January 26, 2005

Management

Here's a lovely little post from Colin MacDonald that should be required reading for anyone in management:

It's like you're asking them to hang a picture for you, but they've never done it before. You understand what you need done - the trick is getting them to do it. In fact, it's so obvious to you that there are constraints and expectations that you don't even think to explain. So you've got some junior guy working for you, and you say, "Go hang this picture over there. Let me know when you're done." It's obvious, right? How could he screw that up? Truth is, there are a whole lot of things he doesn't know that he'll need to learn before he can hang that picture. There are also a surprising number of things that you can overlook.

Update: Thanks to Beth Rhinelander for letting me know I had mis-attributed the above post to a different author. The correct author, as stated above, is Colin MacDonald.