The importance of geek leadership

April 30, 2009

Lack of geek leadership is crushing American business. The inability of "suits" to relate to and motivate geeks denies business of needed innovation. The lack of will by geeks to hone skills to exercise leadership stifles careers and further erodes geek influence on business. If you are a packager, packaging machine builder or converter, you need geeks and geek leadership to drive your business into the future. Geeks and suits need to take responsibility for providing the unique sort of leadership I'll call Geek Leadership.

I've spent a long time being a geek, working with geeks and leading geeks. Over the years I've observed and learned a lot on this topic. A colleague of mine recently loaned me a copy of Paul Glen's book Leading Geeks. As I read this book, I found myself wishing that I had written it. Glen organized on paper those principles and strategies that I've used through the years as I have tried to bridge the gaps between people and technology and between technology and business. If you are a geek aspiring to leadership or you are a leader working with geeks, I recommend this book to you.

At various times in my career, packaging colleagues have made comments to me like: "leading geeks is like herding cats"; or "when I'm with a bunch of geeks, I just wish that there was another adult in the room"; or "geeks have no understanding of the real needs of business";or "these geeks never get aligned with the plant's priorities". Geeks, on the other hand, will be heard to say things like; "these guys don't understand anything but a dollar" or "management doesn't understand that all good ideas eventually degenerate into real work"; or "when the suits walk by, their feet don't even touch the ground". If you've ever heard comments like these, you've witnessed the need for improved geek leadership.

While reading Leading Geeks, I was engaged in visiting high schools and colleges to encourage new education programs in packaging-oriented mechatronics. At one of these schools, I spied a brochure that described a course that was obviously referencing Glen's book. However, as I read the description, I realized that like many people and organizations, this course got it backwards. The goal should not be to make geeks better followers. The goals should be to make business leaders better leaders of geeks and to help those geeks with the desire for leadership to become better geek leaders.

It has been reported that HR recruiters will pass over the best and brightest engineers or technicians to find someone who is less geeky -- they might say 'a better fit for the organization'. Geeks, spend their days with ambiguity and who tend to frame everything in terms of problems to be solved, might respond that "suits can only manage what they already understand". In an age where we celebrate diversity of all types, why are we not better leveraging the geeks within our organizations to drive innovation and productivity?

I hope that many of my readers will seek to learn more about geek leadership. Some may even want some outside assistance in bridging the people, technology, business gaps. Either way, let me leave you with some pointers.

* Geeks and geek work are different from the people and work done in most business environments.
* Geek leadership is more than applying some prescriptive principles. It involves a process of building trust and respect where power will not suffice.
* For geeks, ambiguity is the norm and innovation is their work. For suits the norm is to eliminate ambiguity and innovation represents time away from their work.
* Too much has been written and taught about making geeks better followers. This is not about following, it's about leading.
* Don't think that you need to be involved in IT to be concerned about geek leadership. Geeks were pursuing the advancement of knowledge long before IT and will be doing so long after the information age over.
* Innovation occurs at intersections: intersections of technologies, philosophies; personalities, etc. Real problems are solved by people who can see and embrace the opportunities that an intersection provides. Leaders create intersections.

Will improved geek leadership aid your business?

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Comments

Keith:

Great post!!

There's a Chinese saying (a paraphrase), "Don't get mad when the dog chases the cat. It's in his nature." I've always been intrigued with leaders that can manage geeks (one of my friends calls them "misfits"). Often the critical trait in those leaders is acceptance of the "nature" of the individual and the protection of it. You're spot on with your insight.

Most "suits" want things to be orderly, on schedule, and under budget. Don't ever ask a geek to meet these criteria. They'll fail. But, give them a challenge and the environment to "play" in and watch their genius.

The Chinese see the world in yin and yang terms (opposite, yet balanced). It's too bad us westerners can't figure this out.

Thanks again for the post.

Posted by: Mark V. Ewing on May 1, 2009

Been involved with product production since the first floppy disks.
Read your sketch on the Geeks in business and took some mental notes.
Geeks in a production base shop fit into this type of people scenero. Those who think up the project, those who try to figgure out how to do the project and those who inspect the product before shipment. Unless a shop is totally automated lights out push a button, there is a some kind of supervisior and a crew to get the work out. Those are the men whose job it is to get the work out the door and make products to fill the sales orders. They know their jobs and how to run the equipment. In most part they do their jobs well and do not appreciate a geek
changing or adjusting things in new and interesting ways.
Geeks have a tendency to find little faults in things that lead to big shake ups in production. They look under high powered microscopes and find things wrong with our world and in turn shut it down. Geeks create computer virus problems, not button pushing handle pulling people like us. We want the presses to run the ink to print the folders to fold and the glue to glue and get packages on the foodstuffs that need to be sealed to protect them from the green in the universe. You know stuff like mold and mildew and other microbeal contaminants.

Posted by: John Edgerton on May 1, 2009

yes the geek menace(g.invasion) was especialy set up to attack the ing.vasion and they the ing.'s are fiting back with the power of there pincky ring with the help of e.(cono)micks..they are the ones running the banks who run the world..What a mess!

Posted by: jedi on May 1, 2009

I totally relate - but from a sales developer perspective. All my life I have been chided for not being a good follower. And truly, being a follower never even crossed my mind when indeed I was a leader even 38 years ago when I as a high school senior.

My spirit is to lead with passion to the beat of my drum, not someone else's rhythm. The better part of my adult life, I have worn a marketing/new business sales developer hat. Many a sales manager or general manager has spoken of the task of managing sales people - and the frustration therein.

Where as, I believe if a salesperson or geek require heavy handed 'managing,' then the person inflicting the managing does not get it. Or perhaps, they have hired the wrong person for the job if that geek or salesperson is not getting the job done.

What often is the real issue is not the language - it is the comprehension of the role the geek brings to the organization! Without them, the suits do not have a job.

Mutual value and respect in the form of allowing others (who are different from you... no matter which side of the street you reside on) to enjoy human respect for what they bring, what they provide to the company and grasping that they are crucial to the big picture. And I do mean respect: esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: "I have great respect for her judgment." The condition of being esteemed or honored: "To be held in respect."

I say thank you for the geeks, for the plant foreman, for the accountant, for the guy in shipping and the gal on the assembly line. Thank you for it being them and not me, leave me to the job of 'sales slime" and the other individuals to do what suits them and what they do best. Without each of us, nothing gets packaged. Never say never and continue the ongoing quality and improvement process, for if it is stagnant - it must be dead.

Posted by: Sher Van Cleve on May 3, 2009

About Keith Campbell

Leaders learn from the past while looking to the future - and bring both to bear on the here and now. This is the philosophy that has steered Keith Campbell's 30+ years in manufacturing. It has worked for him in operations, maintenance, engineering, R&D, education, consulting and professional organizations--and now he's putting it to work for you--taking you to the edge of his thoughts on packaging operations.

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The importance of geek leadership

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