Plan Replace Me

One of the greatest things about being a leader, for us, is building deep, enduring relationships with the people and teams we work with.

One of the hardest things, for us, about being a leader is leaving the relationships we’ve built. This is a sad, painful process. We love people a lot, and we keep leaving, maybe because there are always more dragons to teach people how to slay.

Another thing we love is making awesome things with technology – platforms, processes, and tools, things that change the company for the better and enable new ways of working and new kinds of culture. But…we have to leave those behind, too.

I noticed a thing, after I left my first team. Things got worse after I left. Then, after I left my second team, they got worse, and then they got better, and then they got a lot better. I wondered, could I minimize that downturn?

Plan Replace Me

I thought about what I did to contribute to team success. There was technical ability, relationships, and a whole lot of trust on my shoulders. People trusted me to reliably solve problems, and things seemed to dip when that trust gap had to be filled. Sometimes it filled in nicely, and sometimes there was something…lacking.

I tried to make sure that the right people had strong relationships, so they could form a strong team after I left.

I tried to give people lots of practice with and guidance in solving problems.

I tried to always share what I learned, as soon as I learned it, connecting the information to someone else. I learn by teaching, so this works out well. I always tried to have at least one more person understand whatever technology I knew.

I tried to give people opportunities to build reliability.

Because relationships ending by surprise hurts, I tried to find ways to minimize the surprise, and I did my best to keep relationships going while moving to a new team.

All of those things were moderately successful.

But I knew the best plan would be if someone could jump in right where I left off, knowing what I knew, with my skills. I hoped they could also like, slay me in single combat, or at least out-nerd me in some contest of honor and nerdliness.

Unfortunately, my favorite and most qualified candidate just up and refused to stick around after I left.  (from Laine: Tada, it is meeee!) 

Plan Replace Me Us

So, we made a plan, and a roadmap to explain it – a way to build up the enterprise to have a strong foundation. Implement Continuous Delivery as an accepted software delivery process, and teach and support the architecture, accepted practices, and tools to implement it successfully. Once that was done, the roadmap, the plan, was over, and it was time to leave.

But just having tech, processes, and tools isn’t enough – people are core to the success of an organization.

In the end, people are all that matter. They make the decisions, they set the direction, and their ability and knowledge control the successful execution of any vision or plan.

And I can’t make people be good. I can love them, and I can care about them a whole bunch, but all I can do (after pouring in all the knowledge and care and strength and soul that I had time to give) is to let them succeed, and learn, and grow, and make their own choices.

And I can learn from them that in the end, all I ever did was help – they always were making their own choices. I can also be thankful that I was in their lives and got to know them better, and be known, for the time that I was there.