The best manager I ever worked for built a winning team of EEs, MEs, software engineers, technicians, etc.
The team worked together to design a winning product that comprised electronics, fluid systems, mechanisms, structures and such, and then a second generation product that was even better.
It was never apparent in conversation, nor in technical discussion with that manager, that he had NO degree.
He was smart, and clever.
All of the team members had been rejected by other managers, which was how they became available to him.
So, how did he make a winning team out of 'losers'?
The secret was incredibly simple:
He assigned each person to do only things they were demonstrably good at.
... and he assigned another person to cover each member's weaknesses.
So everybody was doing something they could do well, and nobody was doing anything poorly.
I wish the story had a happy ending; it does not.
Top Management (I use that phrase as a pejorative) completely misunderstood
what he had done, and especially how he had done it.
The team was broken up, and each member was assigned to work for a different manager,
(almost none of whom had ever managed to come up with a successful product)
as if the 'magic' was somehow distributive to the individual participants.
Of course none of the other teams got any better.
The more highly compensated team members got caught in the next layoff,
and that best manager was forced into early retirement.
The company is now _much_ smaller than it was then...
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
