Leadership Techniques to Build Trust

The business world is like a merry-go-round, moving at unsafe speeds. Everyone is holding on for deal life, hoping they do not get thrown off and injured terribly. Instead of listening to concerns about the ride's speed, people stare blankly and condescendingly at those who raise the issue, refusing to believe them. No one understands why the ride turns so quickly, but to suggest otherwise seems like madness. I am in the middle of a career transition, which has given me time to reflect on what matters as a professional. 

The business press and popular culture spend plenty of time discussing leadership and vision in the business world. Many organizations need help putting people with leadership skills in the correct roles. Often, we promote people who need help to do the leadership job. The Peter Principle explains why many leadership roles in companies contain mediocre leaders. It is a principle that, when combined with the pressure to deliver revenue and profits to shareholders, further pushes people to extremes in behavior. Employees trapped in a cycle of abuse are forced to endure mistreatment from customers, often finding themselves under the leadership of managers who perpetuate the same behavior.

It paints a picture of incapable people with psychological trauma under unreasonable pressure, inflicting emotional harm on others to provide better customer service. It is a glum and ugly tapestry of alienation. It explains why strikes have increased since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and trends like quiet quitting have impacted offices worldwide. Something is broken in the work culture, hurting businesses, employees, customers, and society. 

In her book, "The Experience Mindset," Tiffani Bova points to three main issues that provide a roadmap to fixing broken work culture. Employees want to support doing their jobs. Short staffing, lack of supplies, and being penny-wise but pound-foolish undermine employee efforts to deliver the goods and services they provide. It is incumbent for organizations to provide that support. Next, employees want to be trained in the skills they need to succeed in their jobs today and in the future. It is a particular problem in technology as skills become obsolete in months instead of years. Finally, there needs to be trust between the people doing the work and the organizations they work for because, as Bova says, "Trust is the bedrock of any business."

The three mileposts of better employee experience are trust, training, and support, which organizations can provide if they treat employees with the same consideration as their customers and shareholders. What it requires is a different leadership style. We need a different approach instead of being feudal or authoritarian toward the people who deliver value to the organization. 

I have discovered a few methods which drive success. The first is the notion of servant leadership. A leader should serve the people who work with them. It requires time and emotional labor because instead of giving orders, you provide guidelines, psychological security, and an environment of trust. It can transform a group of misfits into high performers if done right. 

Next, I am a colossal propoment of L. David Marquet and his intention-based leadership. Marquet is a retired U.S. Navy Captain who commanded a nuclear submarine. Suppose there was a position that fit the autocratic mold of absolute power. In that case, it is responsible for atomic weapons, two hundred lives, and a two-and-a-half billion submarine. Marquet suggests a better way, which he calls intention-based leadership. He asks people to think about their actions and deliberate about what they will accomplish. Mistakes are forecasted instead of avoided, and people have the psychological safety to make decisions even in stressful situations like combat. Finally, intentional-based leadership says that everyone in an organization is a leader, not just those given the official title. It generates a feedback loop of trust, which helps everyone perform their roles better. 

Finally, Kim Scott and her book Radical Candor color my leadership worldview. She says that leaders need to care personally and challenge people directly. She also points out that you cannot be a jerk and be radically candid. Being a jerk is a behavior that can be changed with required effort and a willingness to change. 

Radical Candor, Intention-based leadership, and servant leadership can help build better teams and improve workplace culture. The techniques build trust, help employees develop the skills to be successful at their jobs, and provide the necessary support to do those jobs. It slows down the merry-go-round of the contemporary work culture. I plan to lead the way.

Until next time. 

Cash, Control and the Agile Coach

The business world is a rough and amoral place. The only judgment is the invisible hand of the marketplace. It explains why corporate work feels so dysfunctional. When the only means of value is the amount of profit you generate for shareholders, things like quality of work, personal integrity, and generating value for customers look like afterthoughts. Plenty of mediocre people exist in the business world, so it is understandable why this lack of vision exists. Increasing interest rates and low unemployment figures pull business leaders in opposite directions. As an agile coach or scrum master, we need to discuss what that tug of these forces means for your agile practice. 

William H. Janeway wrote one of the most important books I have read about business. An economist and venture capitalist, Janeway, says that cash and control become critical to a company when time gets tough. Together they help ensure the success of a business and investment. 

Any business person understands the importance of cash. The use of cash provides employee wages, purchases supplies, and offers collateral for loans if they are necessary. During times of crisis, the reflex to cut back on spending is natural because the easiest way to get out of a hole is to stop digging and take stock of the situation. Businesses are cutting back on travel, moving holiday parties to potlucks in the breakroom, and canceling projects for nice-to-have improvements. No matter how pound foolish, each penny saved looks suitable to investors and the CFO. 

Control increases during difficult times. When things are good, the business runs on a form of auto-pilot. Projects continue without question, and managers hire more staff to accommodate the growing to-do list at the company. When a crisis hits, leaders ask uncomfortable questions, and everything is subject to review. It explains the wave of layoffs which hit the tech industry as CEOs and investors realized that they over-hired during the COVID-19 pandemic and could no longer print money thanks to low-interest rates. They discarded anything that was not driving value to the business, like a used piece of facial tissue.

As a coach or scrum master, it is your responsibility to show leadership you are providing cash and control to the organization. For instance, sprint reviews and demonstrations give business leaders a sense of control. In each iteration, you are showing progress on work, and the team can pivot if the market conditions change to meet those changing conditions. The units are still getting the job done, but now the product owner and business feel they have some control over the process. 

Next, if a team understands how much money they are burning to get work done, they can decide what will save cash for the business. For instance, conversations can focus more on dollars and cents than on who has power. When a designer demands that a textbox get moved two pixels right, you can have a conversation that it will take two weeks and require a developer, quality assurance person, and push to production after hours. The change has a dollar cost, so someone from the business can decide whether the designers' demands will provide value to the company. People are less likely to ask for frivolous changes if they know it will cost them money. 

