Our Dean, Rich Lyons, gave a great speech on Leadership.   If I remembered correctly, Dean Lyons mentioned a model originally from “What leaders really do” by John Kotter, HBR May 1990, 9 pages.  It said leadership is about three aspects:

Direction-setter, Alignment builder, and Motivator.

And they can be categorized as Strategic Leadership, Operational Leadership, and People Leadership.

Yeah, sounds a little bit academic, but a good way and framework to think about leadership.

Dean’s speech also covered other Haas characteristic/culture such as “Place, People, Culture”, “Confidence without attitude”, “Influence without authority” etc.

An interesting point was that from Day One, the instructor talked about that the importance for us is to understand the fundamentals, and the rationale behind, but not the mathematics tricks, because it is very likely in the future we, supposed to be the future managers, will delegate the work to someone else.

I understand and agree with the instructor, but here in this post I would like to extend my thoughts to a question:

Delegate vs. Get your hands dirty (GYHD), which is better?

It depends, I would say.

First, the feasibility of delegation.  According to my experience, usually for a well-established, hierarchical organization, for example most big companies, once you climb the management ladder, you will have resources to delegate, and there will have lots of ambitious younger people who wish to get empowerment from you to grow themselves.  However, if you are in a small company, or a start-up, it is very likely that you actually have no one to delegate to.  After all, small companies lack of resources.

Second, each of them has their own pros and cons.

• Pros of Delegation:  Enough empowerment could help your team members get chances to grow their abilities.  They might then appreciate your trust on them.  Thus very likely the morale of your team could be maintained.
• Cons of Delegation and over-use of Delegation:  You are stuck in an ivory tower dictating commands, while your subordinates are tired by the workload, and then hate you.
• Pros of GYHD:  You know the very details of what the things actually going on, so you have true confidence of the reality.  Also GYHD might  be able to generate the practical atmosphere of “down to earth”, and encourage every team member to contribute to the actual work.
• Cons of GYHD:  You as a manager have done the real things, so what your guys do?  They either feel they have no value for the organization, or they feel you are kind of too micromanagement (a management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of his or her subordinates or employees.).

So the conclusion:  it really and has to depends.  Depends on your goals, the team goals, the specific people in your team, etc… a lot of factors.

What do you think?

Hello Freeman,

I did read the 2 blog posts and they are really a big HELP. Thank you.

There is one more thing I am curious about… As your roles changed all the way from R&D engineer to product engineer, are you staying in the same company, or, being focused on the same product? If not, I guess either of them can be a big change, right? Because that usually means you will have to start over – rebuild your professional network, and learn new technologies from the scratch. I am not saying this change is not good; it just feels like the years spent working as an R&D engineer is a waste of time and does not worth it. How did you deal with such a change back then?

Thanks again.

I did stayed in different companies and worked for different products. But the point is not being changing job or product.

Let me try to answer the questions. I do NOT think they are “big change”. I do NOT think I have to start it over. I do NOT think it means to “rebuild”, actually, I view it to “extend” my professional network. I do NOT think it is “learn… from scratch”. Instead I believe that most time my past experiences did help me now. I do not think “waste of time and not worth it” for your current R&D work.

The point is not the jobs themselves. The point is how you look at them, and whether you have got most from them.

I guess you might have read or watched the famous “Stay hungry, stay foolish” commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford:

The first story is about connecting the dots.
…. (talking about calligraphy)
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.
…
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

My second story is about love and loss.
…(talking about how he got fired from Apple, the company he founded)
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
…
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.
…
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

So, deal reader, please be patient. Try to find the beauty of your current job. Try to get most of it (I bet you do not get most of it). There are always a lot things that you can learn from your current job. For example, try to ask yourself these questions:

