How To Lead A Team Of Grumpy Programmers
The account team used to call the developer room ‘Mordor’.
The creatives, who considered themselves the real rockstars in my agency, avoided that room like it was a quarantine area. The account executives engaged with developers only when absolutely necessary, and often told me that they hated their grumpy team-mates.
I used to run a digital marketing agency, from 2003 to 2016. We operated out of Cape Town and Johannesburg and serviced clients on four continents. Our full team consisted of managers, creatives and developers.
The developer team was made up of front end and back end developers.
Our clients consisted of blue-chip organizations like Hyundai, Apple (in Africa, represented by Core Group), Foschini, Virgin, Vodafone and several listed services companies.
In order to look after those clients, we had a team of Account Executives. These were usually smart people, primarily women, who were able to communicate well and ensure the projects were going to plan.
These account executives used to deal with the most difficult personalities you could imagine. Heads of marketing at big firms who were under constant pressure all the time. These were scary individuals who could intimidate the most competent executives.
However, the thing that scared my client service team the most was not dealing with clients. It was going back to the developer team, in Mordor, to provide feedback for project updates.
The door to Mordor was shut most of the time and there was a deep division in our ranks.
The programming team was led by a particularly thorny guy called John, who poured scorn on anyone who said anything that appeared remotely stupid to him. The other developers took his lead, and would often disrupt meetings to make silly comments, laughing sarcastically at the account team reports and sighing in a loud exaggerated way when feedback was provided.
It got out of control, to the extent that John threatened to resign ‘under duress from the stupidity of the team’.
My business partner and I decided to find out what was going on. After confronting them one by one, we realized something extraordinary. These super-smart individuals, who were showing off their intelligence and beating their chests at meetings, were actually deeply anxious about their jobs. They cared deeply about the projects, their work and the outcomes. However, each time the account or creative team came back to them with changes, they saw clearly that their process was not appreciated or fully understood.
No one took the time to ‘get’ them.
They had simply become the hired guns that could make anything happen. No one cared *how* they worked their mysterious magic. The programming team felt isolated and misunderstood.
After that, we undertook to ensure everyone in the broader team respected and understood the development process in detail - and the ramifications of making changes. We did not have to learn programming, but we all had to understand it - and most importantly, understand the process. At the same time, we encouraged everyone in the larger team to focus on their own processes and how they connected and overlapped with others.
As a result, the team became more unified and productive. Our work was nominated for a ton of awards, and we even coaxed the developers out of ‘Mordor’ every now and then to fraternize with the rest of the team.
John, the ring-leader who threatened to leave, stayed for 8 years. He is an amazing guy and remains a good friend to my business partner and me.
My advice on leading programmers is three-fold.
1. Get really good at the thing that you do, whatever it is, whether it’s management, creative or sales. If you’re in charge of a project, then learn everything you can about project management techniques. If you’re a creative, then don’t be lazy - get up to date with design trends, techniques and thinking. If you’re a leader, be clear and concise about your communication, avoid fluff and provide clear rationale and logic for your instructions. Developers will respect you for being on top of your game.
2. At the same time, lean in and understand back-end programming, enough to ‘get it’ - and then speak to them on their terms. If you get them, they will get on with the project.
3. Be calm and confident about your communication. and ask questions about stuff you’re unsure about. If you’re inauthentic, unsure and anxious about your own role in your organisation, they’ll sniff it out in a nanosecond. It’s doubtful decent developer will respect someone who doesn’t have self-respect.
Turns out, Mordor isn’t such a bad place after all.
Pic courtesy of Mo Alzway (https://www.pexels.com/@zway) on Pexels.com
