Category Archives: management

Knowledge is like money. It’s useless if it’s not flowing.

Before launching into this post, everyone should go read the post that inspired it: Alyzande Renard’s brilliant piece on LinkedIn, titled Alyzande’s Tips for Getting a Job in 30 Days. Blunt, sweary version.

I’m excited about her post because it’s direct, frank, honest, and in your face. She’s directing everyone who’s on the job search (and I know it’s a lot of you, this year) to GET REAL about your expectations, about the process, and about the actions you choose to take. In addition to the practical, actionable advice she gives, she recommends that job seekers use this opportunity to get in the habit of sharing knowledge – online, in person, in interviews… because it’s through knowledge sharing that people really get a sense of who you are and what you can contribute.

Knowledge is like money, she says, citing the World Domination Conference guy… it’s useless unless it’s flowing. Your knowledge isn’t going to earn anything for you unless you’ve got it working for you… and that include information that you have that would be valuable to others, not just the “book knowledge” in your head. And to work for you, the knowledge has got to be shared.

I’ve encountered so many people who hoard knowledge, control channels of communication so they can control a narrative, or rely on citing “their professional experience” so they don’t have to explain the rationale behind their own recommendations. All of these habitual behaviors are fear driven cop-outs… and I’ve fired each of these people, at least once (but don’t worry, not without a lot of direct appeals first):

  • The knowledge hoarder believes that their worth is tied up in the repository in their head. Why should they share information with you? If you have it, then the information won’t be special or unique. If you have it, the company has no reason to keep them employed. [As the employer, I’ve fired knowledge hoarders because losing the information in their heads is often less costly than the effort required for others to detect it and get it out. Think about that one if you’re a knowledge hoarder.]
  • The narrative controller is insecure and uncertain of their own skills, especially when it comes to understanding what other people want. If they control communication channels, they can control the narrative to convince you that others want what they want to deliver, and then they can tune their work to something they know they can deliver. I call this the “Moses on the Mountain” scenario because these people go directly to the client or the boss, and come back to the team as the single authoritative channel of information. But what if they got it wrong? You’ll never know, because there were no witnesses to when they got the commandments from above. Any time you’re the only person receiving communications and interpreting them on behalf of others, you are in the danger zone. Bring at least one other person with you! [As the employer, I’ve fired narrative controllers because the cost of losing them was less than the cost of the errors incurred from their desire to control the narrative. I need reality, not interpretation… and reality comes from multiple people, independently interpreting, and coming up with shared results.]
  • The expert who relies on professional experience, you’ll find, tends to make recommendations without backing them up with evidence. They want you to believe the recommendation simply because of who they are. But the true experts, I’ve found, are the ones that share the evidence… even without you asking! They’re either proud of their reasoning, or they know they might not have the recommendation totally right (or maybe both). As a result they want to let you in on the information they have… that way you can make your own judgment. You build trust together when you come to a similar judgment, or when your judgments are different and you use the difference to build a stronger case together. [As an employer, I’ve fired experts-without-evidence because I get tired of trying to pry the evidence for their recommendations out of their heads. Guess what? A lot of times they don’t actually even have any evidence, and have made their decision based on a gut feel of dubious value.]

Now, notice… I said it’s important to share knowledge, and by association, to share information. Try not to share misinformation. If you’re new to a role, or still early in your career (like first 10 years early), find some people with more experience who you trust who you can run “knowledge” by before you share it with your team or workgroup. Heck, I’m coming up on my 29th year of actual real professional work, and even I have my trusted experts (some of whom have much less experience than me, but are super smart) – I run things by them before I share with groups. (“Do I have this right? Is there something I’m missing, or something I could explain better?”)

I’m tired of seeing cycles of misinformation… people with very good intentions sharing information (especially technical) that’s not only blatantly wrong, but misleading, with the easy potential to infect newbs. It’s easy to learn, and super difficult to unlearn… ANYTHING.

Share your knowledge… and information. Share actual knowledge. And go read Alyzande Renard’s post called Alyzande’s Tips for Getting a Job in 30 Days. Blunt, sweary version... if you’re not on the job market now, you’ll need to bookmark this for later.

Dean Meyer’s “How Organizations Should Work” – an A+ Reference on Intentional Organizational Design

The organization that you design designs you back.

