Anyone in the boat who isn’t rowing the boat is an Overhead

Have you ever seen those Managers or Leaders whose only responsibility is to inform the senior management or the Customers about the progress of the team? They got to ensure that the teams keep all the metrics up-to-date and inform them about their progress precisely all the time. Or those, whose job is only coordination and status reporting and ensuring that everyone is doing their job. Have you ever wondered what value are they bringing to the teams, the Products or the organizations?

They are the Overhead in the boat that the teams are rowing so diligently. Not only the teams have to carry their burden but on top of that, they distract the teams who are doing the real work.

You might feel “But we need someone to coordinate; after all, teams can’t do all the coordination on their own.” In fact, if you want the things to be done without delays, teams should be the ones to coordinate with other teams, with other departments, and with Customers. In the end, all inter-dependencies need to be understood by the teams because they are the ones to develop the Product - they are the ones to “Row the Boat”. More people you have in between, more delays and more misunderstandings you add on the way.

I remember once when I was a tester, it took me more than 6 months to resolve a discrepancy between requirements and design because I had to go through so many middlemen to reach the right person who had designed the system and by the time I reached him, he had moved to a different Project and for one, he had forgotten the old Product and two, there was another middleman who would coordinate his activities to ensure that he’s working on the current Project.

Yes, we are made to feel that this Overhead is necessary because as long as teams are dependent on these middlemen, they will always hold an important position.

Let’s talk about senior management.

We have always been made to believe that senior management won’t come to the teams to see their work. They need all the metrics at their desks customized to their requirements. I wonder how much of that is true. Once while coaching a senior manager, I asked him, what stopped him to go to the demos of the teams and he said he never thought about it and he realized that there was nothing stopping him. It’s just that he was so comfortable with the service provided to him at his doorstep that he did not even think about the option of going to the team. However, now he felt that the data was either not correct or not helpful for his purpose and he had to find another way to know what was happening.

Definitely, it’s a personal choice about what we want to do in our jobs, but I’m pretty sure nobody wants to be an Overhead by choice. A lot of times we are drawn into such roles by the kind of Systems that we work in. The Systems make us stagnant and not everyone dares to break this stagnancy. Again, there could be personal or professional reasons for it. This continues as a vicious circle where to keep our job alive we ensure that we are always indispensable and in becoming indispensable we become a bigger burden on the teams and the Overhead keeps growing.

It’s not always easy to move to a new career but it’s still important to have a Purpose and Value in whatever we do.

Maybe sometimes we should sit back and think:

“Am I bringing value to the organization, the Customers and the teams with the work I do?”,

“Even if I’m not rowing the boat, am I at least helping the teams to remove the impediments from their way?”,

“Am I growing myself and helping others in the organization to grow?”,

“Am I letting the information go away so that the decision making could happen at the right level and by the right people in the organization?”

If the answer to all the above questions is “No”, probably it’s time to move on and stop being an Overhead.