I’ve just finished sorting out feedback from today’s team retreat. In my case it was more of a management retreat, as it would be pretty difficult to organize a retreat with all 140 people from my team. Anyway, we ended up having a retreat with all managers from my team, which means we’re down to less than 20 people. Still, kind a crowd, wasn’t it?

What do I mean by a retreat? In terms of a format it was an all day long meeting which was held off-site. Sort of. I mean we went to another office, the one no one works in. We did that, because it is crucial that no one is tempted to go back to their own desk. As one of my colleagues said it: “when we’re meeting in our office my thoughts are always floating around my desk.” For the sake of this meeting I wanted to break this connection. I wanted to have all of us concentrated and focused on subjects we were discussing.

Before I move to subjects we covered a quick disclaimer: it’s been first such meeting since I’m working with my current team. I treat it as an experiment. I know retreats should last at least two days, so we have enough time to chew through things we’ve just heard and come back to them tomorrow, once we have more insight on the subject. Hopefully we’ll come to this point, but first, let’s just make them work in a lighter format.

OK, so this was an experiment and something which was expected to be the first event of the series if people like it. We had a theme – everyone had 20 minutes to prepare a session in a form of their choice on something they’re doing in their team, which is valuable and worth sharing and copying. We ended up discussing stuff from alternatives of meetings (no-meeting culture, anyone?), through engineering practices, to cool coding tools which improve developers’ lives. We had PowerPoint presentations, no-slide sessions and discussions. We had some fun as well.

We run typical round-the-table to share our opinions on what had just happened, but we also had the feedback door.

Although it would be an abuse to say that feedback was purely positive, I’d say that, in terms of feedback, supportive messages just outnumbered critical ones. Now, it doesn’t mean we got it perfect the first time. No, we have hell a lot of work to do. However, we definitely are on a right track.

Why did it work so well then? There are a few reasons.

First, knowledge exchange. We work in an organization big enough that we have these silos, both formal and informal ones. We know each other, but not necessarily know what each of us is doing at the moment, let alone practices we use. It was a great occasion to share some information on that.

Second, focus. We do meet (almost) every week. Yeah, that’s true, but it’s always in the middle of something. This time we were isolated from our errands so we were paying attention to whatever was happening around.

Third, a kick in the butt. When we are in the middle of something important, which means pretty much all the time, it’s easy just to pop up and switch into passive mode. Yup, I will hear anything you have to share, but make it quick. And please, don’t make me do anything – I have important stuff to deal with. This time everyone actually had to prepare something. Not necessarily a big thing – anything between 10 and 20 minutes worked fine.

Fourth, integration. We spent the whole day with each other. Well, if you hate me, or any other of us, that’s not good news for you. However, if you consider us a team, a bit of integration definitely helps.

Now, you can easily scale this format up, and you get top management off-site, which in some companies is kinda popular.

But you can also perfectly scale this idea down to a team-level. Get your team out of their desks and discuss things which are important to them. You won’t be pushing your project further to its success at that very moment but think of it in terms of sharpening the saw. If you don’t let the event slide toward chaotic discussion on pretty much nothing important this investment will pay off pretty quickly.

Try it. You (probably) won’t regret it.

The other day I had a great discussion on Twitter with George Dinwiddie on goals conflicting with each other on different levels. It all started with goals changing over time, went through divergent goals between a project team and stakeholders and ended up with clash between short- and long-term goals. Well, actually it ended up when George very wisely prompted me to set the context first and then go back to a discussion.

The subject is rather broad so here is the story to set the focus. There’s Jimmy the Manager who lead a functional team of 7 developers. I chose 7 as it is a sort of magic number in terms of team size. Anyway Jimmy has in his team Jenny the Slacker. Jenny is a generally liked person and they get on very well with Jimmy. Actually they built quite a friendship. Jenny also gets on well with pretty much anyone. The problem is Jenny underperforms. Jimmy the Manager tried everything he could think of to sort the problem out but it seems Jenny is not only the Slacker but also the Impregnable. Nothing changes.

Now, let’s focus on Jimmy’s goals for a moment. On one hand he is a manager and is responsible for making the team perform well. On the other he likes Jenny and also knows how misunderstood any harsh decision against her would be, as she’s kind of liked by everyone.

If Jimmy chooses to wear his manager hat and do the worst managerial task he’ll accomplish goals set by his superiors: eventually team performance will improve. At the same time he will probably ruin the relationship they have and also receive plenty of flak from colleagues wondering how the heck such a nice person as Jenny was fired. It is likely that even his own team won’t fully understand the decision.

Jimmy can also play a nice guy role. It means sacrificing team performance, and one of his goals, but also avoiding very difficult decision and its unpleasant consequences. It means preserving many of other workplace relationships as well. For any manager, and a normal person, these should be important goals too.

