Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, the better thing to do is let people do what they think is best or at least what they think is better on any given day.

“We are a fill-in-the-blank organization. We use best fill-in-the-blank practices as described by fill-in-the-second-blank who described fill-in-the-blank in the seminal blog post on fill-in-the-blank,” said an earnest leader of a team when questioned about their practices.

There are many worthwhile practices. Agile, SCRUM, waterfall, prototyping, documenting, not documenting, etc.

It is worthwhile for an entire organization of thousands of people to use the same practices on thousands of days in thousands of different situations.

It is worthwhile to have a shared and solid foundation. Let’s all start at the beginning with our feet solidly planted on something solid. Life is tough enough to attempt it while juggling 15 balls when off balance.

And let’s add one more worthwhile practice to this list of worthwhile things: let’s let competent persons do what is best, or at least better, on any given day in any given situation.

Well, yeah, but, you see… Of course that last worthwhile practice is a bit scary. What if the competent persons are wrong on this day in this situation? Things would be messed up and we would have a mess and we would have to fix the mess just to get back to zero. What a mess.

I hired these persons to decide what is best or at least what is better. Did I hire the wrong persons? Wait, don’t pin this mess on me. Wait, I was put in a position of hiring. Yes, this mess flows up to me.

And now I have to decide what to do with this mess.

This mess is today’s situation. Let the competent person do what is best, or at least what is better, given this mess. And that includes me. I can do what is best, or at least what is better, given this mess.

If you wanted guarantees when you became a manager, sorry to disappoint you. There are none. We are working with people, not levels of liquid in bottles in manufacturing. There are no lower-control and upper-control levels with people. We do. Some days better, some days worse.

Let’s observe, think, and do what is best, or at least what is better.