I don’t have a whole lot to comment on with respect to the whole article, but the “Aligned Autonomy” section really jumped out at me as a great example/counter-example of things I’ve seen all the time with my consulting clients. Teams that make autonomous decisions (great!) without sufficient context (not great!). The author has a different article that goes into it in more detail: https://blog.thepete.net/blog/2019/02/08/mission-command-enabling-autonomous-software-teams/
At this point in my career, I feel like I’ve been burned enough by not asking those questions that I’ve gotten reasonably good at trying to dig into the context of my work. I’d definitely recommend, especially to less experienced folks, to really start to ask themselves if they understand how their work fits into the bigger picture. If not, ask! And for people handing off work, preemptively share that context!
In Extreme Ownership, the author talks a fair bit about how, to him, a subordinate failing to accomplish a task (or successfully accomplishing the wrong task) is a management failure. Did the sub not understand the task? Did the understand what was asked but not the reasons why? Or did they not get how it fit into the bigger picture? etc. This feels like pretty much the same situation the author is talking about.
I don’t have a whole lot to comment on with respect to the whole article, but the “Aligned Autonomy” section really jumped out at me as a great example/counter-example of things I’ve seen all the time with my consulting clients. Teams that make autonomous decisions (great!) without sufficient context (not great!). The author has a different article that goes into it in more detail: https://blog.thepete.net/blog/2019/02/08/mission-command-enabling-autonomous-software-teams/
At this point in my career, I feel like I’ve been burned enough by not asking those questions that I’ve gotten reasonably good at trying to dig into the context of my work. I’d definitely recommend, especially to less experienced folks, to really start to ask themselves if they understand how their work fits into the bigger picture. If not, ask! And for people handing off work, preemptively share that context!
In Extreme Ownership, the author talks a fair bit about how, to him, a subordinate failing to accomplish a task (or successfully accomplishing the wrong task) is a management failure. Did the sub not understand the task? Did the understand what was asked but not the reasons why? Or did they not get how it fit into the bigger picture? etc. This feels like pretty much the same situation the author is talking about.
Anyway, end rant on a small part of the article!