Prophet management

Take a currently trending management framework, or your favorite one, and start applying it fanatically "by-the-book". Focus on following the formal process in the first place. Do not take time to step back and think whether the chosen framework is a good fit at all, and if so how it should be adjusted for the benefit of the team.
Prophet management - Teamleadsky
How does this anti-pattern impact the team?
  • Impact
    The team spends a lot of time and effort on trying to fit their activities into the imposed formal procedures. Gaming the system becomes business as usual. Eventually team members shift their focus from striving to achieve the goals of the organization to getting around the formalities.

    This anti-pattern impairs the ability of the team to Deliver.
How can you spot this anti-pattern?
  • Signals
    • "We have too many meetings!"
    • "Let's just write something in the meeting notes."
    • "Our Plannings are not aligned at all with the other teams."

    These signals are the "red flags", that indicate it is worth taking a closer look to check whether the anti-pattern is present.
Let's review this anti-pattern on different levels:
  • Events
    On the level of events we can say, that: "Most of the participants in that meeting were not contributing or looking interested in the topic."
  • Patterns
    On the level of patterns we can notice that Project Managers always postpone working on the artifacts used in planning till the latest possible time.
  • Systems
    On the level of systems we can state that "Introducing the rules that are not matching the nature of the tasks or the needs of the team members creates unnecessary additional effort and reduces the capacity of the team."
  • Mental Models
    On the level of mental models we might discover that the management applies one-size-fits all approach for the teams of different specializations: Engineering, Data, UX, etc.
Written by Alex
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