Disengaged Workers are Our Fault!

The world of business is not an easy place. Entrepreneurs and executives live on a knife's edge daily between success and ruin. A stroke of luck, and they are purchasing a yacht and sailing the Bahamas, or one lousy quarter, and could lose their homes. It explains the manic-depressive behavior of business leaders. It also illustrates the frustration particular business leaders feel with their employees. Today, I want to discuss what the Agile community can do to help. 

Jon Clifton at the Gallup organization talks about slower economic growth and lower productivity becoming a significant problem in the next decade. The price of this decline could cost over $8.8 trillion over the next ten years. It is an astounding amount of money, or approximately 9% of the global gross domestic product. The reason for this decline is simple, according to Clifton. Workers in all levels of business organizations are disengaged. 

To borrow a phrase from my more Marxist friends, a disengaged worker is an alienated worker. Disengaged employees do the bare minimum work because they know that additional advancement or compensation will not arrive, so they do not make any more effort than necessary. For those that follow Tik Tok, younger people call it 'quietly quitting.' The structures designed to discourage innovation and change in the business add to the toxic mix. Inertia like this ensures everyone stays in their place, and the pipeline of products generates a stable amount of income and profit. It is a recipe for mediocrity, and I have never met someone who likes to be mediocre.  

As an agile coach or scrum master, how do you fight against this pernicious system of mediocrity? The first step is removing the perverse incentives that many companies use on their employees. I remember working on a software project which had to be swift to market, and many of us put in overtime to make it happen. I asked what would be the reward for all the hard work. The response from my manager was that we would keep our jobs. The project added an extra million dollars to the bottom line. An executive received a bonus, the shareholders an extra penny on the dividend check, and I got to keep my job. Incentives like that discourage innovation and undermine morale. After thirty years of treating employees like this, productivity is falling after the great recession, the cruelty of the forty-fifth president, and a global pandemic. Knowledge workers have shifted their priorities and want to concentrate on supporting their families and following their individual goals. Business leaders need to change, or they will be leading empty organizations that do nothing. 

The first step is to build out from the organization's middle and think of the middle layer of the organization as a coaching cohort. For a long time, managers enforced rules and micromanaged employees. The situation needs to change. We must take a coaching approach to people, guiding them with objectives, rapid feedback, and incentives that are not perverse. If a development team of ten people generates a million dollars in sales revenue, one percent of that is a healthy bonus for the extra work to gain the business. Heroic efforts deserve respect and recognition; otherwise, you are just in the business of exploitation. 

I am encouraged that some businesses are getting the message. According to Forbes magazine, the virtual assistant company Time Etc is shifting out their managers for coaches; there is one coach for every six employees. The result speaks for itself, and the business improved revenue by twenty percent. Imagine if we create incentives and business cultures where people feel valued. An improvement of 20% is an incredible accomplishment and will lift up plenty of people. With some luck, we can get a slice of those 8.8 trillion dollars left on the table by poor business leadership. 

Until next time. 

Your Staff is Not Lazy They Are Exhausted.

The most dramatic event of the American Civil War was called Picket's Charge. During the third and final day of the battle of Gettysburg, fifteen thousand rebel troops attempted to overrun gun positions in the Union lines. The Union greeted the assault with a hailstorm of lead and steel. When it was over, six thousand rebel troops were killed or wounded. The survivors of the attack shambled back to Confederate lines, and General Picket, exhausted and injured, told Robert E. Lee, "I have no division now." Robert E. Lee had pushed his luck and men as far as possible. The confederacy would never invade the North again and be slowly crushed by Union forces until the eventual surrender at Appomattox two years later. Business leaders can learn plenty of wisdom from the story of Picket's charge. 

It is no secret that employee productivity numbers have fallen. The trend began after the subprime mortgage crisis and has continued uninterrupted since. I have some suspicions about why this is happening. First, the increase in inequality in the workplace means that workers have less incentive to be more productive because they are not sharing the benefits of the growing economy. Next, the push for economic efficiency and maximization of shareholder value is cutting staffing to unsustainable levels. Often one or two people are responsible for doing the work of five or six. Naturally, the result will not get done conscientiously, and the people doing it will not approach it with any sense of craftsmanship. Finally, business leaders straining to accommodate the shifting demands of the global economy are attempting to force change through organizations they created to resist change, causing exhaustion in the workforce. They are like Robert E. Lee pushing their people too far. 

These three trends are why there is such a substantial decline in productivity. We can fight it, but it will take years of effort and a paradigm shift in business leadership. First, we need to be more generous with how we compensate employees. Everyone who manufactures or provides services to others should be able to afford these same products and services. Walmart using the food-stamp system to help their employees eat is madness. Next, businesses need to improve the resiliency of their organizations so they can respond to changes. Finally, business leaders must embrace agile reformation because rigid organizations are less likely to survive. It means pushing decision-making down to the people who get the work done and allowing more flexibility to address problems rather than via a bureaucratic process. 

By doing these three things, we will see improvements in employee productivity and better customer satisfaction. Profits will increase accordingly; otherwise, we will exhaust ourselves just like Picket did during his charge. 

Until next time. 

Some Thoughts About the Great Flattening

Returning to work is a powerful emotional experience. My friends and colleagues were glad to see me, and a pile of work awaited me upon my return. The time away gave me a deep feeling of gratitude. Of course, I had to kick some rust off, but it did not take long to gain my bearings and return to the usual flow of work. My body had other plans, and I had to rest as the healing process continued. It was a strange week in business news. The late reports about technology layoffs pointed out that discharges disproportionally targeted managers at companies. News also surfaced that Meta was attempting to “flatten” its organization. I have spoken about management and leadership on this blog, and I need to share more. 

