- Empowerment: how will you know when you're doing it right?
- 3 practical steps for empowering your technical teams
- Getting technology done: managing contractors and outside support
- (Re)structuring your team
- Getting big things done even when you can't change the big picture
- Advice for new managers: defending your core values
- The hard way: expressing your values and expectations in a formal presentation
- New leaders set the tone
- If leadership is a journey, how will you know when you're there?
- Leadership term limits
July 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Empowerment: how will you know when you're doing it right?
One last motivation
If you need one last motivation on the benefits of empowering your people as a new leader, think of it this way: you are paying these people a lot of money for their time and expertise. Use it. Ask them their opinions and require them to solve problems. You’ll be creating new leaders by teaching them to see the bigger picture.
How will I know when I’m doing it all right?
You’ll know you’ve got it right when your team members can make the right decisions without asking you.
When this happens, they are informed of your goals and vision and are empowered by this knowledge with the ability to make the right decisions.
…and when I’m doing it wrong?
When you don’t inform, when you don’t infuse your goals and vision into others, then every decision made on every day is a mystery to them, and rightly so. With no context, how can anyone anticipate what decision is the right decision?
In this situation no one can do anything without your direct and personal involvement.
This is a very common situation that arises with managers who must control and who live in fear of failure. They don’t tell anyone what the vision is, so no one can criticize it beforehand or know whether they’ve failed afterward. The sad part is, developing an organization that hinges on the wisdom of one omnipotent decision maker sets you up for the biggest failures of all.
It’s worth the trouble; take the time to empower your teams.
This post is inspired by material in the book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 25, 2007 08:02 AM
July 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
3 practical steps for empowering your technical teams
There has been a lot of talk about empowerment in recent years — it’s one of those $50 management buzzwords that spawn whole management consulting cottage industries. But what is it really, and why do you want some?
Webster says
There are two dictionary definitions for the verb “empower.” This first is “to invest with power, especially legal power or official authority.” The second is “to equip or supply with an ability; enable.” Pretty good definitions, because the point is that in doing the first, you get the second.
You’re convinced. But how do you empower a team?
The wrong way: fire and forget
This is easy! All we need to do is to issue an e-mail telling everyone to start making decisions, right? Nope, you have to actually work.
You already know what you have to do: equip your team to make decisions and teach them to make the right decisions. Actually, there’s a third, secret, step, but you’ll have to keep reading for that one.
Put your team in a position to make decisions
First, you have to put your team in a position to make its own decisions. You, as the leader, have to provide your team with the information they need to make the right decisions in the first place. This means making sure you aren’t the sole caretaker of information in your organization.
In order to become prepared to make good decisions for the organization, your team not only needs to understand the big picture (inform and infuse your vision), they also need to understand the facts that surround whatever particular issue they are facing right now. You must create a culture that diffuses these facts quickly and efficiently so that the right information gets to those who need it. How?
There are lots of ways, but two that I use are shared email accounts for teams and daily status meetings. Team information is sent to the team email address so that everyone gets it at the same time. And my daily status meetings are time-limited to no more than ten minutes, and I make everyone stand up to ensure that no one settles in and starts filibustering. Items that need more attention get broken out to their own meeting later.
Teach them how to make the right decision
Second, you have to teach your team how to make decisions and which things are important to you in making those decisions.
When it is time for you to make a decision, try not to simply declare the answer and move on. As often as you can, lead key decision-makers in your organization through your thought process.
One of the ways that I accomplish this goal with my team is that I reflect requests for a decision back to the asker. I do this by asking what they would do, or what they think the right answer is. As they suggest what their course of action would be, I run the suggestions against the various criteria I would use to come to a decision myself: “That’s a good suggestion, but what about x?” And so on, until they can do it on their own.
The secret third step
Get out of the way.
Following these steps will get your team to a position of being prepared to make decisions on their own that are in the best interest of the organization. The next thing you have to do is to make sure that you aren’t stopping them.
One of the most harmful things you can do as the leader of a team you are trying to empower is to correct a decision they’ve made that isn’t obviously badly wrong.
You can minimize the need for corrections in a couple of ways. First, realize that just because a decision differs from what you would have done, it isn’t necessarily a bad one. If the team decision really would work, but it’s just not the way you would have done it, then don’t say anything.
Second, not all mistakes should be corrected. Ask yourself what the consequences are of going in the wrong direction. If they aren’t particularly injurious, your team may be best served by experiencing a failure. Experience is the very best teacher, and often leads straight to heart-learning.
Third, take care with the kinds of decisions that you encourage others to make. Make sure that you aren’t delegating authority on decisions related to things about which you alone have all the information, contacts, context, or perspective needed to make the right decision. Either educate your team so that they are prepared to make these decisions, or keep them for yourself.
This post is inspired by material in the book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 24, 2007 08:08 AM
July 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Getting technology done: managing contractors and outside support
Last time I talked about structuring your team so that everyone understands their role and is in a slot that aligns with their skills. As a special note, let me say a word about handling contractors.
In technology, especially in technology in the federal and state governments, contractors play a large role in getting things done. Technology organizations must respond quickly to changing markets and changing customer needs, and a very effective way to do this is to hire teams of established expertise via external contracts rather than (or in parallel with) building an in-house team of expertise.
Every organization has its own laws and procedures for dealing with contractors, and as part of the management team you’ll need to be aware of these rules and abide by them.
However, I urge you to view all the members of your team, whether contract or in-house, as full citizens of the team and your organization’s family.
If you want everyone to give 110% of their best creative energy, then everyone needs to feel that they are part of the family and that they matter.
Do not make this mistake
If you are seen taking great lengths to nurture your in-house team, but dismiss your contractors immediately at the first sign of difficulty, then your contractors will not feel that they are valued contributors, and your in-house team will feel an unhealthy superiority. The result will be a rift in your workforce, and the destruction of the team.
As a leader, make sure everyone has a starring role, and that everyone is valued for her or his contribution, not for who signs the paycheck.
This post is inspired by material in the book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 23, 2007 08:08 AM
July 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I fundamentally believe that in most situations there is a chance for everyone to benefit. The Happiness Marketing Board calls this a “win-win” situation; sadly this term is vastly overused by people who are usually trying to convince you that the bad deal they’re giving you is really for your benefit. Yuck.
I call it the right way to do things.
Business as usual with bad apples
You’re a new leader with a tight deadline and too much work to do. And one member of your small team isn’t pulling his weight. Your first instinct is to shuffle them out of your group and find someone new who can perform.
At best this is a win-lose-lose deal: you win by getting a new team member, but the person loses out on an opportunity to get better and, if you aren’t up front with the group that receives your problem employee, they lose too.
Lose-lose-lose is more likely, though. Or maybe draw-lose-lose as you discover that your new wunderkind has their own problems.
So how to fix this?
Deming established that the vast majority of failures are due to the system, not the person.
Almost everyone wants to do a good job. How can you match what needs to be done with what your problem team member is capable of doing really well? What is he or she interested in?
A lot of times this requires some shuffling and reorganizing. For example, you may not have planned to write the user’s manual or do a marketing plan for your team’s new widget for another three months, but if that’s something of real interest to your problem team member you might consider assigning that job to him now. He’ll be grateful for the chance to show his stuff and so will work extra hard. You could get more than you expected from the product, and add a whole new dimension to your success at the end of the project. Win for him, win for you, and win for your organization.
People aren’t stupid
They know when they aren’t doing well, and they know when you’re trying to take care of them.
What’s even better about this situation than the wins we’ve already highlighted is that you’ve laid up stores of good will for the future. Your team has seen that you treat everyone with compassion and respect. They now know that you aren’t likely to toss any of them out at the first sign of trouble, and this loyalty will bring new life and creativity to your team. And your “problem” team member now feels an even deeper connection to the team that helped find a way for him or her to be successful.
This post is inspired by material in the book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 17, 2007 09:44 AM
July 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Getting big things done even when you can't change the big picture
It is a fact that the projects we deal with on a daily basis in our technology careers are far too complex for a single person.
