Setting Wrong Rules

The other day I wrote about setting rules and things which usually need to be done to have new arrangements working. However you’ll see some of your Great Ideas which you’ve implemented in the work environment don’t look as great as they appeared at the beginning.

What to do? Run in panic? No, not so clever. Pretend it’s all OK? Well, at least that way you don’t admit you’ve failed, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth to add everyone another dull task just to show you aren’t so great as you’d like to be. Change the rule? Oh yes, of course!

If something doesn’t work in your house you either fix it or throw it away. Why shouldn’t you do the same with processes in your work? Don’t force people to do unnecessary work or they’ll force you to look for replacements. It’s a fair deal, isn’t it?

And no, your reputation among team won’t be harmed. Quite the opposite.

Setting Rules

Now you’re a manager and you have some power. Now you’ll show them. You’ll set up The Rule.

Of course we all know The Rule is reasonable and will be an improvement. You do it because you believe it’ll help, not just to show you have the power.

You announce The Rule to all interested parties and that day you go to bed with great feeling. You did something. Everything will be better now.

Then Mr. Reality comes to kick you in the ass. No one cares about The Rule. Everyone works exactly the same as before. Don’t they see it would all be better if they obeyed?

Most likely they don’t. At least not all of them. Not everyone will be convinced by your words, they expect to see results. And they won’t see results unless they start to obey The Rule. We have a deadlock here.

The thing you need to do is to check regularly how people deal with The Rule. Remind them they should do what they are asked for. Tell them once again why The Rule was invited. Hopefully after several iterations everyone will treat it as a natural part of their workplace and you’ll no longer need to think about that.

Avoiding Frustration

The other day I had a chat with one of my friends. He told me one thing.

There’s nothing more demotivating than being helpless. You only frustrate yourself.

We were talking about taking responsibility for a part of the company as a chance to deal with issues which annoyed us. We considered that as a chance to do something about that instead of ranting about the situation. But there is another perspective.

It doesn’t matter if you’re manager or tester – there will be thing which you don’t like and you don’t want to accept them in the long run. It can be atmosphere of the workplace, it can be lack of order in project management, it can be constant context switching, it can be beef-head boss, it can be anything.

Now, you either see you’re able to change the annoying issue or you end up as frustrated employee and eventually leave. Yes, usually managers have more tools to change the environment they work in, but the rule is general. If a developer can’t go through with his great ideas how to improve development his frustration will rise. If a project manager is struggling to move her projects a bit from the complete chaos with no effects she won’t be happy with her job.

If you’re a manager you have to give your people chances to change their workplace. The place they work in and the way they work. It doesn’t automatically mean you have to agree with each idea, but if you listen you’ll hear a lot of reasonable ones. Except of improving performance of your team you’ll also limit their frustrations.

Talk, but Listen

I guess you were in a situation where you knew everything about a problem. What happened (that easy since you see what happened). Why it happened (there they come, first simplifications). Who is responsible (I got you, Mister Guilty).

Then you have several options.

• Wait actively until the problem will resolve itself. In other words do nothing. That’s what most managers do. That way you avoid difficult discussion and all the hassle.

• Yell over them. Get people who are responsible for the problem. Tell them where they were wrong. Tell them what they need to change. Get them back to work as soon as possible. You know better.

• Talk and listen. Tell how you see the situation. Ask people who you believe are the source of the problem what they think about situation. Ask where you can be wrong in your judgment. Try to find the way to avoid this kind of problems in future. Jointly.

I always tried to avoid running someone down. But even in situations when I came to the point I was ready to choose that option open discussion with mind set to listen not to yell brought much better results. Like recently when instead of one issue I was sure we had we found two others, completely different problems.

Ask Your People

I’ve seen a million decisions affecting employees which were made without any consultation with people. Majority of them were made for the sake of employees. You know, like parents who always know the best choice for children without asking them about their opinion. Even when children are in their thirties. And married. And have their own children.

I know you can’t debate with everyone every single decision you make, but sometimes you just go to hit the wall hard with your head just because you don’t feel like asking if your actions make any sense.

I can recall a couple of reporting processes which wouldn’t have been implemented if someone had asked people what they think about the idea and why it is a piece of crap. Most of organizational changes could be at least improved if not avoided if managers were talking with their people. Actually each process which touches employees is vulnerable to that risk.

