Showing Some Gratitude for 2022

The last half of December is when the professional world goes to sleep. The Christian holidays, the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, and the commemoration of Kwanza take the wind out of the global economy's sails. For a brief period, business people spend time with family and friends. It is a chance to rest, recharge and take stock of the previous year. Today, I want to attempt that same activity.

If you look at measurements, 2022 was a strange year. Since the end of the Second World War, the Russian army has been fighting in Europe for the first time. Inflation rose in response to growing demand after COVID restrictions but is starting to cool. Authoritarians worldwide seem to be on the rise, with the 2022 Olympics in Beijing becoming the high point of the global arrogance of that worldview. The world is still smoldering from the previous year's wildfires, and politics in the United States and the United Kingdom looks like a dysfunctional mess. Finally, any man that had any cultural influence made themselves look like a nitwit. Amid all this background noise, I was working as a technology consultant attempting to coordinate the activities of development teams across three continents. 

Working as a technology consultant is an exhausting career. It is not for the weak and takes a mental and emotional toll on anyone who does it well. You spend your time getting incompatible systems to work together. While dealing with these engineering challenges, you confront the confusing world of office politics and leadership. I stumbled into the vocation because I was good at computers. It also occurred to me that I can lead other developers and business people to get work done. I am a weird kid with nerdy hobbies who grew up to become one of the many anonymous figures who keep the global economy spinning. I cannot imagine doing anything else for a living. Over the years, I have experienced plenty of disappointing situations. Still, I have come out of these experiences more dedicated to making the world of work more sustainable, satisfying, and sane. In a way, it has become my life's devotion. 

First, I want to recognize my colleagues from CAPCO who have been there when I needed them. I could only do my job with a great support network. Michael Guerrero has been the best coach, and I look forward to being under his mentorship for a long time. Casey Schaffer is the woman who took a chance on me and taught me the importance of animal rescue daily. Beth Yiznitsky is a serious professional woman who does not take herself too seriously, and it inspires a loyalty that is difficult to understand. I am also grateful to Owen Priestley and Kyle Chavers for letting me be myself at work and allowing me to help others. Together with my fellow CAPCO employees, we are a "merry band of pirates," which I work with daily. 

I also feel like I need to recognize some people outside my company. Monica Guillory at Surestaff and I go back almost ten years, and even though we work at different organizations, we still keep in touch. We are both committed to diversity and inclusion. We both know that work can be a source of dignity and power instead of alienation and despair. Thanks for helping me keep my chin up. I also need to recognize two people I know through the Chicago Agile Coaching Exchange; Ryan Ripley, the Agile for Human's podcast host, and James Carpenter. Both are fighting to make agile real in organizations and doing it one client at a time: nerdy respect, folks. 

I consider myself fortunate. I have people in my professional life who support me, but where I am most lucky is at home. Carol Zelaya is a great life partner who loves me the way I am. My parents are still alive, so I often enjoy their company and wisdom. Finally, I have a group of friends who allow me to be childish around a board game table a few times a year. 2022 was a strange year, but I am grateful for all the people that made it worth living. I will take a week off to enjoy the holidays with my family. Next time, we will look ahead to 2023.

Happy holidays and until next time. 

Software is NOT transcription!

One of the most challenging things about working in technology is explaining what I do to others outside the business. A chemical engineer at a food company can explain they help create flavors or ensure the potato chips we eat are consistently crispy. A petroleum engineer transforms crude oil into gasoline and other valuable petrochemicals, making modern life worth living. An agile coach, scrum master, or software developer has difficulty explaining what they do. Sometimes it looks like magic, and other times, it resembles tedious bouts of frustration. There are plenty of ways to describe my profession, but today on the blog, I want to explain what it is not. 

Nothing is more frustrating for me professionally than interacting with executives who earn their leadership in their organization by mere survival. These people look like leaders but do not exhibit leadership characteristics because survival in a dysfunctional organization is the only accomplishment they can proclaim. They were mediocre people who were unremarkable employees. Eventually, these people are promoted by someone because they do not threaten the status quo and the leaders above them. These executives are allergic to risk and innovation because it would threaten their position.  

Countless times I have been in the office of these individuals and their faux leadership. One ordered me not to speak to other departments because he did not want the different departments to learn about our challenges with software releases. Another explained that we were not a technology company, so to expect us to behave like a technology company was foolish. I even had a vice president pat me on the head and call me ‘son’ before explaining how I did not understand modern branding. Naturally, when layoffs came, these paragons of leadership remained, and I was made disposable. 

These leaders are toxic and insulting to the professionals who keep the global economy spinning. By far the worst was a salesperson who said, “Software is easy; you just transcribe our order forms into the inventory system.” At that moment of emasculation, I knew it was a matter of time before I would quit the organization to do something else. Software development is not transcription! It is a complex process of taking business artifacts like forms and turning them into strategies that deliver value for the firm. It is not a transcription but countless creative decisions that developers make that have numerous implications for the business and the software development process.

The dismissive notion that software is just transcription is self-defeating. For example, how does an order form behave once a customer fills it out? Developers will ask about the impact of the order on the inventory and accounts receivable system. Software engineers worry about what happens if an item is missing from the warehouse. Can a data team use the inventory to track trends and determine how to serve customers better? Finally, what else should the ordering system do to deliver value to the business? It is a game with thousands of questions, and developers need to answer them to make the software work.

The technology world overflows with intelligent and talented people. Despite layoffs, the technology world has an over-abundance of work and needs more people to do it. Business leaders want to throw as much work at employees as possible because their labor is expensive. It is this crazy ratio of supply and demand which drives much of the dysfunction in the technology business. Instead of creating a cycle of productivity, there are episodes of burnout and failure to deliver. 

Over the years, I have been profoundly disappointed by business leaders who do not understand technology or how to lead others. I joined the agile reformation because I know that there are better ways to lead others and deliver working software. The business world needs reform, and it is up to people like me and you to speed that process along, so now, when a toxic leader says software development is easy, I know what to say to convince them otherwise.

Until next time. 

Cross Training for the Curious Agile Coach

Software development is a long slog of false starts and frustration. It is different from other forms of construction. Stakeholders generate vague guidelines, and it is up to software engineers to transform them into working software on various platforms. As an agile coach, the complex process of building software must have an environment of psychological safety, mutual respect between team members, and a ruthless commitment to quality. I keep thinking about Alex Stoley's discussion about how we need to have a 'brain transplant' between members of an agile team. 

