DeMarco’s Law of Bad Management: “If something isn’t working, do more of it.”
Coté’s Variant: “If a person isn’t working out, work more with them.”
Which, of course, is the flip-side of The Kinman Doctrine.
Advertisement
DeMarco’s Law of Bad Management: “If something isn’t working, do more of it.”
Coté’s Variant: “If a person isn’t working out, work more with them.”
Which, of course, is the flip-side of The Kinman Doctrine.
I’m confused by the Cote variant. Are you saying your variant is an example of bad management, or are you saying your variant is an example of how things should be done? Do you consider the Kinman Doctrine an example of good management or bad management.
Yeah, as with DeMarco’s law, the idea of the variant is a “negative” rule. The “positive” of it would be “if someone isn’t working out, stop working with them.”
I consider both good management when needed. Obviously, if (a.) the person can be trained or made better, than you try that first, but, (b.) if they cannot be trained or “fixed” in the time desired, you’re just hurting yourself by keeping them on.
As the 37signals guy (he’s just the latest to point it out, many others have) has pointed out, bad people (both technically and “emotionally”) are infectous: they’ll bring down the rest of your org.
Thanks for the clarification, and yes, I agree to a point. I’ve seen time and time again where an employee/employer separation turns out to be a good thing for both parties. In many cases, the employee is unhappy but is unable to trigger the separation due to inertia.
p.s. Neither of these comments showed up on Bloglines using this RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cote-comments.