The days of the lone ranger were past with the first version of the 8-track tape player. Things get done in teams now, pretty much exclusively. A given project may have thousands of team members, but it is almost always divided and divided again to create units of work that are manageable by small teams who nest together under the subproject leads.
This nesting of teams within teams to form small work units is an artifact of managing. It is easier to manage a small group than a large group. And the hierarchical relationships which this approach creates mirror the standard corporate structure, which is also hierarchical — so the managers can report to other managers who report to übermanagers, and so on without anyone having to write a lot of memos setting the project up. These are not good reasons to run projects this way.
The way its always been done isn’t always bad
Even so, in this case you don’t have to buck the corporate wisdom to be successful. Here’s why.
As I’ve already said, what you need for a successful team is a group of people motivated around a common vision, collaborating on a single set of accomplishments, each contributing his or her most relevant skills. This requires leadership.
You will have to infuse each of the team members personally with enough of your vision and enthusiasm to focus the strengths of all of them on solving the problems at hand. You will have to know the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and work to match tasks to talents. You will have to be open and honest, handing out compliments and admonishments alike immediately upon being earned.
Confident and comfortable leads to creative
In this kind of environment, everyone is filling a vital role, knows what his or her role is, and knows exactly where he or she fits. This should make each individual confident and comfortable.
When we are confident and comfortable, we can create. And we can think out of the box to contribute new ideas without fear of rejection, because our other teammates are similarly motivated and focused. This is real magic, and as a young leader, you will find that this is easiest to create with a small team.
Easiest, not easy
Note that I said “easiest to do,” not “easy to do.”
If it were easy, all teams would achieve miracles. They don’t, because building and leading a team this way is not easy. You will probably not be successful on your first couple of attempts, but the nice thing about failing with this approach is that your teams will still be more energized, creative, and productive than teams resulting from more traditional management approaches.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 11, 2007 09:04 AM
July 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Advice for new managers: defending your core values
So far we’ve focused on your need to set the tone for your organization, and on how to get that done. Leaders put their stamp on their organizations most powerfully in this way.
However from time to time you will be required to define the other side of tone, and take action when people act in ways destructive to what you are trying to create.
This is another of those areas that is your job, and no one else’s. As a rule, never delegate the delivery of bad news. If you find an encounter difficult, there are ways to manage that, and we’ll cover some of them in future posts.
But if you want to lead, you’ve got to lead from the front. This means that hard decisions and bad news are yours exclusively. When people talk about accountability, this is part of what they mean.
Core values: know what yours are
Every leader has to decide what the core values are in their leadership philosophy, and act to protect those values when they are threatened. All of the aspects of the philosophy of leadership that we’re talking about in this project are important to me. Honesty, integrity, teamwork, and accountability are the cornerstones of effective leadership.
And although I always defend each of the values, I personally always act most swiftly to defend the integrity of the team. The very few times that I’ve had to dismiss individuals from my organization I have done so because of blatant anti-team behavior.
There are obviously lots of things that should be done before you get to the “nuclear option” of HR: the pink slip. But when taking any of these corrective actions, you have to be careful to do it right. Here’s my list.
Corrections done correctly
- Be clear in what you say. Don’t finesse.
- Explain the infraction and its impact.
- Get the facts.
- Presume innocence and ignorance over guilt and malfeasance.
- When correcting bad behavior, start small.
- Escalate punishment methodically.
- Correct at the lowest appropriate level in your organization (don’t punish everyone for the actions of a few).
- Stay legal—consult with you HR folks first if appropriate.
I’ll cover a few thoughts about each of these points in the next post.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 9, 2007 08:31 AM
July 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The hard way: expressing your values and expectations in a formal presentation
Last time we talked about one of the most important things you have to do as a new leader in charge of a team: set the tone, or general atmosphere, that you create in your workplace or for your team.
There are two approaches to getting this done.
The easy way, and the other way
You can work it organically, person by person, by structuring your interactions with individuals and taking advantage of teaching situations in which you don’t simply render an opinion about something, but you explain what values motivate your decisions as you render opinions.
The other the way to go is to work it up front: have a presentation or some other mostly formal session where you outline what’s important to you and why. As we said last time, this can be tough to do, and sometimes you can pick which path you want to take.
If you are suddenly assigned to an organization in which you have had no previous leadership role, or you are taking over an organization and radically changing the management style, you almost have to have a formal session where you introduce yourself and your values to your new team. In this case you’ve got to do it the hard way.
The hard way
This is the situation in which I found myself after I took charge of the executing team in my organization.
I had been a part of the organization for about eight years, but my only official role on the executing team up to then had included responsibility for a group of one (not counting me). Most of the team knew me, but only as a familiar face. They didn’t know what I stood for, or what my goals for the center would be. There was a lot of uncertainty in the center about the new young guy in charge, and uncertainty causes discomfort and distraction.
I decided to call an all-hands meeting and talk about what was important to me, what people could expect from me, and what I expected from them. I’m very comfortable talking in front of groups, and I’m also fairly comfortable talking about what’s important to me, since I’ve spend a fair amount of time thinking about it, figuring it out for myself. But the talk was still not one I was looking forward to, because it was very personal. Talking about new computer technology is one thing. Talking about what I believed is a whole new thing altogether.
I felt strongly that it needed to be done, however, since I was taking over a situation in which morale was not growing because of a management style that did not focus on creativity or on creating and nurturing teams. In this context it was especially important for me to state up front that there was a new guy in town with new values and ideas about success.
So I got over not wanting to do it.
The talk
I focused the talk around my core values: respect, integrity, honesty, and teamwork. To help my message stick, I created an acronym around these four values: RIGHT. It was more than a little corny to add the acronym, and I debated for a long time about whether to use it (in fact, I thought about deleting it from this article!). It did give people something to walk away with, and got them talking about my message. Even if the conversations started with “Can you believe how lame that was?” at least some of the hall talk I heard then continued on to the core of what I said.
In the end I think the details of what I said were less important, in the specific atmosphere I inherited, than the fact that I said something about my beliefs. The impact you have will vary depending upon the prevailing mood of your team.
Overall, the talk went fairly well, with lots of questions about how I would translate my values into specific, concrete changes in the organization. Some were hostile, “Just because you say you value teamwork doesn’t mean you will.” And some were less so. I didn’t convince everyone that anything would change, and I didn’t expect to do so.
Helping people recognize change
But what I did accomplish was to give everyone a mental list of how things could be different. As they saw real examples of my values being put into action, these examples would register against the mental list, and slowly everyone would recognize the change in culture that was occurring. If I hadn’t given the talk and planted the list in everyone’s head, many people wouldn’t have been “watching” for the change, even if only subconsciously. These people would have kept working the old, anti-team way, because they weren’t primed for change.
Putting yourself on record
It’s your job to set and maintain the tone your team needs to create the kind of success you can all be proud of. Sometimes you have a choice about how you do this, and sometimes you really have to get out there and do it the hard way.
I will say this in defense of doing it the hard way — having the more formal setting in which you actually outline your beliefs all at once and set the boundaries within which you expect everyone to behave — it will put you on record with a public commitment that you won’t be likely to break.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on July 2, 2007 09:11 AM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
As I've said before one of the things that is your job, and that you must never shirk, delegate, or otherwise avoid, is to set the tone. “Tone” is the general atmosphere that you create in your workplace or for your team.
This is one area where you really should lead by example. You should start by communicating the basics of what you stand for. How you do this depends on the size of your team, and your personal style. There are many ways to approach this problem, but two broad classes are distinguished by whether you build from the bottom up or push it down from the top.
A big push or dribble over time?
If you are comfortable talking about the softer things in life, your values and life philosophy, and if you have a medium- to large-sized team, then you may want to consider having a team meeting where you outline your values explicitly. This approach falls in the big push camp.
This is a pretty good life exercise because it gives you the opportunity to give some thought to what you actually do stand for, and the act of articulating it for others will crystallize it for you.
