Margin people and the bad deal

So we’ve talked about technology as a creative activity and the need to motivate creative people with leadership rather than trying to herd them through management.

Despite the fact that the leadership approach works (and I think it works best), by many standard organizational measures the management approach can appear successful, especially from the outside. Why?

As we have already talked about, some of the appearance of success can be explained by the control these managers exercise over information in the organization around them. Only the good news—or news that can be made to appear good—makes it out.

Information-control managers can also appear successful partly because over time they attract the “margin people.”

Margin People

Margin people are the folks who want a job where they clock in, are present for eight hours, and clock out. They do what they are asked to do (after the third or fourth time). They require close management because the minute someone isn’t paying attention to them they are surfing the web or napping in their cubicle.

Margin people don’t complain because it takes too much work. In fact, they have an implicit bargain with their manager: “You let me do the bare minimum, and I won’t make waves for you.”

When a competent, driven person joins one of these teams, he quickly realizes that he is not in a creative situation that will let him grow and contribute in a meaningful way. Sooner or later these people leave for another group or another company, most often without ever having complained (what would it accomplish?).

Talent follows the leadership gradient: good teams get better by attracting the best performers, and bad teams get worse as they continue to drive away anyone not in the margin. I have been part of this cycle myself, leaving underperforming teams that were managed by dictators (good and bad) for teams that were led by leaders.

Although the bad managers in my experience appeared effective by some of our organizational measures, the teams never innovated, never surprised, and never did more than just barely meet expectations. In other words, they didn’t move forward. Not moving forward in technology means you are falling behind.

The mandate for leadership

This is the business motivation for the mandate for leaders to foster creativity. But it is not the most important motivation.

The strongest motivation for leading in technology, rather than managing, is that the technology community isn’t just providing jobs for engineers and scientists and profits for investors. We have responsibility for shaping the future. We owe it to the world to ensure that we put the best minds, motivated to their full potential, to the task of making sure that this future is a future of abundance for everyone. This only happens with leadership.

This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.