Similarly, the organization that you fail to intentionally design will also design you back. And you probably won’t like the pain it inflicts… whether that pain manifests as political battles, conflicts of interests, or just plain stonewalling or slow-walking. People tend to perform based on how well their goals and objectives are defined, how effectively their roles (and the relationships between their roles and other roles) are defined, and how rigorously the organization monitors and reinforces desired behaviors and outcomes.

Unfortunately, it’s rare to get all those pieces in place and functioning at the same time. But thanks to Dean Meyer’s new 2022 book, How Organizations Should Work, you’ll have a head start on lessons learned. Based on his multi-decade career in organizational design, he provides simple, tangible, and meaningful explanations that will help you learn how to intentionally design your organization.

I brought this book to Burning Man because I wanted to read it in a place where I could take my time, where I could allow my mind to expand and take in Dean’s lessons, where I could feel the inspiration all around me while figuring out how to bake more inspired organizational design into my own workplace. And I did start reading it there.

But this book is so packed with wisdom and insights that you’ll want to read it slowly. Plan adequate time for it. After getting through the first 80 pages or so at the event, I read one or two sections every weekend. It took me a full three months to get through cover to cover… and I’m someone who can read a whole book in one sitting. This one, though, will make you think, and you’ll need time to pause and reflect on each of the stories and narratives that Dean uses to make his points.

Here’s a small sample of the highlights (and there are more; you can find this book on Amazon for $37-40).

Book Summary (p. 465-494). The best way to develop a reading plan for this book is to start at the end. Dean provides a helpful synopsis of each chapter that you can use to figure out which sections are most relevant for your organization now. The book is structured so that you don’t have to read it from start to finish, but can pick the sections that are the highest priority for continuous improvement in your organization. Some sections (like Chapter 19, on managing workers in the field) may be less relevant to your needs than other sections (like Chapter 15, on aligning sales and marketing). I recommend starting with Chapters 1 through 6 (and if your time is limited, start with Chapters 5 & 6).

Chapter 5 – Market Organization & Chapter 6 – Empowerment (p. 33-57). These two chapters provide the best (and most concentrated) view of the main thesis of the book, which is that every organization should be structured as a market. Each functional area should have customers, and services they provide to those customers. Each functional area should be empowered to make decisions about how the business of that unit is conducted, and should also have the skills to do it (and to build trust within their business unit and between their business unit and others). Organizing according to a market allows people to specialize, makes it possible to monitor performance in a more modular way, and simplifies the cognitive complexity of an organization.

Appendix 4 – Culture: Examples of Behavioral Principles (p. 376-380). Dean notes that companies are great at defining their culture, but often not so great at explaining how people can embody that culture and monitor their behaviors to ensure that they are living it and reinforcing it. In this section, he provides specific examples of behaviors that can make goals like “maintain a high ethical standard” actionable. For example, you can say “we do not permit personal conflicts of interest”. You’ll have to test your processes against these behavioral expressions of culture, too: if you don’t permit personal conflicts of interest, you should identify areas where conflicts of interest might arise and anticipate ways to identify them, prevent them, or resolve them quickly.

There are so many things I like about this book, and it embodies so many principles of good organizational design in a light, conversational way. Although there are a lot of books I really like, I don’t typically gush over them… but this one meets my high standards. Coupled with Dean’s 2017 book, Principle-Based Organizational Structure (which has a less conversational and more academic style), these are the only two references I really need to remind me of the essentials for intentionally building healthy organizations that are aligned internally and externally.

Alignment is the best way to reduce friction between people, and accelerate real progress towards tangible goals.

A Magical 1997-era Web Form & the Illusion of Progress

This morning, while I was checking my email, the power went out.

There was no storm, the neighbors still had power… did I forget to pay the bill? Surely not… I get an email every month & immediately click through to process the payment. But I decided to check anyway.

I went to our local electric company’s web site to check on the status of my account. It’s not a big town, and their development budget has got to be tiny… it looks like they haven’t updated their web site in more than a decade. And the “Pay Your Bill” form is even more extreme… that form is straight outta 1997, complete with a little moving text, like ants marching across the bottom of your screen. It looks like Peoplesoft used to look like, at the dawn of the millennium.

Not my power company’s web form. But close. You get the idea.

