Head: (4.5 of 5)
Heart: (3.5 of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4 of 5)

Thousands of management books are focused on leaders and the when/what/where/why and how of leadership. But what about the followers? Good leadership depends just as much on understanding the particulars of the subset of people you are leading as it does on keeping up with the best leadership pracitices. Author Glen Paul makes the case that “geeks”—a friendly, proud term of endearment he uses to refer to people like himself, who design, build, test, install and/or support computer technology—are indispensable to any company’s success, no matter what the field or industry; you cannot innovate without them. They are also unlike any other group you may ever lead, and require special handling to keep happy and productive.

Geeks, Glen claims, are notoriously difficult to manage; their work is hard to understand, their demands for funds often seem insatiable, their deliverables are always late, and their projects often fail. Perhaps most frustrating to traditional leaders is that they don’t respond to command and control operatives. Instead of working to establish and maintain a power base from which to direct and enforce activities and decisions, leaders of geek teams must learn to create a harmonious atmosphere with a defining narrative that above all, makes sense to geeks.

Geeks value reason above all else and see the world in terms of problems and solutions. They are more stimulated by joy and challenge of how something works or doesn’t work much more than of how well something sells. Therefore it is imperative that geeks understand the mission, vision, and values of their overall organization, be able to clearly articulate their role within the organization, and recognize technology not for technology’s sake but for what part it plays in fulfilling the organizations’ goals.

Leaders must be consistent, never hypocritical—or, even worse from a geek’s perspective—prone to acting irrationally. Geeks have stronger sense of loyalty to their particular group or brand of technology than they do to the company, and are in high enough demand to easily jump ship. Add to their nature the complexity and ambiguity of technical work, where new designs must be created out of thin air, even what may seem like simple questions can become philosophical rather than practical: what, exactly, needs to be done? What do we not yet know? How long will it take? When is done, done?

How, then, can leaders make sure that the team produces anything at all? Beyond providing clear mission, purpose and values, they must shift their mindset from one of control to one of facilitation. They must encourage a culture that creates safe forums for new ideas, the free expression of conflict, and the search for Truth.

Instead of resolving conflict and making decisions, leaders of geeks must create an environment that allows the group, with its own internal hierarchy, to solve problems on its own. Rather than setting fixed goals for the group, they must steer it towards recognizing achievement; rather than assigning tasks, they must facilitate them; rather than dictating schedules, they must coordinate them. Above all else, they must learn to tolerate and manage ambiguity. To do all this, they have the same tools of leadership at their disposal that religious and social leaders have uses since the beginning of time: the stories they tell, and their embodiment, or modeling, of those narratives.

The book displays the tight logical organization one might expect of a technical manager. It is divided into two parts: The Context and the Content of Geek Leadership. The Context includes the nature of geeks, geekwork, and how it is performed, while the Content serves as a how-to on each component of leadership. After this exhaustive breakdown, Glen tries to put it all together in one final chapter on How Geek Leaders Lead. What might be more useful, especially to non-technical leaders, are more examples throughout the book modeling exactly how good leaders weave all of these disparate narratives together. However, Glen’s methodical approach is an invaluable exercise to apply to any cohesive group of followers.  Buy it.