Analytical-Mind

If at any point while you read this post, you disagree with any of my statements, go ahead and click the “Leave a Comment” link. Express yourself!

While the original title of my post was “Why most software development managers need a leadership coach”, I changed it to “Why most managers need a leadership coach” because the situation I have witnessed in the software development industry is also present in many others specialized fields of expertise – at least that’s what many of the people I speak with confirm. Nonetheless, in order not to generalize my assumptions (yet!), I will share my assessment of the people management and leadership capabilities within the software development industry. Let’s begin…

Are you familiar with such problems?

• Unhappy employees leads to high turnover
• Communication challenges
• Employees fail to deliver on their commitment
• People who fail to deliver what they promise
• How To Deal With Problem Staff And Poor Performance

These are only a handful of typical problems encountered by a manager and for most experienced managers, they may sound trivial. Considering that new leaders are not born with management abilities, how can we expect them to be successful in their role?

People managers lack the basic skills

Here’s why I believe most software development managers (and many others) need coaching to become successful in their role (and apparently, I am not the only one who believes this is a valid suggestion). My logic goes as follows:

• Managers – including software development managers – are people;
• There are 2 ways to become successful at something. Either you learn through education or you possess above average intuition and intelligence and can figure out how things need to be done;
• Most software development managers have a technical training /education (examples can be seen here, here, here, and here);
• In addition to their education background, most software development managers mostly played technical roles (software developers, business analysts, application architect, etc.) in their career prior to getting promoted to a management position;
• Most people management positions are complex and require knowledge and experience outside of technology such as Business, Leadership, People Management, Organizational Development, or Psychology;
• Very few people in people management positions have all the requirements (see previous bullet);
• Without prior education and experience outside the software development sector, most managers are ill-equipped to successfully perform in their role.

Coaching is a solution

With an average salary¹ of $85,000 to $125,000 depending on the number of years of experience and location, why wouldn’t an organization invest a few thousands of dollars to hire a coach in order to help develop the people management and leadership abilities? Despite the economic downturn, I still see organizations spend thousands of dollars on training or conferences. Although I don’t argue the value of such events, I doubt they support the development of people management and leadership abilities.

It seems to me that we need to help those in management position succeed. Otherwise, the performance of the entire team will suffer.

Not convinced?

Others seem to agree with this new trend…

1.- Sources:

• The 2010 IT Salary Guide
• Monster.ca Salary Wizard
• Payscale Salary Survey

Would you rather be right or be helpful?

This is the story of Timmy, a highly talented university graduate. After spending 4 years completing a university degree in Computer Science at a well-recognized school and over a year working on internal projects within his firm, Timmy was sent off as a consultant to help an organization in need.

Timmy quickly realized that he was more knowledgeable, more competent, more skilled, and harder working than most software developers on his new team. Whenever an issue would come up, Timmy knew the answer much before everyone else.

After a few days, Timmy realized the sad state of affairs within his client’s software development organization and in trying to help his new colleagues, he started dispensing recommendations as if they were candies on Halloween night.

Every time Timmy noticed something that wasn’t done properly or as per the theory he had mastered, he would immediately point it out. Every time a colleague would run into an issue, Timmy would quickly point out the source of the issue and the solution to fix it. Every time Timmy noticed a team-mate slack off, he would tell others on the team. Timmy knew he was right – pretty much all the time.

Needless to say, Timmy was not well liked by his team mates. On the other hand, Timmy didn’t like his consulting mandate either and within a few days, Timmy asked his firm to pull him off the mandate.

Despite Timmy’s capabilities and the obvious need of his new team, the conflicts between him and his colleagues grew quickly every day. After a few weeks Timmy had enough. He couldn’t understand why nobody saw that he was right, that he had the answer to all their questions, and that they wouldn’t have any problem if only they would listen to him.

Feeling so frustrated by the situation, Timmy showed up at his firm’s office one morning asking for help. “Can someone tell me what is going on?” he cried out.

