What if developers could choose their manager? Not in that mystical sense like a child picking her parents. More like how a rock band chooses a manager. Or the way that an individual chooses a career coach. What if organizations had a pool of managers, or coaches, and developers or development teams could determine which one would do the best job of elevating their strengths and mitigating their weaknesses? As a manager, would that change the way you approach your role? I think it would. Think about what an arrangement like that could do:
Create a loosely coupled relationship between the manager and developer activities.
Create a tightly coupled relationship between the manager and developer success.
Incent the manager to credit the developer with successes.
Foster a servant-leader mindset in the manager.
Turn managers in coaches.
Foster creativity among development teams.
I think this would be an interesting experiment. Who’s in? @johnkrewson