Stalking the Elusive Leader

We like to think of ourselves as highly rational beings, but the fact is we’re just not that good at being rational.The recent Star Trek movie demonstrated the normally imperturbable Mr. Spock making foolish decisions based on emotional reactions. Later in the movie, Spock’s reasoned, logical approach is less than sufficient to rally the crew. Certainly they follow him, because he is the legitimate commander at that moment — but they are not excited. When Kirk takes command, however, it is another story. Kirk engages them on an emotional level, a level deeper and considerably more powerful than logic.

I hear all the time about how there is no room for emotions in the workplace.Yet, the companies where I’ve seen this implemented are about as unemotional as Mr. Spock: in other words, they put on a good front. Under pressure, though, they are as emotional as anyone else. I still remember, from early in my consulting career, the manager of a team screaming at me that he did not allow emotions to influence his behavior. For some odd reason, the irony of the moment was lost on him.

Read the rest in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership

November 6th,2009 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Stalking the Elusive Leader

Boiling the Frog

There is an old and hoary claim that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will sit there until it cooks. In fact, this happens only if the frog is equipped with little frog cement galoshes rendering it unable to jump: frogs are too smart to be boiled alive. They leave long before the water gets hot enough to cook them. Why, then, does this story have such longevity?

Read the rest at the CEO Refresher.

October 25th,2009 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Boiling the Frog

Growing Wheat in Siberia

This one was just published in the CEO Refresher. The link is only good for month, so the text is below:

Once upon a time, the late and unlamented Soviet Union decided to grow wheat in Siberia. Their logic was simple: by growing wheat in the inhospitable conditions of Siberia, the wheat would become stronger. The wheat, however, was indifferent to Soviet philosophy. Despite speeches, threats, and promises from the government, the wheat stubbornly refused to grow.

In 1990s, a group of Nobel Prize winning economists developed some very interesting theories about how the financial markets should work. Their theories were brilliant and attracted billions in investment dollars into the hedge fund they created. Long-term Capital Management almost took down the entire US economy when it collapsed in the summer of 1998.

In both cases, a belief about how the world should work was trumped by the way the world does work.

To bring this a little closer to home, I worked with one high technology company that decided to create a set of coding standards for its software development team. While not an unusual occurrence in software companies, in this case, the manager in charge wrote up a fifty (that’s right, 50) page standards document. Naturally, everyone was overjoyed and memorized everything; at least, that’s what the manager thought. In fact, no one read more than a page or two and most of the engineers ignored even that.

Another company was trying to manage information: design decisions, notes from discussions, and so forth. They had the very good idea that they could manage all their accumulated wisdom as a Wiki. Unfortunately, the Wiki swiftly ballooned into an unmanageable morass of data in which no one could actually find anything useful. The problem wasn’t so much getting people to remember to update the Wiki; it was organizing the information in a manner useful to everyone who needed to use it, and in convincing people to take the time to keep it organized. Indeed, even agreeing on how it should be organized generated controversy and bad feeling.

In both of these cases, beliefs about how people should do their work were trumped by the way people actually do work. Like Soviet wheat, it can be remarkably difficult to motivate or threaten people into doing something that they really do not want to do. Unlike wheat, people can be forced. It’s merely a question of how much time and energy you want to spend: pushing people takes a great deal of effort and tends to result in significant amounts of anger and frustration for all parties involved. Not, in other words, a conducive atmosphere for creating a strong, collaborative team.

Of course, sometimes it is necessary to have people do things they don’t want to do. Code does need to be commented, information needs to be documented, and so forth. Fortunately, unlike wheat, people can be convinced. Instead of pushing them, the key is to get them to pull: the best teams are the ones that know where they should go and will trample anyone who gets in their way. How do you create such a team? Here are some tips:

  • Involve those who will be affected by the outcome in the process of solving the problem. Nothing gets buy-in like giving people the opportunity to develop the solution.
  • Identify the actual problem. Spend some time brainstorming; make sure you know what you’re trying to accomplish. The company with the 50 page style guide needed code that could be maintained over time and easily read by someone other than the writer, and they needed the process to not interfere with actually getting work done. That can be accomplished with a one page style guide. Instead, they were trying to win the World’s Most Beautiful Code Contest. That may be prestigious in certain obscure circles, but it doesn’t sell product. The customers only care that the software works.
  • Ask yourself how you’ll know when you have a workable solution. This may seem counter-intuitive since you don’t have a solution yet, but it helps to figure out what success looks like. That way, you’ll know it when you get there and you’ll be better able to recognize if you’re going off course.
  • Brainstorm possible solutions. Don’t be afraid to come up with wacky ideas.
  • Do not evaluate any solution until the end of the brainstorming process. Off-the-wall ideas frequently trigger creative solutions.
  • For each solution, ask yourself if it will actually get you to the outcome you want. Focus on the idea, not the person who came up with it. Even Nobel Prize winning economists can make mistakes.
    • Take the time to honestly assess what might go wrong.
    • Recognize that “oh, we’ll figure that out later,” is often a warning of trouble ahead. Make sure there is either a way past potential roadblocks or that you have identified the work you’ll need to do to determine how you’ll know if there’s a way.
  • Test your solution before you commit to it, or at least look for examples of similar solutions being successfully implemented. Why learn from your own mistakes when you have the opportunity to learn from someone else’s mistakes? The latter is a lot cheaper.
  • If more than one solution has survived to this point, pick one and implement it. Be willing to abandon it and pick another if it becomes obvious that it won’t work. You can’t foresee everything that can go wrong. Solutions that looked good from a distance sometimes turn out to be unworkable or too expensive when you get closer.
  • Be willing to reformulate the problem if the solution doesn’t work.
  • Give people as much autonomy as possible in implementing the solution. When possible, allow them to develop their own implementations. The company with the Wiki could have used email and encouraged each person to maintain their own records in whatever form was most individually useful. Instead of trying to figure out how to maintain a central repository, perhaps what they should have done was to present different ways of organizing the information and allow each person to pick the one most useful to them.