Standing up in front of a group and articulating what you stand for, possibly even with slides, will bring visions of 7th-grade poetry recitations and night sweats to many of you. If you aren’t comfortable doing this, it will be clear to your audience, and your message will get lost in your discomfort. You’ll likely lose more than you could possibly gain.
If you have comfort issues with this kind of formal presentation, you do have other options.
In the dribble over time vein, you could look for opportunities in everyday interactions to highlight the values behind the decisions you are asked to make. For example, consider a situation in which you are working on a project report with one of your teammates. Faced with a decision to finesse the project progress numbers or be honest about a schedule slip in a project, choose the path of honesty, and tell your teammate why you made the decision to be honest.
For example, instead of just saying “let’s put the real numbers in,” say something like “well, I’ve always believed that it really is best to be honest. It’s going to mean some tough questions from the boss, but I think this is the best way to go in the long run.” That sort of thing.
Doing it the hard way is sometimes a must
There may arise a case when you must consider finding a way to deal with any discomfort you may have about a values presentation.
If you are suddenly assigned to a large organization in which you have had no previous leadership role, you almost have to have an introductory all-hands meeting where you introduce yourself and your values to your new team.
In articulating your values be sensitive to change
In general I think it's true that most people hate change. What they seem to hate even more than change, however, is not being on the train with everyone else as it leaves the station. In changing the culture of a workplace, you can use this stay-in-the-gang mentality to reach the most hardened staff members and bring them over to the new way of thinking.
Set the tone in your organization by telling everyone what you stand for, and what they can expect from you. If you are, or can become, comfortable doing it in a formal all-hands presentation, then do it that way. This will put you on record with a public commitment that you won’t soon break.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on June 25, 2007 07:26 AM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
If leadership is a journey, how will you know when you're there?
OK, so you're on your way into leadership. You think you've got your head around the whole "leadership is a journey" thing, but how will you know if you're making any progress? Are you doing it right?
Here's the benchmark I use: you will know that you are getting there when you become the least important person in your organization.
No, really. It's a good thing.
Now that you've uncurled from your protective fetal position, let's talk about why this makes sense and why it's a good thing.
Decisions—the right decisions—will be made and actions taken even before you are aware of what’s happened. Initiatives will grow around the themes that you set. Problems will be identified and solutions crafted by the people most affected. All of this will happen without your direct involvement and sometimes without your direct knowledge.
The daily stuff will just get done, and you’ll find yourself with time to think and, you know, lead.
The least important person?
So it’s a little bit of hyperbole to say that you will be the least important person in your organization. There are decisions and responsibilities that you must take on your own. They are the job of the person in charge.
But at some point, when your team is large enough, your job won’t be to do any of the work that your organization does. Your job will be to enable other people to succeed.
The adjustment
This was a big adjustment for me. I was used to doing, and my transition to management involved a rather unusual jump from a two-person team to a hundred-person organization and a big mission (if you are tempted to think that all this leadership stuff and career planning doesn’t matter until later in your career, remember that you don’t always get a lot of notice before the jump up).
At first I tried to stay very hands on, actually doing some of the same work I had been doing before I took over as director of my organization.
It was a hard lesson for me that this was not going to work. I was unavailable when things needed to be done or when people needed to see me. There were decisions that were legitimately mine to make that I didn’t take time to handle because I was still doing the job that I used to do; the job that someone else now had. My job was now to set the stage for the team’s success, to define the tone of the workplace for the team, to identify and nurture each team member’s special talents, and to form a vision for where we would go from here.
If you are genuine in your push to become a leader you're more likely to come across as credible and honest, even when you make inevitable mistakes. And this is key: people sense the genuine desire to help rather than push, and they respond to that.
At the same time, the leader is prepared to make, and capable of making, the final decision.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on June 20, 2007 07:33 AM
June 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I’ve just been through a career transition that reminds me of something I realized as a newbie just out of school many years ago: leaders shouldn’t serve forever.
I served as the director of my computer center for five years. During that time we made a lot of changes (I think for the better), expanded our business into new areas, and developed a lot of new talent.
I tend to like a change of scenery fairly regularly, and I’ve just shifted my responsibilities with the result that there’s a new director in the computer center. When I’ve changed jobs in the past it’s involved an organizational change so that I wasn’t involved with my old organization any more. This time, however, I’m still around and I get to see the impact on my previous organization. It’s been fascinating.
The new director is doing a swell job, and is someone we developed from within. What I’ve seen him do in his first few months though reinforces the idea that leaders shouldn’t be in charge of the same organization forever. It’s obvious that bad leaders shouldn’t stay in leadership positions — in fact, ideally they shouldn’t ever get into a leadership position.
But my leadership term limits apply to good leaders as well. Here’s why: new ideas and blind spots.
New blood
It is inevitable that when you start a new leadershp role — even in the same organization — you come in fresh ideas and a new perspective. This brings an energy to your fulfillment of your role. Others can see that energy, and provided you are a reasonably effective leader, will begin to feed off it. Enthusiasm is contagious, and new ideas bring an energy that sparks the imagination of everyone around you.
People wake up under new (effective) leadership, and the difference moves the organization forward.
Once you’ve been in the job long enough to be comfortable in it and to have accomplished the big ticket things on your agenda, you begin to lose your enthusiasm. You tend to let successful programs continue, and you generally aren’t strongly motivated to displace successful programs you started, even after they are no longer the best way to get things done. At this point you might be doing a good job of managing, but you probably aren’t doing a good job leading, and it’s time to move on.
This is all natural, and most people experience these changes. They don’t make you a bad leader.
What can make you a bad leader is to not respond to the changes, and you have two choices. You can wake yourself up, and try to capture some of that energy and enthusiasm you brought into the role at the beginning. (One way to do this is to push your organization’s mission into a new area, or deveop a new line of business.) Or you can move on, and let someone else’s energy carry the organization forward.
Blind spots
The other strong reason to move on after you’ve had the helm of an organization for a while is that you begin to develop blind spots.
There are problems that you start to not see anymore. Either they’ve been resistant to solutions you’ve already tried and you’re ready to give up and pretend they’re not there anymore, or they are problems that are in an area of the organization that you stopped paying attention to because it’s always “just worked.”
In the short run blind spots aren’t a big deal but, like any organizational problem, if left unresolved they can create long term problems for you down the road. That minor personnel problem in customer service will probably blow over again just like it has the past 3 times, but the rest of the staff is getting worn down dealing with this “little” problem that no one will do anything about. Pretty soon customer satisfaction is tanking and you’re trying to figure out why.
The solution? Move on.
Here’s my proposed solution: good leaders get five years, and then they have to move on to another leadership role.
Why five? Well, in my industry segment five years is enough time to come in, create significant change and grow new business areas to add value. It’s also enough time for the projects you started when you took over to become sacred cows, and for your blind spots to be in full bloom.
The number might be different in your industry segment, either shorter or longer. And there are probably exceptions to the rule; leaders who are so capable or who are working in an area so specialized that it would be disastrous to move them out. The idea probably also doesn’t work iun really small organizations; you probably need at least 100 people and several teams for this to make sense. But, in general, I think leadership term limits are a pretty solid idea.
And there’s a very strong side benefit for your organization: new leaders. If the guy in charge knows he’s going to rotate to another leadership assignment in 5 years, he’ll know he’s got to develop the next leader to take over from him. This leads to the creation of a whole new corps of leaders in your company on a regular basis.
Posted by John West on June 13, 2007 10:21 PM
June 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Margin people and the bad deal
So we've talked about technology as a creative activity and the need to motivate creative people with leadership rather than trying to herd them through management.
Despite the fact that the leadership approach works (and I think it works best), by many standard organizational measures the management approach can appear successful, especially from the outside. Why?
As we have already talked about, some of the appearance of success can be explained by the control these managers exercise over information in the organization around them. Only the good news—or news that can be made to appear good—makes it out.
Information-control managers can also appear successful partly because over time they attract the “margin people.”
Margin People
Margin people are the folks who want a job where they clock in, are present for eight hours, and clock out. They do what they are asked to do (after the third or fourth time). They require close management because the minute someone isn't paying attention to them they are surfing the web or napping in their cubicle.
