Becoming a Technical Leader

An Organic Problem-Solving Approach

by Gerald M. Weinberg

Number of pages: 304

Publisher: Dorset House Publishing

BBB Library: Leadership, Business Classics

ISBN: 978-0932633026



About the Author

For more than half a century, Gerald Weinberg has worked on transforming software organizations, particularly emphasizing the interaction of technical and human issues. After spending between 1956 and 1969 as software developer, researcher, teacher, and designer of software curricula at IBM, he and his anthropologist wife, Dani Weinberg (see her bio for more about Dani), formed the consulting firm of Weinberg & Weinberg to help software engineering organizations manage the change process in a more fully human way.

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Editorial Review

You may not consider yourself a leader, but if you take some time thinking about your daily activities, you might discover that you are. Don’t believe? Here are some examples that may convince you: If you are good at your job to the extent that your co-workers ask for your advice, if you were selected to sit in a meeting or a committee to discuss an issue, or if you had ideas you wanted to share with your company, or even further papers or books writing, then you are a technical leader.

Book Reviews

“This book will likely change the way you think and feel about leadership, and that's is the necessary first step to change the way you act about it. There is no point in acting by following a set of formulas or steps if you don't really believe in them. I would absolutely recommend it to anybody who wants to become a (better) technical leader.” — Mariano Korman

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Wisdom to Share

Successful leaders employ a general style that is called problem-solving leadership. They focus on the process of innovation.

When time and labor are running short, stop working on new ideas and just pitch in.

Measure quality as the project proceeds. All great chefs taste the food during preparation.

Check ideas with the customer before implementation. It's not a success if customer won't pay for it.

Set back from the project to refresh your perspective. The earlier the doomed project is abandoned, the more the money and effort are saved.

Understanding the experiences of others expands our choices.

The only way you can know how it feels to grow as a leader is through your own experience and through other people’s autobiographical accounts.

The best-designed working groups are those in which leadership comes from everybody, not merely from the appointed leader.

Technical leaders possess great power in our society, but they are neither demons nor angels. They are ordinary people who happen to possess an effective approach to problem solving that is based on leadership through innovation.

The inability to see ourselves as others see us is the number one obstacle to self-development. To get rid of it, you should recruit others to help you by watching your behavior and stating it to you.

Every mistake is a new idea, if seen by a mind prepared to use it.