Yes! I bucket people into paddling the right direction, sitting in the boat, and paddling the wrong way. With enough momentum, you can tolerate the people that are sitting in the boat. Sometimes they have good reasons and it's temporary. The people always actively working against progress need to be overboard. Smaller teams may need all paddlers. I'd like to think I'm always paddling and usually the right direction.
I'm like OP, I feel like I paddle along, minimal effort, then sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months.
When I'm not 100% sure I'm paddling the right way or management wants me to paddle the wrong way, I don't really peddle, I complain and start playing around with fun tech that I think is the right way. Then when the time comes, I makes some powerful strokes again (aided by the new knowledge from playing).
This is going to sound cocky but I feel that I'm pretty good at determining what the right way is, and that is the reason I get away with it. It's like I'm slowly walking by a wall, feeling where it is weakest for months on end, then I make one big push, it falls, things change, I make noise, people appreciate it and understand this is the right way. Lead by example it's been called.
To be clear, I consider the wrong way usually the ineffective way. Ie in our org many people write many one-off scripts, I always try to focus on creating re-useable assets following global standards. I promote innersource because it's fun but also because it enabled other devs to make my CI/CD pipelines. I'm lazy but I think in a good way.
> sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months.
I think another interesting aspect of software development is that critiquing others' paddling technique (code review) can be as or more valuable than just paddling yourself - it makes both of you more effective paddlers.
