The elves leave middle earth

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I just stumbled across a great article about the difficult transition from a startup into a more sustainable business.

The elves leave middle earth

I'm currently working in a place that is going through this change in the IT organization. Right now, we have a mixed team of heros and good performers.

A key problem I'm having is that one of the managers is having a tremendously difficult time even fathoming the difference between these two modes. As a former hero coder, he spends his time fiddling around with code and inventing new "cool" requirements and almost zero time even thinking about how to keep the team performing.

This has the predictable side effect of the team faltering and thrashing while this person sits around and bemoans how slow and confused the team is. Where I'm going is that if you're going to decide to change modes, you need to make sure you have a management team that is able to function in that mode. If it's necessary to move folks in/out of management to make things a good fit, don't be afraid to do so... waiting just causes MORE problems.

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