I first met Alex in 2018 at the Agile 2018 conference. We were both giving presentations, and I looked forward to his unique perspective. During his presentation, he used the metaphor of a mad scientist to describe the process of cross-pollination, which should happen between a scrum master and a product owner. He likened it to something like the Frankestines monster, with brains transferred between the two roles. To Stoley, only by living and working in the other person's role was it possible to improve the entire team's performance. I instantly converted to this message, and when I had a  chance, I decided to work as a product owner to improve my skills. 

Today, I continue to think about Stoley and his message. My experience in the software business has convinced me that teams perform better when members cross-train. Training like this allows team members to help each other during difficult periods and prevents bottlenecks from happening when one team member can only do work. Each team member can have a specialty, but each member is responsible for instructing the others on the team on how to do the basics of that specialty. Someone with object-oriented skills can help a javascript developer better understand types. That javascript developer can teach the object-oriented developer how a domain object model works on the web page. 

The cross-training process on your team will be hard work, and the go-go business world might need help understanding it. Still, the hard work done upfront will make the team more resilient and better able to code with the numerous challenges which crop up during a software release. 

If you attempt to explain this to an executive, use a metaphor from athletics. The next player steps in to fill a role when a football player is injured. The replacement player is good enough to help the team and will act as a sparkplug for the people already on the field. Crosstraining is also valuable because it defines the standards of excellence everyone on the team should follow. For example, everyone on the team should know how to write unit tests because a story is incomplete until someone writes a unit test. Thus, when new people join the team, part of the integration process is showing them how to write unit tests. It creates a common bond that all the team members share.

Brain transplants are the stuff of science fiction, but the benefits of cross-training are genuine. Team members who share a standard skill set are less likely to get stuck and perform better for the organization. That knowledge makes me want to cackle like a mad scientist. 

Until next time. 

Do the Difficult Things Now!

One of the strange things about being a business professional is when you take time off; you are not free from your work. Current events in the industry are still present in the news. Recruiters and trainers are reaching out to businesses. Finally, blogs and social media promotions do not write themselves. While I took a week off from work to enjoy the thanksgiving holiday, work seemed to find me in some strange ways. Today, I want to talk about your hard work in silence. 

This week's big news was the FTX cryptocurrency exchange's destruction and the technology industry's continued layoffs. The cynic in me takes some satisfaction in knowing that I avoided the tragedy of losing a boatload of money in crypto. It is a smug feeling of superiority, but people lost life savings thanks to Sam Bankman-Fried and his collective group of crypto kids. The layoffs in big tech also illustrate that the technology business is maturing, so they need to concentrate on business basics instead of growth.  

The drama in the industry is a natural result of the basic rules of global business. Sooner or later, a company needs to have positive cash flow and pay the banks and inverters back. It made me think about all the tough decisions business leaders need to make and how introductory psychology works against that decision-making. In her book Radical Candor, Kim Scott talks about ruinous empathy. The desire to avoid conflict and be well-liked prevents leaders from correcting processes and behaviors because they are afraid of hurting the feeling of others. In truth, problems fester until it is too last to fix them.  

I blame this behavior on the culture of executive leadership. Many business leaders see their advancement based on their appearance to their superiors, so they spend plenty of time ingratiating themselves with those leaders. At the same time, they are attempting to win the loyalty of the people who work for them. It is a petri dish for ruinous empathy because you are kissing up to leadership and failing to hold your team accountable. It creates a situation where it is all fun and games until revenue declines or a customer has an issue, then all the good feelings evaporate. 

Leaders need to do the unpleasant and challenging things early so that the positive experiences are more satisfying and profitable. A poor team member can poison an entire organization, so it is necessary to elevate them to a particular skill level or let them go. I hate planning meetings and coordinating team rooms, but they are required to make my team successful, so I attend. Walking peers through their duties and holding them accountable is tedious, but without that coaching, the entire enterprise will fly apart like a runaway carousel. 

Doing unpleasant and hard things is why others entrust you with leadership. Before a client demo, I go through a mental calculus to determine if I have done everything possible to make the team successful. For the last few years, my anxiety has subsided, but I still want to ensure that the teams have everything they need to succeed. The hard work eventually pays off in the trust of other business members relying on the team to solve problems and deliver customer value. 

The business world contains plenty of distractions. Conferences need speakers, media appearances need to happen, and there are countless opportunities to wine and dine clients. Don't let these fun parts of the business undermine the hard work necessary to generate success. Being liked is a different experience than the respect and trust of colleagues. What makes that difference is the arduous and unpleasant work each business leader must do.  

Until next time. 

Focus is the Key

The older I become, the more I am struck by how the contemporary office is resistant to change. The COVID-19 pandemic proved we could work from home and deliver value to customers, but business leaders are pushing employees to return to the office. We are also seeing business leaders demand employees become 'hardcore,' whatever that means simultaneously. We are seeing business leaders juggling more opportunities and distractions than concentrating on the core of the business. The trend of the superstar CEO and founder is becoming tedious, and it is time that coaches and agile professionals emphasize the importance of focus if we are going to make the business world better.  

Ed Zitron in Business Insider this week points out the hypocrisy many business leaders illustrate when they complain about the work ethics of their employees. Zitron points out that many CEOs do not create value for their firms and are "A chaotic blend of unproductive micromanagement and highly paid absenteeism." The problem is that there are too many temptations for an executive to moonlight outside their core responsibilities. Today, a CEO has meetings to attend, boards of directors to sit on, and a television appearance on cable to show the shareholders they are making a difference. Lost in this busy work is the operation of the business and leading the people who work there. 

The lack of focus on the part of executives directly impacts the firm's bottom line. The fact that distracted leaders struggle to deliver value means that as a coach, you must point out the destructive behavior to the organization and then guide people to fix it. Leadership and getting people to work together toward a common goal is hard work. It requires dedication and commitment. The result can get tedious. Frankly, it is more fun to appear on television and make public speaking engagements talking about how good you are at business. 

The sad reality is television opportunities and public speaking engagements are transitory. A business leader who is absent doing other things puts the business's long-term survival at risk. As a coach, you need to concentrate on what is essential, and that focus should be on the company and its executive leadership. Anything else is a wasteful distraction. 

The economy is becoming more challenging, so now is the time for a change of perspective. Instead of building personal brands, concentrate on customers' needs and building the business's brand. Take a good look at your organization's operations and see what you can do to improve. It is not glamorous, but what's best for the business's continued success. 

Until next time. 

