I've just scanned the article, and it does indeed look very worth reading.
I'm particularly interested in this (from the introduction):
> But I also discovered that I was playing with fire. Whenever I got a team ready to be really useful, there would be a bizarre negative reaction from all sorts of other people who were employed within the same organizations, but were not part of the teams I was working with. Sometimes this effect was so strong it could become a workplace hazard, and it always grew until the teams themselves were no longer able to function.
I know exactly what he is talking about. I have seen it happen in very different contexts (including contexts not at all related to software development): when you get a group of people that is starting to accomplish things, people within the organization act in strange ways to shut it down.
It looks like this particular issue is addressed on the 7th page: "The Dreaded Jungian Backlash". (It also looks like you need to read the preceding pages to understand it all.)
I look forward to finding out what the article has to say.
I managed a team that gelled once (not because of any skill of mine; it was an amazing team). It was surprising how much antipathy there was from other people in the company. Even though everybody on my team was happy and they were being amazingly productive, I somehow got labeled as the bad manager.
Ever hear of Wilhelm Reich's concept of the "emotional plague"? Many human beings react with antipathy when others express a greater aliveness than they themselves feel capable of. Reich's idea was that this was because their feelings were being stirred to a greater degree than they were able to tolerate, provoking a clampdown reaction. I've noticed something like this many times in companies: when a small oasis of creativity spontaneously forms, the larger organization often acts to destroy it.
Jerry Weinberg told a great story once about a company he consulted at where every software project failed, except for a handful of successes. He looked into the successes and found that they had all been the work of one team. The team had intentionally covered their tracks (I forget how) and actually pleaded with him not to report on their success. He didn't heed this request, though, and told an executive about them, presumably with the intention of encouraging more such teams to develop. The executive responded by disbanding the team! Shocked, Weinberg asked why. "Because I didn't understand what they were doing." Weinberg said, sarcastically, "Would you rather they succeeded in a way you don't understand or failed in a way you do?" The executive replied, quite unironically, "I would rather they fail in a way that I understand."
I'm particularly interested in this (from the introduction):
> But I also discovered that I was playing with fire. Whenever I got a team ready to be really useful, there would be a bizarre negative reaction from all sorts of other people who were employed within the same organizations, but were not part of the teams I was working with. Sometimes this effect was so strong it could become a workplace hazard, and it always grew until the teams themselves were no longer able to function.
I know exactly what he is talking about. I have seen it happen in very different contexts (including contexts not at all related to software development): when you get a group of people that is starting to accomplish things, people within the organization act in strange ways to shut it down.
It looks like this particular issue is addressed on the 7th page: "The Dreaded Jungian Backlash". (It also looks like you need to read the preceding pages to understand it all.)
I look forward to finding out what the article has to say.