Providing cash and control to business leaders is essential when times are tough. It also shows that you are just as invested in the business as the decision-makers. Investing in the company increases trust and will pay huge dividends when the situation improves. 

Until next time. 

The Long Road to Trust

Trust is one of the easiest things to lose and the hardest to earn. It is like a bank account with individuals depositing and withdrawing confidence in a lifelong series of transactions. Money may be the determinant of value in the business world, but everything would come to a grinding halt if trust collapses. As a leader and coach, we must maintain trust in our businesses. 

It is a difficult time in the business community. Businesses are cutting budgets to hoard cash and control in anticipation of a possible recession. Companies attempt to flatten organizations by cutting staffing levels. CEOs justify returning people to the office by using ancillary evidence and falling real estate prices, breaking the promise of remote work. It creates feelings of anxiety and distress. I feel those emotions regularly, and I struggle not to inflict them on family and friends. 

According to Sandra Sucher from the Harvard Business School, much of the anxiety is the breakdown of trust between business leaders and the workers who create the value. According to Sucher, “Leaders of all kinds…are failing some of the expectations people have for how they should be treated.”  The most significant disconnect is working from the office. Hybrid working plans are a hodge podge with people coming into the office to get on electronic meetings, which they could have taken from the home. Double standards applied to those working in the office and remotely create further resentment in mixed work environments. Double standards for workers and managers reveal a deep corruption in a business where workers see leaders looking after themselves instead of the entire industry. Many people in business have forgotten that rank has responsibilities commensurate with privileges.  

As agile practitioners, we are in a difficult position because we must build trust in organizations where it has been repeatedly violated. Our principal duty is to communicate openly and honestly. Listen to the challenges of others and be truthful. From that point, business people begin to increase the deposit of trust in the organization.  

It is going to take a long time to happen. Employees are tired, and the aftermath of COVID-19 has forced employees to change their priorities. Business priorities need to shift if organizations are to remain profitable or collapse into a puddle of mud. I have worked at two organizations where I witnessed this happen. Self-awareness, trust, and empathy are the only ways to escape this spiral of trust debt.  

Until next time. 

Resilience Now!

It is easy to become cynical when you write about business. The professional world contains mediocre people who get by on connections and charm. Global capitalism's daily grind can often destroy people as it makes decisions in amoral and bureaucratic ways. A cynic or nihilist would snidely chuckle at these realities and say that nothing can be changed and we must accept this adverse situation.

I come from a pragmatic point of view. Business is also a tremendous engine for wealth and good. Under the correct management, I have seen businesses transform communities and improve countless people's living standards. One of those people was me, and I dedicated my career to making business more sustainable, satisfying, and sane. It is a mission of mine. Today, I want to continue my series on changing our perspective on business transformation. 

Since the founding of the Chicago School of Economics, a dominant theory has overcome business leadership. The approach is called the shareholder value hypothesis. It says that the only purpose of a business, especially a multinational corporation, is to generate profit and provide it to the shareholders who pay for the business. In its most simple formulation, the demands of customers, employees, the community surrounding the company, and the environment are less critical than shareholders.

It created plenty of wealth but was not shared equally, leading to the migration of manufacturing jobs to countries with lower wages. It also put power in the hands of people who knew accounting and sales. With a few changes in the accounts receivable report, or a budget cut, share prices would improve without a significant improvement in sales or customer satisfaction. It explains why Southwest Airlines neglected its primitive flight scheduling system until it failed and why a company like iHeart Media is canceling its 401k match. None of these things improved the business of helping customers; instead, they saved money to pay more significant dividends or buy back company stock to juice the share price. 

We find ourselves amid an economy in recession and still generating record profits. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the bankruptcy of this approach because as the world slowed down, thanks to people getting sick and dying, the ultra-efficient networks of supply chains sputtered, and the economic principle of supply and demand began to drive up prices. These efficient systems could not handle disruption, and soon businesses are scrambling to find the raw materials they need to keep operating. People who warned that something like this might happen were shunned in plenty of corporate boardrooms because they were right. After all, there is nothing a potential master of the universe wants to hear less than they were wrong.

Consultants see this situation, and it is evident that we need to focus on making businesses more resilient and responsive to customers. Supply chains need to be more redundant so they can handle disruptions. Information Technology systems need less technical debt and better reliability. The decision-making process must focus on what suits customers and revenue so shareholders get paid with real profits instead of Two Olive solutions. Customer delivery will help fix many self-inflicted wounds that business has created over the last thirty years.

Agile plays a role by allowing people to measure more than dollars and cents. It holds a mirror up to the business; their leaders must be wise and humble enough to act on what they see. Resilience is a verb, and the professional class must practice it. It requires discipline and a sense of hard work, but it is possible. 

Until next time. 

Remote Work is Worth It

The world of work feels like living on an ant farm. You toil away at your section in full view of some mysterious patron and hope you survive the next day. It is an uncertain existence, and there is no guarantee that a child might shake the entire structure for fun. No wonder US productivity figures are down. Frightened workers filled with existential dread are less productive than those with better psychological safety. This week workers in Canada went on strike for better wages and the right to work remotely. Business leaders are pushing back on efforts by employees to work remotely, and I want to discuss it. 

The environment in many large corporations is more like a feudal kingdom than a customer service organization. Unfortunately, those in positions of power at the top often have a disproportionate amount of authority, money, and job security. Additionally, business leaders treat those who generate profit as expendable resources. This unequal distribution of power can lead to a lack of appreciation for the hard work of those driving the company's success and a feeling of frustration and injustice for those on the front lines. Corporations need to recognize their employees' hard work and create an environment where all team members, from the top down, feel appreciated and supported. 

