Don't be Batman.
I'm Batman.
Okay, let me clarify some things here. I used to be Batman.
People would have these big problems, so they would turn on the Bat Signal to let me know they needed help desperately. Then I would swoop in and rescue them… from that problem. There would always be more emergencies, and I specialized in fixing them.
It was great.
Well, it was kind of great.
I loved being a hero. I would gear up with all these great tools, and people were always grateful for my help. Except I admit I mostly used brute force to save the day. I worked long hours. I didn't take breaks. I powered through meetings, delegating tasks, and micromanaging employees. I drove people hard, and I got results quickly.
Sometimes, there was collateral damage though. Some people started asking if I was the hero or the villain. Naturally, this bummed me out, so I hid out in the Bat Cave to brood.
Our culture loves heroes. We love the mythic rogue individual who can do everything better than everyone else, who comes in and rescues us from dire situations. We don't mind that the hero uses extreme measures because it seems like only extreme measures can save us from the situation we're in.
Our corporate culture loves heroes too. The management style known as Command and Control creates heroes and the need for them. Top-down leadership has executives making commitments on behalf of their organizations and commanding the organization to meet the commitments by a promised deadline, and this happens without consulting the people who will do the work. These organizations have hierarchies of heroic managers who demand heroism of their teams. The people who get recognized, rewarded, and promoted are the heroes.
There's a compelling sense of pride and accomplishment from being the hero. Habitual heroes thrive on being the lynchpin. There's a certain romance to the narrative. Nobody wants to read about the mundane daily doings of a high-functioning company with no emergencies and no heroes.
However, the very act of being a hero perpetuates entire systems that create harmful dynamics and motivate people to make decisions that are actually bad for business.
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Heroes live in a world of Us versus Them. Batman versus the seedy underbelly of Gotham. There's a lot of ego involved.
Let's flip the script. Ego tends to get in the way of creating great customer experiences or collaborating with teams.
What if we looked at heroics as indicators of systemic dysfunction? What if we worked to create cultures of safety? What if we let things fail without some hero sweeping in to save the day and keeping people from learning we almost failed? Then, we could learn what caused the failures and come up with long-term fixes for them in iterative ways that allow us to learn as we go instead of needing to be perceived as perfect at all costs.
What if we built lightweight structures to help us make our failings more visible and inspected them so frequently that they don't have time to become more than tiny corrections that don't cost anybody pride or reputation?
Strange things happen in hero culture that we gloss over when we're loving it. Heroes develop bad habits inadvertently and unintentionally.
For example, they hoard work.
During that last emergency, they gained specialized subject matter expertise so that they can do the work ten times faster than everybody else now. It seems like a silly waste to not let them do ten times the work ten times faster, right?
In a culture that devalues heroics, the subject matter expert teaches the rest of the team how to do that work, making the work less specialized and the team more resilient. That way all the work can continue even if the subject matter expert gets redeployed to fight a new big problem.
The hero isn't worried about being less special because they are motivated to make their team more successful. Furthermore, the team isn't worried about being the best team compared to other teams. The team works with other teams to learn and teach what works best.
Of course, for this to work, we need to stop rewarding heroics and start rewarding teams that obsolesce the need for heroics.
Hopefully, there will come a day when we can all say, I used to be Batman. Now, I'm a humble servant-leader with great work-life balance in a culture that values collaboration, curiosity, and change.
I love that the first step in raising collaborating teams and removing hero tendencies was to put away your cape. This speaks volumes to your ability AND the way you empower and raise up others. I am grateful for you sharing your wisdom and insight with others. Thank you.
This is so BASED. I love it!
[Jen's question]: This sounds lovely on paper, but implementing it seems monumental. Is this your job? Is this what you do? [Dave's response]: It's lovely on paper and lovelier in practice. Yes, this is my job. This is what I do. I'm good at it when I have management support and a team of fellow Agile Coaches to keep it from being too daunting. Changing culture takes persistence, passion, and persuasion. It takes focus and a ton of energy. It helps to have a great transformation team to lean on so you don't have to be the hero.
[article excerpt]: "Furthermore, the team isn't worried about being the best team compared to other teams." [Jen's question]: How does the team gain the confidence they won't be poorly judged come review time? [Dave's response]: The team gains confidence through more successfully delivering work that they commit to as a team. Ideally, you get management to start mapping compensation and promotion to team success instead of individual success. The team will still succeed without this because individuals on the team will still be seen as doing great work when they are focused on being great teammates. It's mostly about changing the team's focus from reactive to proactive, giving them more control over their work and their success. Allow teams to tell management how long work will take given current resources. Celebrate teams for not working late or on weekends, for having great work-life balance, and for still delivering what they say they will with greater and greater reliability and predictability.
I want to give a giant thank you to my editor, Jennifer Hansen, who asked some excellent follow-up questions that I will share in the next few comments. [article excerpt]: "The hero isn't worried about being less special because they are motivated to make their team more successful." [Jen's question]: How do you make the hero not worried about being less special? How do they shift from me to we? How does the hero let go of the control? [Dave's response]: You get the individuals to focus on helping the team. You start by stroking the hero's ego, making them feel special for being in a position to level up the team. You celebrate every great thing they do toward that end with emails to their boss and boss' boss. You get buy-in from the bosses on the change in focus and the change in reward structure. When you send mail celebrating a hero, you frame it in terms of a failure that required heroism, communicating plans to address the failure going forward. Being super overt and consistent starts to change culture quickly. In a matter of months, you can change an organization's framing of heroism. The hero becomes the teammate. They don't let go of control; they start sharing control with the team.