Turns out, I did make a mistake last month. I was traveling when bill time came around, and instead of clicking the button to pay all accounts, I accidentally only paid one and not the one that corresponds to the house where I live, where I work, where I absolutely positively need internet all the time.

There was a text box at the top of my screen with a phone number, and a message saying that power could usually be restored by 8pm. I started mentally arranging my work day… how much connectivity I’d be able to get by tethering to my phone… how much battery life I had left in my laptop… how much crow I’d have to eat, as the impacts impacted other people and other meetings.

I quickly filled out all the little boxes to let the electric company know that I really wanted them to take my money and turn my power back on as soon as they could. Like usual, their clunky looking web form was smooth to actually fill in.

But then magic happened.

I clicked the “Pay Now” button with the stylus on my phone. TAP! Before my fingers returned to the position they were in when they started the downward trip to click the button (literally milliseconds later) I heard whirring all around me. The printer was going through its startup sequence. The TV started to flicker on.

That 1997-era web form was like a lightswitch. When I flipped it, my power went back on. For whatever the power company didn’t invest in making their web site look slick and exciting, they sure did invest in what means the most to me: automatically, instantaneously, magically getting my power back in the blink of an eye.

Why don’t all companies invest, like this, in delivering meaningful value over delivering the appearance of value?

I’m thinking of a company I know, right now, that’s invested several million dollars over the past year trying to get a web app in place to perform a basic revenue-driving function of their business. They even “built an MVP”! But they’re still falling short of their goal. I wonder if they, like so many others, are falling into the most nefarious trap that exists:

The Illusion of Progress… showing that you’re moving forward without showing that you know what really matters, and then surgically focusing on that.

Are you making progress on what really matters? Or what looks like it matters?

There’s your challenge for this week (and life).

Agile Should Not Make You Feel Bad

Agility can be great (even though for many neurodivergent people, it’s the opposite of great). But when teams go through the motions to be “Agile” they often end up overcomplicating the work, adding stress to interactions, and achieving less agility.

If your agile processes are “working”, then over the next iteration (typically 1-4 weeks):

⬜ You have a clear understanding, as a team, of the value you’re working to demonstrate. (Note that this is not a promise or a commitment, but a shared purpose, direction and intention.)

⬜ You have a clear understanding, as individuals, of the actions that will generate that value. You know what to work on (and think about) when you’re not in meetings or with clients.

⬜ You don’t feel alone – you have teammates to communicate with and collaborate with, and resources you can use, as you move forward to advance project objectives.

⬜ You are working at a comfortable, sustainable pace.

⬜ Your team is improving every week – you continually do things a little differently to help improve quality, productivity, collaboration, or other outcomes.

None of these things require meetings (or “ceremonies”) – just communication and inclusion. We should always be asking ourselves and our team members: what’s the easiest, smoothest, least intrusive way of building this shared understanding and maintaining it every day?

When teams work with agility:

⬜ Everyone understands the overall goal and the next increment of value to demonstrate.

⬜ Everyone has clear things to do to contribute to that value.

⬜ Each person (and the team as a whole) works at a sustainable pace.

⬜ Nobody feels alone. There’s a group of collaborators to share the work with.

⬜ The client or project champion has visibility into the work and is happy with progress.

⬜ There’s an opportunity to rest, reflect, and adjust every week or two.

It’s not ridiculously hard to adjust to changes in scope, tools, or personnel. 

But I regularly see “agile” teams flailing… unhappy… in constant panic mode, with stress that just won’t end. They are very busy and always seem to be scrambling to show their client or project champion some kind of value… with the feeling that they have to defend their existence. They have a nagging sense of confusion and impostor syndrome may be creeping in. They can tell you exactly what tasks are on their JIRA boards, but they can’t tell you why those tickets exist or how their task is contributing to overall project value. They have lost sight of the forest (value) because they have planted so many trees (tickets).

For these teams, the Scrum process and Agile ceremonies may be adding layers of stress and bureaucracy rather than helping the team work sustainably to consistently drive value. They are “doing Agile ” but have actually made themselves less agile… less able to flow and adapt and respond to changes in scope, tools, or participants.

