Over the past 150 years, technology has changed beyond recognition ? from developing electrical grids to computing in the Cloud, from mechanical calculators to artificial intelligence.
Yet, the fundamental nature of the people who create these technologies remains remarkably constant. They are, above all, creative scientists writes Jamie Dobson, author of ‘Visionaries, Rebels and Machines: The story of humanity’s extraordinary journey from electrification to cloudification‘.
So many organisations struggle to get the best from their technical teams yet the fundamental principles have been present in the best creative and technical teams of the past 150 years.
Whether at Edison’s Menlo Park in the 1870s, Bell Labs through the mid-20th century, Robert Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos facility during World War II, or Bob Taylor’s team at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, the same management principles appear again and again.
These leaders grasped a simple truth that took management science decades to prove: creative, innovative people require fundamentally different approaches than those optimised for routine, predictable work. The specific technologies may have evolved, but the human needs that drive breakthrough innovation remain constant.
The timeless principles of creative management
Across all these historical examples, three core principles emerge that transcend any specific era or technology, because they address the fundamental nature of creative work itself.
• Creative work requires systems thinking
• Environment design shapes performance
• Failure must be normalised as essential to innovation
Understanding these principles is one thing; implementing them is another. Based on both historical examples and modern research, we need a framework for managing technical teams effectively. But in a highly complex IOT environment what does this mean in practice? Here’s a practical framework for industry leaders that I recommend:
Step 1: Hire for learning orientation and collaboration
The foundation starts with hiring the right people. This means looking beyond technical skills to identify learning-goal oriented individuals who thrive in uncertain, creative environments.
During interviews, ask candidates about times they failed and what they learned. Learning-goal oriented people will have rich stories about experiments that didn’t work out, technologies they struggled to master, or projects that taught them valuable lessons.
Most importantly, hire for empathy and collaboration. Edison hired for curiosity and persistence rather than credentials. His teams included former telegraph operators, skilled machinists, and self-taught engineers. What united them wasn’t formal training but an obsessive desire to understand how things worked.
Some organisations, following Amazon’s model, create separate career tracks that allow learning-goal oriented people to advance without moving into traditional management roles. This recognises that the skills that make someone a great engineer don’t necessarily translate to managing other people.
Step 2: Create information-rich, low-bureaucracy environments
Learning-goal oriented people need two things to thrive: reliable information and autonomy to act on it. This means breaking down hierarchical information hoarding and giving teams direct access to customer feedback, business metrics, and strategic context.
The goal is creating what researchers call “high self-efficacy” ? the sense that individuals can influence outcomes through their actions. When people understand the broader picture and have freedom to respond, they make better decisions and feel more motivated.
This doesn’t mean laissez-faire management. Autonomy without guidance becomes abandonment. The leader’s role shifts from controller to conductor, providing direction while allowing teams to self-organise around shared goals.
Step 3: Normalise intelligent failure and systematic learning
Perhaps the most crucial aspect of managing creative teams is changing the relationship with failure. In creative work, failure isn’t the opposite of success ? it’s a prerequisite for it.
This emphasises the need for psychological safety, first defined by Carl Rogers in the 1960s as essential for creativity to flourish. Amy Edmondson’s research in the 1990s proved its importance for team performance. While studying hospital teams. She expected to find that better teams made fewer mistakes. Instead, she found the opposite: the best teams reported more errors. Further investigation revealed that better teams weren’t making more mistakes ? they were more willing to discuss them openly, leading to faster learning and superior performance.
This change in the relationship with failure requires cultural change that starts at the top. Leaders must model failure normalisation by sharing their own mistakes and the lessons learned.
Create systems that encourage experimentation while containing blast radius. Amazon’s “two-way door” decisions can be reversed if they don’t work out. Some teams use tools like Netflix’s “Chaos Monkey” that deliberately introduce failures to test system resilience.
The enduring wisdom of human-centred management
The most striking thing about studying great technical teams across history is how consistent the patterns remain. The specific technologies may evolve, but the fundamental needs of creative people ? for psychological safety, intellectual challenge, collaborative relationships, and meaningful work ? remain constant.
This has profound implications for modern leaders. Rather than constantly chasing new management fads, the most effective approach may be returning to time-tested principles that align with basic human nature.
IOT Companies that understand and apply these principles will attract the best talent, produce the most innovative solutions, and ultimately shape the future.
Author biography:
Jamie Dobson is the founder of Container Solutions, and has been helping companies, across industries, move to Cloud native ways of working for over ten years. Jamie is also author of ‘The Cloud Native Attitude’ and the recently published ‘Visionaries, Rebels and Machines: The story of humanity’s extraordinary journey from electrification to cloudification’.
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