I also suspect that it contains a dose of retrograde thinking shaped by unhealthy attitudes about masculinity. Despite all the changes in the workforce since the 1970s, the business world is still a boys club for mediocre men. Joan Williams, the director of the Center of WorkLife Law at the University of California College of Law, summarized the philosophy best: "These are men with very traditional views, who see the home as their wife's domain and work as men's domain." 

Women, people of color, and LGBTQ folks can join this club. Still, they must be hardworking, dedicated to the firm, hide their authentic selves, and avoid taking time off for childbearing, raising a family, or looking after aging parents. Finally, these people need to be replaceable because the market is the only constant, while people, in the words of Donald Rumsfield, are fungible. 

Employers see remote work as a way to balance family demands with work, while leaders see it as a reflection of "softness." This worldview makes the conflict between business leaders and employees so divisive. Remote work is for sissies who do not want to advance, and it is an expensive perk that was necessary during the pandemic, but now that we have vaccines is unnecessary. It is easy to see why civil servants want to strike about the right to work remotely. Then they can do the necessary work and still care for obligations outside the office. 

Many leaders come from narrow social circles and cannot recall working with women or people of color as equals. Thus, they are biased that what worked for their careers will work for all the other employees at the firm. Leaders like this also need to understand what the people who work for them are doing. A software developer attempting to solve a gnarly problem will not write as many lines of code as an engineer mocking up interfaces for APIs. 

It creates something called productivity theater, where people look like they are busy when they are acting for the benefit of the boss. Instead of working on helping the business and helping customers, contemporary workers spend time in empty activities and acting out a performance of productivity. For leaders used to the status quo, this is better than measuring performance and managing a team remotely. 

As an agile coach or scrum master, you must meet employees where they are, balancing commitments inside and outside the office. A new mother will want to work from home, and when they come into the office, they will need a place to use a breast pump which is private. A project manager who must take a call with India needs to go home early or work from how because the sleep schedule is different from other people in the office. It is not easy, but with some empathy and effort, a remote office can work better than everyone sitting in a cubical. 

It is not easy leading other people. Leadership requires emotional labor, patience, and a thick skin. Being in charge also requires you to see people like the individuals they are instead of ants toiling away on an ant farm for your amusement. Finally, you can adjust to changing conditions and treat them as opportunities to improve the business. Allowing remote work is one of these opportunities we could not miss.

Until next time. 

Turning the Ship Around Requires Trust

Software development is a grown-up activity. It requires intelligence, focus, and the ability to overcome massive frustration. Despite the hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence, only humans can write scalable software that delivers real-world value. It is why developers, in their idle moments, often lapse into childhood playfulness. The focus and mental energy it takes to write software requires a release, manifested in Nerf gun fights or an activity that business people might consider childish. It creates the illusion that knowledge workers are overgrown children. In truth, knowledge workers are the most adult people in the organization, and it is time for business leaders to treat the professionals who generate profit like adults. 

We can see this behavior within the business community as CEOs demand that workers return to the office. Most of the requests are tone-deaf and focused more on power than the benefit to the business. I have written about this tug-of-war between the workers who produce the wealth and those who oversee them. I will side with the workers in this case because the COVID-19 pandemic proved that remote work is not only possible but profitable. 

Old habits die hard in the business world, and micro-management of employees is the hardest to extinguish. For decades, businesses trained managers to ensure people followed policies and procedures. To ensure employees were productive throughout the day, managers scrutinized them to ensure they weren't wasting company time in a factory or traditional office. Instead of fostering teamwork or innovation, middle managers enforced compliance. It worked briefly but was deficient as the global economy became more competitive. Customers demanded value and innovation, so mindlessly stamping out parts or filling out forms would no longer work. As software and technology began to eat the world, it was evident that some other approach was necessary.

My mission throughout my career has been to ensure that work delivers value to customers and employees. This week Fortune magazine pointed out that old-fashioned management styles hurt productivity and treat workers like children. My experience in the business world confirms this theory. The new approach was the birth of lean manufacturing, Agile, Kanban, and digital transformation. 

Treating employees like children boils down to a lack of trust. Managers do not trust the people doing the work correctly, and employees often feel they cannot trust their leadership to treat them respectfully. It is in this situation of mutual distrust where many of us work. We can do better. 

I am a big fan of L. David Marquet's book "Turn the Ship Around." In the book, he talks about his experience as a United States nuclear submarine captain. When he joined the USS Santa Fe was the place where sailors had their careers go to die. Morale was low, the Navy rated the submarine at the bottom of the fleet, and senior enlisted people were retiring or quitting at an alarming rate. Over a year, Marquet helped transform the crew from people afraid to make mistakes to leaders who chased excellence. It wasn't an easy journey, and it had plenty of false starts, but the Santa Fe began practicing something called "intention-based leadership," and I am a convert. 

With the help of senior enlisted people and buy-in from the crew, Marquet transformed a low-performing submarine into an example of the Pacific fleet by treating its sailors with respect and providing them with a sense of pride and responsibility for their work. Since a nuclear submarine costs an average of two billion dollars and has the firepower to extinguish an entire civilization, it is an impressive accomplishment. 

Changing a global company is a difficult task, but if Marquet can do it on a nuclear submarine, then as  Agile coaches or scrum masters, we can lead change in our organizations. The first step is changing the behavior of managers who would instead treat the people doing the work like children instead of the grown professionals they are.

It is a small ask, but the road to psychological safety and intentional leadership begins with one step. 

Until next time. 

When the Going Gets Weird

 One of my favorite literary lines comes from gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He observed, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" The last three years qualify as weird. COVID-19, insurrections, and an economy behaving like a character from the television series Fleebag qualify as strange from my perspective. As a scrum master and agile coach, how do you deal with all the weird things in the economy and business world? Today, we are going to discuss it. 

CNBC points out COVID-19 created a 'legacy of weirdness' in the economy. The understatement is breathtaking. We have survived a global pandemic and, in the aftermath, had to grapple with fragile supply chains, market concentration, and labor shortages, which generated inflation. The fight to curb inflation forced central banks to raise interest rates, and the increasing rates kicked off a wave of layoffs at large technology firms. It is a strange chain of causes and effects that have impacted everyone in technology. 