Margin people don't complain because it takes too much work. In fact, they have an implicit bargain with their manager: “You let me do the bare minimum, and I won't make waves for you.”
When a competent, driven person joins one of these teams, he quickly realizes that he is not in a creative situation that will let him grow and contribute in a meaningful way. Sooner or later these people leave for another group or another company, most often without ever having complained (what would it accomplish?).
Talent follows the leadership gradient: good teams get better by attracting the best performers, and bad teams get worse as they continue to drive away anyone not in the margin. I have been part of this cycle myself, leaving underperforming teams that were managed by dictators (good and bad) for teams that were led by leaders.
Although the bad managers in my experience appeared effective by some of our organizational measures, the teams never innovated, never surprised, and never did more than just barely meet expectations. In other words, they didn't move forward. Not moving forward in technology means you are falling behind.
The mandate for leadership
This is the business motivation for the mandate for leaders to foster creativity. But it is not the most important motivation.
The strongest motivation for leading in technology, rather than managing, is that the technology community isn't just providing jobs for engineers and scientists and profits for investors. We have responsibility for shaping the future. We owe it to the world to ensure that we put the best minds, motivated to their full potential, to the task of making sure that this future is a future of abundance for everyone. This only happens with leadership.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on June 4, 2007 03:29 PM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
As a lightweight way to steer my life in the direction of making some small positive difference I'm a pretty big fan of that phrase. And if you are serious about developing yourself into a leader who makes a difference, you might want to consider adopting it for yourself.
Teaching as a way to recruit and expose your team's talents
The obvious benefit of teaching what you know is that by sharing your knowledge with others you increase their skills and abilities. You make them more valuable as part of your potential team. Also, you’ll quickly find people who learn things in different ways, some of which will complement your own learning style. And you may find people who have strengths that you don’t have—strengths you may need later. This makes teaching a great way to recruit and an excellent tool for building a team and for exposing the talents of that team.
Teaching as a way to deepen your understanding
It is less obvious, but just as important, that the teacher derives substantial benefits from the very act of teaching. When we learn something new, we ideally learn it in two stages. First, we “head-learn” a new idea. At this stage, we intellectually understand a concept and can act upon our knowledge, but we have to think about it first. We have to tug these general concepts out of our memory and wrestle them into a particular form that applies in a particular situation.
The next, deeper, and much more important, stage of learning is “heart-learning.”
At this stage you have taken a concept and integrated it into your worldview. It is a part of who you are, and you can act upon this knowledge without having to activate it consciously. For most of us, knowing left from right is heart-learned: this distinction is instinctive to us and we know it without having to access the left/right memory and process it before making a choice in our actions.
Teaching is one of the best ways to heart-learn something.
Communicating a new concept to someone else forces you to address all the little details you skipped over when you were learning something the first time. Now you must put the whole picture together in a way that your student can adopt (and, if necessary, adapt). Your student will ask questions on aspects that didn’t occur to you, forcing you to shine light into the dark corners of your own understanding. He or she will stumble on things that were easy for you, and in explaining them you’ll realize that you perhaps didn’t understand them so well yourself the first time, and, prodded by the student’s need, you will finally figure them out fully only now.
Teaching is the best way to learn, and your knowledge and skills are some of the most precious resources you can share with others. Best of all, you can start developing this particular leadership trait right now.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 30, 2007 10:20 AM
May 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
There will be winners and losers. Sometimes.
Here's mom-and-apple-pie post, but hey, just because your mom said it doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about. That said, if you're feeling particularly troll-ish today, just move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
When resolving a difference or conflict between one or more people we are taught, from a very early stage, to look at winners and losers.
Sometimes, but not always.
There doesn't always have to be winners and losers. Sometimes it is the case that viewpoints are so vastly separated and so fundamentally held that someone must win and someone else must lose. But it often happens that you can find a path through a conflict or difference in opinion where everyone benefits and some useful change still happens.
The way that this happens in practice will vary from situation to situation, not least because the people and organizations involved will come to conflict with different interests. But let's look at an example that a new leader might face and see if we can't make this a little more concrete.
An example: Dick and Jane hate each other and you
Let's say that you have two employees fighting over the same piece of a choice new project. Tom wants it because he's always gotten that work, and Susan wants it because she's never done work at that level and wants a shot at advancement.
There are lots of ways for both of these folks to win. You could give the work to Susan as part of her development and task Tom with training her to do it as part of his development path to more senior duties—now both people stand to be promoted by the same project, and both people get to grow. Another option: can you take this project a step further than you've ever taken this kind of work by using Tom's expertise to grow a new area and backfilling his role with Susan?
Not every situation will reduce to such nicely wrapped packages, but this is about a point of view and establishing a pattern of behavior. Try to achieve these goals all the time, but be realistic and acknowledge you're only going to make it some of the time.
Leaders create environments
One of the chief things to remember when you are developing your leadership skills is that leaders create environments. The other thing to remember is that you are responsible for the kind of environment you create (whether you take that responsibility and act on it is up to you). The kind of environment I try to create for the people I work with is an environment where we look for ways for everyone to succeed.
I believe—and to some extent this topic is fuzzy and therefore deserves the word “believe”— there is enough room for everyone to be successful and happy. These quantities do not obey conservation laws—they can be created without end. They can also be destroyed without end if you don’t seek opportunities for everyone to benefit from daily situations. When you look for ways for everyone to benefit, then most of the time everyone involved will look forward to working with you again and you'll be creating a feedback loop that will drive future, unexpected successes.
Take every opportunity to move a situation forward in a way that benefits all parties involved, and you'll be creating an environment where you can be genuinely surprised by your success.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 23, 2007 12:59 PM
May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Leadership success comes from failure. Sometimes many, many failures.
You are going to have failures
As you develop, grow, and do your best to give your best, you're going to run headlong into the path of something that most of us will go to great lengths to avoid: failure. We’ll blame others, blame our circumstances, and blame the weather to avoid responsibility for failure. Most usually and tragically we avoid failure by avoiding those things at which we aren’t sure we can succeed.
Here’s the truth: if you aren’t failing at least occasionally, you aren’t doing anything of long-term value for yourself or others.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely want to avoid failure in everything I do. I work for success and I expect excellence in others and in myself. So why do I fail? Why will you—and I mean will, not might—fail?
Failing means learning something new
We are most vulnerable to failure when we are trying something new, in other words, when we are learning. The bigger the lesson, the higher the potential benefit, and the more dramatic the failure is likely to be.
An Olympic hopeful learning a new vault is going to have some spectacular failures, and probably more than a few injuries as a result. But when she finally reaches the goal, in this case a new skill, her chances for gold are increased dramatically.
Likewise as you progress through your academic and into your professional career, and even in your personal life, you will be learning big lessons. Sometimes you’ll be successful the first time out. You will feel pretty good about this, but you will have learned only a little that you will be able to apply elsewhere. This is because you completed something that you were already equipped to do.
It might be good for you, but it still sucks
That said, let’s remember that failure is still unpleasant, usually for everyone involved, and in some cases is pretty costly.
After any one failure you cannot guarantee, to yourself or to others, that you will make your goal on the next attempt. But what you can, and should, expect is not to repeat the same failure twice. As you are failing in new ways you are still learning. When you start to repeat past failures—failing at the same place in the same way—you’ve stopped learning and you need to step back and figure out why.
As a leader you have another obligation, besides just understanding and acting upon your own failures. You have to allow failure in those around you, and in those on your team. In fact, for long term growth and real innovation, you have to encourage your team to put themselves in situations where failure is an option. And you also have to be prepared for those failures, and know how you are going to react to protect the business when they do happen.
Recognize failure as the currency of success, not as an occasion for recrimination and remorse.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 22, 2007 07:30 AM
May 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Most people you'll meet have something to say that's worth hearing.
