October 7, 2010 - Managing the 'Manager Effect'

If you've spent some time working for a technology company, you may be familiar with a phenomenon known as the “Manager Effect” – what appears to be perfectly stable technology suddenly falls apart the moment a manager enters the lab, or asks for a demo of your work.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve tested your design in –40 C conditions, and bombarded it with every wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum except those that could cause you to grow an extra limb. If there’s a flaw to be discovered, The Manager Effect will find it.

Likewise with software – you may have supplied enough donuts to convince four of your smartest coworkers to read every line of your code, but be assured, the Manager Effect will quickly tease out that “blue screen of death,” or as my economics majoring daughter calls them – the beloved crash dump.

Technology companies often combat this problem in a simple fashion – they ban managers from the lab. They also keep them far away from code developers. After all, managers don’t do “real work” any more, do they?

I used to buy into this philosophy too, until I became a manager and started doing whatever managers do. At some point in your career, you'll probably find yourself in this situation.

If you are now a manager, you were probably promoted because you were a good designer, and exercising your creativity gave you a lot of pleasure. Companies often promote their best designers into management. But then their talents are no longer utilized, just as cities are often built on what was once the best farmland.

I don’t mean to imply that you’re a field of dirt, although the words “dust to dust” will be applying to you sooner or later. Yes, I’ll try to focus. Sorry.

I have faced this dilemma. I would like to continue participating in our design projects, but I don’t want be seen as meddling in the work of our engineers. But how can I do this?

1) Find bugs before your customers do

Companies spend heavily on field trials or beta tests, asking trusted customers to discover remaining product bugs. Use the Manager Effect to find bugs before they reach your customers. Venture into your lab, encourage your designers to give you demos, reject their pleas for you to go back to marketing for another martini.

2) Extend your life

If you’re no longer actively in design, try and continue to read about and understand your technology. You will likely extend your life, and your brain will function longer so you can remember your extended life. The great book You, the Owner’s Manual cites many examples where continuing to use your brain, especially for things that you’re passionate about, will statistically extend your life span.

3) Extend your career

Growing up in Toronto, I recall observing work crews during annual construction season. There would be one worker digging a hole, while several supervisors watched him or her to ensure hole quality. Someday I would be one of those supervisors, I thought, freed of hole-digging duties.

Many people had the same idea, and now we find too many supervisors and not enough workers. This shortage of workers (in our case engineers) has made them the most valuable people in our company.

Great engineers are hard to find. One of our best engineers is my former boss in a previous life who decided he liked inventing stuff much more than managing people. You will always be in demand if you keep your creative talent up to date.

4)The "do everything" CEO

Ottawa has a marvelous abundance of technology CEOs, many of whom built their companies with minimal financing and plenty of resistance from cynics. They are now quietly thriving with very healthy businesses that few people know about. I wish I could name them here, but I’m sure I’d be offside on some privacy bylaw. Ottawa also has way too many bylaws.

The one caution I offer is to be careful about controlling every aspect of the company. This is essentially the Manager Effect gone wild. I’ve met a number of Ottawa technology CEOs who still hang on to five or more titles: CEO, CTO, VP of product management, VP of sales, VP of marketing, and so on.

This may ensure that the entire company culture is exactly the way you want it, but it may stop your employees from giving you the value they’re capable of. It will also stop you from ever having a decent vacation.

Michael Wakim is founder and CEO of Fidus Systems, an electronic product development company with design groups in Ottawa, Toronto, and Milpitas, Calif.