Category:
Empowerment & Delegation (30)

The Delegation Checklist

In their book Behind Closed Doors Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby published a handy checklist that you can use for delegation of tasks. ...

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Choosing Authority Levels for Team Members

Empowerment is often incorrectly perceived as a binary choice. Either you empower someone, or you don’t. In reality, your options are m...

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Reduce Your Fear, Increase Your Status

Some managers don’t like the idea of empowering people. They fear a loss of authority, power, and control. They also fear competition w...

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Why We Delegate: The Darkness Principle

From a complexity perspective, there is a good reason why teams in an organization must be able to make decisions together. This follows ...

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Self-Organization vs. Evolution

I sometimes notice a bit of confusion about evolution and self-organization, leading to such silly remarks as “Our team evolved to a te...

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Self-Organization vs. Anarchy

Jim Highsmith and David Snowden think that self-organization is different from anarchy. They say that self-organization (in a social cont...

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Self-Organization = Anarchy (Part 3)

In part 1 and part 2 of this multi-post article I told you that self-organization does not distinguish between valuable and harmful resul...

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Self-Organization = Anarchy (Part 2)

In part 1 of this multi-post article I explained that self-organization has built the universe and everything in it, from quarks to straw...

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Self-Organization = Anarchy (Part 1)

In the beginning there was nothing. And then something formed quarks. And the quarks organized themselves into composite particles, like ...

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Empowered, Whether You Like It or Not

Today a decision had to be made. We have three big new projects, and we have two locations in which to execute these projects. Obviously,...

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The 2nd Law of Software Development

In a previous blog post I wrote about the 1st Law of Software Development. This law deals with each manager’s concern to make sure that...

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A Team of Leaders (and No Manager)

Every year, in late October or early November, I enjoy a one-week vacation with seven friends in a cottage in the Belgian Ardennes. (OK, ...

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