Talk to People Instead of E-Mailing Them!

Instead of sending an e-mail pick up the phone.

I have been a business professional for a long time.  I have been working in technology for two decades.  In that time, the world has changed radically for good and ill.  What has not changed is the time suck which is e-mail and how it is cancer for many organizations.

E-mail is as old as the internet.  Before the creation of the World Wide Web, the most common use of the internet was swapping files and sending e-mail.  Business organizations saw the utility of the application and used it as a means to create a way to cut down on the number of business memos.  What happened is the creation of a flurry of messages through companies as people used the tool to improve communication.  With the advent of e-mail and voice mail systems, managers hoped the worker bees in the cubicles would not ignore important information.  According to my experience, the cobra effect raised its venomous head.

The information did move more smoothly, but it created an incredible amount of noise which drowned out the necessary information. Instead of business goals; office gossip, invitations to lunch and memes began to clutter up inboxes.  The torrent of information became a tsunami as network systems were tuned to send SMTP messages.  Today, every file dropped into an FTP folder, or work item changed in JIRA or help desk ticket created generates an e-mail to provide you with a friendly reminder.  Today, a business professional has to act on hundreds and thousands of e-mails – daily.

The ocean of e-mail both trivial and critical is overwhelming.  It has created the inbox zero phenomena and a perfect storm of professional apathy.  All e-mail has the same relative importance, so it is easy to ignore messages equally.  Managers have used the folder routing features of Outlook and GMail to ignore inquiries and information from subordinates skillfully.  Help desk people with a particular form of sloth will ignore complaints for days.  The ability to use email as a tool of deflection seems, to me a credible reason why productivity has been relatively stagnant over the last decade.

What makes e-mail so insidious is that it is a written record of the conscious and unconscious mind of an organization.  An e-mail gives an employee an alibi creating the impression they spoke up about important issues even if management ignores that information.  Sexual harassment and gossip exist in the company e-mail database like an improvised explosive device waiting to dismember.  Finally, criminal and unethical behavior are spelled out for prosecutors and the journalists to expose.  It is why the e-mail database for Enron is still used by software companies to test e-mail products.  The criminal conduct and general idiocy of the Enron organization live forever.  Technology, human resources, and public relations professionals use the Enron e-mail database as a simulation of what might happen in an actual corporation.

To me, e-mail is not a tool for clear communication but a device for obfuscation.  It is the written equivalent of snowflakes coming together to create a blizzard of awfulness.  Individuals compensate with text messages sent between private phones, executives and other essential people having multiple phones to have conversations.  It is critical information being harder to share and keeping secrets for personal gain.  Finally, business professionals spend three to five hours each business day according to Forbes monitoring and authoring e-mails.  I think this is crazy.  Instead of helping customers, innovating the business or solving problems we are doing ticky-tacky work monitoring e-mail.

One of the agile principles says that face to face communication is preferable to other forms of interaction.  So my warning to any scrum master or agile coach is to pick up the damn phone, call people, and speak to them.  Get up from your desk and walk over and talk to people rather than hide in your office.  Use video conferences and insist that everyone turn on their camera so that we can read body language and know they are paying attention.  A lousy organization is not going to change if we insist on doing the same thing redundantly.  It is time to reconsider e-mail and how we use it.  It cannot hurt to try.

Until next time.

A sweet and sour career

The stuff of life.

It is the Christian holiday of Easter.  I am spending time with my family and friends.  I am also taking a look back at the start of the year.  It seems like only yesterday, I was counting down to midnight and wearing silly hats.  Now, I am wrapping up the first quarter.  I am unsure where the time goes.  This week, I would like to do a little reflection on the ebb and flow of being a scrum master.

I have repeatedly said on this blog being a scrum master is a calling.  It takes devotion and a touch of insanity to lead software developers and organizational change. I spend my days helping people ship software and then my evenings learning how to be better at my profession.  Someone I respect very much calls it the “sweet and sour” of a career.  Experiencing hardship makes accomplishment more meaningful.

This week I discovered I would be presenting at the Agile 2018 conference in San Diego.  I will be talking about the Cobra effect and how you can fight it.  It is a pretty significant accomplishment, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity.  It also encourages me that I am not some voice in the wilderness.  I have spent nine years as an agilest, and it is profoundly satisfying that people are interested in the insights I have picked up along the way.  It is a lovely feeling.

The sour is the daily grind of putting out software.  I take calls from India each day.  I work with product owners to help them be successful.  I have created close bonds with my development partners because the pressures of shipping software are enormous.  It is early mornings and late nights.  It is cold coffee and petty arguments.  It is what must be done to create value for the business.

