ManagementInterventions

Over at the O'Reilly Blog, Marc Hedlund relates a story about a team doing a successful intervention with their manager (using a clever application of Brooks Law).

There are plenty of stories of consultants doing successful interventions (the consulting literature is full of them), but very few stories that involves teams having any success "getting through" to management that's gone dysfunctional.

Have you heard stories of successful interventions that teams have done with their management?

--DaveSmith 2006.05.13

I have lots of such stories. My most successful was a company whose employees persuaded their alcoholic, abusive manager to invite me and Dani to come in and consult on strategic planning. We did a good job, and got invited back for work on leadership. The outcome was that we convinced him that he was the leadership problem (he saw himself in PSL). He fired himself (got a good golden parachute), and after that, things were fine (except in the new company he started, where he caused the same problems).

. - JerryWeinberg 2006.05.14

Updated: Sunday, May 14, 2006