Layoffs are Not the End

It was a rough week to be a technology professional. Layoffs hit the industry hard, and the biggest casualty was Meta which ended the careers of eleven thousand employees for its failed bet on the Metaverse and overenthusiastic hiring during the pandemic. I watched the news with a strange pang of memory. My career contains plenty of firings, layoffs, and assorted catastrophes. I know what it is like to not have a job anymore. This week, I feel it is necessary to talk about layoffs and how to muddle through the process of starting over. 

The first thing you should understand about being laid off is that it is not a personal failure. It was a failure of the company to manage it's business and workforce. People who work in professional fields are told from high school that their success is their responsibility. The sad truth is success in a corporate environment is not merit-related but relationship based. Having good mentors, visible success in front of senior leadership, and looking like a leader are often more important than being good at your job or having actual leadership skills. To this day, I am still amazed people are in charge of millions of dollars and the careers of dozens with the emotional understanding and leadership skills of a fraternity member you find urinating in your hedges each week after a home football game.  

Someone I respect in this business once said, "Do your job and if they have a problem with that, let them fire you." It was a bit of wisdom I have carried with me for my entire career. I say this because plenty of business decisions happen without consideration of merit. Thus, layoffs are another example of poor leadership and planning creating problems for others. It is upsetting because one day, you have a job, and the next, it is gone, and you feel guilty, wondering if something could have saved your job. The truth is nothing you could have done would have held your position. Someone put together a spreadsheet showing the cost savings of a reduction in payroll; then, it was up to executives and managers not affiliated with the people doing the work to decide who stayed and who would go. It is not personal, just a cell in a spreadsheet and a business decision. An employee delivering value to the company with a family to support is cast aside like a broken office chair. 

The impersonal nature of layoffs is what is so demeaning about the process. It stings and creates a grieving process that will take a few weeks. One moment you were a valuable employee helping the team, and the next, you were packing your desk and being escorted out of the building. I experienced a workforce reduction numerous times in my career and have found a better job with better pay each time. Career instability will take a toll on your personal life because nothing undermines a romantic relationship like unemployment. Still, the good news is that with the right partner, a layoff is a temporary setback, not a life-ending event. 

The technology business is tiny, and word travels fast in this community. Already support groups are popping up to help people caught up in the layoffs at Meta and Twitter. Recruiters are working the phone, attempting to place skilled engineers with new jobs. Executives at companies are looking to snatch up talent who can provide value immediately for the business. Finally, technology workers are in great demand because there is still too much work and insufficient skilled people. 

As a survivor of layoffs, I understand the disappointment and heartbreak which comes with being let go. Technology is a harsh world. This week was especially rough, but it will improve, and each of us will be better for the experience. 

Until next time. 

Some Reasons Why We Are Less Productive

This week's big news in technology is Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. He has terrorized the staff quickly, made changes, instituted an 85-hour work week, and laid off half the team. I would love to talk more about this, but Musk already receives too much attention, and I firmly believe in denying trollish people the attention they desperately seek. I will wait for Elon to explain himself to a bankruptcy judge before commenting on his leadership style. Today, I want to concentrate on something which popped up during the week: the decline in productivity among the global workforce.  

The Washington Post featured headlines that productivity is down among U.S. workers. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the headline, and it is clear that a combination of factors is creating a perfect storm of low productivity. I will blame three main elements; inflation, fatigue, and poor leadership.  

It is no secret that inflation is driving plenty of angst in the economy. Supply-side problems and a tight labor market are making prices for gas, food, and rent a significant burden. Pay rates are not keeping up with the inflation rate, which means that as of November 2022, a person's wages can purchase six percent less than one year ago. It means that if you are earning a paycheck, your labor provides less money for you and your family. It creates a cycle of despair where you work each day and fall further behind in your commitments. It is no wonder that people are not working harder because they do not see any benefit from that effort. 

Next, I want to point to an article by Mary McNamara,  who correctly observes that American workers are tired. Fatigue is hallowing out the American workforce. COVID-19 tested American workers and businesses; in the aftermath, people lost their businesses, careers, and lives. Combined with the loss of life of over one million people in the United States, it creates a mourning situation where people must process the things lost during the last three years. Unfortunately, business does not take a break for anyone and relentlessly demands that we set our issues aside and get to work. It is why the World Health Organization has said that the pandemic created a 25% increase in depression and anxiety. Combine this emotional exhaustion with the daily cultural challenges of political polarization, climate change, and concerns about a recession triggered by rising interest rates. Most of us are not right emotionally to be at our best. You have a particular type of demotivation.  

I also suspect a final factor involved in the lack of productivity: the poor leadership of many people in the business today. It looks like plenty of incapable people in leadership roles are using their positions of authority to hurt others. The results show companies that could do no wrong in the past are now losing value with shareholders because their leadership will not face market realities. It also does not help when leaders behave like monarchs and treat their employees like peasants. Working for a bad leader is another factor hurting productivity because people hate working for a jerk.  

As an agile coach and consultant, I take these things seriously. Often, I feel like the kid who points out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Work should not be a source of alienation or drudgery. Instead, it is a vehicle for change, empowerment, and value if we allow it. It means recognizing the impact of inflation, fatigue, and poor leadership on the workforce. The entire global economy is counting on us. Once we have that recognition, it is time to take action and prevent it from falling further. 

Until next time.

Attack of the Scrumzilla!

As a child, I was a big fan of monster movies, from the classic Universal horror films, the campy gore of Hammer horror films, and the unbridled fun of Japanese kaiju films. My favorite was Godzilla because my ten-year-old self identified with the lumbering lizard, and I spent my Saturday afternoons watching UHF television and enjoying these edited television treats. A pre-teen boy has all the properties of a Japanize movie monster. The limbs are unresponsive, the impulse control is lacking, and in moments of stress, you roar for attention. Godzilla was both an inspiration and friend on those lonely Saturday afternoons.  

Plenty of time has passed since those Saturday creature features, but I still see the tropes of those films in my consulting work. The most disturbing is the appearance of a monster that terrorized the cubicles of every business – the scrumzilla! A scrumzilla is a recently minted scrum master or SCP who, with the discipline of a guard at a POW camp, attempts to enforce the rules of scrum or SAFe with an iron hand. These people are the avatars of a dark scrum. These individuals understand the letter of the scrum guide but not the spirit or intent.  

A scrumzilla will stomp over the empowerment of the team because they are experimenting with a new way of working which does not align perfectly with the Scrum Guide or the SAFe specification. These individuals ignore the agile manifest because they follow processes and tools more than they trust individuals and interactions. Without early interventions from management or a coach, these monsters will destroy your digital transformation efforts faster than Rhodan.  

