I’m amused by the timing of my professor’s lecture on group
leadership, as it coincided perfectly with my realization That I don’t have a “boss”
at work. Sure, Rich signs my paycheck, Lou has his name stamped across the
project and Jack owns the company. There is no chain of command, however. Vaughn
(the other engineer), Lou and I all know
what needs to happen and it we just get it done.
It’s odd to think that I give instructions to my boss as
often as I do, but when I need him to do something, the company needs him to do
it, so he does it without question. It works that way with all of us, really.
We only give orders for the good of the company and so far it has worked quite
well.
Our situation is unique. The three of us have very specialized
knowledge of the various facets of the units we produce, and we trust one another
to know what they are doing. These skills and our small numbers make us both
the floor grunt worker and the higher-up systems head, so everyone
simultaneously needs to be in charge and an underling.
We conflict sometimes about direction and prioritization, but
when a task gets prioritized behind another it’s not personal, it means something more important is going to
get done. The surprises go further in fact, as (in my mind) our largest problem
has arisen because Lou has staked his claim as the final word in one aspect of
our program.
We work with partners over seas who have this peculiar habit
of selective email reception. They only seem to respond to communiques that they
want to see. It is therefore no shock when I tell you that progress on our end
has been slow due to the one-way flow of information.
The problem really arises when Lou fights the idea of
playing hardball about communicating with our partners. While Vaughn and I
believe that our time is being wasted (as it is the information he and I need
to proceed with our tasks) and we should jump on them so that we can get things
done, Lou doesn't want to pressure them too much, for fear that we will spook
them.
I am firmly of the belief that squeezing our partners for
info we need is the smart way to go. After all, you would talk differently with
your brother than your priest. Our partner is analogous to our brother, right?
The way to make that decision is to have Lou come down to our level and really
talk it out with Vaughn and I. Lately he has been increasingly blunt with our
partners, and has been great for helping us find proper direction with the
whole program, but the time has come to deal in a definitive hand-me-the-damn-screwdriver
kind of way.
In this particular instance, the soup needs more cooks.
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