I don’t say you should run a survey whenever you want to invite some organizational change but asking several persons during informal chant in a kitchen what they think about the idea wouldn’t be a poor choice. What would you think if we implemented that kind of reporting process? What’s your opinion about code review? Would you like to have a chance to rate your colleagues?

Ask. Listen to answers. Reevaluate your ideas.

Flexible Working Hours: Worthwhile or Not?

I hear that question a lot during interviews.

What’s your working hours here?

And my answer is always the same.

Whichever suit you fine.

Of course flexible work-time brings some issues. It will be harder to organize meeting when you have in the team a person who starts at 7am and another who starts at noon if you’re lucky. It can happen that you’ll end up with sleep lovers only and no one would react early in the morning. You won’t predict exactly when your colleagues will be at work.

But these are rather small issues when compared with making people a bit happier. People able to wake up late if they like that. People able to go on errands for themselves during workday whenever they need. You can’t count that in money. It’s hard to verify productivity growth. But making people a happier always works.

There’s one trap here. Flexi hours are often a name for working overtime. Then, well, it’s not so good idea. I prefer to tell honestly: sometimes we do work overtime. It happens. We don’t treat as a normal situation but it happens from time to time. And we don’t call it flexi time.

As far as a deal is fair it is definitely worthwhile. Especially when you work in IT environment where you can find more people who appreciate freedom. If it doesn’t kill your work processes, go for it.

Do People Need Procedures?

I had a discussion with Simon a couple of days go about procedures in a company. Do people need them? When they need more RAM in their machine or they’d appreciate a new chair would they prefer having written instruction telling them what to do or they’d choose just to say about the problem to someone, possibly their supervisor.

In my opinion people don’t need procedures. Companies do.

When organization grows it’s harder to keep everything in order as more people mean more issues and more chaos. Over time it appears no one can handle this and procedures come to save the world. I mean company. And that’s perfectly OK.

But an average employee needs just to have his issues resolved. Nothing more. I think most people don’t give a damn about procedures unless they’re forced to do that.

And what do you think?

Great Companies

Do you like your team?

Can you ask your colleagues freely whenever you feel like it?

Would you feel supported if you wanted to change your profile within the organization?

Do you feel comfortable when you go talk about work issues with your superiors?

Do they listen to you?

Does your boss say simple “sorry” when he screws something up?

Did recruiters were completely honest during your interview?

Is there “one for all, all for one” kind of environment?

Have the most annoying thing changed over the past year?

Would you recommend the company to your friends?

If the answer is 10 times “yes” you probably work in a great company.

Great Teams

How to measure if the team is great?

Two perspectives.

Team member: When emergency comes will you join and add some more from yourself? Will you meet your colleagues there? The more people on board during tough times the better is the team.

Manager: How many people left lately? How many of them were key players of the team? The lower rotation ratio the better is the team.

Best teams I’ve seen were on the better end of scale in both points. I’m lucky enough to be currently a part of one of them.

And when we talk about my team in Wind Mobile, we have some positions for great people willing to join small, flexible company where people are important. If you have an open mind, like to learn and will to develop yourself as developer, support engineer or project manager in Krakow check our website or contact me directly at pawel.brodzinski@windmobile.pl. We have internship program too. Let me know you found the information here.

Promotions from Both Sides of the Barricade

I had quite an insightful discussion lately about promotions. When people hit the ceiling. Why it is so. What to do in that kind of situation.

Of course, as always, I won’t give you a sure-shot answer but from my observations a number of promotion issues have sources on both sides of the barricade.

Managers suck with promoting people.

Above generalization is built from small pieces including:
• Poor knowledge about people working in the team.
• Inability to take the risk.
• Virtually no information about how people are willing to build their career paths.
• Poor judgment.
• Lack of will to train or coach promoted people.
I don’t say every manager can be blamed for every of above points but probably almost every manager can be blamed for at least one or a couple of them. I’m no saint here if you ask me.

With all those problems managers often tend to choose outsiders instead of insiders as all those issues supports fear of failure. Then the most important thing kicks in. When you promote good specialist from your team to another position you actually lose specialist with no guarantee you gain suitable person on the new position. The fear skyrockets. The question pops: is promoting an insider really a good decision?

Most likely it is. Not allowing people to develop themselves you risk of losing them at all. You end up with no specialist on either position. And from my experience outsiders are much more risky than insiders. It’s much harder to judge a person after one or a couple of one-hour meetings than after a couple of years working in the team.