I accept the sour to appreciate the sweet.  Family, friends, and loved ones talk me through the sour times and help me celebrate the sweet.  It is not glamorous or pretty, but I have found meaning in the Agile reformation.  My life is a mixture of sweet and sour.

Until next time.

Saying good riddance to 2017

Would you invite these two over for dinner?
This image captures 2017 better than anything else I have seen.

I want to say good things about 2017; I really want to do it.  The sad reality is that the last year was the equivalent of inviting guests over for a dinner party and they allow their toddler to break your china and defecate on your tablecloth.  The world of politics, business, and agile felt like that disgusting and awkward dinner party.  This week, I take a look at last year’s predictions and look ahead to 2018. 

My first prediction came true in ways I did not expect. The new president and the Republican Party kicked off a wave of deregulation. It was not your garden-variety deregulation typical of GOP control of the White House; this was something radically different.  The Secretary of Education had no experience in educational administration.  The new Secretary of Energy on the campaign trail demanded that the department is dismantled and then used his position to promote the interests of the fossil fuel industry.  The head of the EPA is building a secure secret office and treating the organization he is leading as a security threat. 

By far, the most egregious in a colorful cast of characters is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.  The Goldman Sachs alumni made a career exploiting financial regulations and staying one step ahead of regulators.  Now he is in charge of those rules, and it looks like a repeat of the events which led to the great recession of 2008.  Adding insult to injury is his spouse who has appeared in public with the personae of a Walt Disney villain blended with a trust fund sorority sister.  Her words about how she and her husband do more for the economy are going to live forever in history books written about this period. 

My second prediction was the brief life and death of Net-Neutrality.  Ajit Pai served on the FCC board and said net-neutrality was unnecessary in 2015 when the board supported it.  With the election, he and the Republican members became the majority on the FCC board, and the net neutrality rules were repealed.  In spite of 22-million comments supporting net-neutrality and opposition by 80% of the public, the repeal went through.  It is going to be a considerable give-a-way to companies like Comcast and Verizon.  It is going to hurt innovation and turn internet service providers into protection rackets charging businesses and organizations extra to have high-speed service.  I hate this turn of events and will work with my elected officials to reverse this decision. 

So that was last year, what trends are we going to see in 2018.  I forecast three events. 

Democrats Resurgent?

I made a political prediction in 2016, and the election threw it back into my face.  This time around I am going to say that Democrats have a credible chance of retaking the Senate and the House of Representatives.  Plenty of things can happen between now and November, but if Democrats are smart, they might have a chance.  Some credible polling and research are showing this might happen.  If it does happen, I hope the new Congress will attempt to unwind, the budget-busting tax cut and work on regulating the internet like a utility so that net-neutrality does not come and go with each regulatory change of power. 

The Battle of Home Assistants.

Google and Amazon began a pretty and bitter war last year, and it will get worse in 2018.  The competition between “Alexia” or “Google Home” will get more heated.  It should be good for consumers, but it is going to be a mess.  Home thermostats, lights, and even appliances are going to be affected by this conflict.  It is a battle for billions of dollars in revenue so grab some popcorn and enjoy the spectacle. 

I will own my brand.

For me professionally, 2017 was a tough year.  Thanks to the good folks at the Agile Coaching Symposium in Chicago, I realized that I am part of an elite group of professionals.  We are a caring, creative, and hard-working group of souls who just want to improve how people work.  I am going to embrace that community further.  I am going to put in for my Certified Team Coach credentials from the scrum alliance.  I will also try to become a presenter for the Agile Alliance in fall.  I hope to learn more about LeSS and how it might help my organization. 

So that is my take for 2018, I look forward to sharing it with you. 

Until next time.

Stop Treating people like Data Points

People are not data points.

I entered the technology business to try and make a difference.  I became an agilest because I spent too much of my time following the orders of damaged, neurotic, and mean people.  They were the kind of people who used their position of power for petty displays of superiority.   I knew there was a better way to lead others.  I knew there was a better way to get work done.  This is why I become an agilest.

Along with the spread of Agile, another trend cropped up in business.  This was the use of big data and algorithms to make decisions.  I trace the origin of that back to the book “Moneyball” and the story of the Oakland Athletics using data to improve the performance of the ball club without having to spend money like the New York Yankees.  Since then, the use of advanced statistical metrics has exploded in baseball.  What worked in professional sports was adopted into other businesses.

I call this neo-Taylorism after the business pioneer Frederick Winslow Taylor who authored the book, “Principles of Scientific Management”. Taylor did make the factory floor safer and faster but it also treated the people who did the work no differently than the machine tools or materials used to make the product.  The demands of Taylorism in business created a backlash and unions grew in strength and influence.

