The Talent Crunch: Not where you expect(or: more coders won't solve the crunch)

In my experience, the bottleneck skillset for the tech industry (and probably many others) is initiative: the ability to take an actual user need and then figure out what needs to happen for that user need to be met, then go make it happen. This doesn't have to be a manager: you put together a group of 3-4 engineers with strong initiative and a worthwhile goal, and it'll happen regardless of whether they have an official manager.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to teach this. The best thing a manager can do is get out of the way and see who steps up to the plate, possibly giving some helpful hints if people seem stuck. It's very easy to kill initiative, though, and most conventional approaches to management do exactly that. Heck, for most people the public school system is 13 years of training in how not to anything other than what you're explicitly told to do.

Incredibly good article, thank you! The part of sustainable management really struck a chord...