I have pointed out that many tech layoffs were executives' fault for not managing their workforce correctly. Those same executives made bad bets which have not paid off, so the technology marketplace is shedding jobs while remaining immensely profitable. The survivors of this process have a hard choice: how do they carry on in a labor environment they do not recognize? 

I keep returning to the agile manifesto for inspiration—first, ship working solutions for your business and customers. Business leaders are looking for revenue and efforts to drive value to customers. Often, we let the perfect get in the way of good enough solutions for our customers. It is up to us to be the person or team which provides that value. Today, more than ever, generating revenue will set you aside from other technical professionals. 

Next, collaborate with your customers. In weird times, clients and customers are looking for reassurance. Meeting customers and getting to know them and their problems will give you a competitive advantage over other organizations. Building trust with clients will eventually lead to more work and an increase in billing. Creating that trust means delivering solutions and accommodating changes with a smile instead of a new contract with more billable hours. It seems contrary to how we see the business world, but sharing risk between the client and your business means that both of you have a vested interest in being successful. I have worked in plenty of situations where that only sometimes happened. 

It is a weird economy; fortunately, odd people like me turned pro and attempted to make the best of a strange situation. There is no way to make yourself completely immune from layoffs. Still, by collaborating with customers and shipping working solutions, you immunize yourself from the worst attentions of corporate hacks who like to destroy careers. You can do it too. 

Until next time. 

Being Woke is Good Business

Nothing entirely focuses on the mind, like unemployment. The fear of losing your job and the threat to the security of your family forces people to pay attention. The current four years have tied people into existential knots. COVID-19, insurrection against a free and fair election, the return of inflation, and business leaders forcing people back into office are enough to rub a person's nerves into a raw nub. I feel it and see similar behaviors in many professionals around me. If that is not enough to worry about, Forbes magazine published an article earlier this month, and I feel compelled to talk about it. 

The term "woke" has become a loaded term in public discourse. For many, it represents a social movement to be respectful to others and the many variations we encounter. To those with a more right-wing perspective, it is a threat to the values of western civilization. Suppose you genuinely want to understand the history and controversy around the debate. In that case, I strongly recommend Lewis Walter and his video about the subject on his YouTube channel "Then and Now."I look at the controversy, and I scratch my head in puzzlement. As Elvis Costello sang over forty years ago, "What so wrong about peace, love, and understanding."

Forbes magazine pointed out that middle managers at corporations are embracing woke culture to advance in their careers and that there needs to be more study on the subject. There should be more research on the subject, but we should be okay with this trend. 

According to Florida General Counsel Ryan Newman, the meaning of woke is "…the  belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." This quotation seems like an accurate definition, so middle managers are trying to combat injustice in the office one cubical at a time. You will know why if you have spent time in the professional world. The diversity of the workforce is changing, and it is becoming a lighter share of brown. More people from Latin America, the Indian Subcontinent, Korea, China, and the Middle East are joining the workforce. Not only are they recent immigrants but first-generation college graduates who overcame tremendous obstacles to become professionals. I feel a deep kinship with them because while I am a white cisgender straight guy, I was also a first-generation college graduate who became a professional person. I have made it my mission to help others avoid the mistakes I have made in my career. 

This kind of diversity is a net benefit for the business. The economy is global, so we need to understand the needs of various people. Can food be sold in Muslim countries because it respects halal dietary restrictions? Green is associated with infidelity and black with darkness in ethnic Chinese communities, so it might be a good idea not to market those car colors in those countries. Finally, software engineers often ignore women because they make up a significant minority. In each of these scenarios having people from a different backgrounds would improve the chance of customer success. It is just smart money to have a diverse workforce. 

Companies realized that sexual harassment could be a huge financial and public relations risk after the confirmation hearing of Justice Clarance Thomas. These early efforts also included training on racial, sexual, religious, and generational categories. Over the last thirty years, this movement has been part of being a working professional. Naturally, managers are learning that treating people with dignity and respect is becoming a growing trend. 

A more diverse workforce means better delivery of customer value. Being able to lead this kind of workforce is not an optional skill, so we should embrace this trend. I have met plenty of mediocre people in business. Along the way, I have also encountered some toxic and intolerant people. Making the office more "woke" will help remove these people from the work environment. If we want a more sustainable, sane, and satisfying work environment, this is a trend we can all get behind. 

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.

Don't Make Hybrid Work a Pointless Exercise.

 

The world turns quickly.  What was the hot business trend a month ago quickly becomes obsolete.   Staying ahead of this changing landscape is a fool's errand, but the business community wants to replicate anything that might give it a competitive edge.  Behavior like this looks silly from an outsider's perspective, like something out of a passage of Gulliver's Travels.  It has considerable seriousness for people chasing profits and promotions.  This week, I noticed two articles that look like a trend but are an illustration of the values in the agile manifesto, which business leaders ignore at their peril.  

With the threat of COVID-19 subsiding, business leaders are arguing for a return to the office.  The demand that people physically be in the office has triggered a revolt among the junior bankers of Goldman Sacks.  The compromise of hybrid working is also backfiring because the workers who return to the office are isolated and have video conferences with those choosing to stay home.   We are looking at the worst of all worlds when getting back to work.  I suspect the reason why is that business leaders are ignoring the agile value of individuals and interactions over processes and tools. 

I can understand why business owners or executives want people back in the office.  Real estate rents are expensive, so each unoccupied desk or empty conference room looks like money drifting into the wind.  The other reason is that executives and entrepreneurs are builders by nature, and the office is a personal construction project.  I remember what keep me going during my failed entrepreneurial venture was the fantasy of opening my own office in a loft.  I only needed to close ten clients to start paying rent.  Today, I understand that I would never have that cool office of my dreams without venture capital and a better sales and marketing plan.  An empty office to a business leader means that they are failing.  