Agile methods first emerged in response to the slow, painful, unsatisfying, unhappy practice of software development. It was really depressing to spend months building software, only to have customers and users complain how bad it was when they got it (especially when you developed exactly what they specified). It felt isolating to have to figure out how to deliver a piece of the software without any input from other engineers, and it was distressing when others were blocking your work and you had to convince them to listen to you. The whole endeavor was inefficient, and people were often tense and stressed. 

The realizations in red (in the 90s) led to the Agile Manifesto items (2001) in blue

We’re applying processes and tools without really examining why we need them

So let’s prioritize…

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

  • Why this is part of the Agile Manifesto: Since the beginning of time, development teams tend to get hung up on the details of using tools (e.g. MS Project, JIRA, kanban boards) rather than why the tools are there in the first place: to make sure people are getting the information and context they need – on a regular, routine basis – to make continuous progress on the team’s overall deliverables.
  • What we should do in 2022: Focus on information sharing, context building, and working arrangements that help people get work done. This applies to interactions within the team as well as interactions with the client.

We’re doing a lot of work that doesn’t actually contribute to our goal

So let’s prioritize…

Working software [ie. tangible stuff that’s valuable] over comprehensive documentation

  • Why this is part of the Agile Manifesto: Software development in the 1990s was documentation-heavy. I even remember, in 2018, throwing away a few hundred pounds of paper (in about 20 4” binders) containing requirements and design documents for a really big software project that we did between 2002 and 2004. Often, development teams wouldn’t even produce software that matched the documentation because we’d learn about what was feasible and what was not as we were doing it. Everyone tended to deliver software that the business needed a year or two ago. We didn’t learn together and co-create the software. 
  • What we should do in 2022: We provide value in the form of information, shared understanding, and working software (which may be in the form of quality controls) – that’s it. Anything we produce that doesn’t directly contribute to making these things happen shouldn’t be done. 

We’re unable to deliver something we don’t know how to define or describe yet

So let’s prioritize…

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

  • Why this is part of the Agile Manifesto: Because deciding what you’re on the hook to deliver at the beginning of a project – and exactly what the deliverables are going to look like – is dangerous. You and the customer rarely have enough understanding of the problem (or of each other) to get it right. 
  • What we should do in 2022: Establish shared accountability. (Note: this is rare. How many times has a customer been on your team and just as accountable to the project champion for the end result as you are?) A workaround is to set expectations with the client that we are discovering the shared understanding together, and we will get as close to the desired deliverables as we can, given the fact that we are embarking on a process of learning together.

We’re unable to commit to a plan when we might learn that our plan isn’t feasible

So let’s prioritize…

Responding to change over following a plan

  • Why this is part of the Agile Manifesto: As you learn about what’s possible, what’s not possible, and what the client actually values… plans will change. Instead of establishing a timeline that won’t end up working out (and that will cause you a lot of stress when you start deviating from), just start with the understanding that your Gantt Chart and your intermediary milestones will probably not be achieved when you think they will – or maybe even at all.
  • What we should do in 2022: Always keep the final goal in mind, but revisit and adjust the plan as you learn more every week. Iterate! 

The Discovery Channel Test

Presentations can be boring. Talking about your work can be boring (to other people). When you’re sitting in a talk or a session that you find boring (and you can’t figure out WIIFM – what’s in it for me)… you learn less.

Although we shouldn’t have to use clickbait techniques to satisfy societally decreasing attention spans, it is easier to learn and retain information when it’s interesting. So I encourage all of you to apply the “Discovery Channel Test” to every presentation, talk, or session you contribute to or lead.

The reason I call it the “Discovery Channel Test” is that there used to be a program called City Confidential that was on all the time. Even though City Confidential was a show about murder mysteries, the first half of the one-hour show was about the city or region where the crime occurred. They talked about when the town was first settled, and key families who made the town what it is today. You heard about stories of intrigue, and challenges the town was facing today. They made the story about the town itself so captivating that EVERY SINGLE TIME I was caught off guard when they ended the first half-hour segment with “You’d never believe a murder could happen here.” Through the hundreds of times I watched this show, I was always shocked when this point came. “Oh, yeah… this is where that murder mystery happened, and we’re about to find out about it.”

