Hackman’s authority matrix and the self-managed team

I’ve always said I want to work ON the team rather than IN the team. So a self-managing team feels like the sweet spot to me.

The problem is that it goes against the grain of what people consider “manager responsibilities.” So even if the team is functional and happy and shipping value, the manager feels like they’re doing half of the job if they aren’t monitoring and managing the work.

It then becomes the manager’s responsibility to prove that letting the team self-manage is actually best for everyone. This can take a lot of paths: team health surveys, growth metrics, consistently shipping, nailing OKRs, retention, whatever. Make a cute little dashboard if you have to.

I need to do a better job of this.