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Ultimately, you won’t be able to make everyone happy. It’s always better if everyone can
agree, but there are many times when there is a genuine difference of opinion. In this
case, the manager is within his rights to pull rank. However, if he just rejects an argument
outright or ignores a valid argument just to get his way, he is abusing his power, and his
team will resent him and try to figure out ways to work around him. They will also avoid
coming to him in the future, opting to apologize later rather than ask permission now.
Another way to help team members accept your decisions is to have written guidelines
that they can follow. If you can point to a published document that guides the way that
your team does their work, your team members will recognize that and respond to your
consistency. It’s much easier to work with a manager who is consistent and predictable
than with one who may randomly reject ideas with no real justification. The tools in this
book are examples of the kinds of guidelines that a team can adopt. For example, a man-
ager may have a written guideline that says that every programmer should follow the
Subversion basic work cycle (see Chapter 7). Then, even if a programmer feels that it’s not
her responsibility to merge changes that occurred since a file was checked out, the man-
ager can refer back to the guideline and show that he is being consistent in his decision to
have her merge her changes.
Understand What Motivates Your Team Members
Talk to your team about their goals. If an employee’s goals are incompatible with his com-
pany’s goals, he should not be working for that company. However, each person’s goals go
beyond simply finishing the current project: people want to move ahead in their careers,
and part of your job as project manager is to help them achieve their professional develop-
ment goals. The organization gains when employees improve, because a more experi-
enced employee will deliver superior work. A team with people who have more
experience can take on more complex projects and come up with more creative solutions.
People work for money. For some reason, many bosses feel uncomfortable with this—they
pretend that people work out of loyalty, love of the job, or blind devotion to the organiza-
tion’s goals. This leads to an unfortunately pervasive attitude where managers act like
their employees are lucky to have jobs. Compensation also comes in many forms: in addi-
tion to money, some organizations will give flexible hours, training, books, stock options,

free lunches, senior titles, access to new technology, or other perks in place of money. But
in all of these cases, people need to feel that they are being fairly compensated for the
effort that they are putting in.
Another motivator is loyalty. Many people naturally develop some loyalty to the organiza-
tions where they work—it is human nature. This is why teams of people who are poorly
managed and undercompensated will still work 80-hour weeks on projects that are clearly
doomed to failure. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to redirect loyalty, especially through dis-
honesty. In some cases, a poor manager can keep secrets from the team and lie to them
about organizational decisions, in order to redirect the team’s loyalty from the organiza-
tion to him. In other cases, senior management themselves can, through lying, incompe-
tence, and obvious lack of appreciation, lose the team’s loyalty.

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