Now, to avoid leaving the subject without any call for action, a few questions. What would you do if you were Jimmy the Manager? Why? Which goals you consider more important? What exactly makes you following one path and not the other?

Note: I do consider that all “let’s fix the situation and achieve both sets of goals” options have been executed and it hasn’t worked. You are on the crossroads – you have to choose.

If you asked me to point a single thing, which I hate most in senior management role, I wouldn’t have any problems with the answer. It would be firing people. On my personal hate scale there’s firing, then huge, huge void and only then other unpleasant things and tasks to do.

Each time I fire someone I feel like a complete jerk. It doesn’t matter that the decision is well-grounded. It doesn’t even matter when I’m proven, after some time, it was the right choice. It isn’t any easier.

And the next time you do it doesn’t become any easier either. I mean if executing such decisions is easy for you and you feel comfortable firing people there must be something seriously wrong with you.

Yet I still think firing people is extremely important part of pretty much any management job. If you’re a senior manager you likely have power and authority to make such decisions. If you’re a team manager dealing just with your team of six or something and you don’t have that much of power, you still can convince your superior to make a tough move. Sometimes the latter is even worse as you have to do all the talking as it is you, who started the whole thing.

OK, why is it so important then? Because this is one of methods of building great teams. As harsh as it sounds: sometimes you don’t have enough resources (meaning: time, patience, money) to make a person act on acceptable level and the best thing you can do is to split your ways.

Don’t get me wrong, my advice still is: do everything you reasonably can to fix an underperformer. I know way too many people who started shining when given a second chance to say otherwise. But then remember that it’s a manager who is responsible for building the high-quality team, so if you just accept the underperformer in the team you basically harm the team on many different levels.

What more, sometimes we’re out of luck and we don’t have all the time and money of the world to try virtually every possible thing one could think of. Sometimes our fixing options would be limited. Sometimes constant resistance of the underperformer will make us lose faith faster. Shit happens. We don’t live in ideal world. And then it’s time…

Well, for many managers I know then it’s time just to accept the fact someone is underperforming. And you know what? I understand them. I understand them because firing people is so damn hard and so freaking unpleasant that I can think of thousands of reasons why I shouldn’t do that. At all. So yes, I can perfectly understand them.

But I don’t agree with them. We are paid to do our jobs even when the jobs suck on occasions. When we make our developers write boring documentation which just has to be done it works similarly. The only difference is in level of responsibility. But we still expect our developers would deal with crappy tasks, don’t we?

Having balls to fire people isn’t something which makes a manager. In fact, with a bit of luck we won’t need to fire anyone for years and will be able play the role of guru manager neatly. However, when time comes you better be ready to deal with the worst management task ever. Otherwise your whole team will be constantly taking big hits on morale and you no longer will be considered a rock star manager.

If you’ve just lived through such situation for the first time I have two messages for you. First, it’s one of the most valuable experiences as a manager you can possibly have so good for you. Second, yes, I know how crappy you feel now and it’s not going to become easier next time you do this, sorry.

Occasionally I receive some flak because of one of decisions I make. Almost always it is one of those decisions which changes status quo.

Let’s take an example: an employee has an offer from a competitor. You care about her so you try to keep her offering different things, e.g. transition to a better project, raise, etc. However you keep your offer rather reasonable. Basically you don’t try to do more than you would if there were no offer from the competitor. Unfortunately eventually the employee leaves.

A question pops up: have you done everything you could to make her stay?

Well, basically no. You could have paid premium or let her be prima donna or whatever but you decided you want to be fair with everyone in the team and not just make her stay at all cost.

Now it’s time to receive criticism. Hey, you could have fight for keeping status quo. Forget everyone else, now she will leave and the whole world will stop. Aargh, we’re doomed!

Um no, not exactly. The sole fact that you can do something doesn’t automatically means you have to, or even should, do it. Making a fair decision, even if it is difficult, usually pays off in the long run. In this case you play fair with the whole team even if it means losing one good employee. On the plus side, you mitigate a risk of frustration among many people in the team. Besides, let’s face it: shit happens, sometimes people leave. Unless you work in damn cool startup, that is.

Anyway, every time you make such decision think about longer perspective and the whole team and not about tomorrow and a single person. It will help you to make the right choice.

Chances are good you won’t be understood in the first place. I can almost guarantee you that you won’t be considered a hero. It is way more likely you’ll be dubbed as the one who doesn’t give a damn, even though that you actually do. After all you changed status quo.

And this is why these decisions are difficult. Otherwise they would be easy and obvious.

