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

Agile consultant

You can find more information on our web site.

“Pyxis helps software development companies to become places where results, quality of life, and fun coexist sustainably.”

Being first and foremost an example of what it proposes to its clients, Pyxis is seeking Agile consultants wishing to evolve in a unique organizational structure relying on autonomy, initiative, and collaboration.

The Agile consultant will carry out projects at the clients’ site. He will act as a coach or ScrumMaster in organizations wishing to adopt or improve Agile development approaches.

At Pyxis, consultants are software development buffs. They are pragmatic and they like to work with people from various disciplines.

Main tasks and responsibilities

• Carry out Agile coaching or transition projects at the clients’ site
• Help organizations with the implementation of Agile development approaches
• Act as a ScrumMaster within development teams
• Coach ScrumMasters to help them familiarize with their role
• Participate in projects at Ensemble, our development center
• Remain at the leading-edge of Agile development practices and contribute to their spreading

Requirements

• Diploma in computer engineering, computer science, or business computing, or equivalent experience
• Over 7 years of experience in IT, including 2 in Agile software development
• Broad experience in traditional or Agile project management
• Mastering software development processes
• Knowledge of main development methods
• Sound knowledge of Agile values, principles, and practices such as Scrum and XP

Assets

• Knowledge of software engineering practices such as TDD and DDD
• ScrumMaster certification from the Scrum Alliance

Soft skills

• Dynamism
• Autonomy and versatility
• Team spirit
• Facilitator’s skills
• Diplomacy and ability to resolve conflicts
• Clear understanding of a company’s business needs, business processes, and organizational dynamics

Remuneration

Remuneration based on the value you bring to Pyxis.

Welcome

If you did not already notice, Pyxis is a different company. You have surely seen that the number of smiles per hour is much higher than in traditional organizations. There are several reasons contributing to this phenomenon but for now we just want to explain the governance model used so that you understand exactly what is expected of you.

What is governance?

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions affecting the way a corporation or company is directed, administered or controlled. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many stakeholders involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. - Corporate governance – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

What is the management philosophy?

The management philosophy of François relies heavily on the work of Peter Block and more specifically on the audio book “The Right Use of Power: How Stewardship Replaces Leadership“. If you do not know this audiobook, we invite you to invest 3 hours to understand the philosophy. The alternative is that you will have to reconstruct the enigma over the coming weeks, so this is certainly a good investment.

What does it mean to work at Pyxis?

Before going further, it is important that you know the values and mission of Pyxis and our perspective of capitalism in the 21st century. Then comes the most difficult challenge for a new employee, you must rid yourself of your mental model of a traditional business because most of your references will not apply at Pyxis. Want examples?

What are the teams at Pyxis?

Pyxis works in “communities“.

What do I do now?

If you have more questions than answers after reading this page, it’s normal. Most people need time to assimilate new concepts and our mode of operation. If you have questions, ask them to the people around you or help others by adding them to our wiki.

As we offer various services to help organizations transition from a traditional software development approach to a more Agile approach, we are often asked why use coaching? Assuming you are also asked the same question, you may find this short blog post useful to help you properly answer the questions.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is a method of directing, instructing and training a person or group of people, with the aim to achieve some goal or develop specific skills. There are many ways to coach, types of coaching and methods to coaching. Sessions are typically one-on-one either in-person or over the telephone. - via Coaching – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. - via International Coach Federation.

What is a Coachee?

coachee [ˌkəʊtʃˈiː] - n (Business / Industrial Relations & HR Terms) a person who receives training from a coach, esp in business or office practice. - via coachee – definition of coachee by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

Why use a Coach?

A coach sees the best in you and for you and will help you develop your skills. A coach will support you in your personal and professional growth – and will help you to live the life you truly want. You will get in touch with your values and your vision and help you discover areas and opportunities you didn’t see before. via Why use a coach? – ICF Nordic.

A coach helps his coachee reach his goals faster and more efficiently than he would by himself. The coach helps his coachee define clear, realistic, and time-bound objectives applicable to his and develops a partnership to you achieve the coachee’s goal.

How does coaching work?

Through frequent conversations between the coach and his coachee, the coach offers an external perspective and:

1. Helps the coachee honestly assess his current situation;
2. Supports the coachee in clearly defining his goal and raising the expectations;
3. Helps the coachee properly assess the gap between the current situation and the targeted goal;
4. Works with the coachee to define an appropriate plan and take action (not only conversations);
5. Helps the coachee anticipate and deal with the obstacles by himself;
6. Provides feedback on the progress achieved, continuously assesses the progress and presents opportunities to adapt the plan;
7. Questions the coachee’s self-assessment, decisions and actions taken to achieve the goal;
8. Proposes potential alternatives to push the coachee outside his comfort zone.

