Managing Software for Growth: Without Fear, Control, and the Manufacturing Mindset

From Bosses to Participants

In most organizations, managers are bosses. They fill a box on an organization chart somewhere. They are the masters of all they see, which often comes across as meaning they're lords of the vassals under them. The organization is a pyramid. Everybody in the organization reports up the chain, until the proverbial buck stops at the top person. Everybody in that chain who has underlings is a manager, even the person at the apex. In the traditional way of thinking, each has a single overriding responsibility: increasing predictability. Their primary tool is control. Their goal is increased efficiency, decreased cost, and workers who salute and obey, but are happy about it. All that should lead to increased profit, assuming ...