I’m always surprised when I meet people who moved to management roles and they pretty much expect it will be reasonably easy position. I shouldn’t be probably. We naturally expect our lives won’t be more difficult than it is absolutely needed.

However, when we’re promoted to a management role we are expected to take responsibility for the team and not only for ourselves, as it was before. And yes, it often means running an extra mile.

Of course one thing is being with the team. If, for whatever reason, they stay late you shouldn’t check out on 5 pm sharp leaving all the work stuff behind. But it’s more than that.

As a manager not only are you a leader of your people but also a representative of a company. This means that you should build best possible environment for your team, but it also means you should be an advocate of the organization whenever needed.

And this is the point where you likely have contradicting goals.

In dream work environments there are no deadlines. People can play with new technologies whenever they want. There is no maintenance work as it is boring. Also there are many additional perks of all sorts from foosball tables everywhere to medical care.

Well, I may be exaggerating a bit but hey, I haven’t made it up – this is what I hear talking with people.

Unfortunately there’s another perspective as well. A manager is a representative of a company. This means they usually should take care of costs and keep productivity possibly high. This means fewer foosball tables and more boring, but well-paid, work. On the top of that the manager should also sell company decisions to the team, even if these decisions aren’t something people would instantly love.

I can give you rather an obvious example: consider you are free to give your people as many raises as you wish and they can be as big as you want. Now the question: should you?

Yes, management job is about trying to cope with goals which are contradicting and sometimes even mutually exclusive. As long as you always choose to do what is possibly best for your people you’re probably failing as a manager. As hard as it sounds you weren’t hired to please them. Take care of them – yes, but not at all cost.

So the next time before you start criticizing a decision or complaining about the imperfect situation, think about both sides. Maybe, just maybe, it is your darn job to support the decision and explain the situation to the team.

And now, that you asked, yes I do expect from you more than from average team member. You are a manager after all, remember?

This is the old lesson, but the one we need to learn over and over again. As managers we’re all about rules. We work like this and not like that. We do things in such and such way. We expect people to act like this. We forbid other behaviors.

Nice. We can do it even worse trying to formalize all these rules.

We need the rules not without a reason. If I want to be fair for more than a hundred people in my team I just can’t make every decision on the fly. Otherwise people would feel they’re treated randomly and the outcome of our discussion depends mainly on my humor or on the weather or whatever. If I want my judgment to be consistent over time I need to develop a set of rules, either formal or informal ones, so I can refer to them each time.

The problem starts when we set these rules and never question them. Actually every time we trigger any rule-based decision we should take at least a few seconds to ask ourselves whether the rule is still reasonable or it is already good time to adjust it.

Over past few months I could share a number of examples when I challenged and eventually changed my rules. Either because it appeared the rule didn’t work well or it had unplanned side-effects or there was a lot of resistance.

And this is exactly how it should work. Our training policy was considered too harsh? Fair enough, we’ve just changed it. Recruitment process was considered sub-optimal? It doesn’t work that way anymore. We had a clash with managers regarding sharing specific information among them? Well, I won’t fight with everyone, so forget about this issue.

The lesson here is: challenge your rules. Leading people isn’t about setting and following rules. It’s about adjusting to the situation.

Sometimes you make a decision. It may be hard, it may be easy – that doesn’t really matter. What matters is how much the decision differs from what is common in the organization.

If you start playing fair in an organization which never played fair or start making difficult tradeoffs in a company which always deferred any decision to the point when it was basically made by itself or make people accountable in a firm which used to allow people to slack it isn’t really about the specific decision. It isn’t about being fair or making a tradeoff or expecting someone to be accountable.

It’s about the change.

The organization has never done that. People aren’t used to such actions.

So they oppose.

They rant and moan and occasionally even fight back because it’s not common. It’s not the part of the organization culture. It isn’t about merits. It’s about the change.

That’s why every organization culture change is very hard. I tend to underestimate the effect of such changes and it always comes back to kick my butt.

The next time you think about your great idea, think how it changes the rules which are in the organization. If the change is significant don’t treat it just as a new great idea – treat it as cultural change. Which happens to be pretty damn hard.

I have screwed up. I mean really. I have.

You want the story, don’t you? So here it is. The other day I was talking with one of my team members and I kind of promised something. I told that they’d get the thing as soon as something else is done, something else being sort of pushing project to a specific stage.

Well, that’s what I thought I said.

Because the true is I said something different. I kind of forgot to add the second part, this damn prerequisite.

Well, I might have added it but it doesn’t really matter.

It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t matter what I, as a manager, am trying to communicate. What counts is how the message is received. So I could either way said it like ten times but if I wasn’t able to deliver the message successfully so the team member actually hears it and understands it I could have just omitted it and it would have meant the same.

Basically, I have screwed up.

