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

Power

In most companies, power is concentrated in a few. That has to change, and not because of any namby-pamby statements about empowering people, or being more democratic. It has to change because power relations, as Stacey and his colleagues put it, are the basis for true novelty in human organizations.

If managers hold all the power, this amounts to them trying to play a sort of multi-player chess with human pieces. Managers compete head-to-head for resources, glory, attention, or whatever. Good people run away from that. As soon as you find out you're a pawn, head for the door. What managers need to do instead is share power. Tom DeMarco calls this “control slack”:

I offer the following model for control-sharing. If control is in some sense ...