There were a couple of comments on my First make someone responsible… post that I’d like to highlight.
Ian from Financial Cryptography (a subject so complex I can barely spell it) chimed in with his usual wisdom to say:
…It’s a mess of contradictions - the job is mostly communications, but you need to be a technical expert otherwise the techies will snow you. The job is about compromise, negotiation and swallowing ones ego; but getting the technical skills required to face up to the people you are managing requires the reverse of that…
The ability to be able to smell obfuscation in nerds is something that most reasonably experienced managers develop. Being able to challenge, or better, work with a nerd to come up with an improved and acceptable (to the nerd) solution is something that can only come from people who have themselves been nerds. As Ian notes finding such people and keeping them in the middle is something that can be a challenge. Having a role model doing the same job somewhere else in the company helps.
Tarun from Musing of an Iconoclast added this:
…if you have a late or overbudget project then this is probably the only thing you can quickly change that will make a significant difference…
So true. Even if a process is being followed the absence of someone in the middle will probably bite you. As I said in the original post, adding someone is great experiment - showing whether or not the addition has helped.