Why does coaching work?

Coaching is an empirical process (inspect and adapt). The coaching process helps the coachee envisions himself in the future, making it easier to expect and the achieve the set goals. The coach helps the coachee see opportunities that the individual wouldn’t see by himself and pushes the coachee to set goals his comfort zone. As each goal requires an action plan, the coach forces more frequent and more productive sessions during which the progress is evaluated. Overall, coaching is a partnership process between the coachee and his coach.

Why would someone ask for a coach?

Coaching is not an end in itself, it is a mean to achieve a set goal. When there is a true willingness for change, the coachee doesn’t want the status quo and is receptive to being challenged in order to achieve its goal, asking a coach for help will allow the coachee to carry out their goal faster and more efficiently.

Some prerequisite questions?

Before starting a coaching process, there are a few questions the coachee needs to ask himself:

• What am I really looking for in my professional life?
• What really attracts me in my professional life?
• What do I really want to change?
• What would really spark my passion?
• What problems would I like to resolve to become happier or more productive?

Conclusion

As the first of a series of posts on the topic of coaching, it is important to set the stage which is what I intended to do. Over the next weeks, I will add material to this topic and hopefully will start a conversation with you.

The Experiment

I attempted a small experiment with my kids a few weeks ago – get them to voluntarily help clean the house. If you have children between 7 and 10 year-old, I’m pretty sure having your kids help with cleaning is nothing short of a nerve-wrecking experience. If you don’t have kids, the process typically goes like this:

• You – “Timmy, can you please pick up the toys in your room.”
• Timmy – “Why?”
• You – “Because your room is a mess and I break my face every morning when I come wake you up.”
• Timmy – “OK, I’ll clean up.”

30 minutes later, you go see Timmy.

• You, slightly annoyed – “Timmy, what are you doing?”
• Timmy, looking up – “I’m building a castle, daddy. You want to play with me?”
• You – “Yes, I’d like to play with you as soon as I’m done cleaning up. Why didn’t you pick up your toys like I asked you too?”
• Timmy – “OK, I’ll clean up”

30 minutes later, you go see Timmy

• … (you can guess the rest)

So, back to my experiment. A few weeks ago, while my wife was grocery shopping I decided to use an adapted version of Scrum. I called my son and his twin sister and told them we would do a little activity. To their enjoyment, they were wondering what I had in mind. They sat next to me at the table while I the took 4 x 6 index cards and on each of them, I wrote a task: pick up the toys, put your clothes in your drawers, empty the garbage cans, bring the recycling to the garage, put the Tupperware away in the drawer, vacuum the floor, etc.

• My son – “Daddy, why are you writing these down?”
• Me – “We’ll play a little game.”
• My daughter – “Can I play too?”
• Me – “Of course. Here’s how it goes. I wrote 8 cards and each card has a little task. I need you to help me clean up the house while mommy is doing grocery.”
• The twins – “OK, what do we do with the cards?”
• Me – “You will each select the cards (the tasks) you would like to do. You then decide in which order you want to do them.”
• My daughter – “Daddy, some tasks are longer than others. What do we do about that?”.
• Me – “It’s up to you to decide.”
• The twins – “It doesn’t matter. We’ll decide which ones we pick.”
• My son – “Do we get a reward for doing the work?”
• Me – “Mmmm, good question. I know you like to read. How about I give you tokens for each task? Once you get 50 tokens, I’ll buy the book you asked me.”
• My son – “OK.”
• My daughter – “Can I buy a beeds set instead of a book?”
• Me – “Sure.”
• The twins – “Can you write how many tokens each task gives on the cards?”
• Me – “Good thinking! Picking up the toys is 3 tokens, bringing the recycling to the garage is 1 token, …”
• The kids – “OK, but who picks first?”
• My son – “Let’s do rock – paper – scissor.”
• My daughter – “Yes, let’s do rock – paper – scissor.”
• The twins – “ROCK, PAPER, SCISSOR…”

After determining who would start, they quickly picked the cards and started doing the assigned task. At their own pace, they executed on the cards. Then, something cool happened.

• My son – “Daddy, can we add a card? We need to water the plants.”
• Me, laughing – “Of course. Who’s going to take this one?”
• The twins – “Me, me, me!”
• Me – “I guess we’ll have to write another card so you are even.”
• My daughter – “Can I dust the bureau? I saw mommy do it the other day and I’d like to do that.”
• Me, with a big smile – “OK, if you’d like to do that. I’m OK with this.”

