The Name Of The Game

The Name of the Game is a section heading in the first chapter of PeopleWare. The underlying thesis of the whole book is that "the major problems of our work are not so much technological in nature as sociological in nature."

This represents a LeaderShip concern. DeMarco goes on to state that: "Most managers are willing to concede the idea that they've got more people worries than technical worries. But they seldom manage that way. They manage as though technology were their principal concern. They spend their time puzzling over the most convoluted and most interesting puzzles that their people will have to solve, almost as though they themselves were going to do the work rather than manage it."

One of DeMarco's early managers "knew what all good instinctive managers know: The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work." In fact, PeopleWare and other LeaderShip literature encourage you to:

• get the right people;
• make them happy so they don't want to leave; and
• turn them loose (see EmPowerment)

See also: LeadershipPatterns