Darth Vader, the best manager ever
By: Rémi Doolaeghe
Tags: Work Life Balance, Management, Leadership

Yesterday evening, I had a nostalgic trip to a good ol’classic. A slowly gathering dust DVD on a shelf in my library. Star Wars, episode IV : A new hope.

credits from Star wars films

I’ve always been fascinated by my hero. The one who changed the world. The one with an aura for which no one can remain indifferent. Darth Vader.

Darth Vader fascinates me. Remember, the little Anakin Skywalker has started his life as a slave. Hardly 20 years later, he is almost at the head of a powerful and limitless empire.

That’s for sure a lightning ascension, backed by the best management strategy ever. Nobody can’t say the opposite, Darth Vader techniques are terribly efficient. Let’s have a look on how he performed so well.

Darth Vader’s management techniques

Fear

What does Darth Vader do when a goal assigned to one of his subordinates (some may say “collaborators”. Meh) is not reached? Let’s have a last thought for that poor Kendal Ozzel.

credits from Star wars films

This brave admiral has committed only two errors. The first one isn’t really one, apart in the eyes of Darth Vader. When a probe sent on Hoth system reveals a thin clue of a rebel presence, Kendal Ozzel refuses to take it into account. Chances that the rebels could hide there are really thin. Darth Vader is sure of the contrary, and considers the admiral order as his first error.

The not-so-discrete arrival of the imperial fleet in Hoth system is his second error. The rebel base has detected it soon enough and deployed a protection shield, forcing the Empire to drop a ground force to fight the enemy. Darth Vader can’t tolerate this new error, and takes necessary measures.

credits from Star wars films

Darth Vader punishes systematically the error and the divergence of opinions. The underlying idea is simple: spread the fear, that plays the role of the best catalyst to avoid failure among anyone under his orders.

Problems don’t matter

When Darth Vader visit the Death Start worksite, the project manager tells him the deadlines are impossible to meet and the engaged manpower is insufficient to finish the project within given time.

Darth Vader solution is preventing the project manager to have the choice. He prefers ignoring the alert, and imposes his will as a reality. He doesn’t care about complains or problems. That’s not his problem.

Darth Vader let all the responsibility fall on him men, so as the pressure. He won’t search for a solution or any additional help. His orders must be realized, whatever their feasibility. The technique is simple here too: order, and consider anything will be executed, may it be impossible or the source of problems.

Keep heading straight forward

Darth Vader has objectives, and a strong will. He won’t let any major obstacle to them. His strategy is well defined since the very beginning, and nothing could change it.

Given that everything is determined a long time in advance, it’s useless to go away from the drawn path. There’s just to stay on the plan, and never diverge from it, whatever may happen.

Darth Vader won’t consider the obstacles. He thinks they would be crushed by a firm strategy and a well defined plan. This approach is the origin of the weaknesses that allowed the rebels to destroy the Death Star

credit from Star Wars films

When the rebel fleet starts the assault against the Death Star, Darth Vader decides to keep stuck to the plan. The Death Star follows its planned trajectory towards the rebel base to destroy it as soon as possible, without trying to keep the distance until the rebel fleet has been eliminated by imperial one. Darth Vader prefers keeping heading to his goal.

Darth Vader prefers forgetting about adaptation and about questioning his choices and strategy.

Darth Vader management techniques consequences

Darth Vader creed focuses on three points. Inspire the fear on his teams, never ever listen to their advice/suggestions/problems, and keep heading whatever may happen. As a consequence, the atmosphere in his teams are nothing but terror and inaction.

Dialog is stuck. If anyone is facing a problem, she/he’ll prefer keeping it unsaid or even hide it. Everything else would make fall on him/her the responsibility of the failure, and so the punishment. This leads to a situation of innovation locking, blocking any improvement process. Teams can only stagnate.

No one will try to take risks and lead improvement initiatives. That’s how hierarchy climbing works, though. No one will take responsibilities, and everybody will stay at his/her place silently, leaving any new idea aside. Even worst, the best elements, lifeblood of a team, will remain silent and leave their teammates get bogged down. That’s the best way to inaction.

As a conclusion, Darth Vader techniques are catastrophic, and are more counterproductive he could have initially thought.

Ok, but that’s just a film. Darth Vader has never been meant to represent the idea we have about a team manager.

Yes, you’re right. However, don’t you recognize some of these traits in some people you’ve met in your professional life ?

Let’s ask us this question: what could have done to improve his teams and get better results? How could he achieve the Death Start worksite more efficiently?

Alternative

Accept the mistake

Death Star construction is by nature based on the notion of project. Wikipedia definition is the following one:

A project consists of a concrete and organized effort motivated by a perceived opportunity when facing a problem, a need, a desire or a source of discomfort (e.g., lack of proper ventilation in a building). It seeks the realization of a unique and innovative deliverable, such as a product, a service, a process, or in some cases, a scientific research. Each project has a beginning and an end, and as such is considered a closed dynamic system. It is developed along the 4 Ps of project management: Plan, Processes, People, and Power (e.g., line of authority). It is bound by the triple constraints that are calendar, costs and norms of quality, each of which can be determined and measured objectively along the project lifecycle. Each project produces some level of formal documentation, the deliverable(s), and some impacts, which can be positive and/or negative.

