The Starfish Team

This week, I witnessed the power of leaderless teams when our Project Manager fell ill and we were left to manage the work ourselves. The team stepped up their games, made smart decisions and never stopped. In the process, they also began to notice where constraints kept us from moving forward on some tasks, and they found other tasks that will be required and worked those while they waited for obstacles to clear. I myself fell ill one day, and they rose to the challenge.

In the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, the authors explore decentralized leadership. When you hire the right people in the right jobs, and share a vision, business goals and ownership in the work, there is little need for traditional leadership. For us, the change came when executive leadership asked questions about the project methodology were we following. They immediately instructed the team to throw the methodology out the window and just get the work done. My manager called it the "GSD" methodology (or "Get Stuff Done", with a substitute for the middle word). We quickly refactored and removed steps in the official methodology of the enterprise, and cleared more than 12 obstacles. The Business Analysts quickly adapted and sent 4 BRDs into development (who had been relatively idle, waiting for approvals on requirements). So now that each group in the whole application development process has work, the obstacles removed (for the most part), and adapted to change, I think this team is working extremely well together.

So when our key leader, the Project Manager, unexpectedly stepped out, everyone rose to the occasion, and filled in where needed. Where a "spider organization" would have lost their stride, this "starfish team" demonstrated great strength of character and kept the project on track. When I spoke with our Project Manager on the phone, and discussed the situation, she commented that this was the first time in her career, where she felt completely confident that the team would deliver for her and the enterprise. No greater compliment than that!  

Mining Coal - Tough Lessons to Learn

Leaders of any kind, can learn a lot from coal mining. I've been watching a new series on Spike TV called "Coal" where a couple of guys buy a coal mine and the series documents the struggles of coal mining. The balance between technical, mechanical, psychological and medical challenges occur every day. Presumably, the primary goal is to cut tunnels of coal from the mountain, however they quickly learn that there is so much more. From extreme risks to man and machine, and issues with weather and power, this is a series that anyone with ambitions to be a leader should see. And educators could use the series to illustrate the ethical decisions that face most managers.

If you've seen the show, please share your experiences as they relate to something that occurred on the show. I'm watching, so I'll be happy to discuss with you.

A Whole Lotta Crazy Goin On

With Financial Reform requiring all kinds of new processes and practices in the financial industry, you'd think that perhaps an Agile approach would provide the tools needed to respond to the constantly changing laws. We discussed ad nauseum, why Agile is required. With literally thousands of new reports that have to be produced, Financial Reform has certainly created jobs where I am. We have analysts with compliance, finance, technology, data warehousing, archiving, administration, data stewards, and many more working on the project. How will we keep track of everything that's going on? Unfortunately, the only thing Agile at this point is that we are having scrum meetings daily. It's still early in the project, so hopefully we'll arrive at more Agile processes, but for now, we are just storming. First, we are getting to know each other, figuring out who has what skills, and leveraging talents as much as we can. Follow this blog as this project takes on a life of it's own and perhaps, we'll find some new great tools and learn together.