Most of the success I have in dealing with people is in helping them feel as if they have a meaningful role to play in what is going on around them. People in all situations feel valued when they feel they have impact or influence on their surroundings. I do this by listening to them, acting on the good ideas people share with me, and giving them the credit.
You can't possibly have all the good ideas
Before I make a decision about a change in some process or procedure, I talk to the people who will be affected by that decision. What do they think the problem is? How would they solve it? Does my proposed solution address their concerns? If not, how can we move toward the common goal in a way that leaves them more comfortable? What am I missing?
No matter what your position is—the CEO or the janitor—you are only one person. Your ideas have holes in them. Solicit the input of other people.
Getting good input from others
When you are exercising this skill, don’t present your solution first and ask for their input. Try to lead them through a collaborative discussion that focuses on how they view the situation and what possible solutions might be.
Rather than saying “So, the OS patch process is broken. I think we should do X”, say something like “I’ve been looking at the OS patch process lately. It seems like we could be getting more done here. What do you think? Can you think of a way to improve it?”
If you do have a solution already that seems to be more complete than what your partner has come up with, slowly work your solution into the conversation, and get feedback. When you come up with needs that haven’t been addressed, ask for input in modifying your proposal from those most affected and from those who will have to implement the change.
The benefits
I invariably learn something new about the situation, and often this new knowledge results in changes to my own plan. With a solution that more completely addresses the problem, the organization benefits more quickly from my action.
The people affected (“stakeholders” if you're a business consultant) get visibility into my decision-making process, and by so doing receive a little mentoring in the process. They also get to contribute their voice to the situation, and often they get to see their ideas incorporated into the solution. When the decision is finally made and the change enacted, they support it more fully because they feel that they were a part of the decision.
The strength of your solutions will increase ten-fold, and the strength of your implementations will increase exponentially as all the stakeholders feel connected to and responsible for the solution.
And it works for people, not just projects
This approach works as well on people as it does on projects and products.
If you are experiencing a personality conflict with someone on your team, or if you are mediating a conflict between others, listen to other points of view first. Ask questions and probe for explanations before you hand out punishments or impose a solution.
You will be surprised at how complicated “simple” situations really are: people conflicts are almost never about what they’re about. No one is really fighting over who does or doesn’t make coffee in the morning. The fight is really about one employee’s perception that another one isn’t pulling his weight on important projects, or whatever.
But you won’t find out if you don’t listen first.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 18, 2007 07:02 AM
May 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Why you should be blowing your own horn
I've always heard you've got to blow your own horn, because no on else is going to blow it for you.
For most of us, though, blowing our own horn is pretty hard to do. I'm always worried about coming across as a blowhard. So, how do we find the line that separates useful updates on your accomplishments and capabilities from anti-social bragging?
I think the answer is to stay focused on the big picture. Knowing what it is you are accomplishing can help you determine when to speak up and when to sit quietly.
Good for your organization
Sharing your accomplishments and growth with peers in your professional community, but outside your immediate work environment, can be extremely beneficial to your organization's mission or your company's bottom line.
Many of these people are customers (or potential customers) who can help bring in new revenue and new mission, or help to cement your existing mission. Its human nature to want to be associated with success, and given a choice everyone would prefer to do business with organizations that treat their employees as they themselves would want to be treated.
Looked at from another angle, these potential customers might be more easily converted to actual customers if they see your business as a dynamic, growing organization whose employees can continually adapt and grow to meet new requirements. If you are growing and accomplishing new goals the odds are good that your co-workers are too, and that sounds like an organization that can get things done.
Good for your career
Advertising your accomplishments is also clearly good for your own career.
While you are helping to grow your organization by helping potential customers see your organization as dynamic and adaptive you are also advertising yourself. It may be that one of your peers in another organization (or another part of your organization) is looking for someone with the skills you've just acquired, or is looking for someone to grow into new role. Unlike the stock market where past performance is no guarantee of future success, past personal growth is a pretty good indicator that you'll continue to grow and adapt over the coming years.
And finding opportunities to showcase your accomplishments is also good for your career even if you stay in your present organization. It puts you in the running for promotions and awards, especially if you can encapsulate your successes into documentable (and actionable) nuggets.
Getting it done
So how do you do this? There are a few different options, and frankly you just have to find the one that's right for you and your style of interaction.
Some people belong to professional networks (like LinkedIn) where they maintain a network of contacts that they update periodically with significant accomplishments. You can achieve the same goal with an email list as well.
The key here is infrequent, significant updates. Pick one or two big things every 12 or 18 months or so and update your most relevant contacts. You might even adapt your message to your goal for the contact: in other words, you might highlight different achievements to your boss than you would to a new potential co-PI or customer.
Other thoughts? Find opportunities to network and learn to work the room. Conferences, professional societies, and standards meetings can be a great place to interact with potential customers, partners, and future employers. Your own organization's social functions can help you stay in contact with parts of your company that you don't usually get to see. It can also be helpful to add professional information to your personal blog or web presence, provided that your personal life isn't totally at odds with your professional one.
Small steps
As with most new things, I suggest taking small steps and incrementally expanding your comfort zone. As you figure out what works for you, you may find yourself keeping a journal of accomplishments to share throughout the year. Blowing your own horn might seem a little self-serving at first, but upon reflection I think you'll agree it's good for you, your company, and your profession.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 7, 2007 02:27 PM
May 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
It always surprises me how effective recognition is, and there is tremendous variety in how you can give it. I have a hierarchy of recognition that I use depending upon the magnitude of the accomplishment.
The “Everyday”
For the everyday attaboy, I'll try to run into the person casually (like in the hall) and speak a word of thanks. If it's not someone I run into routinely, I'll seek them out, and possibly follow-up with an e-mail. This only takes a few minutes, and might be one of a hundred e-mails you send in a day. But it might be the only thank you that the recipient has had all month, and it can be a powerful motivational tool.
Keeping it casual
For accomplishments that are a little more substantial, I send an e-mail with a cc list that is appropriate for the magnitude of the deed. For example, the recipient's chain of command should be cc'd. For issues of significant impact I'll also cc my boss and peers in the organization that I interact with (hey, I want some recognition, too!).
Kickin' it up a notch
At the next level are accomplishments for which I'll write a personal, handwritten thank-you note on nice stationery. I actually bought some of my own stationery so that it's more personal than simply using the company letterhead. I don't write many of these personal notes because I want to maintain their value by rarity. Handwritten notes are noticed precisely because almost no one writes anything longhand anymore, and the effort is often more appreciated because of it.
Full frontal commendation
At the next tier is the official letter of commendation. This is a typed letter, sent formally into the recipient's chain of command on the organizational letterhead. These letters typically make it into employee files and become part of the official record of that employee's performance. This type of recognition often pays off at review time in the form of the best of all possible bonuses: the raise.
And the winner is…
Above this tier is recognition with an artifact. My options here are cash awards (bonuses) and plaques or certificates, and I use them all depending upon the circumstance and the individual employee's personality. Some people are motivated more strongly by public recognition than money; for them, a plaque is the way to go, and I usually find a function at which I can recognize the accomplishment in front of a wide audience.
The plaque option is also a good one when you want to recognize members of your team that don't work directly for you: subcontractors, for example. Often you won't have a direct path to impact their pay, but you can certainly offer them a plaque or certificate.
Some people, however, are more strongly motivated by money. For these folks, cash it is. An option to create a more public recognition from what is usually a private action (in most organizations salary actions are not discussed openly) is to create a certificate to go with the bonus and present that in an appropriate public forum.
Do it now
In order for any reward to stimulate further similar action it has to be close enough to the original act that the person associates the reward with the action. If you wait until the end of the year and have one big awards day when the accomplishment happened the preceding January, the recognition will be of little value in creating more of the good behavior you are acknowledging.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 3, 2007 10:06 AM
May 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
No free soda? Keeping your team happy outside of Oz
I've always wanted to work at one of those companies. You know, the ones we keep hearing about that offer their employees massages at their desks, pool tables, snacks, and free sodas. To be sure we heard a lot more about them before the last .com bubble burst, but they're still out there. And the periodic stories on slow business news days torment me with images of a magical work Oz done in technical-worker-bee happiness.