The definition states “realization of a unique and innovative deliverable”. How to guarantee a unique deliverable is successfully done at the first try in the predefined calendar with a reliability of 100%? Even with the most detailed analyses, cost estimations, specifications, etc, a certain form of unknown remains, due to the creative nature of the work. The creative worker in a project must, by nature, experiment and try ideas before she/he could reach a satisfying result. And any try could lead to a failure, by essence.

Let’s take a non technical example: Scrum. This method philosophy could be resumed to these few words: “Try, make mistakes and adapt”. Scrum won’t give miracle recipes, but a good approach of how to tend to the best reachable situation, using an approach by the mistake.

We could all stay on an old-fashioned methodology, with a good ol’ V-Model for which everybody knows the strengths and weaknesses. Darth Vader uses it for the Death Star, by the way. Try and make mistakes is the best way to determine a better way to reduce one’s weaknesses and increase strengths.

Scrum is just an example here. A lot of other ones could be mentioned on subjects more technical, functional, methodological…

Do not follow Darth Vader example. Don’t blame the mistake. On the contrary, encourage initiatives that aim to fix them.

Listen

Darth Vader is dumb. Anyone who dares stand against him will hit the wall. Discussion is forbidden. Discussing his decisions, even with the best arguments ever, will be refused or even punished.

Let’s think about Kendal Ozzel who dared oppose to Darth Vader about the probes sent to seek the rebel base, or to the project manager of the Death Star building that just asked for a delay. The answer never changes. No new element, may it be pertinent, would affect the plan.

Just imagine a development team manager who would use the same methods. He’s the head of developers, engineers or more generally executives. These team members should have at least two or three neurons in the skull. The information they will mention will have most of the time at least a real value that is worth to analyze.

The manager should stay analytical with requests in general. However, it would be wise to give a chance to ideas, and think about for benefits before refusing them.

Improvement proposals are not the only ones that are worth being listened. If a developer launches an alert on a task that proves to be far more expensive than expected, or a weakness she/he discovered in an application design, the worst decision is ignoring it. Every single piece of information is an indicator to be used in a project management to take decisions. Raise the alert to the customer, decide to rework something, etc.

Just listen to your team. They have a lot to bring.

Question Yourself

This is a consequence of two previous points. Accept the mistake and listen leads to being able to accept suggestions from the team.

A team has the nose in the business all day along. The teammates know it very well. They know what slows them down or, to the contrary, what boosts them. The team has ideas on what could help them get faster, being more productive or raise their well-being. At their level, they are the best voice to hear about suggestions.

That said, we should not forget a team can’t always be conscious about the challenges outside their perimeter. A developers team can’t always know the marketing challenges or the customers, whereas its manager is transverse in the company. It means he will be conscious about a larger perimeter, but not so deep.

When you combine the large vision of a manager with the deep one of a developer, it’s possible to combine the best of both worlds to combine each one’s ideas together.

When a developer submits his/her smartest idea to the manager, this one is able to criticize it and understand if it is a totally unrealistic idea, or to the contrary the best one ever.

Darth Vader could have spared his Death Star if he had been able to just listen to suggestions.

Don’t do the same!

Consequences

When applying these principles, you’ll just get the following advantages.

Enthusiasm

A team that feels listened, with less constraints, will have its own movement with great initiatives. With more obstacles, it will get stuck in the mud, with bad habits it won’t be able to leave. It will be locked in a boring routine, continuing in its wrong way and losing the least piece of enthusiasm in its every day tasks.

That team, listened by its manager, will have the desire to fight against the problems it encounters, and even generally to propose pertinent solutions. Free to express itself, it will blossom and improve itself, instead of ranting against imposed constraints that spoil its everyday life without valid reason.

A team led by a manager able to say no at the right moment will feel free to improve itself without being deprived from safeguards, and so never fear to get into an uncontrollable drift.

Elevation

A team that get used to question itself and to change will gain intelligence. It will have tested several ways, and some characters will emerge. The leaders of these teams, the ones who drive most of the improvements, will be the best candidates to get elevation in the hierarchy.

As they would have experimented their own ideas by themselves, these leaders will be able to take the commands of a team in the future, with a soft transition and real legitimacy. This natural progression will fight against the scheme of managers that get catapulted at that post without valid experience in the past.

Loyal teams

Listening, in a company, plays a great role in the well-being of an employee. If he/she feels flourishing, he/she will have far less reasons to search to another contract in another company, may it be the direct concurrent.

Teams will get more stable, with a better cohesiveness and great dynamics. The arrival of a new member in the team will be smoother and more efficient. Its productivity will reach its maximum far earlier

The team stabilization remains a good way to have a reliable and stable quantity of work done each day.

Conclusion

As Darth Vader, it’s possible to have a team, a service, or even a whole company driven by a constrained and severe management. Some companies have built their business model on this principle, and remains alive until now thanks to a promising market, nice products or any third-party asset.

However, if the managers can be talented and resourceful, I can only regret that living force doesn’t matter much. With just a little more freedom, flexibility and comfort, they could bring so much additional value for a hardly perceptible cost.