Staff Terror. I have recently been put in charge of a team of 6 and one of the first things that has surprised me is how scared everybody seems to be of actually expressing an opinion. Now, I'm not a management master, but my general opinion on it all is to trust your programmers and let them get on with it. Make it easier for them to do their work. Deal with the red tape. Trust their instincts on things, because they know whats going on and, after all, they should know better than me - they're in the trenches. So they should be able to define timescales (within reason), they should be able to suggest what architecture and hardware they require, they should lead the process of building a spec (or even come out and say they don't need one). They are the people doing the work. So they should know best. What is such a surprise to me is how difficult they find it to actually respond to this, and to offer me their opinions on how things should be done. Taking my lead here from The Cluetrain Manifesto, I think that this is because they are so used to the internal hiararchy - they've had it drilled into them that being at the bottom means you are less important, your ideas count for less, and you should speak only when spoken to. Couple this with the "blame culture" in which Cable & Wireless operates and its no real surprise that no-one wants to get involved. You think it's probably pointless and you feel you're sticking you head above the parapet should anything go wrong. Now this is of no use to me, nor the way I'd like to manage it. Ideally, in meetings with my staff, I want them to be sitting there telling me exactly what they need, how they want to do it and how long they think it'll take. I don't want them to be afraid of making mistakes. Admittedly, I don't want people to continually make the same errors over and over again, but the culture C&W has managed to create is one where individuals are simply terrified of doing anything; prefering to default to whoever is above them in the company organisation chart, because surely they must know more. Not good. One of the things I'm doing to try and change this is setting up a new blog (cwthinktank.blogspot.com) where my team can post ideas on programming, and how to improve Cable & Wireless processes and so on - encourage them to think. Because they're the guys that should have the knowledge to change things at Cable for the better. Ideally this will grow into a selection of interesting links, articles, ideas and methodologies that will help us all. Finally, my apologies for using the phrase "think tank". I realise its quite cliched but it fits, and I actually quite like it.