For agile to work, the most important thing you can do is to lead by example instead of by authority. I speak from experience because I was a scrumzilla. It would take me a year with the direction of a patient manager and agile coach to get me to the point where I could get a team to self-organize without being prescriptive. Let people make mistakes and then use those errors as learning opportunities. The approach is not the spit and polish of a military drill team but rather the technique used by bomb disposal units. If you have met anyone involved in Explosive Ordnance Disposal, you know they have a light approach to discipline and a deadly serious focus on learning. It is because a lack of knowledge can get someone killed when working with explosives. 

Just because someone takes a test and passes a training course, they do not become an expert. It takes practice and time before they have the correct temperament to serve others and guide people through the agile process. I have seen plenty of damage done by lousy scrum masters and product owners. Terrible agile coaches are more destructive. If we are going to lead change in organizations successfully, we need to be on the lookout for these scrumzillas before they crush us underfoot. 

Until next time. 

Radical Candor is the New Way of Leadership

My mentor at CAPCO Financial says, "Each day, everyone gets up and delivers value." This aphorism provides me with the desire to persevere in my darker moments. As a leader and agile coach, it has become apparent that most of my job is helping others navigate difficult moments. The pressure of working in the global economy is enormous, and everyone cracks under strain. Their ability to deal with daily adversity during work makes people and teams successful. Today, I want to discuss why you should learn the techniques of Kim Scott's popular book "Radical Candor." 

Scott has a simple thesis in her work. For a leader to be successful, they must care personally for the people they serve and challenge them directly to do the best they can. It is not a difficult concept to understand but hard to put into practice. Mistakes cost money, and careers rise and fall based on small details. The demanding needs of customers are exhausting, and business relationships years in the making can disappear overnight. Being a business person requires a certain amount of toughness. The challenge is to exhibit this mental toughness without inflicting it on the people who work with you.  

It is apparent when you challenge people to improve performance or adjust to changing situations. Speaking up is problematic because many people want to be well-liked by others, and telling someone they are failing risks rejection. Scott understands this, so she comes up with strategies that help leaders correct the conduct of the people they serve. In my experience, people want to know if they are doing good work or how to do a better job. To make this approach relevant, you need to care about the people working with you.  

When we talk about caring for people, it means learning about their families, what they enjoy off hours, and listening to what they have to say. I struggled with this skill, and only in retrospect did I realize that not caring personally about the people under my care creates a toxic type of management known as obnoxious aggression. It is when you challenge others but do not care about them. After some time, I had one team member in open rebellion and another dissociated from the work. I was determined to be different in my next leadership role. 

This humility is hard-earned thanks to numerous failures and false starts during my career. Today, I accept my failures and use them as valuable lessons for my next leadership role. Vulnerability is a superpower in today's business world because it helps you connect with other people and proves that when you must be firm, it comes from a place of empathy instead of malice. The world contains plenty of talented jerks, be the radically candid leader. 

Until next time. 

Saying Yes and No a New Way

The seasons are changing, and the chill in the air represents a sense of urgency organizations have to meet their financial and project goals. I am one of those people who accomplishes these goals and helps organizations succeed. Over the years, I have discovered that the most challenging part of the job is not the engineering but the interpersonal and political skills necessary to get work finished at large bureaucratic businesses. This week I want to look at a skill I learned that had become an essential tool for my success in the weird business world of business.  

I feel strongly that a Liberal Arts education is valuable in business and technology. You can teach anyone to write software and perform basic development tasks, but the real skill is communicating with people via the written and spoken word. Putting yourself in another person's shoes and spotting spurious arguments are also valuable business skills. A liberal arts education helps teach these skills, and the business world is better because of people with liberal arts backgrounds. I am biased on this front because I am a liberal arts graduate, and exposure to philosophy, theater, literature, media, and writing traditions has given me a competitive advantage in my career.    

In high school and community college, I took theater courses. Each student learns how to improvise on stage. It was a great experience, and I had plenty of laughs, but I did not realize the presentation and speaking skills I developed in a theater would stay with me for the remainder of my life. As I began meeting facilitation, I remembered a technique I learned in improvisation. Performers know to be unselfish with other performers and internalize the maxim of "…yes and." During a strange situation or when you are stuck on what to say, you look deeply into the eyes of your fellow performers and say "yes and…." At that point, the other performer, if they are paying attention, will pick up the performance and move it in a different direction.  

As a coach, in meetings with people who are reluctant to talk, I often use the "yes and…" technique to elicit more feedback and information. It is a great way to break the tension, and it helps remove the responsibility from one person speaking to the group. It transforms meetings into a more participatory experience because, as the facilitator, you lead them to say what needs to be understood instead of dictating to the group.  

We often have deadlines and other challenges which involve conflict. That conflict can be acknowledged if we use language that is a little less violent. Lately, I have been using an additional phrase: "no, wait…."  For example, I had someone demand that I deliver a user story. I said, "No, wait, I understand this is important, but where does it fit in with the release schedule."  After some thought and waiting, the person making the demand backed down. Another example is saying, "No, wait, do I understand you correctly?" The approach makes the conversation more participatory and helps facilitate a more profound understanding.  

We all have to say yes or no at work. Using theater improvisation techniques makes the process easier and allows people to feel involved in creating value. Feel free to give it a try.  

Until next time. 

Learning to Lead in Strange Times

The current economic situation is strange. Inflation is increasing, and at the same point, the employment market looks strong. Prices are rising, but at the same time, employers want to recruit and retain talent. It is enough to make an economist feel like they are being drawn and quartered. What is going on as an agile leader, and what do you do?  

It is easy to be gloomy in the present economic times. Forecasts say a recession is coming, and the price of everything has taken a colossal spike. We even see layoffs at companies like Meta. As much as I like seeing Marc Zuckerburge receive a dose of reality, scratch below the surface, and you will see that the job market is more robust than it has been in my lifetime. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 10 million open jobs or 1.7 jobs per person looking for work. It is the best it has been in twenty years. 

Workers are gaining power and can afford to be picky with who and where they work. We can see this in the public conversation about hybrid work and returning to the office. It also includes the discussion about quite quitting and the equally awful practice of quite firing. When you think about it, the debate centers around trust. Workers want to work to be productive and fulfilling, while employers demand their labor dollars to generate a profit.