• Do you really do very well now? Are you a real expert for your current job? OK, you are doing R&D. Then what is your knowledge on R&D? Can you tell me what is a good R&D? We all know in software R&D, there are programmers and testers. Then what is a good programmer? What is a good tester? Are you a good one? Why is, or why not?
• Tell me something about R&D process and methodology. What is your comment? If you are a R&D manager, how can you improve your current way of working in your current company?
• Do you get appreciation from your boss and colleagues? Are you a good team member? How your boss and colleagues will comment on you? How do you comment your boss? If you think your boss is not so good, then image if you are in his position, then how will you do, are you sure you can do better than him? If so, then why you can do better than him? If not, then why you cannot do better than him?
• What is the project or product that you are working on? What are the customers? What are your competitors? Try to visit your competitor company website, and tell me the difference between them and your company. Do you know any professional media, newspaper or magazine in your area? Do you regular read them? What are your comments?

I can ask even more dozens of questions. But first let me know your answers to the above questions.

Again, let me summarize my points and suggestions:

Believe your hard work now will NOT go Unrewarded, in other words, NOT “waste of time and not worth it”.

But ask yourself: Have you really work hard now? Think again on your current job. Try to get most of it. Think the above questions.

Believe Steve Job’s words “you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Know who you are, and find what you really love to do.

Follow your heart.

Good luck.

Hello Freeman,

I ran into your Chinese blog site when I was searching “Femtocell” over Internet. Currently I am a test engineer working on home networking gadgets like xDSL home gateway, etc. My current job is way too far from customers. We do not have to talk with our customers in person. Instead, we just hold the PRD (Product Requirement Document) and make sure if all of the requested features are working fine. Therefore, it’s not easy to get a deep understanding of the industry and marketplace. Actually I feel that I am kind of losing the big picture. That’s why I am always thinking to be a product manager. But I just have no idea where to start.

Now I think maybe I can learn something from you. How did you become a product manager? Transitioned from developer? And what is important to be a successful product manager (of course I have read the articles like “10 tips to be a good product manager”, I just want to know what you think from your own experience).

It will be great if you can take some time to read and reply this mail .

Thank you.

It is very interesting that I can see two major problems:

• First, it is very normal for the author, as a R&D engineer, to have a feeling that “losing the big picture”, but the problem should be blamed on the management side. I do not think his or her manager is a good motivator.
• Second, the author raised a very common question: How to move to Product Manager position?

In this blog entry, I tried to comment on the first problem:

Why to motivate team by big picture is important?

Many managers do not share the big picture with his team. This is usually for two reasons. One reason is that the manager thinks his subordinates just need to follow his command to do assignments, and do not need to know too much else. The other reason is that the manager has a so narrow or selfish attitude that he worries that his subordinates may know too much.

I disagree both. I believe that sharing the overall situation, the big picture and the vision (but in an appropriate way) to the team is a good approach to motivate the team.

The idea comes to me when I was doing my first job as an entry level software development engineer. At that time my manager just assigned to me tasks such as doing software programming to finish a certain function before the project deadline. But I have no idea of the big picture. Sometime I just have to ask myself:
• Why we need to do this project?
• What is the value of our current work?
• Whether and how the customer will use our product?
• Whether there is any competitor that can do a better job than us?

I was frustrated and cannot see the value of my daily job. Eventually I lost morale, and the passion for the job.

Later when I became a manager, I began to know the importance of the morale of my team. I know I should motivate my team. And I remembered my painful experience. I realized that I should share the big picture with my team. And I did it.

For example, for most technical issues, after we come out the solution and decisions for the way forward, not only I will explain the technical consequence to the engineering who are assigned to do the real implementation job, but also I will tell the engineers the “Why” of the decision. Why is much more important than What and How. I will tell them how our customers will benefit from this solution instead of that solution. I will tell them how this solution will increase our business value, or catch up with or beat our competitor. I found that engineers are inspired after they understood better for the whole big picture and their value and contribution. The team was energetic and kept with high morale.

These facts further strengthen my belief that to share big picture with team is a good way to motivate the team.

Of course for managers, this does not necessarily means that you should disclose everything to everyone in your team. You need to spread information in an appropriate and intelligent way. And a smart leader will give different people different visions.

I really wish the email author’s manager could read this article.