alt Hacker NewsThere's a big difference between protecting a team from all the shit and hiding it from them completely.
It's good to be a transparent shit umbrella. The team should absolutely have visibility into what's going on, and understand why certain decisions are being made, but a good manager does need to step in to avoid the shit hitting them directly.
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simonw • today at 6:01 PM
"Transparent shit umbrella" is indeed a much more useful metaphor.
Love the idea of the transparent shit umbrella.
Some people advocate keeping the team inside and telling them it's raining. But how far does that go? Are you keeping them in an underground bunker? Or is it a room with a window? A skyscraper with floor to ceiling windows surrounding them?
I'm of the mind that if it's possible, the team needs to be outside in the shit rain while protected by the shit umbrella. But they need to FEEL the weather, not just see it or vaguely know of it, but still protected enough to be able to get to where they need to go.
Of course, what if the shit storm is overwhelming and coming in sideways, or if it's flooding shit, so that even with protection, everyone is stuck in a quagmire? Well, obviously, don't actually let them go outside, but 1) the company has much bigger, likely existential problems it needs to deal with, and 2) the team REALLY needs to know.
Needless to say, this all applies more to decently high functioning organizations, but not to completely dysfunctional ones. When it's a nuclear winter outside, everyone is bought into the idea of staying in the bunker and just keeping calm and carrying on regardless of how bad it is outside. There's nowhere to go, you're there just to survive.