Management in the Digital Age

Anyone who tells you that being a business person is easy has not spent much time in an office.  Customers demand more value, and the pressures of profitability squash and stretch the organization like a piece of taffy. You have to navigate market pressures, office politics, industry regulation, and deadlines as an individual.  Often these factors combine to create a toxic stew that undermines your sense of self.  It is why I embraced the agile reformation as strongly as I have.  This week there has been plenty of conversation in business literature about severe problems in the agile movement.  Jurgen Appelo is promoting a new book entitled “Agile 2.0.” As someone who works on the front line of the reformation, I have seen some of these challenges firsthand on the blog this week, I want to discuss them.  

This week, Steve Denning published an article in Forbes magazine proclaiming managers need a new job description.  He points to a 1977 Harvard Business Review article entitled, “Managers and Leaders Are they Different?”  The article is so popular that it has been reprinted twice since its original publication.  In the article, the author points out three characteristics of a manager in a business organization. 

1) The manager focuses attention on the procedure and not substance – it is more important to concentrate on how decisions are made rather than what those decisions are.

2) The manager communicates to subordinates indirectly by “signals.” - The only safe way to use procedures is to send indirect “signals” that obscure personal viewpoints.

3) The manager plays for time.  Self–protective routines are done up and down the hierarchy to avoid being on the wrong side of a decision.  

To anyone who has read the agile manifesto and understands agile principles, these three management practices are what we are attempting to overcome in the business world.  Self-managing teams were better than managers dictating work.  Playing for time disappears when you are working with the customer to provide value to the organization.  Finally, “signals” disappear when you are emphasizing individuals and interactions over processes and tools.  Software is eating the world, so the manager class should disappear as companies move from an industrial age mindset to a digital one.  

In reality, the frozen middle of the management class is alive and well in most organizations.  Banks, Insurance companies, manufacturers, and other businesses have existed for years, and managers have used that time to cling to the organization like barnacles.  Playing for time, using signals, and following procedures work for these people if they keep them employed and feed their families.  When faced with a new way of doing things, they react like saboteurs.

Thus we need a new style of manager who can succeed in the digital economy.  The first characteristic of a new manager is to embrace speed.  Instead of playing for time, they follow the cadence of a sprint.   Every two or three weeks, they release products to customers and hold others accountable for those goals.  It means getting out of the way of the teams when they are attempting to meet those customer needs.  It means learning to ask questions instead of giving orders. Finally, teams need to know how to self-manage, so scrum masters and the development team might need help and training.  

Instead of signals, leaders need to be clear with expectations, and those expectations need to be visible and unambiguous.  It is keeping with the principles of empiricism and transparency public for everyone to see.  Budgets should be transparent, deadlines and requirements should be obvious, and when the plan changes, it should be clear to everyone.  I suspect this will be the most challenging behavior to break because this stinginess with information is self-serving for an old school manager. 

Finally, a manager needs to be less concerned with the process and more concerned with output.  Daily Scrum meetings and sprint reviews are a great place to come up with new ideas.  An idea that originates with a customer or team is just as valid as something that comes from leadership.  We should embrace ideas from everywhere.  Ideas should be tested in public and held to rigorous standards of success.  For the sake of the business, reject ego and authority for outcome and value delivered.  

The management class needs retraining to reject old behaviors and embrace new ones.  Notions of process, signaling, and playing for time should be cast away for outcomes, empiricism, and speed to market.  Leaders and managers who embrace these new values will become agile digital companies.  Those who don’t will see their organizations sink to the bottom of the ocean encrusted in barnacles. 

Until next time.