Once I talked with a colleague about SRUM. The dialog went like tthis:

C. Who has the responsibility in SRUM?

Me. Everybody in the team is responsible for the project.

C. If I go on vacations and the team takes a wrong decision it will affect me as well. It will affect my bonus. I’d better depend on somebody who knows what he/she is doing . We need somebody to have the responsibility of the project and gives the direction.

Me. Hm…

A dialog with another colleague went like this.

C. We don’t have any software architect to give detailed requirements.

Me. You are designers and testers in the team. You can discuss  the requirements with the product manager and find out the details by yourselves.

C. I’m not get paid to take decisions. If the company wants me in this position it should give me a higher salary.

Me. Hm…

What do you take out of those discussions?  Do we need a leader to tell us what to do and take responsibility of our actions?

Definitely we didn’t want it when we were children. I’ve never met a kid saying they wanted their parents to tell them what to do and take decisions for them. What happened next? Did we forget our desire for autonomy?

I guess we’ve grown up and become what our parents have shown us with their behavior. And they became what their parents have shown them and so on. This is tradition. Can we break it?

Let’s go back to our childhood and remember how we wanted our parents to be with us. Keep this wish in mind and return to now. We are adults and we can make our wish real for our own kids. Finally we can build the family team as we wished it to be. At least for me it is without a CEO.