Beautiful Teams

Coping

My philosophy, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, is both community-oriented and process-oriented. It's community-oriented because I believe every success and failure can be exploited to improve team building, and process-oriented because I believe every project decision should take into account the way it treats team members and resources.

In earlier, sunnier times, our technical writing group once held a meeting (similar to many such meetings held by Unix writers, I'm sure) about the reorganization of manpages, which are an ungainly collection of historical Unix documentation. After some 45 minutes where we dissected the competing issues and established some precepts, I said, "The decision we eventually come up with is less important than the fact of our holding this conversation."

Some of the group were shocked by that luxurious approach to how we spent our time, but I believe it appealed to the technical writing manager, Alan. He talked regularly about bringing one's full self into the workplace, including one's emotional reactions and personal values. He once asked his staff to read a recently published management book whose central claim was that companies needed to be based on a vision in order to enjoy long-term success, and that this vision must pivot on some valuable contribution to customers, workers, or the larger society.

Alan designated me the team leader for the Longjump documentation—my first stint as a team leader, like George. I decided it was my job ...