Employees want to do work that provides for their families and generates some form of fulfillment. Employees also want to take pride in what they are doing; do the widgets they produce help the environment, are the customers thrilled with the gadgets, or do they help improve communities? I do not know an individual who wants to sell a product that causes cancer or is flammable on children. Workers also realize that with modern technology, they can work anywhere. Long commutes to the office are unnecessary, and saving time allows people to look after their kids and aging parents. I also think it eliminated a form of theater where office workers looked busy to their managers because those managers were outside their doors, snooping on the employees in the cubicles. With the charade, gone employees could do their jobs and be authentic without playing games in an office. 

Amy Chow, the former CEO of AT&T Business, this week in Forbes magazine says as business people and leaders, we need to be aware of the “…what, where, when, and how” of work. The ‘what’ is non-negotiable. Accounts receivable need to be collected, sales calls need to be made, and new products need development. Thanks to COVID-19, the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of work do not need to happen in an office during business hours. Not it can occur in coffee shops around lunchtime or late at night after story time with the children. The ‘how’ was always up to employees, and technology makes creating high-quality results that deliver customer value easier. An old line manager wants to control three of these parameters. Agile leaders must respect that they can only handle one of them. 

Business people love fancy offices and corporate campuses because they represent the physical manifestation of their company. The coffee bars, ping-pong tables, and minimalist architecture are all a façade to entice workers and customers. The last three years have shown that image as empty because innovation can happen anywhere. It might be time for business leaders to review their construction and lease plans. 

These economic times are strange, but one clear thing is that workers are growing in power, which is changing the office. If we are serious about agile, we must respond to the change instead of following the old plan. 

Until next time. 

Agile defeats Brutality on the Battlefield

War isn't about the brutality

Since the beginning of this blog over ten years ago, I have been an advocate of working differently.  The IT world was and still has plenty of talented jerks.  Women and people of color are underrepresented in the ranks of Software Engineers.  Finally, LGBTQ people labor under a cloud of etiquette in the technology business, which is a shame because much of the business would not exist without the contributions of Alan Turning.  Over my career, the situation has improved, but we have significant improvements yet to achieve.  I have fought for this change my entire career.  Reform is difficult in the best of situations.  Even so, it's even more complicated when people fetishize the past that did not exist or feel threatened by people involved in decisions or creative processes.

The most exciting thing to happen in the last fifty years of American history is the gradual acceptance of the variety of people who make up the United States.  The law and public opinion witnessed the approval of the religious and those who do not believe.  Gay people can live their lives openly, and that acceptance has led to a debate about the commercialization of the gay rights movement.  Technology workers from India and Pakistan have exposed American to Muslim and Hindu cultures.  We even see women participating in politics on a level not seen before.  

The progress generates a vocal and sometimes violent backlash.  Individuals in our society struggle with dealing with different types of people with who they do not understand or identify.  Both politicians and media figures have embraced this backlash to make money and gather political power.  This week pundits Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson lamented the state of our military for being too 'woke.' Never missing an opportunity to call attention to himself, Texas Senator Ted Cruz joined the public debate.  The conversation was so disingenuous that republican representative Adam Kinzinger decided to call out Shapiro's bad faith arguments.  I decided to share the tweet below.  

Good point Ben. What branch were you? https://t.co/DA8o17zY90

— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) September 25, 2022

I am not a military veteran and do not even understand the daily sacrifices our service members experience.  I do have a strong background in military history and war gaming.  It gave me some insight into the changes which happened to the United States military since the war in Vietnam and the shift to an all-volunteer army.  Shapiro, Carleson, and Cruz are wrong.  Brutality and firepower do not make a military successful; instead, it is diversity, intelligence, and agility.  I have first-hand knowledge about this subject because I am hosting two Ukrainian refugees in my home.  The stories they tell about the brutality of Russian troops are chilling.  There is also widespread evidence of war crimes committed by entire Russian units.  

A modern battlefield is a place that demands grace under pressure, the ability to improvise, and finally, a will to fight, and based on what we see in Eastern Ukraine, the Russian army lacks those values and skills.  The reason is that the Russian military still thinks it is fighting the Second World War despite its tanks, artillery, and planes. 

While attending training as a product owner, the instructor said something interesting to the class.  He said, "The largest agile organization is the U.S. Army." I chuckled a bit at that notion, but he reassured the class that it was true because everyone spends time in training to do their job.  Soldiers in the field are constantly tinkering around to do their jobs better.  Finally, after a mission, military people have "after-action reports," where they attempt to understand what they can do better.  "There is no way you have a volunteer army without an Agile mindset," he said. 

It brings me to a few articles on the web.  The first is from the Atlantic this week from Phillips Payson O'Brien.  I will include his article here, but he points out that the brutal army of Russia is getting its head handed to it because the Ukrainian military is more flexible, technologically conversant, and willing to learn.  Additionally, unicorn soldiers prove that LGBTQ troops are as deadly and heroic as heterosexual troops.  

The more informative article is from agile coach Dmytro Yarmak who became a Ukrainian Military Officer overnight and February 24, 2022.  Commanding a Ukrainian artillery battery, Yarmak says many of the skills he has as an agile coach make him a better leader of troops.  Empathy, pushing decision-making down to ranks, and giving people purpose and mastery instead of orders is how he runs his unit.  It is a powerful lesson that victory belongs to the agile instead of the brutal in war.  

This blog is a bit of a departure for me.  I do not like to talk about current political events and would instead focus on the ups and downs of the business world.  The Ukraine war has lasted six months, and I can no longer ignore it and its impact on the planet and my family.  It also reinforces my belief that we can have a more sustainable, sane, and satisfying work world if we abandon notions of brutality and ignorance for something more agile.  

Just as the Cultural Support teams of the United States Army proved that women have a role in combat during the Afghanistan War, it is evident that agility on the battlefield is more critical than brutality.  Something I doubt Shapiro, Carlson, or Cruz would understand.  

Until next time. 

 

Trunk based development is the agile way forward.

Software development is a complicated and detail-oriented process.  It requires hours of focus daily.  The profession also requires near inhuman levels of patience as you spend most of your time with broken systems.  Developers who build those systems are a special breed.  Creating software is more challenging when you add deadline pressure and the collaboration of numerous creative people.  This week, I want to discuss another obstacle to software delivery: the use of source control to create versions.   

