Bringing Innovation 101: Managers to Leaders

Software development is not as simple as A + B = C, It is more a collaborative effort of different skills.

As someone said “Building great software is easy: build a great team and they'll make the software for you.”. Building a team is not a managerial job. 

There is an interesting comparison between managers and leaders in their article titled “Are you a manager or leader?”

MANAGERS administer are a copy maintain systems/structure focus control short-term how/when bottom line imitate accept good soldier do things right

LEADERS innovate are an original develop people focus trust long-range what/why horizon originate challenge own person do the right thing

As you can see, it's clear that, what we need leaders not managers. Unfortunately, apart from making every other aspect of the software development unimportant, including quality of code, maintainability and usability, etc., delivery focused approach makes a process based managerial environment, which is completely opposite of the people based environment.

Managers might be good option for a process based controlled environment such as manufacturing, but defiantly not suited for software development.

As quoted by Azim Premji in his memo “Why employees leave organizations” 

Largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was published in a book called First Break All The Rules.

It came up with this surprising finding:

If you're losing good people, look to their immediate supervisor. More than any other single reason, he is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he's the reason why they quit, taking their knowledge, experience and contacts with them. Often, straight to the competition. "People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better perks and better training - when, in the end, turnover is mostly manager issue." If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers. Are they driving people away? Beyond a point, an employee's primary need has less to do with money, and more to do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of this depends directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad bosses seem to happen to good people everywhere.

Innovation can happen only by empowering people, not by following a defined set of processes.

All you need to empower people is Leaders, not Managers.

Here is, what you can do, as an organization

1) Hire Good Leaders
2) Upgrade your Managers to Leaders
3) Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes. - Phil Daniels