Together, they successfully completed all their tasks. All of their tasks! No fighting, no screaming. That was a “proud moment” Imagine when my wife got back home after the grocery…

With the Xmas Holidays and the broken routine, I was pleased to see my kids grabbing the cards by themselves this past Saturday and starting to execute on the routine. “Wow, this self-organization thing really works! Even with kids…”, I told myself.

The Take-Away

If you want people to carry out a task, here are a few suggestions:

• Describe the task;
• Let the team self-organize;
• If the team needs help, you may suggest tools or a process – but do not impose them;
• Get out of the way;
• If possible, make it fun;
• That’s it.

I had dinner with a friend a few days ago and among the various topics of conversation, he was complaining about going through the yearly performance evaluation process – once again. I consider my friend to be a good people manager who cares about his employees and who is well respected by them but the traditional performance evaluation process used in his organization is far from effective.

You are most likely familiar with the process yourself. The manager has accumulated comments on your performance throughout the year (the good ones do, the others just make up the feedback on the spot!) and during a 30 to 60 minutes meeting, she will tell you the competencies you need to improve with some feedback on your strengths. The manager may even comment your performance based on the accomplishment of certain goals (the good managers have told you ahead of time what the objectives were while the others like to surprise you).

I already pointed out that traditional performance reviews aren’t effective at providing useful feedback to employees but the conversation with my friend reminded us of feedback that we heard and in some cases received ourselves over the years. Our discussion led us to the assumption that many (most?) managers aren’t really good at providing feedback so they use predefined messages. Needless to say, the feedback is empty of true meaning and rarely say the actual performance. In a humorous fashion, we reminded ourselves of the feedback and translated the message. I’m sharing with you some of the translations.

So here we go. Below is a translation of the terms used during a typical performance evaluation and the real meaning behind the vocabulary used.

• “You are one of the pillars of our team” = You are offering a decent performance but since you have been with us for a while and you don’t seem to have plans to leave, we don’t need to give you a big salary increase;
• “I’ve asked many people and they all tell me…” = I actually haven’t spent any time on this performance review thing but I figure if I tell you that I asked many people you will easily accept my feedback;
• “We really like your attitude” = It’s great having you on the team because you take the crappy work that nobody else wants to do;
• “You need to invest more time at the office so you can move ahead in your career” = My boss has pointed out to me that my employees seem to leave early and that is starting to impact how people perceive me at the office;
• “You should build a stronger network within the organization. You can’t expect to move up if you are not well connected to many people” = I wished you knew more people in other departments so you could give me detailed information on how things are going in other departments;
• “You deserve a promotion” = I can’t fire you because it wouldn’t make me look good and I really don’t want you on my team anymore. Once I promote you, other departments will pay attention to you and most likely will want to get you into their department;
• “You need to change your attitude, your teammates don’t enjoy working with you” = You always contradict me and ask difficult questions, couldn’t you simply agree to my requests like everyone else;
• “Everyone on the team likes your positive attitude” = I really don’t have anything useful to tell you so I will try to make you feel good;
• “This year has been very difficult for the company and the increases aren’t good – even for me” = I have a limited pool of money to distribute and I don’t want to create inequities so I am distributing evenly among everyone on the team;
• “I know the salary increase isn’t great but I’m working on something for you” = I’m trying to get away without a lengthy discussion for now and hope that by next time, you forget about my promise;
• “If it was up to me, you would receive a big increase because of your performance but the company won’t let me” = Thank God I can blame someone else for my in abilities to prove a big increase for you.

Have you heard empty feedback? Would you like to share the translated messages with others?

Does your organization’s compensation model and your personal attitude support prostitution?
[Note: The definition of prostitution is provided at the end of the blog post. In the context of this post, I am referring to the second and less often used definition.]

The Scenario

As the head of a large Information Technology department, you walk by Michael’s desk one afternoon and to your surprise, you notice that your system administrator is frantically switching from Google to Chat to a discussion Forum. You recall similar observations a few weeks ago so you quickly wonder if, at $80K per year, you are getting your money’s worth for a system administrotor who always seems to browse the internet. To make matters worst, you don’t even remember when was the last time your company ran into serious systems issues. Do you need Michael on your team? Maybe he is a good candidate for the headcount reduction you have been imposed by Finance.