Software is in a constant state of construction and revision.  Each day code is revised, and developers create a shorthand for what they are working on to keep track of these changes.  Software developers call this shorthand version.  Microsoft uses the following terminology for versioning software: major, minor, hotfix, and build number.  A major number represents a significant improvement in the look or performance of the software; thus, version fifteen is superior to version fourteen.   A minor modification is a minor version number.  For instance, a new software version allows for alphabetically sorting columns, becoming version 15.2, which is superior to version 15.1, which did not have that feature.  Version 15.2.1 is superior to version 15.2.0 because it addresses errors created by German or Russian characters.  When we talk about hotfixes, a development team often deals with defects.  The final number is the build number, usually a date stamp of code compilation.  Version 15.2.1.20220925 is a day older than version 15.2.1.20220924.  By glancing at this numbering system, a software developer, product person, or executive knows which version is in any development environment.  It is an elegant and transparent way to understand the progress of a software development project.   

Unfortunately, the business world is not elegant or organized.  A version can exist in production, and a different version will live in the User Application Testing environment.  In situations like this, most source control tools can branch code, so the main version of software exists in the trunk, and a version can live in a different branch.  It is supposed to segregate code into two lines, which developers merge once the software is released.  The ugly truth is that software is being manipulated in source control by hundreds of people creating branches and combining them.  This situation is filled with entropy as developers are making fixes to one component and ignoring the other.  In cases like this, code in one branch can exist, and code that creates critical errors might exist in the other.  The team will not know until the code is merged into source control or pushed to a testing environment.  Merge conflicts like this are expensive to fix and often happen publicly, hurting your credibility with customers. 

As a result of vague promises made to the business, product managers insist that the updated code find a home in the previous version.  It is called backporting, and it metaphorically resembles placing a rocket engine on a bicycle and expecting it to behave like a spaceship.  When a development project requires backporting, it introduces further fragility and technical debt, which shows up in expensive ways.  Instead of source control adding focus to a project, it creates more entropy.  

There is a proven way to fight this problem.  It focuses on developers keeping their code repositories up to date, and the business focuses on the next release instead of prior ones.  If something needs to go to production, the team promotes code, knowing that the company is not introducing technical debt.  It is a practice known as “trunk-based development.”  If you are using trunk-based development, you are forbidden to create branches.  The developers on the project check in and check out of the same branch, known as the trunk, guiding development.  At any point, the most recent version of the software is in the trunk, and the need to perform mergers becomes unnecessary.  Backporting to the previous version stops because the most recent version is the only one.   

Source control is a powerful tool, but so it s a chain saw.  You can use it to cut firewood or create sculptures.  It is also possible to maim and kill others with it.  The difference is training and intent.  So if you use source control in your project, use a trunk-based approach.  You will be glad you did.

Until next time. 

Agile is all about Trust

Since the end of World War Two, increasingly complicated systems have developed to make our lives easier.  Complexity creates many of the biggest challenges we face in the business community.  It creates a cycle of expectations known as the luxury trap when one generation's luxuries become the next generation's essentials.    The rapid technological change makes this trap more dangerous as industries struggle to remain competitive and build increasingly more customer-focused products.  It is challenging to stay on top of these demands.  We need a way to approach rapid change with a healthier perspective.  The good news is that we can create that healthy environment if we develop trust as leaders. 

Yuval Noah Harari points out that a modern economy requires two things for growth.  The first is easy access to credit, and the second is trust that things will improve over time.  The credit will keep flowing while there is confidence in the future.  Trust maintains this cycle.  If you cannot trust others to pay back loans or do good work, then you will not part with your hard-earned money.  When trust breaks down, then economies seize up.  It happened during the 2008 sub-prime loan crisis because the banks were freighted to loan money.  

Simon Sinek has a great video discussing the concept of trust in greater detail.  He talks about how the elite special forces unit SEAL Team Six chooses its members.  To a sailor, the SEAL team member prefers team members they trust over those with an outstanding combat record.  The reason is apparent to me.  When things go wrong, and they go horribly during combat, they want to know that the other members of the team will back them up.  It is a type of trust earned over the years and is why those of us outside the SEAL community see these warriors as clannish and insular.  

In business and life, this is important because people want to work with people they trust, and it is up to business leaders to foster this among their team and others.  You can be the top salesperson in an organization, and if you do not have the trust of others, your sales will eventually evaporate. 

So how do you build trust?  It is not a simple answer because you earn the trust of others over time instead of making significant splashy actions.  It is countless small behaviors that build trust.  It is starting meetings on time.  It is being honest when it is inconvenient and respecting people.  Leaders build trust by doing what they say and saying what they do.  Embracing the grind of the team and acting in good faith with your interactions with others.  Earning trust is the hardest thing a person will do in a leadership role.  

The agile manifesto states that we should value "Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools." This value is central to developing trust— your team and colleagues want to count on you.  In turn, the group wants someone to be their advocate and protect the team from the impersonal forces outside.  It is a problematic task, but if done correctly will pay huge dividends.  We do not talk about trust and leadership often enough, but a business will become more agile if we do it. 

Until next time. 

Not just coders

I have spent the last few days hiding from cable news.  The death of the Queen of England and the mourning and celebration it generates is overwhelming.  I have spent my time reading David Forster Wallace's essays and working on white papers focusing on creating cross-functional teams.  It has been a welcome respite.  As I was writing, I stumbled upon some online forums discussing the role of developers in an agile team, and I felt that I needed to make an important point.   

I have commented on the attitude of a minority of people in the project management profession that the only role of a development team is to write code.  It is an incorrect assertion.  A development team not only includes people who write software code but quality professionals, data specialists, user interface professionals, and business analysts.  Each team member has a say in delivering value to a customer.  The combination of these diverse skills makes an agile team so powerful.  

Leaders with command and control mindsets think that developers are interchangeable.  A developer understands a computer language and can take business requirements and translate them into that language.  What these leaders do not understand is that developers are people.  Developers have children and spouses.  Like all human beings, they are struggling with emotional and existential challenges.  Software developers deal with deadline pressure and problem-solving differently than others because each is unique.  A software developer is not some nameless worker bee working for the company hive; they are flesh and blood struggling to get along in the world just like everyone else.    

Along with Marx's observation that work alienates people from themselves, I believe the dehumanization of people keeping the global economy spinning is the biggest challenge of our time.  People should take pride in what they do, and saying a software developer is just a coder dismisses all the intelligence and effort they put into mastering their craft.  Influential bureaucratic organizations often make the work process impersonal and anonymous, whether in government or business.  

A competent software developer requires creativity, attention to detail, intelligence, and the ability to deal with oppressive levels of frustration and doubt.  The middle ground of healthy self-esteem is elusive when you are on deadline with a gnarly problem to solve.  Some days you feel like the dumbest person on the planet, and other days you want to revel in your intelligence.  It is emotionally taxing, and treating these people like mindless drones is insulting.  