As our economy shifted from a manufacturing to a service economy, neo-Taylorism reared its ugly head in the cubical farms across our nation.  Customer service reps were measured on how long people waited on hold.  Sales people were judged on how many cold calls they made a day.  It was also used in human resources as Credit Scores were used to determine reliability.

This began to reduce people to data points rather than individuals.  It also gave professionals and people like me a bad name.   It is no wonder that professionals are held in such contempt in certain parts of the country.  When you see someone as an entry in a spreadsheet instead as a person and they are bound to view you with contempt.

This is why I don’t like to use metrics as a menu to set expectations for the team which works with me.  Instead, I like to use metrics to show how we can improve performance and how we did in the past.  I truly believe that once you use a metric as a quota it ceases to be useful.

So to my friend in the agile community, please continue to measure the performance of your teams.  Just do not use those metrics as quota’s because if you do everyone being judged by these metrics will game the system to make them better than they actually are.  If we are going to measure performance and be agile we need to treat people like individuals rather than points of data.  Otherwise, we will suffer a backlash of our own.

Until next time.

Well Fargo is a Victim of the Cobra Effect

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I rarely hold a grudge and I don’t like kicking an individual or organization while it is down.  I am just not wired that way.  This week I am going to make an exception because of the lesson that can be learned for everyone in the agile community.  I am talking about Wells Fargo and their latest scandal regarding opening bogus new accounts for existing customers.

This isn’t the first time I have had my differences with Wells Fargo.  They were involved in a financial literacy campaign which denigrated humanities majors and liberal arts students.  Now thanks to federal regulators they are paying a $185 Million dollar fine for creating new accounts for customers without consent.  This gets to something the agile community call perverse incentives.

One of the central tenants of “scientific management” is that you measure how an employee does their job and then based on the data, as a manager, you figure out how to make that employee more efficient.  On the surface it seems like a smart idea.  A business person measures how work is done and then they strive to use that data to improve the speed and quality of the work.  This is where the perverse incentives come into play.  If you measure something and then use it as a performance incentive it ceases to be useful because it will force people to game the system to meet the metric.  This is called the “cobra effect” and I have blogged about it repeatedly.

Based on his testimony to congress, Well Fargo CEO John Stumpf said that he set up the incentives to “cross-sell” bank services to improve the company stock price.  This was the beginning of over two hours of uncomfortable questions and criticism from both Democratic and Republican congress members.  You know that you have done something bad when both Democrats and Republicans denounce you in public.

It did not have to be this way.  Stumpf could have measured performance and created training and education programs to make his staff learn how to better “cross-sell” products.  Instead, he used the blunt instrument of job incentives and it worked for a while until regulators and congress got involved.  Wells Fargo now faces additional investigation and possible criminal penalties.  It did not have to be this way but “cobra effect” can claim another victim and it could be a major American financial institution.

Until next time.

Do Not Kiss the Cobra.

Incentive programs are just as
 misinformed as kissing a cobra.

As a leader you are faced with countless decisions.  One of those decisions is how you create constructive incentives for your team.  This week on the blog I would like to talk about one of the most dangerous traps you can get into as a budding leader.  The Cobra Effect.

The cobra effect is documented around the internet but in short is a classic example of the rule of unintended consequences.  Simply put, when you put an incentive out to guide the behavior of co-workers or subordinates you will find they will game the system to maximize the incentive for their own personal interests.  This was documented when the English ruled India as a colony.  A local governor offered a bounty to reduce the number of cobras in the city of Delhi.  It worked too well and the locals started breading cobras to kill them and collect the reward.  This bit of capitalism got the governor to cancel the bounty.  In response, the cobra breeders released their worthless snakes out onto the streets.  The net effect was an increase in the cobra population of Delhi.

As a scrum master or leader you can run into the cobra effect at any time.  For instance, if you want to increase the velocity of a team the team members could inflate their estimates making it look like they are doing more work than actually doing it.  My favorite example comes from the comic Dilbert where the pointy haired boss offers to provide bonuses for developers who fix bugs.  The developers use this as an incentive to write buggy software to increase their compensation.  

The short answer is that incentives are not a good tool for improving performance.  People will change their behavior temporarily in order to meet the incentive goals and then when the incentive goes away they will switch back.  This means that developers and business people will take shortcuts instead of doing the job the way it is supposed to be done.  Long range goals are sacrificed for short term incentive gains.  I also feel that quality suffers.  

So when coming up with incentives for your development team and business, take a pause and understand that you are inviting a snakebite from the Cobra effect.  

Until next time.