And I feel totally bad with that. The milk is spilled. If I’m lucky I can probably limit some damages, but then limiting damages doesn’t really sound positive, does it?

So while I sit in the corner and cry over my crappy leadership, take this lesson:

If you’re a manager it’s your damn fault. If someone fails to understand you it’s your fault, not theirs. If you think you communicate perfectly clear I still don’t give a damn. It’s your fault.

It’s not about you feeling well because you believe you kept your word. It’s about people being totally disappointed with you letting them down. You may say it starts being about feelings and not facts and you’ll be pretty damn right. But it doesn’t change the rules of the game.

It’s still your fault.

Letting people understand something else then you say is equally wrong as just lying to them.

It’s your fault.

Trying to get with your message to people and failing at it is the same.

And it’s your freaking fault.

So well, there’s no explanation I want to use. I’ve screwed up. I’ve let one person down and they won’t treat my word seriously for a longer time. Considering that it’s even possible to rebuild the trust which isn’t that obvious.

For that I’m both angry at myself and sad.

I’m in a pretty uncomfortable situation these days. With a big team, people come to get different stuff pretty often. At the beginning you take things as they are and agree most of the time but you establish your own view very quickly.

That’s when things change.

You actually start saying no.

I mean you probably don’t want to. Well, no one really wants. It would be just easier to say yes all the time and make people happy in every situation and be such a nice guy who is always supportive and never critical. Also it would be just easier if there was peace all over the world.

The problem is it doesn’t work that way.

You, as a manager, have some budgets, goals and other big hairy things which have to be in order or your manager, VP, or whoever is up there over your head, starts yelling at you. You don’t like when others yell at you, right?

So you learn how to say no pretty quickly.

Then no, she won’t get a raise. No, he won’t transit to other project. No, they can’t get the day off now. And no, it isn’t possible to add more people to the project. It is also obvious that no, there’s no freaking chance to change the schedule. And goddamned no, we won’t recruit more people to the team. Aaargh!

Except it does matter how you say it.

There are some unhealthy patterns I notice here and there when I hear no.

• No, because I said so. That’s the easiest one. I have the power and you don’t. It means that I can say no and you can’t do anything about that. Problem solved. Case closed. Next, please!

• No, because my boss won’t allow me to. That’s also an easy one. I’d like to say yes, but you know, my boss won’t allow me to. It’s just oh so freaking unfair, but what can I do? I’m just a poor little manager with no authority whatsoever.

• No, because I don’t care. Here’s my no along with some placeholder reason. I don’t really care what you think about it but since I gave you some argument I’m done here. Go cry somewhere else.

• No, even though I tell you yes. I mean if you bought that crap than you basically asked to be tricked so it’s your fault. It’s not me who lied; it’s you who allowed to be cheated. And I just got a few months of peace.

If either of those sounds familiar than you probably are on the wrong track.

If you say no, mean it. Care enough to share real reasons standing behind the decision. What’s with decisions you weren’t allowed to make, you ask. Um, you represent the organization, you want it or not. So take this responsibility and live with it. Sometimes when the organization, whether it means your evil VP or whoever, makes the decision it is yours. Even if you don’t feel comfortable with it there are usually some well-grounded reasons behind the decision. So go convince yourself first, it will be easier later.

As long as you’re sure you’re making the right call every, even most difficult, rejection can be handled well. You will be able to ground it, you won’t fear to discuss it and you will be ready to take it on your chest. So don’t hide behind your authority or your boss. Make your call and live with its consequences.

By the way: if you’re out of luck enough to constantly live with consequences of calls you don’t agree with, you probably are in the wrong organization, but that’s completely different story.

I hear that one from time to time: “people are our most valuable resource.”

Well, they are not.

People aren’t your most valuable resource. People aren’t goddamn resource at all. People are, well, people. Individuals. Folks who somehow like to be treated as real persons and not precious pieces of junk otherwise known as servers and such.

Every time I hear this cliché about people being most valuable resource I wonder: how the heck can you say people are most valuable when you treat them as resource? As commodity. As something which can be replaced with another identical um… resource. If you say that, you basically deny that people in your organization are important.

And it doesn’t really matter how hard you try to avoid calling people with that name. If you believe they are (put here “most valuable” or whatever bullshit you like) resources you won’t trick them. They won’t feel respected and they won’t trust you. Why should they after all? Do servers trust project leaders? And no, that won’t make people motivated whatsoever.

I know, this is a rant. But this makes me crazy. I mean, how could we learn such humiliating behavior? I’m just waiting until I hear “Hi resource” instead of “Hi Jane” when Mr. I’m-So-Damn-Important-Project-Manager meets one of his project team members.

Then, I’m going to hurt somebody. And I guess it won’t be Jane.