The COVID-19 pandemic made working from home a realistic alternative for many clerical workers.  The video conferencing software could connect remote offices and remote workers.  The business did not stop; instead, it shifted to coffee tales, bedrooms, and small working spaces.  Accounts receivable processed invoices, human resources did what it did, and the information technology department kept it all working from the comfort of home. 

Commuting time is wasted time, money, and gas.  Running household errands was now impossible, and spending time with children or the family pet was out of the question.  Finally, working in an office to attend conference calls and zoom meetings alone is self-defeating.  There was bound to be pushback when business leaders demanded employees return to the office.  Recruiters took notice and offered to poach employees from organizations that were not offering alternatives to the office.  It is one of the factors which keep the great resignation churning.  

As an owner, executive, or entrepreneur, take a look at the agile manifesto.  The first part says, "Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools." To run a modern-day business, listen to the people who work for you.  Find out what works for the team and then implement it.  The solution may not be what you want, but it will be what the people who deliver value to your business need to be successful.

Many offices have standing days for in-person meetings, Wednesdays or Thursdays.  If you must have everyone in the office, reach a consensus among the people you serve to have one or two days where everyone must be in the office.  Great days for something like this are client demonstrations or kickoffs for large projects.

Ordering people back into the office because you are in charge is not working; it creates ill will among staff and hurts the organization.  Listen to your workers and implement it.  Everyone wants to get back to work, but it has to work for the people delivering value; otherwise, hybrid work is a pointless exercise.

Until next time. 

Beginning a Journey Into Healthy Ownership.

We will remember the end of the COVID pandemic as a combination of science-fiction, fantasy, farce, and tragedy.  I was on a plane to have dinner with a client while tanks began rolling into Ukraine.  The contradictions between my life and the peril of others were oppressive.  

Still, the business world continued to turn, and clients were looking for ways to do business smarter and faster.  I am a minor player in the global business story, but my role is to make a difference.  Part of that difference is to help improve product ownership in the agile reformation.  I have authored numerous blog posts about product ownership, and I have advocated for something called "healthy ownership," which began at the 2018 Agile Coaching Retreat in London.  Today, I am starting a series of posts on being a better product owner and developing beneficial ownership on your team.   

Healthy ownership began when I had a jetlagged rant about the quality of the product owners at my organization.  I asked if I could instill good habits among product owners and respect the developers.  Then, I found a group of like-minded individuals, and we got to work.  An agile team requires trust and interdependence to be successful.  The team then takes collective responsibility for its outcomes to have healthy ownership.  It is a goal I think each team should strive to achieve. 

Product owners should begin by having an open dialog with team members.  It would help to ask the teams what works and what does not.  Take time and listen to what they are saying.  What are the team's frustrations, and what do they need to overcome those frustrations?  Assume good intentions unless proven otherwise.  Finally, collect data from the group and make it meaningful.  

As a coach, teach product owners the D.E.E.P  model of backlog management.  Let new product owners write user stories and then get them to critique their work.  Have developers push back on user stories that are unclear or incomplete.  The trial and error approach may be more clumsy, but it will help develop more skill and confidence in the long run.  

Product ownership requires more than writing user stories and gathering estimates.  It is not an easy job, but it can be a force multiplier if done well.  It takes clear communication with the team and understanding the social compact, which guides agile, and it takes interaction with business partners and saying "no" when necessary.  

We will talk about being a better product owner for the next few weeks.  We will have a blueprint to create healthy ownership in your organization by the end of our journey.  

Next week, the D.E.E.P model of managing a product backlog.  

Agile and Leadership Means Pissing People Off.

I am a fan of military history and wargaming.  The stories of veterans and the high stakes of combat have informed my worldview.  This blog even featured an article on how Dungeons & Dragons helped me become a better scrum master.  A fascinating thing about military history is the stories of personal heroism and leadership which occur when everything is on the line.  Stories of grace under pressure are an inspiration for me, considering I work in the intense world of technology.  Earlier this month, one of my heroes died from complications from COVID-19, Colin Powell.  His legacy is complicated in American history, but his insights on leadership are something people in the agile community should emulate.  

Powell did not have an impressive pedigree when he became an officer in 1958.  He spent the early years of his career learning his trade, and it was only in Vietnam that Powell’s career took off.  The young officer had a knack for solving problems and turning around dysfunctional units.  His superiors considered him competent, hard-working, and loyal.  Powell’s superiors fast-tracked his career.  

Where Powell distinguished himself, he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush.  Taking lessons he learned throughout his career, Powell innovated warfighting by toppling Manuel Noriega’s Panamanian government in 1990 and leading the Pentagon during the First Persian Gulf War.  I remember his collaboration with theater commander Norman Schwarzkopf and his declaration that the allies in the first gulf war would “…cut off and then kill.” Saddam Hussein’s forces in Kuwait.  

When he retired from the military, Powell wrote a best-selling memoir and spent his time public speaking.  Before being named Secretary of State by George W. Bush, he was a best-selling author and gave numerous workshops on leadership.  During the intermission in his public career, he continued to provide leadership speeches, and one of my favorites was in 1996, where he outlined some observations of a lifetime career.  The most important was, “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”

To Powell, getting the job done is more important than being popular.  Building consensus and attempting to please everyone is a sure-fire way to mediocrity.  Often there are too many cooks in the metaphorical kitchen, and someone needs to make a decision.  When someone is in charge and makes a choice, it is going to get second-guessed.  Others will be unhappy with the decision because they will exert themselves more than they usually would.  Finally, a decision might expose someone as unable to do the work to the level of quality demanded.  Someone will always be pissed off with a person showing leadership.  

Agile makes this doubly accurate as the rapid cycle times and demand for working solutions are required.  People who get by on charm and a smile can no longer hide in plain sight.  Items missed are visible for everyone to see.  Technical debt which is missing during a demo shows up in testing or production environments.  All of these things are great at pissing people off.  