Any production crew that can spend a half hour off-topic, keep me interested, and give me a dopamine burst right before the main point of the show… has achieved something great. And you, too, can achieve this same greatness when you’re talking about your tech stack or a new architectural initiative or that project you did last year that improved customer sat. Make it interesting by applying….

The Discovery Channel Test (* = could also be called The Good Podcast Test)

Rule 1: Use an emotional hook up front. Why should any of the people in your audience not leave after the first five minutes? Don’t make them guess! Tell them specifically why this topic might be interesting, or surprise them with an initial feeling of novelty or unexpectedness. Jonathan Lipnicki’s character in Jerry Maguire (1996) was great at this, with his “did you know?” questions. The dopamine surge you create with an emotional hook will keep them engaged for long enough to get hooked on your story.

Rule 2: Find the wow nugget(s). This is one of the things the Discovery Channel has always been really good at: getting me interested in things that I didn’t think were interesting to me. Remember that your projects and initiatives, no matter how cool they are to you, will be boring to other people unless you TRY to make them interesting. I try to tell my high schooler that even in the most boring classes you should be able to find some nugget, some angle, some insight that helps you see the subject matter in a way that grabs you. Find that angle for your audience, and then spoon feed it to them.

Rule 3: Use examples, screen shots, visuals, diagrams. If your presentations are full of slides with words, people will start yawning immediately and may or may not actually hear those words. You can also reduce ambiguity with examples and screen shots. For example, saying “we used Python for this project” is far less compelling than showing the tree structure of the code (or a simplified diagram) and annotating it with what each piece did to get the overall job done. Saying “we used Confluence” is less compelling than saying “we set up a confluence site at [this location] and agreed to put [this kind of information in there]” because if someone has a need for [that information] – at least they know a first place they can look for it.

Rule 4: Spoon feed the closing thoughts. At the very end, remind people what you want them to remember when they leave. Remind people why that’s interesting, and how it might benefit them in the future. Make it concrete and tangible. For example, can you give them reference material, or an infographic, or a checklist that they can use in the future? Don’t assume that people will get something out of your presentation just by attending… spoon feed what you WANT them to get out of it.

“Documentation” is a Dirty Word

I just skimmed through another 20 page planning document, written in old-school “requirements specification”-ese with a hefty dose of ambiguity. You know, things like “the Project Manager shall…” and “the technical team will respond to bugs.”

There’s a lot of good content in there. It’s not easy to get at, though… for each page I want to understand, I can expect to spend between ten minutes and an hour deciphering what’s going on. (That’s half a week of work, and I have a lot of other work to do this week. Is it even worth it?)

Also, this document is boring… and there’s a lot of filler (like “package X is useful, flexible, and open source” – OK, that’s great, and factually correct, but not very informative).

The whole document could have been condensed into 4 or 5 slides of diagrams plus annotations. If that had happened, I’d be looking at a 10 to 30 minute commitment overall to get my brain into this particular company’s context… and then I’d be able to make some useful contributions. (As it stands, I’m weighing whether it’s worth my time to go spelunking in that 20-pager at all. Probably not.)

Unfortunately:

  • The bulk of technical documentation that I read is unintelligible or lacks sufficient meaning. I have three decades of exposure to this stuff, so if I can’t understand it, I feel super sorry for the early career people (who might think they can’t understand it because they don’t know enough).
  • Nearly all of the technical documents I see are uninteresting. And tech is interesting.

99 times out of 100, technical documentation is dull and dysfunctional. While it’s supposed to help people and teams establish a shared understanding of a system or a process or a concept, it just ends up looking really impressive and convincing you that the authors know a lot more about this than you do. It doesn’t help you much, if at all.

And as a CTO, CIO, or VP of Engineering, I don’t want to pay for crappy documentation. This particular document probably cost me between $32K-50K, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg… because it doesn’t account for the incremental costs of the people who will attempt to decipher it – which could be 10-100x more over the lifetime of that document. Although the person or team that wrote the 20-pager probably knows what’s going on (at least a little bit), the artifact itself is going to cost other people time and take them away from more value-adding tasks.

The sheer volume of information we’re required to wade through to gain understanding – without the assurance that it will lead us in the right direction, or even in any direction at all – is probably what’s led to the disease of devaluing documentation

A lot of managers think documentation isn’t value-adding, and shouldn’t be done, because… in most cases, people do it so badly that it wasn’t worth the investment in the first place.

