Of Warfare Metaphors and Tribes on the Electronic Frontier
In recent post Earning one's way out of the trenches Matt Asay posits:
It has become an unspoken for me, and should be a common rule throughout the open source business landscape, that no one should become a commander without first having slogged through the trenches as a private. … I don't think it's wise to hire management with no open source experience. Now, given that very few people - management or otherwise - have worked within an open source environment, the best way to achieve this is by making the commanders slog like privates for 6-12 months. A VP of Sales should spend at least six months answering emails, setting up demos, etc. before she assumes she understands the open source sales process, and can effectively lead it.
The point is that in a significantly altered business landscape, the best managers will be those who first understand the alterations. Only then will they be able to lead a team tasked with leveraging these alterations for competitive advantage. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as reading a book on open source strategy. You must live it.
Is answering emails, setting up demos, etc. really living on the electronic frontier? Even more, is it actually being in the trenches? For people fond of warfare metaphors, consider this quote from former British soldier Arthur Savage:
My memories are of sheer terror and the horror of seeing men sobbing because they had trench foot that had turned gangrenous. They knew they were going to lose a leg. Memories of lice in your clothing driving you crazy. Filth and lack of privacy. Of huge rats that showed no fear of you as they stole your food rations. And cold deep wet mud everywhere. And of course, corpses. I'd never seen a dead body before I went to war. But in the trenches the dead are lying all around you. You could be talking to the fellow next to you when suddenly he'd be hit by a sniper and fall dead beside you. And there he's stay for days.
Trenches aside, the gap that Matt speaks of isn't caused by a lack of knowledge (or even experience). Most "outside" managers I have dealt with who have been grafted into a project are competent people who do their research - they weren't brought in because they were failing in the proprietary world.
The gap is one of tribe and passion.
Thinking back about my own troubles with outsider management inside of an Open Source corporation, one of the key troubles was that they just weren't of my tribe.
It wasn't that they lacked knowledge of the core principles of Free Software and Open Source - it was that they consistently made plans and took actions that that put me in personal conflict with the interests and values various electronic frontier communities that I am a part of.
Outsiders won't ever get the true spirit of a community-driven development project unless they participate - unless they go native.
Consider Mitchell Baker, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation. As a female lawyer a decade senior to many Mozilla community members, she makes an unlikely community leader. Despite this, she is a solidly respected leader for an entire family of projects because she became a part of the tribe - struggling to solve the same issues, voluntarily taking care of them when trouble loomed and being fiercely protective of their shared values and needs.
Want to get Open Source, Free Software, free culture, digital freedom and the rest of the Electronic Frontier? Find some part of it that overlays with your true passions, roll up your sleeves and get to work.
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Posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 10:54
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