When you are not able to lift weights at a gym, what do you do? Typically people go back, take rest, find what makes them stronger and eat that food; reduce the weights and slowly work their way up. In short people will nurture and train themselves to be better and stronger. They will not cane their hands and legs for not lifting those weights to expect a better performance.

Yet so many SDMs (Software delivery managers) prefer to use coercive power to try to make their teams perform well instead of nurturing and building a strong team. The reason being, many people treat their teams as a resource to be exploited than a team of individuals trying to solve a creative problem.

One solution to this problem is to remove the power the SDMs carry.

• Make them mere facilitators and deal makers instead of the power to review, promote and reward people.
• Distribute the powers within the team itself and keep the teams small enough to have meaningful connections and identify non-performers very quickly.
• Decision making should ultimately rely on technical abilities and feasibilities than pure ego
• Do not hire SDMs who claim that they can code but they prefer management, these are the know-all people who ruin everyone and everything!