| In defense as a delegator ; --- I have, through my career, managed, directed, employed, mentored MANY people that were WAY smarter than I am (Looking at you JDB) -- but I had "mortar skills" -- oor as i call them "Lego Skills" I am talented in bringing disparate engineering disciplines together. Ill give you a real world example ; Brocade. I was the TPM on the build of their new HQ in San Jose, I was responsible for literally the entire go-live of collapsing all offices and data-centers down to the new HQ (I have dont this with other companies, including ILM, Facebook, Lockheed) Its kinda my jam.... anyway, there were teams Server, storage, network, app, HR, blah blah not to mention the relocation of ~60,000 devices from colos in the valley to the new 4-storey DC building made at Brocade's HQ campus... I was brought in because I knew how to gather the data req'd to inform an actual migration strategy. --- I met with each SME of every discipline, asked them of their needs, inputs, workproduct, team, etc... I did this with each SME for each discipline separately. I then formed a plan of action, both tactical and hypothetical. Once I had a plan together, held a meeting and showed the cohesive plan, with every teams dependencies and I threw that up on the wall and had all the SMEs in a meeting and asked them "Tell me what is wrong with this plan. Show me any deficiencies that your team may suffer, and what is also needed from the other teams to make YOUR team successful. Throw as many darts as you can at THE PROBLEM and not the people on the other team." A flawless move of ~4,000 employees and ~60K devices to a new colo with ZERO downtime to regular employees. --- So, just know that just because youre not an SME in a deep subject, delegators have value. In my case : I was not an expert in ANY of their fields, but I knew how to tie a team together in a way that was less divisive. Super successful and I allowed each SME to air their project issues and requirements in private, so as to keep emotions to a min. Esp considering prior to my joining the project, they had not been talking cross-teams at all. Delegation is a skill -- you need to know enough about the problem (both project and team issues) to be effective, and really what it comes down to, is ensuring that your SME stays focused on being an SME for [SUBJECT] and remove the Human Emotional friction that can happen on teams of really smart people. |