Snow's career and writings.
What I want to add to the discussion are some anecdotal data points taken from many years of being managed and managing, not really advice, mostly data associated with successful and less successful outcomes. In particular I want to address the management of software teams, because there is a large data set out there that can be mined for results, and this can become more of a scientific discussion. I am thinking of surveys done when books like "The Psychology of Computer Programming" were written, all the way to Stack Overflow's periodic states of the nation.
Some random thoughts about what seems to work, in effect, some hypotheses to investigate and validate:
- The definition of a team is a group of people who trust each other. A manager must ensure that this happens, and must trust the team.
- Any anxiety or mistrust at the top immediately trickles down.
- A manager's role includes the responsibility to shield the team from external distractions that jeopardize the work. Software and engineering require focus, and the hard problem solving generally benefits from a reduction of noise.
- Programmers are usually quite dedicated (citation required:-), and require very little whipping about, negative reinforcement is a no-no, since it demotivates people who generally are fully motivated already. Point in the right direction and get out the way.
- Attribution of ownership on projects is important, fair attribution doubly so. Think of Monty Python's parrot sketch, mostly written by Cleese, but fairly equally attributed to Chapman for just saying "let's make it a parrot". The Ritchie-Thompson/Lennon-McCartney/Jagger-Richards model really works, and size of contribution must be measured on importance of outcome, not effort expended.
- Providing a safe environments for brainstorming and design is necessary. If we accept the definition of team given above, this needs to be less of a competitive model and more of a collaborative one, but given that the players are more often than not young ambitious men, this can be challenging to implement.
[More to come]...