A few days later, on your way out of the office around 7:15 pm you hear key strokes and notice that Kim is still working. You remember approving Kim’s over time report last month and start to realize that the increase in ERP support calls might be starting to impact Kim’s work-life balance. Remembering your conclusion about Michael, you wonder if you shouldn’t close the system administrator position and add resources to Kim’s team. At $55K per year, you would still be able to cut your budget spending. Pleased with your conclusion, you briskly walk to your car hoping for a nice family dinner.

A New Concept

Here’s a new concept. For people working in most traditional organizations, this will sound like a really weird concept but what if employees decided their own working hours? I’m not talking about the flex time concept where people decide what time they wish to start and end their work day but actually decided how many hours and which hours they worked?

Typically, the traditional work week varies by company and by country. A standard work week in Canada is somewhere between 35 and 40 hours per week. Some would argue they work many more hours per week but that’s not where I want to take this discussion.

Imagine for a moment you stopped controlling the hours worked and focused instead on the results. Granted, this is a much more complex endeavor but in my opinion much more suited to year 2010.

The Old Paradigm

At the beginning of the industrial age, many employees were paid “by the piece”. For every bolt fastened, shirt sowed, or widget delivered they received a small amount of money. Eventually, companies realized that it would be more predictable and easier to manage if people were paid by the hour. Needless to say, the model has somewhat evolved and employees are currently paid by the hour, by the day, by the week, or by the year but the model pretty much remains the same.

The New Paradigm

The new model I’m proposing is to offer a fixed salary (or a risk salary), without any expectations of number of hours worked. Instead of expecting people to work 40 hours per week, people would be expected to deliver value or results. As I mentioned, it is certainly more difficult to set up the type of results expected but on the other hand, isn’t this the basis of commerce – I pay you $x for this good or service without any consideration about how many hours were required to produce it. The production piece is the responsability of the seller, not the buyer.

Back To The Scenario

Pleased with the previous day’s conclusion, you call into your office Michael and Kim’s direct supervisor to share your thoughts. Michael’s boss explains that since hiring him 2 years ago, systems outage have dropped 92% as Michael is consistently looking for ways to improve systems availability. He heavily praised Michael for creative and pragmatic solutions and despite the fact the Michael rarely has to do overtime, he would recommend him for a promotion.

Slightly shocked, you turn to Kim’s boss and ask for comments on her employee. With a grin on her face, Kim’s manager tries to hold back her answer as it certainly wouldn’t make you look good. She explains that Kim clearly lacks analytical abilities which is why she has to spend more time than all her colleagues solving similar issues. In addition, Kim is a poor team player. She likes to think of herself as a super-hero and she prefers trying to handle problems without the help of her team mates which often leads to repeated issues as the root problems are rarely solved properly the first time around. Despite many attempts at helping Kim with her shortcomings, she doesn’t feel the need to improve since she is often praised by the head of the department for putting in long hours…

(Silence in the room)

Embarrassed and apologetic toward both managers, you realize your attitude toward the number of work hours per week may have had the opposite effect that you were originally looking for. You genuinely thank your employees for their valuable feedback and wonder if you shouldn’t aim to leave early today…

I already mentioned that we do not work like most organizations. We are almost at the point where people decide their own salary (more on that topic in an upcoming post). Some are even contemplating making their salary public to everyone within the company (more on that also in an upcoming post). For now, I want to share some interesting discussion around what is called the “risk salary”.

Now that our leaders were happy with their salary – or at least responsible for them – Paulo had another, even more daring proposal, He called it “risk salary”.

“Each of you now has the correct salary, according to your own estimate of your worth,” he told managers at a meeting of company leaders in 1989. “I propose to pay you a little less, but in return will give you the possibility of earning more.”

Then he explained his new wrinkle. If Semco did well, an employee who agreed to risk a 25 percent salary cut – the limit – would receive up to 50 percent more. If Semco did poorly, he would suffer the 25 percent cut. So a manager who received, say, $1,000 a week could risk having it reduced to $750. On the other hand, he could, at the end of each quarter, get an amount that would bring his weekly salary to $1,500.

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace

We are talking about implementing a similar concept. Below is how the proposed model would work.

Variable salary that fluctuates with the company's performance

This model was used by a few employees last year and the discussions around opening this model to everyone are under ways. Interestingly enough, although this model would be entirely voluntary employees are divided on the implementation of this proposed model. I should be able to share more details on this experiment in the months to come.

Have you ever heard a people manager demonstrate his openness and receptivity toward his employees bragging “I have an open door policy“?

Open door policy

In theory, having an open door policy means that anyone can walk into their manager’s office to ask for advice, to request help, to bounce an idea, to propose a suggestion or simply to shoot the breeze.