This may seem like a lot of steps, and there certainly is effort involved. The Soviet Union decided it was easier to yell at the wheat. Given the amount of wheat they imported, it’s clear which method is cheaper in the long run.

Good luck!

August 6th,2009 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Growing Wheat in Siberia

Quoted in PM Planet

I was just quoted in an article titled, “5 signs you’re not cut out to be a project manager”

If you’d rather not read the whole article, here’s what I said:

”

In my experience, there are "natural" project managers in much the same 
way that there are natural athletes, musicians, writers, etc. In other 
words, some people might start with more natural talent than others, but 
if you want to be really good, you have to practice and develop your talent.

Unfortunately, there are so many poor managers out there that someone 
who is even marginally skilled looks fantastic.

That said, I've observed that the best project managers have as a common 
trait the ability to yield power. It's the ability to give people as 
much autonomy as possible while still maintaining a sense of team 
cohesion that makes the best project managers. While some people might 
do that naturally, almost anyone can learn to do it."

The reporter didn't use the whole quote, but I think he got the point across.
August 6th,2009 Announcements | tags: , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quoted in PM Planet

Leadership and team formation

Ever wondered why some teams are a pleasure to work for and others are a royal pain? You can find out on my live radio interview on Leadership and Team Formation.

You can also read a discussion of the show here.

July 31st,2009 Announcements | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Leadership and team formation

Yankee Swap Rorschach

The holidays are the season for Yankee Swaps. Now, a Yankee Swap would seem to be a fairly simple and straightforward activity: each person either chooses a wrapped gift or steals an opened gift from someone else. This latter activity can, of course, trigger a chain reaction, but that’s part of the fun. At the end, everyone feels like they had at least some measure of control over the outcome. One would think it difficult, if not impossible, to mess up a Yankee Swap.

However, all things are possible. In this case, one company held a Yankee Swap with incredibly detailed and complicated rules which had as its most salient feature that no gifts were opened until the very end. In other words, the experience was transformed into the equivalent of a very slow grab bag: a long, frustrating, totally random process at the end of which people felt that they had no control over the outcome. Ironically, the most common complaint from employees at this company is that many of the rules are complex, time consuming, and leave them feeling like they have very little control over how they get their work done.

Read the rest at Affluent Magazine

July 20th,2009 Published Articles, Thoughts on business | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yankee Swap Rorschach

The Bi-Lingual Advantage in IT

Imagine a typical software solutions problem. The company needs to improve its bottom line revenue, the customers are complaining and want their problem solved yesterday. At best, the engineer sees a technical challenge involving algorithms and code. At worst, he sees an annoying interruption to solving interesting technical challenges. The engineer’s goal is to build a robust, elegant solution to a problem. The manager, on the other hand, sees something very different. His focus is not on the technology but the process of assembling and coordinating a team. Who has the right skills? What skills are needed? What will this cost? How quickly can it be done? The manager’s goal is to give the customer what they really want, even if that is not the most elegant solution.

Dilbert highlights, to great effect, the gap between management and engineering. Frequently, the two groups seem to live in different worlds. More significantly, they often appear to work for completely separate companies with totally contradictory agendas. Sadly, there is some truth to this. Ed Schein, professor emeritus of business psychology at MIT Sloan, points out, managers and engineers form two distinct, separate organizational subcultures. Each group has very specific goals, which may not always be in alignment. Unfortunately, since both groups are working for the same company, and apparently speaking the same language, they tend to assume that they have the same image in mind. As many managers and engineers have discovered, this can lead to more than a little friction.

Read the rest at Enterprise Management Quarterly

June 3rd,2009 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Bi-Lingual Advantage in IT

How You Hire Just As Key As Who You Hire

Where you start is what you get. I regularly hear managers say:

  • “An unexpected problem arose and the team didn’t step up.”
  • “I can’t figure out how to motivate them.”
  • “No one goes above and beyond.”
  • “They are just so passive!”

