Are You a Manager of Something?
NYT has a thought provoking interview with Mark Pincus, it asks "Are You a C.E.O. of Something?". Mark Pincus has some great advice to startup CEOs about leadership and building teams. I liked his approach of making every one of his employee a CEO of some one thing. It really struck cord with something I do at work with my team.
I managed product development teams in both Hyperion and Oracle and one thing I always have done is give my developers ownership of some one thing and many of times more than one thing. How do I know it works and its useful? Because I used to be a developer and I used to get excited and motivated to work on things that my manager gave complete ownership on. I used to go above and beyond to get those things done. When I was asked to do something specific in a specific way without giving me a big picture or complete ownership, those things are just tasks that I used to get done but with lot less excitement. So now when I manage development teams, I ensure everyone has the big picture and everyone gets ownership of some one thing and when integration teams, QE, documentation team has questions about that, they will be directed to the owner.
For startups Mark's approach will apply how about mega corps? For big companies, its the managers that come into play, that directly deal with 'individual contributors' i.e the programmers, designers, testers. My belief is that these direct managers should give their reports manage some one thing, it gives ownership to individuals, it increases team motivation, it increases productivity and in the end helps build better team and products.
