Having also sat in both the developer and manager chair, it seems most work systems in use at organizations emphasize I-shaped managers with control mechanisms (financial, risk, schedule, etc.) as their fundamental tenet. We need T-shaped managers, just as we want T-shaped team members. To fundamentally ‘control’ things outside of what one is doing directly requires more understanding and empathy with other members of the organization; this should come as no surprise then that one of the directions for generalizing could be understanding more about IT. It’s a shame our work systems continue to emphasize even greater specialization around certain management aspects the higher one goes.

Cheers!