Читать книгу Agile 2 - Adrian Lander - Страница 37

A team of people is a group that is organized for a purpose. A team often needs many kinds of leadership. First, each person needs to be their own leader: each person has agency, and they need to take responsibility for their own outcomes, voicing problems, trying to get those problems solved to the best of their ability, and—if it comes to it—deciding whether to remain in the group. Some groups sometimes are not a good fit for a particular individual, and vice versa. That is just the reality.

Besides individual leadership over oneself, a team often needs leadership. For example, it might need coordinating leadership; it might need coaching leadership to help it to grow its abilities; it might need thought leadership about particular domains of knowledge that are mission critical; and it might even need some directive leadership for some issues.

Peter Drucker has said that an organization needs “an inside person, an outside person, and someone to get things done.” In other words, one kind of leader is not enough. That does not mean that one person cannot fill all those roles; but such an individual is unusual.

By an “inside person,” Drucker meant someone who can form relationships of trust with the members of the organization, someone they look up to. For a technology company, that individual might be a visionary CTO, or it might be a visionary product designer. In the case of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs was the CEO, but he was also the chief product designer and was widely seen as a visionary, so he was the inside person. When he returned to Apple, he was greeted as a savior, and many people worked at Apple only because it was led by Steve Jobs.

By an “outside person,” Drucker meant someone to deal with the outside world. Any organization or team exists in a larger ecosystem, and that ecosystem can be leveraged, or it can undermine the organization or team. Managing the relationship with the world outside of the team or organization is essential. To do that, one must have some level of authority to be able to make promises, to negotiate deals, and to invest in resources. One must also be adept at managing expectations and coming across as personable, trustworthy, competent, and visionary to some degree.

The third role described by Drucker was “someone to get things done.” That is the organizer. Within a team, an organizer might not need much or any authority, but the higher one goes in an organization, when a team member in turn oversees other subordinate teams, authority is increasingly important because without it, one cannot make decisions on behalf of one's subordinate teams. An organizer is someone who stays on top of everything, continuously watches for problems, takes action as soon as there is a problem, and orchestrates discussion and timely decision-making.

A recurring theme here is when to use one's authority and when to let subordinates decide. Hold that question in your mind as you read this, and we will address it at the end of this chapter, because it is the most important question about leadership, and it ties everything together.