A senior consultant who immediately saw the distress on Timmy’s face, gladly offered to help. He explained to Timmy that although he was a competent technical resource, Timmy failed to realize a few key elements of consulting:

• Timmy hadn’t made sure to clarify the reason he was hired. Clarifying the expectations was necessary to avoid possible confusion around the role he was to play;
• Nobody likes to feel they are inferior to others – especially not to consultants. If Timmy wanted his suggestions to be accepted, he would need to use a softer approach, some humility, and a lot of patience;
• People do not accept suggestions – let alone recommendations – from others unless they have established their credibility;
• Team mates are not likely to accept input unless they actually ask for it;
• Timmy needs to ask himself if he believes it is better for him and for his client to be right.

Do you know anyone who is like Timmy?

Few people have the courage to kill their "puppy"

Before you call animal protection agencies, I need to warn you upfront that this blog post is not about taking the life of man’s best friend. This post is about making difficult decisions – very difficult decisions when it comes to ending your own initiatives. For the record, I love animals but I found the analogy so powerful that I decided to use it to support my perspective [thanks to André for the analogy].

I wrote about an organization’s ability to create, select and grow new ideas in an earlier blog post. I already highlighted 2 very different methods of launching new initiatives and in this post, I want to write about a leader’s ability to kill an initiative before it reaches full potential. No sane person launches an initiative or a project with the objective of not being successful.

Too many organizations lack the ability to innovate so when an organization has the amazing ability to generate new ideas, it is a wonderful thing. In such organizations, employees are motivated and the company makes sure it will continue to grow by bringing innovations to the market. Such organizations typically have a healthy pipeline of ideas that help them re-invent themselves. Some large organizations even have the goal to generate more than 30% of their revenues from products created in the last 24 months. That’s an aggressive but worthwhile strategy.

The challenge I have seen is with smaller organizations where the initiator of the idea is also typically its leader. In such circumstances, the leader no longer has the ability to take a step back and see things as they are – not as he wants them to be. After investing money and personal energy and imagining such high potential, making the right decision about pursuing the project (or not) when the results aren’t there is nearly impossible. The emotional ties to the project are so strong, it requires a lot of courage to make the decision to kill the project.

What do you do when the initiative doesn’t deliver on its expectation? Do you keep moving forward or do you put an end to the project? When do you know when enough is enough? How do you know you didn’t kill the idea too soon?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to these questions except it depends… It is obvious that the decision to end an initiative is much easier to make when you are not emotionally associated with the initiative. Not having taken part of the initiative makes it easier to use clear-cut criteria and apply them. If the project didn’t generate the expected revenue or doesn’t meet which ever other criteria used to evaluate it, it is much easier to decide to cancel it – to make a rational decision instead of an emotional one.

As with every thing in life, no one can ever be certain that the decision was the right one but I firmly believe that making no decision (or maintaining the status quo) is worst than making a decision. Isn’t insanity the behavior of repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome?

As for your initiatives, stop seeing them as puppies. Take a step back and if you must kill your project, see the experience as an opportunity to develop new skills that you will need further down the line. As Agile people keep saying “Inspect and Adapt” which is a clever way of saying “Learn from your mistakes, and move on”. Very few large success happened on the first attempt. See your failed initiatives as a pre requisite for your next success.

I’ll tell you about some of my “puppies” in an upcoming post…

I didn't have time to do this

“I didn’t have time to do this” is by far the lamest excuse I hear and we hear it all the time. Why is that?

You know the scenario. Someone committed to delivering something to you by a certain date and once the time comes, you ask the individual to honor their commitment only to hear these words – “I didn’t have time…”.

Although I could go into time management, this is not the point I want to make. Let’s call a spade, a spade and stop pretending that work doesn’t get done because people didn’t have time to do it. Think about it, when was the last time you heard someone tell you, “I have too much time”?

Life is as such as we accept more work and activities than we have time for, so claiming we didn’t have time for something seems like an understatement. In reality, what really happens is:

1. the individual didn’t want to do the work in the first place;
2. the person is procrastinating;
3. the person has difficulties in prioritizing their activities and cannot make a decision to determine which piece of work is more critical and should be completed first.

As you can see, none of these options would be a popular answer, so people use the same lame excuse over and over again.

Now that you know there is no such thing as having too much time, you may want to ask the person using the lack-of-time excuse to provide the real reason why the commitment has been broken. That should make for an interesting conversation.

