Leaders Let Go!

It is amazing what product development teams can accomplish, especially given the technology we have now versus what we had 20 years ago. Building software or any technology products for that matter is still hard and complex.

Having a team of people that bring their gifts and talents each day to the work amazes me what they can accomplish. It also amazes me on how many organizations lack the ability to nurture these team based environments and prefer top down / command and control organizational structures. I still maintain, who reports to who shouldn't affect how we build agile teams.

No one person can do everything, but everyone can do something. Everyone doing something, collaborating, working together to achieve a focused outcome, and letting the people on the team have some autonomy in their ways of working can be the difference between your product's competitiveness. Everyone assembling to create a body of work is how humans have achieved some of our finest moments.

As leaders, learn to get out of the way. Learn how to challenge your team's thoughts and collaboration, and support them with all the things they need to do their work. Learn how to hire the best people and set them in motion. If you have hired people you don't trust and feel that you must micromanage them, that is your issue and a false start.

The mantras I have used to help organizations foster a better environment (I beat the drum to these sayings each and every day):

"No one can do everything, but everyone can do something"
"None of us are smarter than all of us"
"If you aren't servicing the customer directly, you better be servicing someone who is"
"All of us together are responsible for the outcomes of our team"
"Don't focus on the output of the individuals or the team, focus on the desired outcomes"
"Outputs alone lead to lean wastes of inventory"