The article was popular. In retrospect, I found that there were two populations that cared about the piece and one that did not. One was the “I want to be a wolf” crowd, and the next was the “How do I create a culture that encourages wolves?”
“How do I become a Wolf?” Wolves don’t know they are wolves. They don’t care about the label or the unique circumstances that surround them. Wolves are the result of the work and do not ask the question. Wolves don’t ask to be wolves; they are.
“How do I create a culture that attracts or encourages wolves?”I have been somewhat helpful here. First off, I’ve seen Wolves in every type of business. Small, medium and huge. Enterprise, consumer, ad tech and pure services. Everyone had Wolves in their tech-friendly companies. That’s your job: to build a culture that is conducive to technology. Then. Nothing. Don’t talk about 10x engineers at All Hands. Build a safe, healthy, distraction-free, and drama-free environment where builders focus on building. That’s where engineers do their best work.
And the third important population. Wolvesthe population has not read this piece. Yes, I shared the piece I was thinking about with the Wolf, and he nodded and said, “Yes,” and returned to the project at hand. Wolves don’t care whether they are seen or not. Wolves are completely focused on the self-selected essential project in front of them because they decided it was worth their time and important to the company.
A Wolf Factory
I tried to build a Wolf-like role within two different companies, but it didn’t work out at all. I used different approaches and different frameworks in each attempt, but each attempt failed. Existing Wolves were at best distracted from their work and at worst left the company because they felt I had forced them into management. Disaster. Another time I created a completely new title, which was my definition of a Wolf’s responsibilities. I learned from my previous attempt and left the Wolves out of the process other than a gentle warning about my intentions.
The result of the second attempt was a handful of fake wolves stumbling around trying to do Wolf-like things. They had read my role description carefully. They worked hard. And they angered virtually everyone around them, because while they were respected, they now acted with unearned privilege.
At my next company, four months after the gig, a random meeting with Richard popped up on my calendar. He was an engineer on one of my teams. I had never spoken to him outside of a group setting. No title for the meeting. No heads up. Just a meeting.
Richard arrived right on time. Nervous. Random, throwaway talk before he got to the point:
“Yes, so. I’m very concerned about the quality of the code base, so I haven’t done any of my work for the past two weeks because I’ve been building a test framework to pressure test the worst part of the code base. Can I show you?”
He did. Punchline: Never seen anything like it. Jaw to the floor. I’m not going to tell you why. It’s his secret to tell.
I picked my jaw off the floor and calmly asked, “This seems great. How can I help?”
“My manager gets angry because I’m working on this instead of a feature. I think this is much more important.”
“I understand. Let me see what I can do.”
I have done very little to support Richard. During my next 1:1 with his manager, late in the meeting, I made an off-the-cuff comment about Richard’s testing framework: “Looks promising.”
I did not:
- Suggest to his manager that this work was more important than his main work.
- Come up with ideas on how to distribute the load on the engineers so that Richard has time to work on his side project.
- Make sure others are interested in his efforts.
All these activities took place because good work speaks for itself and Wolves are completely motivated by good work. Richard eventually (reluctantly) demonstrated his project to others, and they all had the same overwhelming response. They arrived on the scene to help and made it even better. Someone else chose to help with some of the feature work, so that’s just been done, albeit a little late. All this signal eventually reached his manager, who now paid full attention to the effort.
Could I have accelerated this effort? Yes, but when it comes to Wolves, it’s my job to stay out of their way.
Hell?
One of my managers discovered – months later – that Richard had pitched me about his project and also that I had briefly shared my impressions with his manager. They were confused. They saw this rogue project appear from nowhere, gather steam, and eventually become the cornerstone of our testing strategy.
Confused: “Why didn’t you do more for a clearly useful effort?”
I responded, “I didn’t have to help make this effort a success. I was aware that Richard was a Wolf long before he walked into my office. I’ve seen many. It wasn’t my job to help foster this effort; it was my job to stay the hell out of the way. The work would be successful without me; he’s a Wolf. In fact, the organization, which sees how this engineer works, is actually more important than the success of this vital project. Richard’s ability to help will be appreciated by others in the future recognition of this ability.”
Still confused: “But what about the process? We do things a certain way for a reason.”
Break.
“Process is how we get things done at scale, but we’re also innovating. We’re bringing new work into the world. At key moments, process has an unfortunate side effect: inadvertently stifling innovation. My job here is to identify the work and explain why staying out of management’s way is the right strategy.”
“And you didn’t ask for it, but the reason I curse a little when I say this is because managers need to hear this. The job is a privilege, but many managers confuse this privilege with the desire to know everything, act and help. They believe that’s their job, but very often it’s their job to know when to do nothing at all.”
#job #stay