> (1) Everyone needs to operate in good faith. I've observed leaders ask their direct reports for something off-hand, without giving it more than 5 seconds of thought. I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act. Don't be either of these type of people.
Operating in good faith is so important.
Leaders who operate by pushing the limits of what they can get away with are a stark contrast from leaders who operate to form good faith relationships with their team. Managers who make thoughtless demands all the time will steadily lose their best employees. In my experience, after a long enough time these leaders are reduced to having only juniors reporting to them because everyone with experience avoids the team.
Your description of “human command line” team members is a great example of bad faith operation, too. I’ve worked with people who thought they were so clever by demanding that even the smallest request be delivered through a form they created or a document they need people to fill out before they can get started, which they might try to debate, critique, or circulate for a couple days before they’ll even think about working on your small task. They think they’ve insulated themselves from small asks because nobody wants to go through all the trouble of asking the question just right to get them to acknowledge it, but over time they build a reputation as difficult to work with.
Another variant is the person who tries to exploit ambiguities in every request; These people have a good idea of what’s being asked of them, but they think they’re “teaching a lesson” by exploiting ambiguities in the request to deliver something that technically matches the letter of the request, but that everyone knows isn’t really what was needed or wanted.
Not coincidentally, most of the people I knew who tried these game found themselves laid off in the past year. I think people can tolerate a bad faith coworker who at least does some work for a while, but when it’s time to downsize they’re at the top of everyone’s list to remove.
I’ll add that poor managers inadvertently create a third variant of these employees by expecting them to “take the initiative“ but then “raking them over the coals” when it doesn’t go smoothly. It can devolve into a very unproductive environment where nothing gets done because the CYA requirements are extremely expensive, but nobody dares to move unless they’ve got their incredibly exact instructions in-hand.
>They think they’ve insulated themselves from small asks because nobody wants to go through all the trouble of asking the question just right to get them to acknowledge it, but over time they build a reputation as difficult to work with.
Sounds like they're completely right, then. "Don't bother Steve unless you really need something from him", which is exactly what he wants.
> Sounds like they're completely right, then. "Don't bother Steve unless you really need something from him", which is exactly what he wants.
Then why is Steve in a job in the first place? Such an attitude would find more traction in the contingent consulting world. At a job, where you're paid to deliver for your co-workers, it's asking to be laid off or fired.
You'd have to ask Steve. But he's still there, so the organization may just feel his idiosyncrasies are worth it. Maybe he does really impressive, reliable work when you just let him do his thing.
It's less important (and implausible) that everybody act as the same game theoretic agent than that the team understands everybody's idiosyncratic shape and can compose those shapes into productive patterns.
You usually have to do very good work to be a Steve and hang onto your job, but very good work is rare and valuable, so if you do deliver on it, you can often be more assertive and draw some of the boundaries that more marginal team members can't get away with. It works because real-world teams are more like an organic ecosystem than a mechanical gear system.
It turns out that Steve, in this scenario, is functioning just like a manager. He has outsized influence, and you have to be careful what you ask of him. With Steve, there are no free looks, and he has the power to stop whatever line of effort you're pursuing. On the other hand, he can activate your efforts, give them the needed bit of polish, and get them in front of the right people.
But Steve is an informal manager, so he better be sure that he has the tacit approval of the actual manager for the team, or his actual manager's manager. Otherwise he's not doing his job, and this will eventually put him in conflict with exactly the people who have control over him.
And if Steve is your direct report, you better keep the situation under control, or Steve will eventually have to be let go and you will be made to look stupid for letting a talented contributor fall out of step with the team.
As someone who did his fair share of project work across departments, first as resource and later as a manager type, people like Steve arw everywhere. And they are a pain to work with, have no real influence whatsoever. All they are is not enough of a nusiance to be delt with, which ultimately they will if their attics block the wrong people's project.
That being said, if I have to deal with the "command line" people by tellong them each and every step of the work they are supposed to do, more often than not I'm faster doing it myself. There are places for those people, places they actually provide a ton of value because strictly following procedure is paramount, things progress faster when people can get an assignment and everyone else can count a) the assigment being completed on time or b) everyone getting a heads if not.
Those other roles are tge easiest to automate, and by no means do they justify the salaries some people are expecting to be paid.
> But he's still there, so the organization may just feel his idiosyncrasies are worth it.
Alternately, he’s solely there because the HR requirements are onerous and take time, and he has dramatically misunderstood his importance and value. Or he used to do good work and thinks he is now irreplaceable because of domain knowledge.
In any case, as a manager, Steve is a needless disruption/drag and there is nearly no situation in which his work outshines his stated personality. The org would be better off without him.
Steve's job is emphatically NOT to prioritize delivery of solutions for arbitrary or ill-formed requests from co-workers! Saying "yes" to one such request requires saying "no" to everything else, including strategic priorities and commitments. And it invites more of the same. An organization that ignores the need to respect each others' time is dysfunctional. An employee who insists on clarity, instead of allowing half-baked interrupts to derail the work they're already engaged in, may simply be defending their ability to do their job.
Perhaps, but if you know how far to push it, it's not a bad strategy. If you're on a salary it's in your interest to do the minimum possible that won't get you fired, just like how it is in your employer's interest to pay you the minimum possible that will get you to do your job.
Operating in good faith is so important.
Leaders who operate by pushing the limits of what they can get away with are a stark contrast from leaders who operate to form good faith relationships with their team. Managers who make thoughtless demands all the time will steadily lose their best employees. In my experience, after a long enough time these leaders are reduced to having only juniors reporting to them because everyone with experience avoids the team.
Your description of “human command line” team members is a great example of bad faith operation, too. I’ve worked with people who thought they were so clever by demanding that even the smallest request be delivered through a form they created or a document they need people to fill out before they can get started, which they might try to debate, critique, or circulate for a couple days before they’ll even think about working on your small task. They think they’ve insulated themselves from small asks because nobody wants to go through all the trouble of asking the question just right to get them to acknowledge it, but over time they build a reputation as difficult to work with.
Another variant is the person who tries to exploit ambiguities in every request; These people have a good idea of what’s being asked of them, but they think they’re “teaching a lesson” by exploiting ambiguities in the request to deliver something that technically matches the letter of the request, but that everyone knows isn’t really what was needed or wanted.
Not coincidentally, most of the people I knew who tried these game found themselves laid off in the past year. I think people can tolerate a bad faith coworker who at least does some work for a while, but when it’s time to downsize they’re at the top of everyone’s list to remove.