A company is a living organism

My group leader has forgotten my name while giving a speech at my goodbye cake event. He vividly confirmed my impression that he cared most of the product but not of the people. Of course, the product gives life to a company so it’s necessary to take care of it but not only of it. The product is made by people. The company is made by people. People who search the market, people who implement products, people in a lot of different functionalities. A company is a living organism made by people in the same way the human body is made by cells.

The nervous system of a company is its leaders

The needs of the cells are captured by the nervous system. One part of it is the peripheral system covering the whole body and the other is the central system comprising the spinal cord and the brain. Can you imagine how your body would be without its nervous system? The body of a company has also its own nervous system. The peripheral one is built by Team leaders, Group leaders, Scrum Masters, Departmental managers, Human Resources whereas the central by Executives. Can you imagine how your company would be without its nervous system?

 

Leadership and product management: All in one

Even if most companies acknowledge the role of leadership, a lot of people feel that they are ineffectively led and quit. One reason is that traditionally the companies use the role of a group leader also as a project manager. Thus they put in positions having to do with people persons with high technical experience. Those leaders shift their focus to the product leaving people alone. The agile management has clearly separated the concept of designing a product from that of leading people by defining the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master. If you decide to decouple those roles in your company, you will probably need new persons as leaders. Your peripheral nervous system will be much more effective if you examine what skills a leader should possess. To make more visible which character qualities a leader should have I’ll compare them with a neuron.

The leader as sensor

A neuron is different from the other cells. A neuron is a cell that has sensors bringing in signals from the surrounding environment. The sensors are specialized in what they measure. In other words, a neuron should speak the language of the things it wants to feel. There are specialized neurons for feeling the pressure, others for temperature, others for pain. In the same way, first and foremost a leader should develop their sensory to feel the people. One of my previous departmental leaders told me during a goodbye event, “When I see people passing by in front of my office I think, please go further, don’t enter, it won’t be for good”. Missing sensory and isolation protects you but not the people you lead. Leaders need to leave their Ego in the garderobe. They need to communicate in a non-violent way. They need to listen actively to people. During conflicting discussions, they capture the feeling behind the words. They realize quickly what’s going on because they speak the language of the people they lead. Software developers, marketing, production, finance, executive management speak different languages and they need leaders who understand their language.

The leader as transmitter and door opener

Assuming now that the neuron has captured the signal. Its next job is to evaluate and forward it to further neurons. If the signal is stark enough the neuron propagates it through its axon. This is a long fiber whose ends meet the sensors of another neuron and build a Synapse with it. Synapse is a kind of meeting room. In this coming-together-place the neurons exchange signals between each other. The sending neuron emits chemical substances so long until their concentration in synapsis is so high to wake-up the sensors of the receiving neuron. This is like knocking a door until it opens.
This is the way I see a leader. He opens closed doors. He evaluates the captured signal and if the problem cannot be solved locally, they propagate it further to the next level. I had a group leader once who could catch very well the pulse of the group. However, he couldn’t bring our problems further. We didn’t see any change even if he participated in several upper management meetings. Being a sensitive sensor but a broken transmitter leaves the people fighting with the same problems over and over again.

The leader as interconnector

The structure of neurons in the human body is also crucial for the communication between the periphery and the centers of decisions in our brain. The axons grow and create millions of branches that meet other neurons and create synapses with them. In this way, the neurons cover every single and small corner of our body. If a branch is injured it cannot be regenerated. But there are many other branches to relay on.
This is also one of the leader’s duties. Coming out of her office, finding connecting points with other groups, letting the pain of one group be noticeable to another, interconnecting the whole company.

The leader as decider

We have managed now to set up our peripheral nervous system and cover the body of the company. The other important part is the central nervous system. The nerves in the spinal cord are responsible to transfer the signal to the centers of decision strong enough to excite them. After the trigger, the various centers collaborate to process the inputs and make a decision. In one of my previous companies, the CTO presented the roadmap with all the possible products for the coming year. For us, this was a Utopia. We were not enough people to drive all the products so we suggested to drop something out. Our suggestion was labeled pesimistic and ignored. The result was that after one year we had released one delayed product from the previous year, we had an escalation from the customer side and a lot of frustration among the developers. This center in the company’s brain was polarised by one input signal, “new market opportunities”. However, it failed to evaluate the other input signals and collaborate with other centers. The result was, suffering.

Your company is like your body. To keep it healthy you need a responsive nervous system. For the peripheral nervous system choose leaders acting as sensors, transmitters, and interconnectors. For the central nervous system choose leaders able to combine input signals, evaluate risks and make decisions. Investing in the nervous system of the company pays back to the company’s sustainability.

Further reading: “LEADERS are MADE NOT BORN” by Michael J. Farlow, PhD