The fear is the most important issue on manager’s side. But it should be overcome.

People suck with promoting themselves.

How many times you hear a friend or colleague who is complaining how hard is to get promotion and you want to ask if her manager actually knows she want to be promoted? How many times you see people who don’t try to do anything with their career just waiting for bosses to do something about that? I can add a number of people who haven’t even tried to talk about what they like and what they don’t like about the job with their bosses. They just left rejecting a chance to change anything within their workplace. Even when the chance was just waiting for a smallest piece of initiative from them.

Sure, managers aren’t cool with promotions but most of them are in fear of losing good people. And sometimes they’re just lost with looking for a good candidate in the team and giving them some hints what you’d like to do can be really helpful for both sides.

Remember managers don’t know everything about their people’s professional goals. They should but they don’t. As far as you leave all in their hands you put your career in risk.

Don’t fear talking with bosses. You can’t lose much as far as your superior isn’t a kind of psycho. Help them. Put a pressure on them. Hey, that’s what they’re paid for. Managing their teams.

Among the best promotions I remember there’s a significant place for those which were made in difficult situations when both manager and employee overcame their fears, started talking with each other and found a way out. Profitable for both sides. And it all began with honest discussion about future with a boss.

A Measure of Good Management

One of measures of good management is a number of situations when people, not a manager, decide how to do things. When the manager allows people to make their decisions. Let them become accountable.

I’d like to see technical design document, but you decide what should be in, what out and how the whole thing will look like. Hey, you guys will be working on that later, not me.

We need formalized risk management in the project, but it’s you who decide how to run whole thing. You know a project team better. You know what will and what will not work.

We have some emergency in server room in another city and it has to be dealt with. Find a way to fix the problem and to minimize impact on other tasks. I don’t have all the data to make the best choice.

The more you hear those kinds the better manager you work with.

When Crisis Comes

How do you act when a crisis comes? Does it motivates you to find unused resources of energy and creativity or rather overwhelms and tires you? Answer yourself honestly. You are not on the interview.

How do your people act when a crisis comes? Who performs well and who don’t deal well with pressure? Think about that before you need to choose those who would help you in a difficult situation.

Ask people how they deal with stressful situations and virtually everyone will tell you that’s not a problem for him. Look at people working under pressure and at least half of them won’t perform very well. A differentiator here is a mixture of several traits including creativity, ambition, general attitude (pessimist/optimist) and engagement.

I don’t say everyone should have the mixture or not being that kind of person is bad. No. But there are roles out there which are much easier to fulfill when you deal well with crisis. Project manager, support engineer, fire fighter, marine... Oops, wrong branches.

Although some of us are more predisposed to deal with stress than others it can be learned to a certain level by anyone. And even when you’re not willing to learn that there are a bunch of positions where it isn’t needed as much. Most of development or quality assurance roles (although not all them) to take the most obvious ones.

When a crisis comes you look for people who will perform well in the situation. When a crisis comes it’s better to know whether you can count on each person in your team. Including yourself. Answering the questions stated at the beginning isn’t a waste of time.

You Are a Lightning Rod for Your Team

When your boss or managers from other team want to give your people negative feedback, which is a nice way of describing good wigging, they shouldn’t go directly to your people. They should talk with you, right?

When a client is unhappy with performance of a couple of people in a project team they should talk directly with you. Shouldn’t they?

When there’s internal issue between people in a team you should be informed to prevent escalation and help to solve issue rightly. Don’t you think?

When you’re a manager or a leader of a team all attacks, even those which are aimed at your team-members, should hit you first. Then you decide whether it is justified and pass the message to an original addressee or you just dismantle that bomb isolating team from unfair accusations. You work as a lightning rod on steroids. Sometimes you put lightning into the ground and sometimes, whenever needed, you let some energy hit the house.

From my experience usually you protect your team as most of the time you know more about your team and you can just judge better. Sure, that does mean you’ll take some hits on your chest, but hey, that’s something they pay you for. And lightning rod doesn’t moan when another lightning hit.

When Project Is Finished

What did you do when your last project came to the (hopefully successful) end?

Did you write an email to the team saying how crucial had been their effort to complete the project?
Did you thank your team?
Did you bring a bottle of champagne to symbolically celebrate a success?
Did you praise the team to your bosses?
Did you invite the team to a party to reward their effort?

If not, well, you should seriously ask yourself why. Probably something is wrong either with you or with your team.