Meanwhile, I'm still clocking in back in Kansas. Black and white, buy your own sodas, thank you very much.
If you're a new manager or team leader, you might long for the ability to take care of your guys this way. After all, how much can a couple sodas cost, right? I went through the same thing, with the same results you're likely to have: buy your own sodas, thank you very much.
Fact is, most of us don't work in an environment where this kind of attention to employee comfort is a necessary recruiting/retention tool. And until a business case can be made for it in your area of the country, it probably just isn't going to happen.
So what can you do to keep your folks motivated and happy? I've got a couple ideas tested by my own experiences leading teams large and small. No doubt there are many others, and if you've got some that work, or some that don't, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
An easy one: say thanks
This is English for "recognize and reward accomplishment." I'll do a longer post on this later this week (in fact, I thought I already had but can't find it), but this boils down to being on the lookout for an opportunity to recognize someone else's hard work.
How you recognize it depends on your own style, and the magnitude of the accomplishment. From the simple "pat on the back" to the full blown award and commendation, you've got a whole range of ways to say thank you. Find what works with your team and your style, and then spread the love around.
The only thing to watch here is that you keep your recognition in scale with the accomplishment. Gushing over a one line addition to a python script that took all of 30 seconds to write is going to devalue all future recognition you give.
Include your team
The people on your team are there because they have something to offer. Let them offer it. When there is a decision to be made or direction to be chosen, ask some advice. Bounce ideas off your team. Get input.
You can do this formally or informally, but the benefits are real. The quality of your solutions will increase from the benefit of additional points of view. And your team will feel like they are part of where you're all headed, investing them even more fully in the team's success.
Empower your employees
That's a $5 management industry word, but I can't think of another one. Basically what I'm talking about here is pushing decisions down to the lowest level in your organization that they can be successfully made. You don't have to make all the decisions. You might want to know about many of them so you aren't surprised in a meeting, but if someone on your team can really make that architecture or API decision, let them.
Again, they'll be more personally invested in the successes (and failures) related to the choice, and you may find that your team does more innovating with this kind of distributed decision making.
The (occasional) outing
I'm not big on doing a lot of outside-of-work activities with the people I work with. Maybe that's just me.
But the occasional lunch or weekend picnic can be a valuable opportunity to help your team relate more effectively to one another, and if you're footing the bill this kind of activity can provide a real boost to the team.
Buy a round of appetizers after work one day, or spring for 45 minutes on the go-carts after meeting a tough deadline. It doesn't cost much, but could pay off big.
In the long term
Sure, soda and massages are a great recruiting tool, and if everything else is going right they can give you just the edge you need to keep your best people around.
But if you aren't focused on the fundamentals - on building a team where everyone has a place and understands the real value of their contributions - then no amount of soda and snacks is going to hold things together.
And, lucky for you, you can start building a great team right now, from the trenches. No budget required.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on May 2, 2007 11:34 AM
April 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
So if you're thinking about leadership philosophy, and you should think a little about it, here's an item that's got to be on the list: Be honest.
Yes it's obvious, but here's the thing about honesty: it's usually hardest when it matters the most. But when you stick to it you'll find benefits you never planned for, along paths you hadn't thought were even related to the situation in which you were honest.
Unfortunately, early in your academic and professional career you can get away very easily with not being honest. You can commiserate with a classmate over his "unfair" grade on the last test, even when you really believe he spent too much time that week partying instead of studying. You can blame the project plan if your teammate misses critical deadlines when you really believe that she spent too much time surfing the web instead of working.
The consequences for these dishonesties are relatively slight in the near term, and for the sake of camaraderie you will be tempted to take this path. You shouldn't go this way.
Starting on the path of honesty early will serve you well long into the future. You'll develop tact and grace, learning how to be honest without being mean, in a much lower stakes environment than if you don't start until you are the leader of an outsized team. And you'll develop a reputation for forthrightness that will serve you well as you are considered for advancement.
How to approach this?
When your boss or friend or wife or classmate asks you for feedback, make it honest. In the case of your boss, you may have to be careful about phrasing if you disagree with her or his pet project, and you want to be clear that you will follow directions (as long as they are legal, ethical, and moral) and do everything you can to make the boss's choice a success.
All of this said, however, when your opinion is requested, you don't serve anyone by saying you agree if you don't. If the decision works out, the boss may appreciate your candor and your ability to work hard in support of a choice even when you don't agree with it. All involved will also be looking for evidence that you learned from your mistake, so figure out why you were wrong and make an adjustment! If the decision doesn't work out, the boss will likely turn to you again and perhaps assign more weight to your opinions in the future. Be respectful of the boss's position and mindful of possible hurt feelings and resentment of a challenge to authority, but be honest.
An example
Take the simple, but very common, example of the annual performance review. This ritual is easy if you have a staff made entirely of “USDA Grade A” employees. Since no one actually has such a magical staff, the performance review is never easy in practice, and for new supervisors it can be downright miserable. How do you tell Michelle that her performance isn't up to your or the company's expectations?
Here's the situation: Michelle has a chronic problem with missing deadlines, and it has delayed two major projects this year. You've only been her manager for a year, and before that you were her co-worker for three years. She's older than you, with more experience at the company. And besides, she's not going to take this well, and you don't want to hurt her feelings.
You can avoid the situation, or deal with it.
Choice one: the duck and run
Your first choice is to focus on the things she did well, give her a slightly above average review, and mumble something about perhaps being on time a little more often with deadlines. She walks away (probably) happy, gets a small raise, and spends the next year not doing anything differently.
But because you aren't satisfied with her performance, you begin to give the harder assignments to other team members. She notices this, and is beginning to feel left out. Because you haven't told her anything is wrong with her performance, she concludes that this is personal: “You just don't like me anymore.” She becomes disgruntled, discontent, and shares her feelings with the rest of her teammates, undermining your effectiveness as their leader.
Ultimately she may leave the group—this is actually the best possible way such a situation can go, because if she stays she'll become increasingly unhappy, and have an increasingly negative effect on your team. Either she'll quit, or you'll find a way to make her someone else's problem. Either way, you've got a broken team and a former friend.
The right choice: face the issue with an honest assessment
Your second choice is to be up front at the beginning. Tell Michelle, very specifically, in which areas she needs to improve. Give her examples of times that she succeeded and also of times when she didn't meet expectations. Tell her why her non-performance was a problem. Was the project late? Did it go over budget? Was the report not well received? Did you lose the contract?
Specifically, make sure you cover the following three items:
- Be honest about impact so that she can understand why her performance is really a problem.
- Be clear about your expectations for her.
- Work with her to develop a scenario in which she can work on the things she needs to improve.
I am surprised at how well these situations generally end, at least in the long term. I personally find them very challenging. I hate to see people upset. But, it simply isn't fair to ask the rest of the team to deal with the consequences of a decision by me to avoid an uncomfortable situation.
A tough thing to do
Is it hard? Yes. Honesty is not usually explicitly encouraged in the workplace. It can make things bumpier in the short term. But it is worth it in the long term, both ethically and for your career. Just look at all the trouble that dishonest leaders are having at major corporations these days.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on April 27, 2007 08:33 AM
April 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I have a confession to make: I was a brat. There are a lot of us around, so odds are you probably work with one or are one (c'mon, I confessed; you can too).
I'm talking about young (mostly), headstrong employees who know everything. In the presence of strong leadership and a good team environment brats usually just become the irritating, know-it-all employees that everyone else avoids at lunch.
But in a negative work environment—or one marked by a lot of conflict and change—brats become, well, brats. Headstrong, mad at the world, in disagreement with everything and in support of nothing that managers and leaders want to get done. In fact, they can be even a little subversive and take delight in pointing out the many reasons that initiative X is stupid and will only make things worse.
That's the one I was for most of my late twenties. Not my best years.
The attitude problem
Anyway, I knew I was a brat at the time. I was even more irritated by the fact that my manager didn't stop me than I was by whatever he was doing that I was working against.
