Leading Geeks Introduction

You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em. No, I’m not talking about the opposite sex. I’m talking about geeks, a.k.a. nerds, computer jockeys, or knowledge workers—the people who design, build, test, install, and support computer technology from mighty mainframes in their climate-controlled glass citadels to the humble PCs on every desktop. In the knowledge-driven, hypercompetitive, 24-7 economy, geeks are a key weapon in a business’s arsenal. As technology continues to drive business productivity and competitiveness, the role of the geek becomes increasingly critical. Some think that whichever organization attracts and retains the best geeks wins in this environment. They’re only half right.

Just getting the best geeks isn’t good enough. You’ve got to know what to do with them. Even the most intelligent, motivated, good-willed geeks don’t always succeed. Just think about all those dead dot-coms.

Success requires not just having good geeks, but leading them. And with technology infiltrating every area of business, from sales and marketing to operations and human resources, all managers must learn to lead geeks.

Geeks are notoriously difficult to manage and lead. Their work is frequently difficult to understand. Their demands for funds often seem insatiable. Their deliverables are always late. And, perhaps most frustrating of all, they don’t respond to traditional methods of command and control.

So where do you turn? Unfortunately, most books on leadership won’t be much help. In fact, much of what you already know about leadership won’t work with geeks for three primary reasons:

1. Geeks are different from other employees. (You probably figured out this one in grammar school.) Most leadership books begin with the fundamental assumption that leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers, and then proceed to focus almost exclusively on the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, ethics, and behaviors of the leader, as if the nature of followers were irrelevant. But as most of you already know, not all followers are alike, and they do not respond to leadership in the same way. Geeks in particular are a special group requiring different care and feeding from others in an organization.

2. Geekwork, the intricate, technological knowledge work that geeks perform, is different from other types of work. Most discussions of leadership assume that leading a group of first graders on a field trip to a museum is the same as guiding a nation into war. Of course, this simply isn’t true. What you are trying to lead people to do does, in fact, affect the nature of the relationship between leaders and followers.

3. Power, the basis of most approaches to leadership, is relatively useless when dealing with geeks. It’s not just that they can be recalcitrant (which they often are), but that the nature of power renders it . . . well . . . powerless. Power is the ability to effect the behavior of others, but geeks don’t deliver value through behavior. They deliver value mostly through thought rather than action, so their behavior has relatively little effect on their productivity. And because most theories of leadership are based on notions of political, organizational, or social power, they don’t work too well with geeks.

If you want, or need, to lead geeks, you’ve got to jettison lots of what you already think about leadership and start over. This book will introduce you to the world of geek leadership and answer these and other questions:

• Who are geeks?
• What role do they play in today’s businesses?
• How do geeks add value?
• How is their work structured and delivered?
• How can they be led and managed?
• How can they be integrated into the wider business organization?
• How can I improve the productivity of technology and technology workers?
• What can I do to motivate them?
• How are they different from other employees?
• Why are they so difficult to manage?

Although my primary experience is in the information technology arena, I focus here on issues common to all geekwork. Many of the principles and ideas discussed are equally applicable to scientific arenas such as biotech or pure research institutions. Many also apply to other forms of knowledge-intensive work, such as advertising, consulting, law, and architecture.

Who Will Benefit from This Book

This book is intended as a how-to guide for those who lead, manage, oversee, invest, or participate in technology projects. This is not a book about how to program a computer, install hardware, integrate software, select databases, design user interfaces, or even manage projects. This is a book about how to lead the people, the geeks, who do these essential things in your organization.

For executives who have become increasingly dependent on technology and the geeks who deliver technology for their success, this book will introduce you to the world of geeks, giving you the basic tools that you will need to integrate both technology and geeks into your organization.

For managers of nontechnological groups, this book will help you better understand and forge productive partnerships with geeks in all parts of the organization. Whether or not you are directly responsible for their day-to-day supervision, you need their help to get your job done.

For executives and managers within technological organizations, this book will help clarify your role as a manager and leader of these unique and critical people. It will help you move past simply managing technology and tasks and on to leading people. It will also help you to better align your organization with your client’s needs and the organization’s opportunities to leverage technology.

For project managers or aspiring project managers, this book provides foundational information that you’ll need to deliver technology projects. Most project managers overemphasize the use of task lists, Gantt charts, budgets, and schedules as the means to successful project delivery, but these are just tools. Ultimately, all projects succeed or fail based on the work of people—the work of geeks who must be led, not just managed.

For human resource professionals, this book will help with the selection, hiring, counseling, and career development of technical people and organizations.

And for venture capitalists and board members of technical enterprises, this book will help you assess the leadership approach and potential of the companies that you either oversee or choose to invest in.

What’s in This Book

The book is organized into four parts, each focusing on one facet of geek leadership.

In the Overview, “The Challenge of Geeks,” Chapter One explores the roles of geeks and leaders within organizations.

Part One, “The Context of Geek Leadership,” surveys several facets of the relationship among geeks, geekwork, leaders, and the organizations in which they live. The part introduction sets out the first of two primary models around which the book is structured: the Context of Geek Leadership model. Chapters Two and Three explore the distinctive culture of geeks, identifying patterns in the beliefs and behavior of individual geeks and the effects on geeks of working in groups. Chapter Four describes the uniqueness of the intricate, technical knowledge work performed by geeks and its effects on the relationship between geeks and leaders. And Chapter Five offers a model describing the twelve ways that knowledge workers deliver value to the organization. If you want to lead geeks, this will help you understand where to lead them.

Part Two covers the role and responsibilities of the geek leader. The part introduction sets out the second of the major models around which the book is structured: the Content of Geek Leadership model. Chapter Six discusses geek motivation and what leaders can do about it. Chapter Seven describes how geek leaders operate within their groups. Chapter Eight explores the geek leader’s role in representing geeks to the world outside the cubicle. Chapter Nine introduces the subject of managing ambiguity and the hierarchy of ambiguity that must be resolved to lead successfully. It also discusses managing environmental ambiguity by exploring the broad, general questions that must be considered when helping to make sense of the environment in which geeks and leaders work. Chapter Ten sets out the questions that must be considered when structuring groups of geeks within an organization. And Chapter Eleven describes the geek leader’s role in helping individuals be productive.

Chapter Twelve in the Conclusion discusses the tools that geek leaders use to transform the chaos of the creative workplace into a coherent and compelling place for geeks. The References section offers other resources for learning about the topics covered in the book. And finally, the Appendix collects in a single convenient place the checklists and models referenced throughout the book.