Bulldozer00's Blog

Scott Berkun is one of my favorite technical consultants. He’s a former Microsoft program manager who worked on the development of Internet Explorer and he’s written two classic books on project management and innovation. In this post: power, Scott states a simple and profound truth:

As a program manager (glorified title for project manager), all of my power actually came from the programmers. I only had a job because of the programmers. No programmers means no code, no product, no revenue. End of story.  My power was an extension of theirs. I had to treat them with respect and go out of my way to earn their trust over time.

I’d like to extend Scott’s opening sentence  so that it applies to companies that develop multiple-technology products containing an integrated system of software, digital hardware, mechanical hardware, and electrical hardware.

As a program manager (glorified title for project manager), all of my power actually came from the engineering groups….. I had to treat them with respect and go out of my way to earn their trust over time.

In multi-technology companies where managers put other peer and higher up managers first, the odds are that schedule, cost, and quality will suffer. Instead of operating like high performing meritocracies, these companies end up just like the rest of the herd; as mediocracies.