The Evolving Worker

Here’s a common story: Joe works as part of a team and trials what seems to be a useful tool (some mind-mapping software for instance).

During the trial, Joe shares the discovery with the rest of the team – as he falls in love with the benefits provided by the tool.

Pretty soon, a good part of the team, including the team-leader, find that it would be a useful addition to their tool set.

So far so good.

The Purchase Wall

The next step is often “nothing happens”. In many organizations, the team (including the team-lead) has no way to carry out a purchase by itself. To buy an interesting product, the team often has to:

• go through a complicated and somewhat discouraging buying process involving a 5 steps workflow
• alternatively, bug the person (usually the boss) who has a company credit card – who is busy as hell working on totally different topics

Pros: the budget is under strict control! Cons: the team may stop asking for purchases because the process is too painful or slow. Or the guy with the credit card may end up doing more administrative work than his own work. Either way, not very interesting.

Breaking The Wall: Controlled Delegation

Here’s a solution that is often suggested in time-management trainings or in books like the 4-hour work-week.

The idea is to achieve controlled delegation: make a deal between the team and the boss to define a specific amount (or monthly amount) under which the expense should be carried out by the team without even asking the boss.

(note that it doesn’t mean that the boss cannot ask for a budgetary situation).

The benefits are:

• the team can more easily adopt new tools that foster innovation, overall productivity or well-being
• the payer frees some time and can focus on what he would like to focus on, as he doesn’t have to handle the purchase process for “small” purchases
• the payer stays in control of the budget

The reasoning behind this tip is simple: put the people in position to make decisions by themselves, as they have the knowledge of their needs.

More recommended reading on “Team Empowering” and such principles

If you like this kind of idea, be sure to read Implementing Lean Software Development (Mary and Tom Poppendieck).

This book contains a lot of advices on team empowering (not specifically for software teams), value stream mapping, reducing waste and many more interesting principles.