So as a leader and agilist, pissing people off is a natural consequence of the job.  It is asking why a deadline promised ninety days ago was missed.  A coach will ask powerful questions about server configurations and testing plans.  Leadership can be such a lonely job because if you are doing it properly, some portion of the people you serve will be pissed about a decision you make.  Once I internalized that message, I found leadership to be less lonely.  

I do not want to make Powell into some demi-god.  He has a complicated legacy which includes involvement in stonewalling the investigation of the My Lai massacre.  He also tarnished his reputation with his advocacy of the Second Persian Gulf war.  It is why biographer Jeffrey J. Mathews calls his biography of Powell “Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot.”  We can learn from this imperfect man the principles of his leadership style, which served him well over his career.  The most important to me is that a leader pisses people off.  

Until next time. 

Southwest Airlines and the Gremlins of Technical Debt

It is Halloween season, so I indulge in a few monster movies when I have downtime.  I am partial to the old Universal monster movies with Bela Legosi and Boris Karloff.  I also enjoy anything with Vincent Price, and I consider his film “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” one of the most frightening things I have ever seen.  There is something about monsters lurking in the shadows which always gives me a great scare.  One of my favorite monster movies comes from director Joe Dante entitled “Gremlins,” which is a fantastic popcorn movie and a parody of entertainment culture at the same time.  Today, on the blog, I want to discuss a different kind of gremlin lurking in the shadows and how it has been fouling up air travel.   

The term gremlin was invented by the British.  In the early days of aviation, airplanes were not mechanically reliable; engines would jam, flight controls would snap, and canvas would tear without explanation.  Mechanics and pilots often blamed these mishaps on “gremlins,” nasty elf-like creatures who liked to cause mischief on an aircraft in flight.  By the Second World War, pilots from the United States and Royal Air Force had stories about gremlins.  If anyone has stories about these creatures from the German, Russian or Japanese Air Forces, please share them in the comments.  Suffice to say, gremlins were an excellent alibi for poor maintenance, bad design, or dumb luck.  The gremlin became a part of aviation culture. 

I keep thinking about these critters the more I work in technology.  I wish I could invoke them during a debrief of a poorly executed project or use them to explain a server outage.  Unfortunately, gremlins are mythical creatures, and if I use them to present a technical problem, the CIO of my client would laugh at me and then ask me to pack my desk and leave the building.  

Gremlins are comforting, compared to the problems technical professionals face with increasingly complex systems.  Earlier this month, Southwest Airlines could have invoked the little monsters during a three-day weekend when it faced a severe shortage of flights.  Some pundits on the internet spread the false rumor that the slowdown was a strike created by pilots who refused to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.  The reality is less about the civil disobedience of pilots than the negligence of Southwest Airlines and its Information Technology systems.

According to the Southwest Airline Pilots Association spokesperson, “I point to how they (Southwest) manage the network and how I.T. supports that network.”  It seems the union has been complaining about the reliability of I.T. systems for over four years.  Company officials have not commented on the claims but based on the events of the long holiday weekend, it is easy to see how an outage can ground an entire fleet of planes.  

I understand why something like this could happen at a large organization.  The internal system which schedules flights is buggy or unreliable.  Debate within the organization happens, and a decision is made not to fix the system because the cost and inconvenience are greater than dealing with the flawed system.  The conscious choice to do this is called technical debt in the agile community.  It sits in the organization like a time bomb waiting to explode the business at the least convenient time.  I suspect that is what happened to Southwest Airlines. 

Having technical debt in your organization is like having a box of gremlins and tossing them into a swimming pool.  Bad things are going to happen.  It is why everyone in an organization needs to regularly look at technical debt and give it a serious evaluation. Otherwise, your organization will get grounded.  To avoid a horror movie corral the gremlins of technical debt, you will be glad you did.  

Until next time. 

Let Your Employees Work from Home

From time to time, I like to call out bad behavior in the business community.  I don't particularly appreciate doing it, but when people behave poorly or say things that need challenging, it is the responsibility of people like me to call attention to it.  This week, billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin gave a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago and said young people are hurting their careers by not returning to the office.  I respectfully disagree and want to point out that a net worth of 21 Billion dollars does not equal wisdom. 

Mr. Griffin is hugely successful, and he has offices in Chicago, New York, and across the globe.  He has one of the most significant hedge funds in the United States, so when you have that level of wealth and power, people like the Chicago Economic Club are going to give you a forum to speak.  According to Bloomberg News, he said, "So for our youngest members of our workforce, I'm gravely concerned that the loss of early career development opportunities is going to cost us dearly over the decades to come." I disagree; if we work in the global economy, we need to think differently about asking people to work at a corporate office.  

Workers are going to time-shift working with teams in India and Asia.  Thanks to tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, they do not need to come into the office to have those meetings.  In addition, people who work at home can avoid commuting expenses, and the savings in both time and money tends to increase productivity from the workforce.  Finally, the last 18-moths of work have proven that professional workers can do what they do from anywhere in the world.  

I suspect that Mr. Grifin is more interested in exercising control over his workforce than the personal development of younger people in his organization.  Why?  Because he runs a multi-billion dollar hedge fund and thinks it gives him absolute power over the people who are delivering value to his organization.  It is a common form of arrogance that the wealthy have regarding the people who work for them.  

Griffin can run his business, however, he chooses, but it is clear that it is a conformist place that stifles innovation and creativity.  I am confident he enforces a dress code in the office and likes to keep up appearances for his clients or competitors.  The offices he is eager to populate with his workforce are a stage to show off his wealth and power to future investors.  

Mr. Griffin then chides other CEOs for being soft because they are not mandating their workers to return to the office.  The reality is companies are struggling to retain workers because they want to work from home. The great resignation is a reaction to businesses that will not allow them to work from home.  Workers are voting with their feet, and CEOs are not being scared; they are smart.  The global talent competition is such that if you do not offer a hybrid model for working, your competition will poach talent from you.  