In reality, I have rarely seen managers actually keep their door open – figuratively speaking. Once a people manager gets the opportunity to have his own office, he will implement obstacles along the way – close the door, hire an administrative assistant or pretend someone is about to come in for a meeting – to reduce to a minimum the number of disruptions.

Many managers with an open door policy would rather have their employees limit their number of visits and are certainly not interested in hearing suggestions that could increase their workload.

That behavior might be explained by the fact that people don’t realize the benefits of keep their door open. The importance of maintaining open, constant, and reliable channels of communication is a solid asset for any people manager.

Let’s push the open communication channel further and imagine what would happen if the manager was actually sitting with the employees. I’m not talking about a closed-office near the employees but a cubicle or a desk right there where the action is. If you wonder why someone would want to try this, you are probably working for an archaic organization and you are certainly not an agile manager.

Closed offices have become such a status symbol that most people couldn’t imagine moving up the rank without an appropriate office. Managers then start preferring their status symbol to obtaining reliable information quickly from their team members. Once the ego takes over, managers lose their strong information channels and then need to rely on other mechanism to remain efficient.

I personally believe that sitting with employees has some substantial benefits:

• It brings the manager closer to the action – the manager will know quickly when something bad is happening or something good that needs to be recognized;
• It brings the employees closer to the manager – information is more likely to move up and down the chain of command;
• It includes the manager within the team – the perception of “the boss” versus “the employees” is lessened since the manager is physically part of the team;
• It removes the psychological barrier of approaching the boss – there are no hurdles to cross, the boss is right there;
• It immediately breaks the perception of classes – there are no evidence that some people are more important than others since nobody has obvious status symbols.

Granted, the manager’s attitude has a lot to do with the benefits obtained by this change but all things being equal, a manager that sits with his people is more likely to build a stronger team and implement strong communication channels.

A colleague of mine has actually pushed the concept further. Mathieu has come up with a more cleaver way of obtaining and disseminating information – he permanently sits in the company cafeteria. He uses an enclosed room for private conversations but most of the time he works in the cafeteria with his laptop where everyone can approach him.

Do you know how much valuable information Mathieu is getting?

Hierarchies aren't evil... People are!

Do you ever say to yourself “I wish there was no hierarchy in our company“?

Wouldn’t it be a perfect world if there were no hierarchy in organizations? Everyone working in harmony, collaborating to achieve their goals with no annoying boss telling anyone what to do. In this hierarchy-free world there would be no supreme ruler over the teams, only happy people delivering their work with birds chirping in the background…

OK, I realize I’m pushing it a little but people who systematically oppose to specific organizational structures often have an idealistic perspective of the world. Fortunately, the world isn’t black or white, there are many nuances.

I have had discussions about hierarchy-free organizations with many people over the last few months. Repeatedly, people bring up the same reasons why they don’t like hierarchies. From their perspective, hierarchies are bad because:

• they don’t let employees perform their work as they wish;
• they allow authority over people;
• they break communication channels;
• they create a distinction between the boss and the employees;
• they don’t treat people equitably;
• they offer more benefits to people at the top;
• etc.

What if hierarchies weren’t the problem? What if the cause of these issues was somewhere else? What if the organizational structure wasn’t the real problem? Not that I am a huge fan of hierarchies, but I do not believe the organizational structure is the real problem – people are!

Let me explain my perspective.

I feel that blaming hierarchies as the reason people hate their job and feel under-appreciated is short-sighted. Organizational structures have much less to do with how people feel than the management style and attitude of the leaders.

Let me repeat that statement. I believe that the attitude and behavior of the leader has greater impact on the team members’ performance and happiness in the workplace than the organizational structure under which they operate.

You are not convinced? You might want to try this exercise.

Can you think back of a time when you felt empowered to do your job and were happy to be at work? Can you recall a time when you would invest long hours working on a project and your energy level was going though the roof? If you answered yes to these questions, ask yourself this other question “was it because of the hierarchy-free structure or the leader’s attitude”?

If you have had the opportunity to work for a great leader – someone who gives you freedom to do your work, holds you accountable for the results, is always supportive and available for mentoring, and gives you credit for your work – you will immediately realize that the leader’s behavior and attitude were the underlying causes of your satisfaction. A bad leader in a hierarchy-free organization will make everyone’s life miserable while a good manager – even in a position of authority – will get amazing commitment from his people.

It might be that the people against hierarchies are ones that never had the opportunity to work for a great leader and so, assume that the organizational structure is the issue. I wish them to find a great leader to work with because in the end, the leader’s attitude has much more to do with a happy and productive work environment than the actual structure of the organization.