Thursday, June 22, 2006

How Not to Lead Geeks

The Positive Sharing blog has a good read on how not to lead geeks from earlier this year. The ten points are:

1. Downplay training
2. Give no recognition
3. Plan too much overtime
4. Use management-speak
5. Try to be smarter than the geeks
6. Act inconsistent
7. Ignore the geeks
8. Make decisions without consulting them
9. Don’t give them tools
10. Forget that geeks are creative workers

You’d think most of those are obvious, but from my past jobs I can say they’re definitely not.

I want to add my own ten points of how not to lead geeks to the list:

1. Think all geeks want to climb up the career ladder or can be rewarded with job titles
2. Shield geeks from early design stages
3. Put job formalities and processes over teams and communication
4. Demand strict working hours
5. Stop geeks from browsing the web to read up on new technologies
6. Interrupt geeks with questions, phone calls, unclosed doors, and daily meetings
7. Use technical buzzwords because you think geeks enjoy them
8. Believe that every geek loves hardware, system administration, and solving Outlook problems of colleagues
9. Have a strong, expressed believe that all geeks are the same
10. Demand that geeks behave completely normal, non-neurotic

[Thanks Markus Renschler.]

How Not to Lead Geeks by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (7)

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