The other day I was listening to an interview with film director Joseph Strick, and was particularly struck by two comments he made that, to me at least, resonated with my thoughts about running skilled software teams:
Always let them do something first without telling them what to do, because they may do something fantastic, and if you give them direction before you hear them you may be crushing something that could have been much better.
and
Nations advance in proportion to their freedom... the more free the culture, the more people are encouraged to think, and thinking means leaving them alone to think.
I'm a big proponent of getting a team of highly intelligent, motivated individuals and essentially letting them get on with it. The level to which creativity is crushed through any type of micromanagement with these type of people is incredible, and I quite like hearing similar sentiments from such a different sphere of life. I'd be interested in hearing other views on this...