Dear tech workers: can we fix this, please? I know it will take a whole generation to effect meaningful change, but… I’m ready to roll up my sleeves.

Scrum and the Illusion of Progress

Agile is everywhere. Sprints are everywhere. Freshly trained Scrum practitioners and established devotees in the guise of Scrum Masters beat the drum of backlog grooming sessions and planning poker and demos and retros. 

They are very busy, and provide the blissful illusion of progress.

(Full disclosure: I am a Sprint Grinch, and my heart will not grow three sizes, or even one… on any day. I do support Alistair’s Heart of Agile, because I think he’s as pained about where the industry has gone as I am. Probably more.)

Despite the mirage of progress, the people on the front lines doing the engineering work feel little relief from the ill logic and misplaced pressure of the pointy haired bosses. The managers aren’t getting the deliverables faster (like they convinced themselves they would). There are tons of charts and graphs that tell us how we’re doing (like burndowns) but now the CFO is using them to whip our horses just a little bit harder, trying to get them to go faster. They’re not going fast enough. (Spoiler: They will never go fast enough.)

And isn’t that what Agile is supposed to do… speed things up? NO!

Once upon a time, we used to build software like we built skyscrapers: plan every single task, put in on a Gantt chart, and make sure there are approval gates between every phase of work: elicit requirements, design the systems, write code, test it, deploy it, maintain it.

But a couple of big, bad things tended to happen over and over: 

  • By the time we got to “test and deploy” we’d discover that the thing we built was not what the users and stakeholders actually needed. (“But it’s exactly what you asked for in the requirements,” we’d say, “and you approved it at multiple decision points.” “Sure,” they would say, “but we learned a lot in the meantime, and things are different now. You just built us what we thought we needed six months ago.”)
  • The software developers would build something that the operations team, responsible for standing it up and maintaining it, wouldn’t be able to support at the intended service levels. (“You can’t expect us to maintain this,” they’d say. “It’s fragile.”)

Agile practices emerged more than two decades ago when engineers said… hold it, there’s got to be a better way. If we work collaboratively with our users and stakeholders, learning together, figuring out how to realize value together… then we’ll produce something that real people are able to get value from much faster. We need control over our process, and we need you to be actively engaged, business people. We can eliminate all these handoffs, and replace them with shared accountability.

The two solutions were: 

  • Agile: We said “let’s take a more collaborative approach to development, and get the users and stakeholders together with the engineers, so they can all learn and co-create together until they’ve produced the next nugget of value.” 
  • DevOps: Instead of two groups siloed from each other, let’s automate the handoff and make it seamless, and give the developers tools that will alert them when they’ve got to fix more stuff. If tests automatically run before the code is merged into production, we’ll always know that we’re deploying stuff that runs. (I’m pretty sure everyone agreed this was a good idea.)

Agile is a great aspiration. But how often have you ever seen the users and stakeholders sharing space, sharing accountability, sharing the process of creating value? Not often. They still coordinate through user stories, and tickets, and handoffs, and PRs. 

Agile speeds up value delivery, but not necessarily software delivery. Having daily stand-ups and burndown charts and JIRA tickets won’t make people code faster. But it will make managers think they should be coding faster, and that’s where the poison will settle in and grow.

Bottom line, my position statement is:

  1. Any (minimalist) process is better than no process.
  2. Agility is an essential goal, but Scrum and certified Agile practitioners are less likely to get you there.
  3. Go back to first principles: plan an iteration, co-create value, see where it got you and reassess your ability to reach your goal, then adjust. Keep experimenting.

Would I ever use Scrum? Sure, under specific conditions:

  • There’s something we have to build, and we’ve never built it before.
  • The road ahead is unknown.
  • We have access to collaborators who can help us see what’s needed.
  • We agree to intentional checkpoints where we can see how far we got, and whether we can still get to the place we’d originally intended.
  • We iterate, and iterate, until we agree we’ve incrementally added enough total value nuggets to move to the next project.
  • There are no well-meaning-but-not-helpful engineering managers or business managers hovering over the development team with bated breath, waiting to beat us with burndowns. The dev team can manage itself.

Agility is a laudable – and essential – goal. But only in rare cases do I believe Agile and Scrum will get you there.

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