People Problem

Several stories.

1. Poor architecture prepared by a lead developer who rejected to redesign the whole thing as he didn’t consider a person who proposed changes as knowledgeable enough. It ended in a series of functionality issues and bugs in the application. The reason laid within people characters.

2. Low efficiency of the whole team which was organized to allow its boss work effortlessly. It wasn’t the team itself which didn’t want to engage. It was the boss who saw the more work his people have, the more he has himself.

3. A developer put extreme effort in to rescue the project. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible anyway. He saw his extraordinary engagement. His bosses saw the failure and rejected to reward him. The guy left few months later.

4. A manager of development team who was considered by project managers as the one who they didn’t want to work with. As far as there was no supervision from the higher management cooperation with the manager sucked. The effect was the projects were dealt unfairly among development teams. Higher management refused to do anything to solve the problem.

5. Guy was made a sacred cow in his department after a couple of other experienced employees left. He ended up forcing ideas which seemed cool for him, not those which were valuable for the project or the team. A list of issues was invited as several cool decisions brought loads of additional work to the rest of people.

6. Higher managers were treated differently. The sales guy was always right while the technical guy was usually ignored. It ended up with selling things which weren’t feasible or profitable. The technical guy was the one to blame. He left. His successor did the same.

OK, where’s the point? The real reason of all this situations is similar. It’s a people problem. No matter if you think about flawed architecture, rotation among valuable people, wrong workflow or poor cooperation. It is people problem

Either individual goals are different than organization goals or the person’s character somehow doesn’t stick to the rest of the team or there’s personal conflict between people which affects everyday work.

You should accept neither of them. In many cases issue can be solved. As far as clear expectations are shown people can change. I saw them leaving their ego aside and then, voila, magic happened. They were using their time and experience to push things further instead of fighting with environment.

When it doesn’t work, well, you always have the ultimate way of changing things in the workplace as a plan B.

Management with Human Face

Other day I spent the night with my long-time friend who is also a manager in his company. Part of our discussions was about different types of bosses. We went through managers we know, work or worked with. The outcome of discussion was rather not promising. Most of bosses we know are rather poor in managing people. I wouldn’t say the situation on the market is drastically different.

Sure, management is not only dealing with people and you can be poor in that aspect and still successful as a manager. But I strongly believe the manager who gets on well with her team will always perform better in the long run than the one who isn’t capable to do so.

That’s quite a paradox. Even though people could be more successful as bosses if they put some effort to be liked and respected by the team they usually don’t even try. If I had to point several reason why it is so I’d go for:

• Lack of awareness. They don’t see or feel it is important. No one told them it is. They just play whatever they think is the best. And getting on well with the team isn’t on the list.

• Carelessness. They’re aware but they don’t consider it as important. There are more important measures of being good manager than team’s attitude.

• Egocentrism. They look at the world as it was made by copies of themselves. They’re workaholics so why shouldn’t anybody else be too? They feel as everybody else was staring at them trying to copy their approach.

• Asshole. They’re just trying to squeeze their teams as much as possible as they don’t even treat their people as humans. They use all dirty techniques you can think of including those which are forbidden by law.

No matter what the reason is the outcome from the team is usually similar (although intensity can differ). People neither respect nor like their managers. They have no incentive to give something more as no one shows their effort can be worthy. There’s no trust between the team and its manager. Effectiveness is on average level in the best case. People don’t really care.

On the other hand there’s minority of bosses who focus on getting on well with their teams. Sometimes it’s quite a hard job to do, as quite often doing someone a favor produces an issue to be resolved. You let someone to get a day out but still his urgent task must be completed by the end of the day. You don’t force someone to work long hours because he doesn’t feel very well but you’ll have to deal with higher management explaining why the project is late. A list of examples is long.

I know I oversimplify here but I like to think whenever a boss does a favor to one of his subordinates he earns a little plus. He can later exchange those pluses for different things, whenever he’d need that. Moving holidays by a day or two. Staying after hours for a couple of days. Honest feedback. Engagement. Accountability. The list is much longer than the previous one.

As far as you have your bag of pluses received from your team you can feel quite comfortable whenever tough times are about to come. And, what is even more important for me personally, it makes your workplace a bit nicer and contacts with the team better. It’s definitely worth effort.