Treating people like people instead of nameless cogs in a global machine is the key to success in a global economy.  I have come up the technology ranks as a hobbyist, student, entry-level developer, and finally, a scrum master.  This experience in the trench of software development makes me a better leader and agile coach.  

Until next time. 

Anyone can lead change- a lesson from Gorbachev

In the United States, a barbecue and family time seems more urgent than the latest hot take on business transformation.  It is hard to be inspired when confronted with a three-day weekend.  The last official weekend of summer is more appealing than sitting down and focusing on something to say which has meaning to many people.  Something happened this week that you might have missed.  Mikhail Gorbachev died at the age of ninety-one.  For those who don’t remember Gorbachev, he is a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Time Magazines Man of the Decade in 1990, former president of the Soviet Union, and, oddly enough, the star of a vintage Pizza Hut commercial.

It is hard to explain to young people today the terror you felt growing up in the 1980s during the end of the cold war.  The nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other with a hair trigger.  Planes were flying round-the-clock missions, so the launch codes for a counter-strike would be ready if the other nation attacked.  The number of nuclear missiles ready to extinguish all life on the planet numbered tens of thousands.  A misunderstanding could kick off a series of escalations each day, eventually ending all life on the earth.  It was a scary time with the future promised to no one, but you still had to do your algebra homework if you wanted to go to college. 

The Soviet Union was communist and, between 1982 and 1987, had gone through three presidents.  Brezhnev was corrupt but wanted to get along with the west.  Yuri Andropov was a hardline communist who made his reputation in repressing freedom movements in Hungary.  Andropov was confrontational, but his poor health meant he spent most of his time in a hospital bed.  Andropov’s successor, Konstantin Chernenko, was in even worse health and died of emphysema and heart disease less than thirteen months after he replaced Andropov.  Gorbachev was young by communist party standards, in good health, and the ultimate insider, rising through the ranks of the communist party with smiles and handshakes instead of bullets and threatening to deport people to Siberia. 

When he took over, Gorbachev confronted a colossal mess.  Crops were rotting in fields.  The Russian computer program could not compete with western systems run with a new-fangled technology called microchips.  The war in Afganistan had devolved into a stalemate.  Finally, the Soviet Union faced destruction at the hands of the United States.  If it wanted to survive the cold war, the nation had to be protected from attack and provide basic economic necessities to its people. 

According to people who work with alcoholics, Gorbachev had “a moment of clarity.”  The nation would starve from within or face a nuclear attack from Americans unless something changed.  If it were any other person, they might have picked fights with the west and ignored the situation at home while enjoying the trappings of power.  Gorbachev wanted to put long-term fixes into place to preserve the Soviet Union for future generations.  It meant reforming the communist party to be more accountable to the citizens, creating an economy that could meet the basic needs of its people, and foreign policy, which reduced the likelihood of war.  It would be the ultimate transformation project of the Soviet Union into a modern power. 

It was an incredible gamble.  If anything went wrong, the entire nation would collapse.  What made this gamble more spectacular is that Gorbachev was born and raised in the system and advanced through the ranks, saying the right things.  The intimacy with a corrupt system and the power it gave him could have blinded Gorbachev to what he needed to do.  Instead, he decided to institute reforms hoping to save the only way of life he knew. 

Glasnost and Perestroika are footnotes to history, but they represent a reasonable faith effort to reform a flawed system.  I have no illusions about Soviet Communism, which killed millions of people and enslaved half the world in the aftermath of World War Two.  Nations under communism required over thirty years to integrate with the World economy, and Russia today behaves more like a corrupt petro-state than a great power.  

If you are wondering what any of this has to do with agile, it is this; to make a change in corrupt systems takes courage, and it is up to all of us to have moments of clarity and incite change.  Influential people need to experience moments of clarity, and the agile movement has the moral credibility and technical experience to make the change.  Corruption and failure happen if we allow them to happen. 

The world is a better place, thanks to Gorbachev.  The number of nuclear weapons has decreased by a factor of six.  A war that will extinguish the human species is still possible but will be a conscious decision instead of an accidental blunder. The world has faced a global pandemic with halting success, and the war in Ukraine has not boiled into a worldwide confrontation. We are concentrating on more long-term problems like climate change and wealth inequality.  

It is the legacy of Gorbachev.  A safer world with fewer nukes and more cooperation.  It is far from a perfect world but allows us to concentrate on longer-term problems and make reforms.  People can, in good faith, institute change, and it is up to each of us to act.

Have a great labor day, and until next time. 

Don't Hate Agile, Hate Bad Agile

The internet is awash in pixels about the trend of “quiet quitting.” Plenty of talented people have sounded off on the subject online.  I do not think I can contribute anything more substantive to the debate.  Instead, I want to talk about another trend popping up on the web.  Many people are talking about poor agile implementations, and I think we need to discuss it.   

Agile is a growing paradigm in the business world, and as an early adopter, I have seen a few bothersome trends.  Allen Holub on the Continuous Delivery YouTube channel gave some strong opinions about agile and how it is failing organizations.  I am an outspoken critic of poor agile implementations and dark scrum, so when I heard Holub bemoan the state of Agile, I found myself chuckling along in agreement about most of the things he had to say.  

The first trend is the shift from technology professionals becoming agile advocates to project management professionals advocating agile.  It is a standard survival strategy for business people to pivot when they see changes in the market.  The cohort of PMP-certified professionals witnessed the changes in the market and then retrained to become scrum masters and SAFe professionals.  It is not an alarming trend, but they took the values from traditional project management and business leadership and attempted to dress them up with agile terminology.  The effect was the worst of conventional project management combined with the frantic nature of iterative development.  Not to over-generalize, but these people are dogmatic and accustomed to enforcing rules instead of the pragmatic delivery of solutions.  These people enforce laws and generate outputs, but customer value is an afterthought rather than a central focus.  

Next, business leaders feel that their problems will evaporate if they do agile instead of having an agile mindset.  Jeff Sutherland points out that agile and scum hold a mirror up to the organization.  It is then up to the organization to effect change based on what they see.  Often problems are hiding in plain sight.  Philosopher Slavoj Zizek calls this unpleasant part of human nature Unknown-Knows.  We can ignore evidence when confronted with it.  I have witnessed many business leaders act this way because they cannot effect change or feel the necessary change might impact them negatively.  A manager loves the rapid cycle times, feedback, and transparency that agile offers but only sees accountability pushed down to the teams as valuable instead of accountability, which percolates into the organization as part of the agile mindset.  I liken the situation to someone who wants to get into better shape but can’t seem to quit smoking.  