He could have severely disciplined me or transferred me out. I'm basically a pleaser, so once disciplined it's unlikely that things would have progressed to firing.
But he didn't. What he did was keep trying to work with me. He kept the lines of communications open, and every time I made an ass of myself he gave me another shot to do better.
Did he do the right thing?
In the short term, his approach (just hang on and keep it strictly positive) didn't work. I eventually got out of control enough that the only thing I could do was quit, which I did. Then my life took a turn, and I ended up back in the same organization a few years later in a more senior position working as a contractor for the same manager I was such a brat to.
In the long-ish term, I came back, and I was better. I was older and being away had cooled me off. He was still trying to dig out whatever redeeming quality he had seen in me, I was grateful to have been given another chance, and this time I responded to his efforts at redeeming me. A year later he was promoted and recommended me for his job, which I got.
Could it have been better?
Could he have handled me differently and still ended up with the same result? Was there a path through all of that turmoil that would have ended up with me contributing through all those years, not causing trouble, and still ending up in charge?
It's always fun to play "let's revise history," but the real answer is I don't know. I might have taken the only course I could have.
But, since that promotion five years ago I've had a couple brats to deal with myself. I usually get a lot of advice on how I should handle these folks, mostly pleas to fire them. And I would have 10 years ago. But if I see some glimmer of a redeeming quality under all the bad attitude then I hang on, just like my old boss did.
The "breaking point"
One line of questioning I get when I talk about this point is how to know when enough is enough? In the "best case" should I have been disciplined or transferred? Where is the "breaking point" where you need to get rid of a problem employee because the disruption outweighs their potential value?
I think these questions arise from the ubiquitous nature of this problem: almost everyone is facing it or has faced it. And we all want a recipe to follow to fix it. The trouble is that there isn't a single recipe. You need to judge for yourself what the potential value of the employee is, and weigh that against the cost of the disruption and the cost of your time to reform the brat. This is judgement, not measurement. It's basically an educated guess.
If any of the variables goes to extremes, your answer gets easy. Extremely disruptive employees cause too much damage: discipline quickly and be prepared to transfer or terminate. If you employee has incredible potential that your company can't live without, settle in and start molding. If you have 200 other people to manage and this one is going to take your full attention for a year, that's probably an investment you cannot afford.
Unfortunately, life almost never hands you extremes.
This makes it harder, but hard work is why we need leaders in the first place. When you first start out leading people you'll probably find yourself a lot more willing to work on a brat. You'll be gung ho to "fix" the "problem" for the same reason that people climb Mt. Everest: because it's there. As you go through a few of these and add years to your career you'll discover that your gut gets better trained at being able to spot the people you can actually save versus the ones you should just boot or isolate to contain their damage.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on April 24, 2007 09:26 PM
April 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Success: point it out, make some more
When I'm talking to new managers I'm often asked about dealing with people and "how to get them to perform." Finding a role where everyone can contribute and perform at their best can be hard and is a problem that's nearly universal, so I understand the question. I talk about it quite a bit in my own book, and nearly every other management and leadership author does the same thing.
Success
One thing that we don't talk about as often, though, is recognizing and rewarding success. If you just pay attention to people when their performance isn't up to snuff, you miss a key opportunity to develop their leadership skills and confidence. Look for, and reward, meaningful successes every time you find them, and you'll be building the confidence your team needs to become even more creative than they already are.
You can do this "from the trenches"
Fair enough, standard management stuff. But we're leading from the trenches here, and we don't have to stop with the standard stuff.
The fact is that, as I've pointed out many times before, we're all leaders in some facet of our lives right now. Someone in your life is making decisions based upon the example you set. We don't have to wait until we are formally managing a team before we start leading others to grow their own confidence and skills by recognizing and rewarding their success.
Point out good work when you see it
You know good work when you see it, right? Point it out. Mention in a team meeting that Sara did a great job reconfiguring the server last night to get payroll out. At the end of a release death march take your buddy from the next cubicle over who worked twice as long as everyone else to make it happen out to lunch. Or just pat someone on the back when you notice they've done a good job.
You're doing several things at once when you take the leadership position of recognizing success in others. First, you're learning what works and what doesn't in a no-penalty environment. If a peer doesn't respond well to your praise it doesn't really matter (since it wasn't expected to begin with), and this is a great chance to learn the lesson about human behavior that one type of reward does not fit all people. Odd though it may be.
Second, you're proving by example that your team is a team. You aren't jealous of someone else's success, and neither should the rest of the team be jealous of the success of others.
Third, once you start paying attention to what other people do to become successful, you'll have behavior to model for yourself.
Finally, you lead your team into a virtuous cycle. Once you recognize success in others they'll feel good about themselves and you, and want to pay you the favor back by recognizing your own successes or helping you to achieve success if you're struggling. Then you feel good about yourself, and so on. Feeling good is, well, good. But all of this success hunting will actually improve the performance of the whole team.
And you will have led the charge that helped everyone work more effectively.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on April 19, 2007 07:53 AM
April 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
What's vision and how do I get some?
Lots of management and leadership writing starts from the premise that you know what you're doing. Case in point: "vision."
Leaders most organizations behave in one of two ways: they are either compelled to talk about their vision at every possible chance, or the vision is only thought about during the annual strategic planning sessions and pointedly ignored the rest of the time.
There are lots of management books that talk about why neither of these is very effective. All of which is graduate level work if you are a new manager terrified at the thought of being asked what your "vision" is. If you're that guy (or gal), this post is for you.
Big picture: breathe normally and take enough time to do it right.
A vision: how things ought to be
Vision is a $50, cottage-industry-spawning, buzzword. But really a vision is simply your mental image of how things could or ought to be. In general this should be fairly high level, so that you don't have lots of visions. If you do, it's fairly likely that what you really have are goals related to a single overarching vision.
For example, my vision for high performance computing is to remove the barriers to access in order to encourage scientific discovery. In plain English, this means that I want to make high performance computers so easy to use that the scientists and engineers using them can focus only on what they want to do, not how to get it done.
My vision involves changing the way things have been done for the past thirty-five years. In general, visions are like this; they are stretch goals, not the next logical step in the chain, but a big leap over to a new chain of logical things entirely.
Forming a vision takes time: don't rush it
If you're still in school or recently graduated, the odds are fairly good you don't have a vision. If you've just recently started to lead as a part of the executing team in your organization, the odds are still good you don't have a vision, even if you and others think you do (or at least they think you should).
This is fine.
One of the necessary conditions for creating a vision of your own is being able—either by virtue of training, natural ability, or time in a position of sufficient seniority—to see the big picture and then to see what's wrong with that picture and imagine how things could be better.
When you are just starting out, you don't see the big picture. You may not even know there is a picture. You've got your head down, getting the job done.
Training yourself to create a vision
But eventually someone will ask you to pick your head up a little. They'll ask, “You know, our code-revision system is really pretty old and seems kind of clumsy to use. Could we manage the code base more effectively? What do you think?”
And you'll look around at the landscape of one particular problem, and see part of the picture. As time goes on and your experience and level in the organization grow, you'll naturally see more and more of the picture. Then, if you are paying attention to what you see and trying to stay out front then eventually you'll start to see the flaws in the image. Once you see these flaws, and come up with a new picture, then you've got a vision.
But I need an answer now
How long does this take to do well? As long as it takes. Unfortunately, you might be expected to articulate a vision before you are ready. You should try your best to avoid this by training yourself from the very beginning to look around and understand the big picture. But if you are pressed for an answer and you aren't sure your idea is cooked all the way yet, focus on something fairly obvious and incremental that moves you in a direction consistent with where you think you are ultimately headed.
Why buy the extra time? Because visions are best when they are only infrequently changed. If you rush an answer out with a grandiose vision that's half-baked (or worse, simply impossible to achieve) you're going to have to change it pretty quickly. And then you'll lose credibility and demoralize your team. Not good.