Alternately:

  • “They won’t stop arguing!”
  • “People complain about being interrupted all the time.”

Businesses like to describe their culture in positive terms, as “can do” or “fun-loving, but hard working,” or “highly motivated, team-driven atmosphere,” and so forth. Unfortunately, as the comments above illustrate, this is often wishful thinking. Culture is a complex construct and actions taken early in the company’s history can have far reaching effects. And while everyone knows that who a company hires can make a big difference, what is less obvious is that how a company hires can be even more critical.

Read the rest at the Indus Business Journal

June 1st,2009 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How You Hire Just As Key As Who You Hire

The Aardvark Principle

In any business, information can be thought of as the organizational equivalent of nerve impulses. Information about the state of the company, the state of the economy, the marketplace, how different parts of the company are functioning, and so forth, is critical to effective decision making. If any aspect of information flow is interrupted, it is like losing sensation in a part of your body: unable to feel, you may suffer serious injury without realizing it; if the nerves are unable to innervate muscles, those muscles will atrophy and not perform when called upon. By the same token, a business failing to receive crucial information about the state of the market can suffer financial disaster when products don’t sell or when innovation and productivity are crippled.

The problem with information flow is that people may not agree on the information, on the meaning of the information, or what should be done with or about the information. Disagreement leads, in turn, to argument or intra-organizational conflict.

Read the rest at AffluentMagazine.com

May 30th,2009 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Aardvark Principle

Right To Midnight

“Left or right?”

“Right to Midnight.”

I had this conversation recently with my 3.5 year old son. We were in the car, and he had just dropped his favorite stuffed animal, a black cat named Midnight. He couldn’t reach it, and I was feeling around trying to find it for him, while he kept telling me I was near Midnight. When I finally tried asking him if I should move my hand left or right, his response was that I should move my hand, “right to Midnight.”

Now the fact is, a 3.5 year old doesn’t really understand that I don’t know what he knows: after all, he can see my hand and the cat, therefore I should know which way to move. This sort of thing is not at all unusual with young children. For the most part, it’s generally pretty funny.

It’s much less funny when senior management is in the role of the 3.5 year old, and the employees or customers are trying to figure out what is going on. Young children haven’t yet learned to consider other perspectives; management, on the other hand, doesn’t have that excuse.

Many people are familiar with companies that put out products with incomprehensible interfaces or unreadable documentation, and then become highly irate when the customers complain that they can’t figure out how to use the product. I worked with one high tech company where the CEO and engineering team routinely described their customers, primarily research scientists, as a bunch of incompetent idiots. They simply could not understand why their customers could not understand how to use the product. After all, the CEO and the engineers understood it.

Fortunately, very few people are going to argue that a company needs to get input from its customers and involve them in the design process. After all, that’s the best way to make sure you’re giving them something that they’ll be happy to spend money on. The real problem arises when the company’s internal communications are lacking. It is, sadly, not at all unusual for management and engineering, or engineering and sales, or any other combination of departments to be talking past each other. The groups are nominally all working for the same company, but none are capable of recognizing that the others don’t know what they know or cannot imagine that different groups within the company have different, equally valid, priorities.

Engineers, for example, are most concerned with building elegant, effective solutions to problems. Salesmen want to sell product. Documentation wants to describe what the product does. Customer support wants to help the customer actually use the product. Managers are trying to meet deadlines and generate revenue for the company. It would seem that everyone is on the same page. The reality, though, is far different. The engineer’s elegant solution may be brilliant, but impractical: for example the engineer who suggested driving bolts into the side of my house to hold up a sunshade for an afternoon. While that would have solved the immediate problem, it was just a bit of overkill and could easily have caused other problems down the road. Salesmen may promise features that engineering can’t implement or management, in an effort to close a deal, might set overly aggressive deadlines. A case in point occurred in one company I dealt with, when the CEO turned to the VP of Engineering and asked when the product would be ready to ship.

“September 1st,” said the VP.

The CEO turned back to the phone and said, “We’ll have it for you on July 15th.”

The CEO simply could not understand why engineering couldn’t have the product done by July 15th, and the VP of Engineering simply could not understand why the CEO couldn’t accept September 1st. The net result was that the product ended up shipping on October 1st, delayed by a constant series of unmeetable deadlines.

When I’m telling this story, someone always says to me that the two people simply needed to communicate better. True, but not very useful. If it were simple, they would have done it. Under the pressure to get a product out the door, each one forgot to stop and get the full picture. Their frames of reference narrowed to the point where they could not imagine any other answer than the one they had locked onto. Whether two people or ten people are involved, it’s important to stop and ask four critical questions:

1.      What do I know that they do not know?

2.      What do they know that I do not know?

3.      Do I actually have enough information to make a decision?

4.      Are we really all on the same page?

Taking the other person’s perspective can pay off in a big way. What’s stopping you?

May 12th,2009 Newsletters | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Right To Midnight