I have repeatedly said that workers are not resources, and treating people like machine tools who can be used up and thrown away is a recipe for failure in the 21st century.  Mr. Griffin's wealth insulates him from that reality, but that does not mean people like myself cannot call out his lack of vision.  It will only be a matter of time before that reality catches up with him or his descendants.  

Until next time. 

Keep Pushing

The life of a scrum master or agile coach contains plenty of ups and downs.  Some days, you have manic energy, and people recognize you are attempting to change the organization for the better.  Other days, you are depressed, feeling the structural problems of the organization crush the enthusiasm out of your body.  The business world brings out the bipolar characteristics of each person.  I am prone to those emotions as much as the next person.  Today on the blog, I wanted to go over the emotional labor we need to be a successful agile professional.  

I am a big fan of Western Philosophy and have devoted numerous blog posts on how different philosophical schools of thought parallel the agile reformation.  I have talked about existentialism, stoicism, the pragmatic nature of agile, and how Heraclitus and his ideas about change affect how we should look at agile.  What has always fascinated me about philosophy is the branch known as ethics.  It is the study of how to live a good or positive life.  Over the last few years in business, I have relied on philosophy to understand what motivates other people and ethics on how to conduct myself when under stress.  

It is a delicate balancing act when you care deeply about something and the daily stress of achieving that something piles up.  The existentialists often talk about how emotions are intentional.  We cannot control the outside world, but we can control our emotional reactions to the outside world.  The stoics also appeal because they teach nothing is ever as good as it gets, and nothing is as awful as it seems.  Both schools of thought offer a healthy dose of wisdom when things time tough in the office. 

Lately, I have been reading the works of Albert Camus.  Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have read his most famous novel, "The Plague," which describes the outbreak of pneumonic plague in Algeria.  In the book, we follow the story of an Algerian doctor as he attempts to treat the sick during the attack.  We also see how others react to the suffering and death as the plague follows its natural course.  It is a grim book, but it has moments of hope and decency when people step up to help others.  Camus had no illusions about people in times of crisis, but in the end, he supports the idea that our essential humanity comes through when we help others.  The Plague is one of the reasons Camus earned the Nobel prize in literature.  

I am a big fan of Camus's essays, particularly "The Myth of Sisyphus," where he compares the human condition to the Greek myth of Sisyphus.  The gods punished the Greek king Sisyphus to spend eternity in the underworld, pushing an immense boulder up a hill.  When the boulder reached the top, it rolls down to the bottom, and Sisyphus begins the process again. I look at "The Myth of Sisyphus" as a metaphor for project management. It is both a metaphor for futility and human existence.  Humans toil for futile goals and face numerous setbacks to keep going. Often it is a struggle and toil with a brief moment of success before returning to effort and work.  Camus sees this struggle as heroic and says famously at the end of the essay, "one imagines Sisyphus happy."

In my darker moments, I understand the sense of futility that Sisyphus experiences.  What gets me through is that each day I have a goal to push the metaphorical boulder up the hill.  Each day, I have a chance to make a difference.  It is the slow and steady work that is part of the life of many professional people— the grinding of work and the friction of helping others to collaborate toward a common goal.  I use the story of Sisyphus to explain why I do what I do.  It also helps me manage my emotions better because I can say that I moved that boulder up the hill a few more inches on my worst days.  I get to stand at the top of the mountain when I get the boulder to the top.  Finally, I get a few moments of rest when I walk back down to start the process over again.  It is the source of happiness in my life and why I keep doing it even during the worst moments.  

Until next time. 

Give A Little Thanks to Help Your Agile Practice

Give thanks and let others
know you appreciate them.

The agile reformation does not happen by itself.  It requires numerous people working daily to deliver value to customers.  Scrum masters, product owners, and technical professionals come together each day and do the hard work of building new things.  It requires discipline and intelligence.  Each day, I am amazed at the new and innovative things the people I serve do.  We need to take time and express gratitude for the work we do for each other.  

The holiday season starts with Thanksgiving, which began formally as a holiday during the American civil war.  The Union was starting to turn the war's tide and hundreds of union and confederate dead were littered across battlefields from Pennsylvania to Georgia.  President Lincoln wanted to celebrate union victory but used the occasion to create an opportunity to reflect on what we were grateful for.  To our 16th president, being thankful and grateful was a means to unite a bitterly divided nation.  I like Lincoln’s sentiment; it shows his leadership was well ahead of its time.  

The Christian season of Advent and Christmas follow this season of gratefulness.  It is joined by the Jewish festival of lights and then Kwanzaa.  What unites all of these holidays is their focus on concentrating on what matters, especially during difficult times.  It is a shame that we need ethnic and religious holidays to remember this wisdom. 

As a coach, leader, or scrum master, it is up to you to let people know that you appreciate the work they do.  It is not touchy-feely goodness that inspires this sentiment, but detailed research by the Harvard Business Review and Forbes magazine.  Business researchers are discovering the common-sense notion of treating people with dignity can improve work performance.  A more humane office creates better results.  

Each day, I use the words 'please,' and 'thank-you.'  I refer to people by the names and pronouns they would like used.  I also want to pronounce the names of the people I work with correctly.  I have a funny-sounding foreign name, so I try to pronounce all the developers' names correctly.  It does not matter if someone comes from India or Chicago’s Oldtown neighborhood. You should be respectful of their name.  Respecting a person’s name respects them as a person and their culture.  Finally, before going home, try to meet your team members and thank them for a job well done.  I learned this at Harrah’s over twenty years ago, and it builds comradery on a team.  

The next few weeks will be a blur of work, shopping, stress, and COVID-19.  With all this flurry of activity, we should take time to express gratitude toward others and build respect, which will help us build a better day. 

Until next time.  

Resolve Matters More Than Ever

Resolve is fun and difficult!