Focus on the value of the contribution
Incidentally, not all visions are unique. Probably very few are. I certainly am not the first person to have my particular vision for high-performance computing, and I'm not even the only one who cares about it right now. Lots and lots of people all over the world share this vision. The important point is to contribute something unique, not that the vision itself be unique.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on April 16, 2007 02:52 PM
April 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Technology is for creative types
In most technology companies, services like facilities or physical-plant management are provided to support the creative force behind the company.
Creative? Yup!
Despite all the press from the art community that would indicate they have the lock on the world's creative output, technology professionals are creative people. We create the products, services, and technologies that will shape how we meet, greet, and interact with one another and with our environment in the future. I have found that creative people do not respond well to “management.”
Management creates boxes and moves people and tasks around within them. Boxes do not lead to innovation and creation. They don't create the kinds of environments in which a single lightning bolt of an idea can shape an entire industry.
A small part of the creative environment can be nurtured by the physical workplace itself. This is why the hip, happening companies continue to provide free soda and snacks, pool tables and video games, and other premium services to their employees long after the bubble burst.
But the biggest part is the intellectual and emotional environment that leaders create. This is why hugely innovative new companies can still innovate on TV trays in Mom's garage, and why brilliant new approaches to fundamental problems sometimes rocket out of the sometimes depressingly under-funded facilities of major university and government labs.
Lead to create, manage to quell
In large measure, creativity in technology professionals is stimulated by the degree to which they are led. I believe also that creativity is actually stifled in proportion to the degree to which these professionals are managed.
Technology professionals want to have a direction, with broad outlines of a plan, and then be let loose to create the best solution to get to the goal. They want to contribute, be recognized, and feel they made a difference.
This is absolutely not easy. I've worked with and for a lot of managers, but only a few leaders. All of the managers had different personalities, and different personality traits. But in general managers who aren't also leaders are dictators. Some of my managers were benevolent dictators, content not to micromanage my every action so long as I didn't ask too many questions and stayed in line. Some of them were the kind of people you often see running small South American countries after a violent coup. They ruled by intimidation and fear.
Both management styles control information as an effective means of controlling their teams and their management's perception of how well they are doing their jobs. They create an information black hole: a lot goes in, but very little ever comes out.
In my case, these dictators appeared effective by most direct organizational measurements. Their projects were usually delivered on time, and few personnel problems ever percolated up to senior management. This is partly because of the rigid control of the flow of information which these dictatorial mangers maintained.
This kind of management actually pushes away the top performers, leaving you with only the “margin people” clocking time and doing the minimum to stay afloat. And this, as they say, is no way to run a railroad.
This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.
Posted by John West on April 12, 2007 08:28 AM
April 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
How to totally screw up a classic leadership situation
In the "do what I say, not what I do" department this week I met, and failed to handle well, a communication/leadership situation at work. Which just goes to show you that sometimes situations get away from you, and the best you can do is just handle it.
Here's the sitch: I'm leaving my leadership role as director of one organization to a pseudo-step up. The details aren't important, but what is important is that I'll no longer be the director of day to day operations in the organization I've led for the past 5 years.
The right way to handle this
The textbook way to handle this sort of thing is to keep it buttoned down until you are absolutely certain that the move will happen (you get the job, whatever). Then, you create a transition plan, to the extent that you are able designating or at least identifying your replacement so that when you announce to your org that you're leaving you can tell them what's happening. Then, starting with your most senior leaders, you work rapidly through your organization explaining the change and what it will mean for them at each step. For me, this always culminates in an all hands meeting. In order to stay ahead of the rumors this has to be done quickly, all meetings happening in the space of just a few hours. It's quick, orderly, everyone feels included, and rumors are squashed. I've done it this way, and it works. Swell.
The way it actually happened
...was much messier this time around. The process started well in that I had started coordinating transition with my leadership chain. My replacement is identified, and I've worked with him as well. He's knows what's coming, but no dates are set. My new role will have my old organization reporting to me, so we'll be able to work together to make sure his transition is successful. All good. Almost ideal, in fact.
My staff doesn't know anything: outside of my replacement they have no idea anything is changing.
Then things started to slide.
First of all I'm not at work this week (bad start). There is a newly-introduced element of time pressure in the days before my trip, and the announcement has to be made this week. I'm traveling so I won't be there to announce in person, can't be helped, definitely a bad start. (-10 leadership points)
I figure I'll patch this up by announcing via email and then having my all hands meeting when I return next week. Getting worse, but still manageable.
Then, because I'm not local to my boss we get our wires crossed during final transition planning and she announces to my parent organization's senior leadership (my peers) in a staff meeting, unknown to me, while I'm in the air en route to my destination. Poor planning and execution, my fault. (-25 leadership points)
I get a phone call while waiting for a connecting flight from my designated replacement who's carrying buckets to the fire with both hands. Staff is confused, leaders in my org are alienated, no one knows the full story, rumors everywhere. Ka. Boom. (-1,000 leadership points)
At this point, the cat is out of the bag. Horse is out of the barn. Genie is out of the bottle. Only thing to do is to try to recover.
This is what I did
First, I typed an email and sent it to the whole staff and all of my peers. As best I could on a Blackberry trundling down the hall to get on a plane I explain where I'm going, why, and who's replacing me. I also have to try and put into a few characters (my fingers growing numb) in email all of my complex emotions at having come to this difficult decision. I'm excited to have something new to do with new challenges, but I'm also surprisingly and profoundly sad at leaving this group that has been so, well, great to me over the years. I fail miserably, but the email goes out. (+5 leadership points)
Next, phone calls to my boss to try and patch things over with her. I'm pretty sure she's ticked at the mayhem, and she should be. But she's nice about it and doesn't snatch my new assignment from me in retribution (if you're reading this: thank you again for understanding).(+2 leadership points for me, +100 for her which don't help me at all)
Finally, phone calls with my harried replacement, who is now Not Very Happy. I owe him a thanks. And an all hands meeting when I get back to explain myself to my staff. In person. Finally. The way God intended. (+1 pity leadership point, just for effort, because it's too late)
Leadership tally: situation totally mishandled. Sometimes they get away from you, and all you can do is clean up the mess and DON'T DO IT AGAIN.
Posted by John West on April 3, 2007 08:26 PM
March 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Great email is an important career skill
Ok, so the reports and documents I write in Word and submit to my management are forever, I get that. But not email. That's different, right?
Nope, that too, and this does mean you.
Casual email habits start early
Many of us spend a lot of time writing and reading e-mail, and most of us have our first experiences in e-mail communicating with our friends. In this respect e-mail sometimes resembles instant messages, and you may treat them interchangeably with regard to form. Sentence fragments, abbreviations (LOL, IMHO, AFAIK, and others), inside jokes, obscure references (“its only a flesh wound”), and strange vocabulary are part of what has become a powerful mechanism for building and sharing in virtual communities with people we rarely see. Good stuff.
Moving on to professional email habits
But once you begin to have professional communications (whether related to your academic career or to life after school), these practices are out of place. In fact they can actually damage your ability to communicate effectively with others to whom you are not so intimately connected by circumstance, age, and culture.
Change now!
If you are reading this kind of stuff on the web, the odds are pretty good that you've already started your professional life, even if you are still in school or working to complete your training. Now is the time to start breaking these habits of familiarity and informality.
What to look for
I'm not suggesting that you sterilize your e-mail of all things personal and write with the formality you would employ on a final project paper in senior design.
What I am suggesting is that you write in complete sentences, with proper usage (spelling, punctuation, and grammar). Spend a little time organizing your thoughts. If you aren't sure, look up the difference between affect and effect before you hit the send key (I still get those backwards).
In many parts of the world we start e-mailing and texting in elementary school these days. It will probably take you a while to break your bad habits, so start now.
Separate styles in different accounts
If you really feel that this will cramp your style in a particular social community to which you belong, let me encourage you to separate this community from all your other e-mail transactions.
Get at least two e-mail accounts. Use one for your informal communications and one for everything else. This will get you in the mindset of having different writing styles for different contexts, and this will serve you well when you need to separate your work e-mail from your personal messaging