Making the Case for Middle Management with Dennis Stevens

Dennis Stevens joins drunkenpm for a deep dive into the challenges faced by middle management in organizational change. Dennis argues that Agile and transformation efforts often fail because they treat middle managers as a roadblock, when in fact, these managers are simply victims of a badly designed system. The core idea is that companies shouldn't try to eliminate these roles but must instead design specific organizational "containers" and routines that force middle managers to leverage human nature (like self-interest and competition) to drive innovation. The goal is to shift strategy from a static plan to a dynamic process that lives in the interactions between people, ensuring all the work being done is strategically aligned, measurable, and ultimately successful.

You can find the podcast here: https://tinyurl.com/4tp8hcct

Links From The Intro

Productivity Survival with Mark Kilby and Dave Prior 

• https://www.tickettailor.com/events/markkilby/1905697

No One is Coming to Save You

• Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/yhdk785j
• Leanpub: https://leanpub.com/surfthechaos

When Your Team Members Also Report to Other Teams w Dan Eberle

In this episode of the podcast, Agile Coach Dan Eberle is back to help me respond to a student question that is complicated, confusing, and more common than it should be…

Ivan (not the person’s real name) explained the situation like this… 

Six Product Owners/Developers oversee 20 reports within the org. Each of the reports has a specialized role. They are broken up into teams that range in size from 1-5 people, and the team size tends to fluctuate. Some of the Product Owners/Developers oversee teams and are also the people managers of the individuals on the team. Some of the team members report to people managers who are Product Owner/Developers of other teams, team members of other teams, or people completely outside the grouping of 6 + 20. There is competition for the attention/efforts of team members who are allocated to more than one project and/or reporting to a people manager who has different priorities than the PO/Dev they are assigned to work with. 

You can find the interview here.