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| Blair's remarkable “egoless” FCC |
| Friday, 25 September 2009 00:00 |
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Blair Levin took the FCC job running the broadband plan without even asking for a title, unheard of in government work. Erik Garr is “General Manager,” Brian David “Adoption and Usage Director,” and Kristen Kane “National Purposes Director.” No “chief,” “deputy chief,” “deputy assistant” and the other badges of hierarchy. This was a symbol of Blair's effort to build a team, not a bureaucracy. Blair
explained he took the job because “it's a great chance to do great work for a great cause working with great people.” Getting high-powered people to work well together is hard. He's succeeding. Casually, people on the team say – “BTOP just sent over the data we needed,” “We let RUS handle that. They had more experience,” and many other examples of a system running smoothly. The spirit is strong, and judging by the late hours on their emails, everyone is working incredibly hard. Blair personally has a strong ego which makes him confident enough to let others take the credit. Bell Labs had a tradition like that: the junior members of the team got the kudos because the senior members didn't need any more. If you were senior at Bell Labs, you didn't need to prove anything. You couldn't even show off your Nobel Prize because there were half a dozen others down the hall. Jerry Weinberger introduced the concept of “egoless programming” forty years ago after IBM sent him around the country to try to understand why projects failed or succeeded. He discovered the key difference was that successful teams were able to say “I don't know,” and “I need help.” The disasters typically were full of folks who took everything on themselves out of ego. Get ego out of the way and you'll get far more done. Jerry's book, The Psychology of Computer Programming, teaches lessons that apply to any project that requires strong people to work effectively together, whether or not they are programming computers. It's been in print since 1969. I don't know if Blair was directly influenced or evolved a similar style independently, but the intellectual firepower of the team is extraordinary. |