Saturday, April 17, 2004

Management versus Leadership on ‘The Apprentice’

So America sat glued to its TV sets on Thursday night to see Bill, the entrepreneur, win and Kwame, the Harvard MBA, lose in the final episode of The Apprentice. As The Houston Chronicle reports, it is really hard for us in the audience to judge the result due to the shows editing. We clearly didn’t have all the facts. However, it was very obvious in the end why Kwame didn’t win. He lacked leadership. It was a theme over several shows. His cool, unflappable, trained manager, Ivy League MBA style might have been full of delegation and empowerment, but he wasn’t prepared to provide the leadership, direction and example when it mattered. When his team was flustered and confused filled with ambiguity, uncertainty and doubt, Kwame didn’t step in and show them how he wanted it done.

Management is an essential skill in business but it cannot go without leadership. The season of The Apprentice showed us why and how leadership matters. What does this teach us in the software business?

I discussed this once before - my belief that all good software development managers have to have come from a strong coding background, whilst some others believe that the problem with managers in software development is precisely because they did come from a development background and have no management training. I feel The Apprentice has reinforced my belief that leadership is essential and in software to be a leader, you need to carry the respect of the geeks who work under you. To do that you need respect as a technically accomplished individual who can step-in and show them how and why. Managers can be trained. I’m not sure that is true of leaders. I feel leaders are born. So perhaps the correct recipe for a good manager in software development, is to find the talented developer with born leadership skill and train them as managers - coached by a mentor, someone who has learned good management practice and can provide Kwame-like coolness, delegation and empowerment, whilst maintaining the ability to jump-in, analyze, design and architect with the best.