Leadership is not about knowing everything to guide every aspect of the various problem the team come across. Yeah, you need to have a high-level overview to pass it to the concerned funnel to address the issue, so that you will be able to address it yourself. It's far more devastating when the authority without proper deep knowledge ends up guiding you towards critical solutions. You end up in deeper chaos and suffer in the long run.
So, what's the issue? backstory please..
We got a new lead, without years of experience. From where he came was an established place, the growth was stable, and the innovative initiative curve was level. So, he used to just direct the initiatives, guide the same shit, and manage them.
Well, when you are on a developed product, nothing new to introduce, you are mostly poking around the same thing over and over again. Your place has nothing new to work for, nothing to take as a problem-solving challenge, nothing to deep dive into to bring out a new innovation. All you do is the same thing: manage, fix, update, and repeat. So you are bound to get stuck.
Or maybe you have expertise in something else that doesn't align with everyone.
Let's go back to our lead. I will accept the reality that he has a high management leadership skillset. I will say, his years of expertise excel in that section. Maybe he will pass with excellence if he sits with the management team, with the VC that funds us, and with the client meetings, to handle and deal with them. But I'm seeing him bottlenecking with the technical skills to sync with the tech team, pretty badly. Like, you may be familiar with the tech terms, words might seem very identical, but that doesn't mean you can jump in all of a sudden and start giving solutions, imposing instructions.
For example, we got an issue recently with one of our infrastructure pipelines. He jumped into our conversation, noted down whatever he could, threw them into ChatGPT, and asked for a solution. Whatever he said, without even exploring the concepts, without even validating himself, he just made a diagram (that too generated via ChatGPT) and called for a meeting. Handed over the diagram and proposed that we should go for this infrastructure plan.
We were like, "wtf is this?" in our minds, visible through our expressions. And then, our product developer walked into the conversation and started explaining the existing infrastructure, why it doesn't align with that, why it's not feasible for us to go through the hassle without even doing a poc that isn't worth the time at this phase. Everything he exclaimed, went over the lead's head was clearly visible via his expression and silence. And there are many more...
At many points, we do encounter such people a lot; everyone has unique expertise, and we should be within our limits of expertise, not to poke around with something that we aren't knowledgeable about. With the revolution of AI, we feel like there are no limits; everything can be achieved. Yes, you get answers to everything, presented in such a way that this is it, but for the complex stuff, you need the ability to validate. I repeat, the ability to validate if it is correct or not, what comes when attempting to implement, and how to tackle that. If not gained this ability, you may make things one or two times; the real dilemma will begin when you go for troubleshooting or modifying, or in cases of changes.
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Stephen Hawking
Ignorance by nature is harmless, but when you keep [retending becomes devastating. Without having the true knowledge, when you start to guide us through the storm, is what causes the issue, a risk that takes a huge compensation. Curiosity is good, I appreciate the methods that he tries to learn from ChatGPT or other AI, but the fact that he tries to act as the guide and comes with the shadow is what bugs me the most. Because when the illusions fade away, the team will be in the middle of nowhere to roll back as well.
As the saying goes, "with great power comes great responsibility," and that's it; if those are taken for granted, then the destruction is inevitable.