Four years ago, I wrote a rather glum blog in the aftermath of the election of 2016.  I struggled with plenty of feelings and the realization I had a skewed vision of my fellow citizens.  In that darkness of the soul, I over-ate and did some reflection.  Today, the election results are different, but I do not feel any big jolt of joy.  Instead, I feel a deep sense of resolve.

I said the following in 2016, “Even in darkness, we can find resolve and purpose.”  Today, I feel more committed to that sentence.  We are in the middle of a terrible pandemic, the economy is deeply dysfunctional, and political polarization creates a toxic brew of resentment.  Fixing these challenges is daunting.  I have naïve faith that collectively, we can overcome these difficulties.  I feel this way because it is up to people of good faith to do the hard work to help unify the country and deliver value to its people.  People like me.

I joined the agile reformation because I felt there was a better way to work.  The toil and struggle of working on technology projects could be fixed and agile with four values, and twelve principles showed the way.  It was easy to learn the ideas of agile but carrying them out in the real world is complicated.  You cannot host a meeting with a slide deck and expect people to start leading their businesses differently.  Agile requires technical excellence, servant leadership, psychological safety, and putting in the extra effort.  

The goal of agile is to make the workplace more satisfying, sustainable, and sane.  If people like myself can make work better for others, then we can slowly begin to neutralize the poison which exists in society.  People who can support families and who work in healthy environments are less likely to support authoritarianism.  I am working to make the world a better place, one cubical at a time. 

We are still in a dark time.  The world is not going to fix itself.  It requires smart people working hard to create reasonable solutions that people can embrace.  It is not going to be easy.  Agile and servant leadership will provide direction and purpose.

I look forward to continuing to lead change and help make work better one step at a time.  I am proud to be part of the reformation, and I hope you will continue to follow me as I share nuggets of wisdom I gather along the way.

Until next time.

The Road to Damascus and Agile

Enjoy this holiday weekend.

Each day millions of people go to work.  A person spends a third of their lives working to provide for themselves and their families.  In the modern economy, it means being adaptable and finding value in any situation.  It is challenging and filled with anxiety because, at any moment, forces outside our control could threaten our livelihoods.  With the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we should reflect on work and how it should be. 

I became a member of the agile reformation over ten years ago when I discovered agile could be a better way to work.  I was tired of the drudgery of a project which had no payoff.  Technology leadership exhibited the worse traits of authoritarian management, and your best was never good enough.  I felt something had to change.  Since that “road to Damascus,” moment, I have devoted myself to the agile movement.

The manifesto has four simple values and twelve principles.  Professionals have used this tool to help make work better and more humane.  Now we understand how to eliminate waste, deliver value, and improve quality without being callous or working people to death.  Along the way, I have grown exponentially and met plenty of great fellow travelers. 

As we settle in for a long weekend, take some time to relax and spend time with the people you love.  We have a global economy to rebuild and a business community to reform.  We need to put people back to work, and I look forward to being with you during the journey.  

Until next time and have a happy Memorial Day Weekend.  

Legacy Systems are Just as Dangerous as COVID-19

Creatures like this live in our legacy systems. 

The strongest test of leadership is adversity.  It is easy to look like a master of the university when everything is going well. Only when faced with failure and vulnerability, can we understand what kind of leaders we are.  Hardship and stress reveal the strengths of systems; it also points out glaring shortfalls.  One of the more interesting stories this week was a plea from the Governor of New Jersey to COBAL programmers to come out of retirement and fix the state’s antiquated unemployment system.  It is a story of benign neglect and poor leadership.

The computer languages COBOL, PASCAL, and Fortran were the first early languages used in computing.  From the 1950s to the early 1980s, these languages ran the large computer centers of business, government, and academia.  With the explosion of personal computing, these old languages fell out of favor.  With the arrival of a publicly accessible internet, the industry saw newer languages like Java and C# take over the professional world of programming.

The Y2K crisis was the last gasp of COBOL systems in banking and government.  These aging legacy systems had a glaring design flaw; they kept track of the year with two digits.  No one could answer with any confidence what would happen when the century ended, and the systems rolled over to the year “00.”  The Y2K bug created a frantic rush to patch and upgrade systems.  People paid COBOL developers ridiculous sums of money and government, business and academia were making the rush to avoid catastrophe.  Some of my first technology jobs were writing VB code to replace aging COBOL systems.

With the arrival of the millennium, the frantic rush paid off; no significant systems failed, and life proceeded as nothing had happened.  The COBOL developers and the technology pros saved the day.  The reward was unemployment for the tech pros in the dot.com crash of 2000.  COBOL programmers were no longer necessary, so they were laid off, and many of them were not hired again because organizations felt they were over the hill.  I remember being in a job club with many of these people, and I swore I would never let my technology skills become obsolete.

The hard lesson I discovered during the interim between the September 11 attacks and my return to the job market was something people in government chose to ignore.  Legacy systems become obsolete, and the people who knew how to maintain them retire. Schools do not educate people to work on these aging systems, so you are stuck with a difficult challenge.  Do you leave the system to become a ticking bomb, or do you go through the expensive and time-consuming process of upgrading?  Many people opted for the slogan of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  It was a great plan in the short term, but it sowed the seeds for a bitter harvest.

No one expected unemployment claims to be in the millions.  During our worst economic moments, the number of applications was barely over 500,000.  The COVID-19 outbreak changed that perception, and in New Jersey, the outdated unemployment system crashed, making it new to impossible to help people who needed it.  The schools were not teaching students how to program COBOL, and the only people who had experience were retired.  New Jersey has to patch its existing system and replace it with something more modern, and it is not going to be cheap.  The reactive approach is going to cost money and time when we have them in limited supply.

The moral of the story is simple; make sure all of your computer systems can be maintained.  If a college graduate can not update them, it is time to replace or upgrade the system.  Otherwise, you are going to wind up like the great state of New Jersey.

Until next time.