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Governance Over Control and Command
Leadership / Dualities
Replace top-down control with systems that guide behaviour.
Command & Control
- Leader decides, team executes.
- Works fast but creates bottlenecks.
- Doesn't scale. The leader becomes the constraint.
Governance
- Define rules, principles, and boundaries.
- People make decisions freely within those boundaries.
- The system guides behaviour, not the leader.
Examples in Engineering
- Code reviews are governance. You don't tell people what to write - you review what they wrote.
- Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) are governance. They set precedent without requiring approval for every choice.
- SLOs and error budgets are governance. Teams decide how to spend their budget.
The Shift
Move from "ask me before you do X" to "here are the principles - use your judgement."
This only works when:
- Principles are clear and well-understood.
- People have the skills and context to decide.
- There's a feedback loop when things go wrong.
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