RE: Re: Do C-Level managers, and business drivers really need to know about XP?

Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Ropa [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 8:50 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: [xpAdoption] Re: Do C-Level managers, and business
drivers
> really need to know about XP?
> 
> Hi Glen,
> 
> I think I'll take a stab at some of these questions:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alleman, Glen B. 
> > From Steve's comments,
> >
> > So from your experiences of being "groomed" how would a
> > leader emerge in
> > the absence of this grooming?
> >
> > The concept of "emergent" leadership is interesting IIF there
> > is such a
> > leader in the group. The other unanswered question is what is the
time
> > scale for this emergence? Is this timescale alterable by external
> > processes? Grooming prior to need?
> >
> > The conjecture that emergent leadership actually works needs some
> > discussion.
> >
> > (1) Is there a difference here between emergent leaders and
> > leadership?
> > Do self emergent leaders already have the leadership skills
> > to lead and
> > therefore emerge in the absence of an imposed leader?
> >
> Self emergent leaders already have the skills to lead, but not
necessarily
> the tools.  One of the most important tools for leadership is
experience.
> I believe that if there is the rare self-emergent leader in the group,
she
> will emerge with or without an imposed leader.  There is not
necessarily
> always such an individual in any given group, though.
> 
> > (2) What processes are in place for this leadership to behave in
> > accordance with the higher needs of the organization?
> 
> In an XP framework, I would say that the practices coupled with a
really
> strong emphasis on the values creates a good start.  How one ensures
that
> they are living up to this is really best evaluated case by case.

[>] Agree and one powers agile claims is to define the outcomes. Turns
out this is a goal of any good management process. But what's important
about agile is the adaptive definition of the outcome and "done." This
removes the sticky problem of seeking a solution to the wrong problem -
a Type III error.

> >
> > (3) At what scale does this emergent leadership work? Small group of
> > self directed teams? There is lots of literature on the software
> > development world on this approach? Large groups - say departments?
> > Where is the cut off - if any - on group size for self
> > emergent leader?
> I don't know that its necessarily a cut off kind of situation.  The
> emergent leadership can work on the smaller groups of teams, at which
> point we have a nice set of candidates for the department heads.  Once
you
> get into the larger organizations, there are actual "B-School" issues
that
> need to be addressed, and they are not instinctive.  For instance, it
is
> sometimes disconcerting how many times I have to explain to folks
around
> here what the difference between utilization and realization is, and
why
> it matters.

[>] So to continue the question - at what level does the self emergent
leader not have sufficient skills?

> >
> > (4) In the discussion here of leadership are we speaking in
> > terms found
> > in business - say the HBR series on leadership - or in anecdotal
terms
> > from within a small group?
> >
> Here is where my toolset is incomplete.  What is the HBR series on
> leadership?  From my standpoint, I am talking about leadership in
groups
> of 5-50, sometimes broken into smaller teams, sometimes not.

[>] Harvard Business Press "HBR on Leadership," is one of a half-dozen
or so books that capture classic papers from HBR of various topics. The
leadership book has seminal works on large and small group leadership.
Several other "must read" texts include "On Becoming a leader," Warren
Bennis and "True Professionals," David H. Maister. Another book we live
by is "The Wisdom of Teams," Jon Katzenbach and Doug Smith.

What has dawned on me in this thread is the separation of "leading" from
the skill of "leadership." I not sure I would concur that all teams
contain self emergent leaders with the skills - that certainly isn't the
case here. There are lots of "wanna be" leaders, but their technical
skills soon run out of gas when confronted with non-technical process
leadership problems.

So maybe one clarifying point is to separate the leadership of the
technical aspects of a team from the business process aspects. Just had
a team member come to my office asking a personnel issue about paid time
off. If left to the leader of his team, it would have been a mess, but
fortunately the team lead knew enough not to answer the request - self
emergent denial of capability ;>)

Glen B. Alleman

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