Finally, the licensing and training for agile professionals are creating what Holub calls “a priesthood that does not understand the scripture they are professing.”  I am a big supporter of formal training in the technology business.  The pace of change requires any good professional to relearn their job every eighteen months.  The proper training and curriculum by the various organizations like SAFe, Scrum.org, and the Scrum Alliance are exceptional at teaching the formal theory of Agile, but in the trenches work of delivering software is often ignored.  It creates a situation where people trained in this manner fall back on the processes they were taught instead of concentrating on the individuals and interactions necessary to get work done.

A classic example is my recent interaction with an agile coach with a PMP certification and SPC credentials.  This person never wrote a line of software or delivered value to customers.  The only experience they had was providing reports to upper management.  Suffice to say; they failed spectacularly.  

The agile reformation is over twenty years old and is starting to show growing pains as the initial enthusiasts become supplemented with careerists and ticket punchers in organizations.  Don’t hate agile; instead, let us hate the people diluting and undermining its effectiveness.  I fight that lonely fight each day. 

Until next time. 

Organize Development Teams to Deliver Value

I am working on a large software development project.  By my estimate, we have over one hundred teams working on this project.  Since it is a significant financial client, we use Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise, or SAFe for short.  It is a complex process with lots of moving parts and little room for error.  I am also experiencing a common problem with large SAFe implementations, and I want to discuss it today.  

SAFe is the de facto standard for large software projects.   For executives, it helps standardize the process and is a reasonable attempt to coordinate numerous agile teams.  Unfortunately, most business leaders do not understand how value flows through the organization.  The larger the organization, the more difficult it is to know how the firm generates value for customers.  Thus, teams are organized not around value but by technical specialty.  Front-end developers work on one team, database specialists on another, and middle-ware experts on APIs are on a different team.  It is a logical way to organize technical professionals, but it makes delivering software on large projects a headache.  

Specialized teams are fantastic if you organize your business to embrace the status quo.  Still, suppose you are attempting to innovate or build new services to help customers.  In that case, you need cross-functional teams because specialization means no individual team is accountable for getting work finished.  It becomes a deranged relay race where work passes to others, and no one is sure it has reached the finish line.  

For instance, if you are a clothing company offering a new mobile application for customers to customize their styles.  You could do the following: hire a design firm to build the mobile application and take an in-house technology team to hook into the current sales and invoicing system.  Finally, you have a group of manufacturing engineers take that data to reconfigure the factories to address the customer demands.  As an executive, it makes perfect sense, but the reality is that the mobile application developers do not understand how to communicate with the sales system.  The manufacturing team does not have what they need from the mobile application or the sales system to create high-quality products on demand.  They are traveling a logical path along a road to ruin.  

What makes the situation more troublesome is that SAFe has the concept of release trains which says these three teams above should be able to work together, hand off work, and get things done.  The trouble is the decision maker does not understand how the software and system should work, so they do not know how to construct the teams.  A team of mobile specialists, a team of sales and invoicing specialists, and manufacturing engineers is a straightforward way to break down the groups.  Alas, these teams will not work well together.  Instead, reconstitute the units, so mobile developers, sales and invoice specialists, and manufacturing engineers work on the same team.  Condense these three teams into two.  

What will happen is when a mobile developer has a question about the data they receive from the sales and invoice system, an engineer with experience will be able to help on the spot.  Likewise, the manufacturing engineers will understand what the sales and invoice system is doing because they will be working side by side with the necessary technical professionals.  Finally, the three teams blended into two sections, one for standard sizes and the other for children's; they can share solutions to make each group more efficient.  Instead of work being passed around like a hot potato, people work together to deliver value.  

Some of the biggest problems in SAFe happen when work passes between teams.  As a coach and agile professional, it is your responsibility to reduce this dysfunction as much as possible.  Organizes teams around value to the customer instead of technical proficiency, ensuring work when assigned can be taken from beginning to end with zero handoffs between teams.  It will make your release trains more efficient and save you from unnecessary headaches.  

Empathy is Superior to Self-Confidence.

Some of the biggest mistakes a person can make are those made with absolute enthusiasm is confidence.  Blissfully they indulge in activities that they are going to regret significantly.  In my experience, alcohol is involved, but the more toxic substance is ego.  Nothing is more dangerous than a leader with a messianic vision and the self-esteem to match.  These people lack self-doubt and emotional intelligence and are responsible for destroying millions of dollars in wealth and countless organizations.  This week, I want to have a necessary discussion about humility.  

The web is crawling with numerous research papers talking about the Dunning-Krugar effect and how we promote incompetent people into positions of authority.  Unfortunately, I have witnessed this dysfunction firsthand, which undermines your confidence in the business community.  The leader promoted on looks and charm becomes a high-priced disappointment as a rule rather than the exception.  Treating confidence as a force multiplier often eclipses competence, empathy, and experience.  The harsh truth is the best leaders need the above mixture of skills to be successful. 

A leader who listens with emotional intelligence and empathy is superior to those who only exude self-confidence.  In the face of challenges, these two tribes of leaders differ significantly.  A charismatic leader will see an obstacle as something which must be trampled or bludgeoned into submission.  This approach works in the short term but often creates more problems down the road.  A leader with emotional intelligence sees an obstacle as a means to pivot and change directions.  The ability to adapt and shift focus when necessary makes these leaders superior. 

Edward Deming said survival in business is not mandatory.  The world of commerce requires us to be adaptable to change.  Thus, being flexible is a powerful business trait.  Another reason the emotionally intelligent leader is superior to charismatic leaders is the ability to change.  When confronted with a compromise or trade-off, a charismatic leader will become stuck, while emotionally intelligent leaders will focus on a pragmatic way to accomplish work.  

The business world is a chaotic place.  It feels like you are traveling in a run-a-way train, and no one can ensure it does not fly off the tracks.  We have plenty of passengers on the train and people willing to shovel coal into the boilers, but a steady driver is hard to find.  The person who asks, “who is driving this train?” is often conscripted to take charge and attempt to bring order to the chaos.  It takes an extraordinary leader to take control of a run-a-way train.  These reluctant leaders approach their jobs with humility and pragmatism because they know mistakes could cause the metaphorical locomotive to plunge into a bottomless cliff.  

The ability to listen to others, exhibit emotional intelligence, and put themselves in the shoes of others is a necessary skill to be a successful leader in a complicated world.  It is not the traditional form of leadership but one we need today.  

Until next time.