Since my first post on this topic, a few people asked me why I thought communities were a new way to organize and what complexity there was in applying communities to a business setting (i.e. for-profit organizations). I have defined what is a community in a business context and some of the rules they follow. Below are some of the recurring questions and their associated answer.

In a business context, what is a community?

In a business context, communities are similar to functional departments with some fundamental distinctions. In traditional setting, members of a functional department or of a project team work together to achieve a goal. With some exceptions, team members share nothing but their common goal and a common boss. By comparison, in addition to sharing a common goal members within a community also share common values and culture and they operate within agreed upon self-defined norms. I provided a few examples here.

Why are communities in the context of business different from other communities?

Communities that come together to carry out a goal are common but communities that aim to generate revenue to autonomously support themselves are no frequent. In traditional for-profit organizations, shareholders through board members select the management team for the organization. The management team (President, CEO, COO, etc.) become accountable to the board for their performance and as such almost always use a top-down (command-and-control) approach.

By contrast, communities rely on a bottom-up approach to decide their goals and those are seldom oriented toward profit.

Aren’t communities completely disorganized and as such, couldn’t work in a business context?

Communities could be disorganized but they wouldn’t be effective. Communities typically set up rules that will allow them to work efficiently. What may seem like disorganized entities within traditional organizations may actually bring better results.

In certain situation, a larger community may ask sub-communities to run within certain guideline and as such, would cut disorganization.

Why use communities as organizational structure?

Because communities are living cells, they are components of a living organism and are able to adapt to their environment.

A community can be born, live and die. A community arises when 2 people come together around a common goal, and decide to form a community.

A community dies when less than 2 people deploy energy to sustain it.

What rules govern a community?

I already provided an answer in this post but typically, communities work by the rules defined by their members. Some rules are implicit while others are explicit and clearly adapted to the needs of the community. The community may decide to create a space for expression and revision of its rules.

In his blog (English translation by google) Tremeur talked about the notion of rules and how they are relevant to the functioning of communities.

How can someone join a community?

Individuals can join a community by expressing their interest in the community, ensuring they are motivated by the goals the community has set, and by adhering to the rules of that community. Further information on this topic can be found in this post.

Can a community expel a member?

According to the rules under which it operates, the community may choose to expel one of its members. It is important to establish that the decision to evacuate a member is serious and can not be done without the approval of the majority (or unanimity) of group members.

An individual is part of a community if he is active in this community. Being active in the community means to actively and positively contribute to achieving the goals set by the community by working with other members of this community. If an individual is not active in a community, it is not part of that community (even if his name appears in the list of members).

How many communities can an individual belong to?

People can belong to as many communities as they wish. Individuals alone are responsible for setting their limit.

What is the largest number of members in a community?

There is no set limit.

If the number of members is jeopardizing the operational effectiveness of the community (9 members in a team would be a reasonable number), then it is likely that the community will divide itself into 2 communities, each pursuing different sub-objectives.

What is the role of leader of the community?

A leader is appointed only if the community decides to appoint one, and its role is defined by the community. Typically,

• the leader ensures the respect of the common rules that the community has given itself;
• the leader ensures that the community is visible and transparent;
• the leader is the one who will link with other communities.

Who chooses the leader of a community?

Unlike traditional businesses where leaders (managers) are selected or appointed by their supervisor, the leader of a community is chosen democratically by the members of the community. Similar to the concept of holacracy, the leader emerges from the group because of its expertise and its commitment to advancing the community towards achieving the goals it has set.

Are all communities are connected?

Maybe, maybe not.

The link between 2 communities may be at least 2 kinds:

• members belonging to more than 1 community;
• a need expressed by a community for the services provided by another.

A community that needs support or resources from another community therefore becomes automatically linked to another community.

Can a community exist independently?

If it apart from other communities, the answer is “yes”: For example, communities of practice are primarily in service to their members, and this is enough.

Is that all communities have financial goals?

No. Basically, communities set their own goals.

As a commercial enterprise, some communities have financial goals to make sure growth and sustainability of the organization.

By contrast, other communities will be directly or indirectly serving communities with financial goals but will not themselves financial targets.

Other communities are communities of interest and have no link with strict financial targets.

Volkswagen has launched a competition to demonstrate that FUN is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. The competition ends December 15th and the winner will receive 2500 Euros (US$ 3700).

“Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw]

To throw rubbish in the bin instead of onto the floor shouldn’t really be so hard. Many people still fail to do so. Can we get more people to throw rubbish into the bin, rather than onto the ground, by making it fun to do? See the results here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw]

Most organizations use a top-down approach to assess their employee’s performance. The assumption is that the individual’s manager is the best person to perform an un-biased, quality performance review. As I already pointed out, only archaic organizations still rely on this type of performance assessment (see #6). Not only are traditional performance review not representative but they focus on the skills and competencies the manager wants his employee to develop.

On the other hand, if you prefer a more comprehensive review, you may be interested in 360-degree feedback. This type of feedback mechanism covers various sources – boss, colleagues, employees, customers, suppliers, etc and as such provides better coverage for the evaluation of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. In some cases, the employee may even decide which specific skills to assess.

360-degree feedback form

After working on the competencies required by my bosses for most of my career, I have decided to build my own 360-degree feedback form to assess my leadership abilities. You may download and use the Excel version of this form – a pdf version is also available. *

The form presents Weaknesses – skills to improve (in column C) and Strengths – skills to maintain (in column I). The evaluator must rate each statement or competency, using a scale from 0 to -4 (for the weaknesses) and from 0 to 4 (for the strengths). The evaluation scale is presented below.

Although there are 50 competencies, the evaluator is given a maximum of 25 points to allocate forcing them to choose which competencies to recognize as strengths or weaknesses.

Evaluation scale

360-degree feedback form by Martin Proulx is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

The problem with slow feedback loop

I recently re-read The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. Peter Senge talks about the impact of feedback loops in individuals and organizations’ learning process. Feedback loops (aka retrospection) are also critical in Scrum and the Agile approach.

What does this have to do with my plant you ask? Simple. I was the victim of a slow feedback loop myself and it almost killed my wife’s beautiful Azalea.

A few weeks ago, I bought my wife a beautiful Azalea for our anniversary. It was in full bloom. It was simply beautiful!

In addition to looking very nice, the salesperson at the flower shop told me it was low maintenance. This is a key feature for us since we usually don’t do very well with house plants. I bought the plant and took it home.

Following the instructions, we would add water every few days and made sure the plant didn’t have too much direct sun light. One morning, we noticed some of the beautiful flowers were starting to dry out. Experience tells us that when something is dry, you add water – so we did. We increased the frequency of the watering ritual from once every 4-5 days to once every 2-3 days.

Much to our surprise, the situation didn’t improve. Actually, it was even worst, more flowers were drying out – so we thought, let’s add more water. We moved the plant next to the kitchen sink so we would remember to add water every morning when preparing coffee. A week passed by and the results got worst. In addition to dry flowers, the plant was loosing all its leaves. It started to look pretty bad.

While I was preparing coffee this morning, I went to add water to the plant only to discover that the plant was immersed in water. There was so much water that it covered the earth in the pot! S*%t! We are drowning the plant!!

Then it hit me. Because we weren’t getting any obvious feedback, we assumed what we were doing was good and we continued until it was almost too late. Had we had indications sooner that our actions weren’t the right ones, we could have changed them and possibly address the right issue.

This is exactly what we teach our customers and what Peter Senge was explaining. Without rapid feedback loop, it may take a while for people to realize they have been doing something wrong.

As I was driving to work this morning, my brain was going through a list of outstanding activities I wish to complete over the next weeks: finalize the structure of the strategic committee, contact client X to present our newest offering, work with the team to write their objective in SMART format, recruit a few more consultants, finish reading “Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes“, finish reading “slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations“, start reading the draft version of “Leading Lean Software Development“, and re-read ”Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold’em“. I’m even listening to the audio version of Jack Welch’s book “Winning” when I’m in the car…

I love to learn and I like to read but there has to be a faster way to absorb information!

Then the 56K modem analogy popped-up. Sure, there are ways to improve my reading speed and yes, I possibly could try to read while I’m listening to music. It is somewhat frustrating to see that with the multiplication of information channels, we humans have limited abilities to simultaneously absorb more information.

Until someone finds a way to connect our brain to the Internet via fiber optic, I will have to continue prioritizing my activities.