Do yourself a favour and check out this podcast on Westrum organizational culture. The piece on 'Technological Maestro' really stood out for me. I explore it and Westrum organizational culture in this blog post. Let's credit Gene Kim and Dr. Ron Westrum for this fantastic content.
What is Westrum organizational culture?
I’m a big fan of the DORA (DevOps Research Assessment) program that has been running for several years. One of the organisational culture models used in that study was created by Dr. Westrum who is a sociologist. He talks about 3 types of companies: Pathological, Bureaucratic and Generative. Westrum organizational culture is based how the flow of information in a company can indicate company culture. Organisational culture is widely covered in the excellent book: Accelerate by Forsgren, Kim & Humble.
(Source: Ron Westrum, "A typology of organisation culture)," BMJ Quality & Safety 13, no. 2 (2004),doi:10.1136/qshc.2003.009522.)
My opinion is that this is a groundbreaking model to describe organisational culture as we think about software delivery.
What is a technological maestro?
The second idea introduced by Gene and Dr. Westrum is the term 'Technological Maestro':
So let's look at the characteristic of a technological maestro. This is a term that is used in history of technology a lot, technological maestro. So first of all, you're dealing with somebody who has very high energy, that's critical. The second thing is they know what questions to ask, that's critical. The third thing is they're good on the details too, and that's unexpected. You don't usually expect people who are good on the big things to be good on small things. But they also have to have a high standard and they have to be willing to get immersed in the activity itself…..
In a generative organization, you have good people at the top because they know what they know, and if the people at the top don't know what they don't know, that's a very dangerous situation to be in…..It is even more profound by something else that Dr. Westrum mentioned, which is Rabinow's Rule Number 23 of Leadership, which is if you have a dope at the top, you will have, or soon will have dopes all the way down.
Transcript from the podcast, “The Idealcast with Gene Kim, featuring Dr. Ron Westrum”.
A Technological Maestro or “dope at the top”?
By peeling back the attributes, you can ask a good question about your organisation. If you work in the dog grooming industry, the boss needs to know about dog grooming. How does the boss of your company shape up to these attributes. Do they:
1/ have high energy?
2/ know what questions to ask?
3/ are they good on the details?
Technological Maestro doesn’t mean your boss is a Kubernetes expert (remember the term is over 50 years old). It means they know the business, the people and they have expertise. The expertise here is 'deep detail'. If you are a software development company, your boss should be an expert in software development - past and present.
Generic managers shouldn’t rise too far up the company. If generic managers start to run the company, mediocrity can take over the organisation. In other words, the existence of the company becomes more important than the purpose. Senior executives/bosses should have leadership capabilities and deep expertise. It's the classic case of leadership over management.
The key takeaway for Westrum organizational culture:
As Dr Westrum points out, the flip side to a Technological Maestro is having “a dope at the top”. They are likely to hire or promote other "dopes". This can slowly rot the organisation. I don't actually like the "dope" phrase, a lack of expertise is not stupidity. I don't believe that someone who runs a company is a "dope". A better was to describe it is that a person lacking expertise is damaging.
For employees, it’s a great way to size up your organisation by simply asking - "does the boss get it? Your boss could be a “nice person” or a “mean salesperson”. However, if they don't have the right expertise, then you could be in the wrong organisation.
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