[Palindrome] Thoughts on leadership

[Eric Albert <Eric ericalbert net>]

Dear Palindrome Team,

We will soon be deciding how this team will be led over the coming year.  
Here are some of my thoughts.

Several people have quoted Sprout.  Sprout is a great leader who runs a 
closed, top-down, hyper-organized team.  His teams win Hunts, and put on 
entertaining Hunts that are impressive in their slickness and freedom from 
bugs.  His leadership style is clearly effective.

Our team is a wide-open one that emphasizes cooperation, consensus, and 
shared responsibility.  Our teams win Hunts, and put on entertaining Hunts 
that are impressive in their originality and influence.  Our leadership 
style has also been effective.

Cooperation, consensus, and shared responsibility are inherently 
inefficient ways to run a team.  (This is true for both solving and 
constructing.)  I sympathize with those who are frustrated by the 
disorganization and duplicated effort of our approach.  It *is* 
frustrating.

Our approach also has enormous strengths.  One is flexibility, which is 
why we've been around far longer than any other team.  Another is openness 
to new ideas, which is why we've consistently led the way in Hunt 
innovation: many elements people now consider crucial to the Hunt were 
invented, or first tried, by us.

This is a proud and exhilarating legacy, and I think we should continue 
using cooperation, consensus, and shared responsibility, Even If It Slows 
Down Construction.  This means that anyone who wants part of any task gets 
part of that task, and no one has final say.

Frankly, if I were forced to choose one person to be our overall 
Hunt-creation leader, I would pick someone with *no* prior experience.  We 
have a mature team with plenty of expert constructors; the basic tasks are 
going to get done (though not so smoothly as on Sprout's team) no matter 
who's in charge.  Where our leadership can distinguish us is in bringing a 
new vision to the Hunt.

I've run more Hunts than any other person, and I'm well aware of the 
difficulties this approach brings.  I think the benefits are more than 
worth it.  Other teams have shown great ability to refine and polish 
existing Hunt ideas (which are often our ideas); no other team has shown 
our ability to consistently make major successful Hunt innovations.

I believe in a living, growing Hunt, and I believe our team should 
continue to use the strengths of our leadership style to guide the Hunt's 
future.

-- Eric