Early in my career, I was asked to manage a new, small group of programmers. Our job was to build a new modern portfolio theory (MPT) product for mid-market investors. We divided up the project into logical parts and each person was assigned a section to code. I was the overall architect and also did some of the coding. I had established myself as a quick and facile FORTRAN jock (the financial programming language of the day!) I could code better and faster than anyone. That was the problem.
One day, I was checking some of the code that Kathy, our portfolio input environment (PIE) coder had completed. I saw that some of her code could be improved and expanded. So late one night I did. The next day she saw the changes and was very upset. "What were you doing?" "I thought I had responsibility for coding that piece?" she complained. She was right.
I learned a very important lesson. I call it the first law of management. When you can do something better and faster than anyone else, you need bite your tongue, sit on you hands and let others do it. You'll never leverage your self as a manager unless you can accomplish things through others. So resist the temptation, and don't do what others can do, even if you are a jock. |