Let it (them) be

Tom Breur

28 February 2016

Self-organization is one of the cornerstones in Agile to foster motivated and entrepreneurial team members. Sometimes it may seem squarely at odds with “traditional” (i.e. Taylorist) management views. One of the hardest transitions to make for managers, can be that “managing” turns into leadership – Gil Broza refers to the very descriptive term: servant [emphasis added] leadership.

Telling people what to do, or how to do their jobs is disrespectful. It implies they aren’t capable of learning that for themselves. It doesn’t work, either, because the “manager” would become a huge bottleneck in any delivery process. A more productive approach (servant leadership) is to ask your developers how you may (best) help them.

So if you are a Product Owner (or Customer, or business sponsor, or whatever), tell your people what to accomplish, not how to do it!