Squeezing the Team

Several days ago I had a chat with my wife about squeezing employees. You have significant delay in project and what the boss do? This way or another he’s trying to get more from his team. Personally I don’t know any boss who hasn’t done that, maybe except of those promoted this month.

1. Money. There’s always that old simple method. Financial incentive. Stay longer, I’ll pay you more. A bunch of dollars for every hour. Personally I think it sucks when not mixed with other methods. As far as boss’ goal isn’t to have people sitting in the workplace longer but to have the job done. Of course there are jobs and people which response very well for the scenario, but on general it doesn’t work very well.

2. Simple squeeze. Get them in a room, shout at them, tell them to work more. I’m always surprised how often it actually works. How often people response positively for aggression on the other side. Sometimes it doesn’t even ruin atmosphere as team has collectively the same enemy – the boss.

3. Accountability. Let people feel accountable for the job they do. That’s not an easy path. First not everyone will respond as there are people who don’t really care. Second, it requires quite an effort and empathy from a boss. Especially the latter isn’t seen very often. Ah, it’s worth to add some financial prize after all (not before). Bonuses are typically great budget to exploit here.

4. Ask. You’d be surprised how often people have positive attitude when you just go and ask them if they could do something for you. Sure, no one would jump into the fire after you, but sometimes fixing a couple of bugs more or staying late for a couple of days aren’t unreachable. Don’t forget to say thank you.

And one more thing. When you squeeze your team, no matter if you’re on the dark or light side, always try to imagine how your people actually will feel. And while you’re doing that remember they’re usually in drastically different position than you. After all they aren’t bosses.

Positive Feedback versus Negative Feedback

Positive Feedback

When you praise someone (and you do have reason) do it publicly. As often as possible.

Negative Feedback

When you disapprove of someone’s actions do it privately. As often as possible.

As far as you expect some positive impact of course.

Blame Game

Something is screwed up. Once again. What happens next? Usually the witch hunting also known as the blame game. If there is a problem there has to be the source of the issue – something, no, someone who will be blamed.

There are many flavors of that ancient business game. During board of directors meeting when they look for someone else to be the victim that day. In everyday situations between support engineer or tester and developer when they prove each other who has invited the bug. In boss to subordinate relation when another time the same crappy thing happens which should not be here any more.

And that’s all completely wrong.

OK, sometimes it isn’t your choice. You dance as others play. However usually you have the power to stop that. Blame game doesn’t have winners. It doesn’t support people in changing attitude except of growing their frustration and hate.

Yes, from time to time you’ll find it very hard leave the blame game, especially when you’re the boss, but no matter how hard it is, it doesn’t worth you nerves. Ever.

Money as a Motivator

OK, the subject will be controversial. Money as a motivator. If you ask people what motivates them to work, they’d throw a bunch of different things much more often than they’d say about remuneration. Self-development options are evergreen here, but good atmosphere, top technologies, interesting products or well-organized processes are all mentioned more often than pure cash. By the way that’s one of my interview questions and, believe me, I hear “money” much, much less than I’d expect. Rob Walling presents quite a long list of different qualities which are valued more than money by developers. That’s first perspective.

Another one is pointing money actually does no good in the area of motivating people. David Carr in his post about money as a motivator shows a list of examples where money doesn’t really affect positively people’s work or even harm their attitude and, as a result, effectiveness. That’s other perspective.

Personally I strongly believe in non-monetary motivating techniques. “CEO’s handshake” followed by several words of praise can have much more impact than a payload of money. That’s another perspective.

Having said all of that, ask people if they’re willing to change the job for a better one in almost every aspect they can imagine. Better atmosphere, cooler technology, more interesting products and wide range of possibilities to self-develop. The only worse thing would be money. Few would follow. And if you leave aside those who are starting their own businesses you end up almost empty-handed.

Now, do another test – situation is the same but in the second job money is better, but e.g. atmosphere is worse. More candidates? What a surprise. Oh, is that really such a big surprise?

OK, where’s my point then? There are a few of them actually:

• Money alone doesn’t work very well when you want to add motivation over the standard effort.

• Money is very often used wrong. If it is so the result are usually opposite than intended.

• When used well, which is rather rare by the way, money can be a very good motivator.

• Non-monetary motivation techniques are essential but they don’t substitute remuneration – they supplement money.

• Money is more important for people than they’d be willing to admit.

• There are both managers who overestimate and underestimate the role of money as a motivator. There’s no rule here, although I think the former is more often.