Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

22. Natural Authority

Competence attracts authority.

Authority tends to move toward and congregate around competence. In a multifunctional team (and what other kind is there these days?), different team members have differing degrees of competence in different domains. The authority to make decisions wants to follow that competence.

Knowledge work is profoundly different from production. In a production environment, workers share a common and usually simply stated goal (“Put out the maximum tonnage of Rice Krispies in the next eight hours”), and also share the skills necessary to get the work done. The boss is typically someone who is master of ...