The other day I was looking out my window and watching my neighbor, Fred, play fetch with his dog. He had a tennis ball that he would toss a few yards, and then his dog would bound out to it, pick the ball up in its mouth, and then bring it back to Fred. They did this for hours!
On the window sill in front of me sat my cat, Izzy. She was not really sleeping, but rather lying down and enjoying the sun on her back. I called her a few times, then picked up her favorite toy in hopes of getting her to play a bit. After a number of attempts, the most I was able to evoke from her was a disdainful twitch of her ear.
I thought about the phrase "herding cats", which is used as a metaphor to describe how to lead small teams of employees. Cats didn't sound like the right metaphor to me, if you were going to bring together a team for your work, wouldn't you rather get a team of folks who were more like Fred’s dog than my cat Izzy?
Lets take that metaphor further; lets see how this metaphor works with a small team (herd of cats versus a doggy park). If you have a herd of six cats that you’re trying to manage, there are very few things you can use to orchestrate their combined movement. If you put down food, only the hungry will come. If you introduce a toy, only those in the mind to play will come.
Contrast that with the doggy-park. If you whistle and hold up a ball in your six-canine doggy park, most of the dogs will run to you wanting to play. And, if you throw that ball, all of the doggies will compete to get the ball and bring it back to you. Isn’t that really how you’d like your team to work? Happily working together in friendly competition to meet their goal in the best manner possible?
The purpose of this blog is to discuss the management philosophy of "creating a doggie-park" as opposed to "herding-cats". While this may seem like a very simple topic, the change of focus is very deep. It requires a change of thinking from X-Theory management to Y-Theory. It means changes in how we recruit folks into our doggie-park focusing on character in addition to technical competence. It means that we release the full potential of our employees to succeed at their tasks while providing a learning environment in which they can grow as practitioners.
To show how to implement this, I will use two primary philosophies of team-management: ROWE (Results Oriented Work Environment) and OpenAgile. ROWE creates an environment where team-members can work hard to complete their tasks without obstacles, and OpenAgile is integrity codified. Stay tuned for more information!
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