I always disliked the term manager. In my experience, leadership at any level is more significant than official management titles. It implies an act of authority over others which is short of leadership and greater than building customer value. Serving in a management role also includes plenty of responsibility with none of the corresponding authority. It creates awful paradoxes where people are being pushed and pulled in two different directions, first by executives above and then by the people they serve below. It explains why recent surveys of middle managers show that 43% suffer from burnout. 

It also does not help that many executive suites have the characteristics of the VIP room at an exclusive nightclub. Many executives come from similar MBA programs and have yet to spend time working with customers or employees. When this happens, tunnel vision takes over, prioritizing what the executive team wants versus what the customers might be demanding. It is all fun and games when interest rates are low and business is good, but increasing interest rates and venture capitalists looking for the next big thing trigger over-reactions. The recent tech layoff is an example of these over-reactions. 

So with executive leadership looking out for themselves during difficult economic times, middle managers and front-line employees bear the burden. Naturally, those left behind in the aftermath of layoffs must take on the duties of those who are gone. It is a significant problem in the technology industry because work outstrips the number of competent people to complete that work. It explains why Meta is attempting to flatten by forcing its managers to code with their teams. 

To an executive, this seems logical, but it is fraught with peril. First, programming is a creative skill like music or dance. It is rare for a choreographer or conductor to return to the performing company because they often need help to physically perform the skills. Next, asking technology managers to code and perform their typical management duties means they must improve their skills. Requiring a manager to code means less time for meetings, performance appraisals, and transmitting messages from executive leadership. Executives might say those functions are unimportant but will be when raises and vacations are late for line employees. Finally, managers are connective tissue within the organization because much of the work is too specialized for executive leadership. Someone needs to make sure the network engineers keep the network running. A good accountant must keep accounts payable up to date. Human resources people understand the law and can prevent both strikes and lawsuits. Without this specialized knowledge, most modern businesses would collapse like a house of cards. 

I lived through two downturns in my career. It is not pretty. However, the executives who try to flatten organizations often discover that they need the managers and specialists they depend on to run the organization. You should expect sanity to return to corporate offices in twenty-four to thirty-six months. Let's all tough it out in the meantime.

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. 

Foucault and the Power Inside an Agile Business.

 Foucault can teach us a few things 
about power and agile.

When you work as a professional person, objectively, your life is better than many others.  You work in environmentally controlled conditions, you get paid more than most workers, and you have the social cache of being an office worker.  In reality, being an office worker has plenty of risks.   Professional people do not unionize, so they are fired “at will.”  White-collar workers deal with high levels of stress and deadline pressure.  Finally, many of your colleagues are damaged, neurotic, or plain mean.  The reality of this situation should not be happening, but it often does. I was thinking about it more seriously this week and decided to write about it. 

As a professional person, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn learning about industry trends, keeping tabs on my colleagues, and finding informative bits of information.  Ville Pellinen posted an interesting nugget this week when he shared the satisfaction survey results from the banking and investment firm Goldman Sachs.  The news was a damning inditement of the company culture.  See for yourself.  

Employees were working on average 96 hours a week, and they were suffering physical and mental health problems because of the pressures to perform.  Managers were not respecting mandated time off over the weekend, and associates were expected to make last-minute changes to presentations and reports up to 20 minutes before discussions with clients.  As one associate said, “ What is not ok to me is 110 to 120 hours over the course of a week!  The math is simple. That leaves 4 hours a day for eating, sleeping, showering, bathroom, and general transition time.  This is beyond the level of ‘hard-working,’ this is inhumane / abuse. “

Compare this information with the company mission of Goldman Sachs, which proclaims, “our people are our greatest asset…” and you can see a severe disconnect between what the company says and what it does.  It occurred to me that a few factors are forcing these employees into these abusive situations.  The first is the notion of workism. Derek Thompson from the Atlantic magazine says working long hours becomes an “arms race” between talented and hard-working people who want to advance their careers.  The next is Karl Marx’s theory of labor exploitation.  Business people know that they can force people to work longer hours for less money because their competitors do it, so they are forced to squeeze harder on their workforces.  The most intriguing notion came from one of the other coaches on the thread who shared a quotation from Michel Foucault.  

He said,

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.”

In other words, there is no difference between the prisoners and the guards in prison; they have to live by the same awful rules of surveillance when they are together.  I then joked about if M.B.A’s are being taught Foucault in business school.  It appears that business schools in Europe are sharing Foucault and his unusual philosophy with the future masters of the universe in their business programs.  What do business people have to gain from a radical French philosopher with a colorful history?  

Foucault and all of his writing were concerned with two principal issues.  The first was power, not the power to control but rather the ability to influence.  Peer pressure, new forms of learning, standard means of coercion, and social factors all mix together to create power structures that influence how people think and behave.  This kind of power is what executives and human resources people label as corporate “culture.”  The other thing that Foucault is interested in is how people’s knowledge and perceptions change over time.  In his books, “The Birth of the Clinic” and “Discipline and Punish,” he shows our perceptions of hospitals and prisons have changed over the last 300 years. 

As agile professionals, we can learn plenty of wisdom from Foucault.  We have to see how power flows through an organization, including the less formal means of control like peer pressure.  Next, we need to know how those systems of power affect the people doing the work.

As Foucault says in “Discipline and Punish,”

"In a disciplinary regime, on the other hand, individualization is ‘descending: as power becomes more anonymous and more functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized; it is exercised by surveillance rather than ceremonies, by observation rather than commemorative account, by the comparative measure that have the ‘norm’ as reference rather than genealogies giving ancestors as points of reference by ‘gaps’ rather than by deeds."

We improve individual performance, but to do so, we need to exercise more surveillance, and the nature of the administration should be more anonymous than personal.  Employees are worried about letting their fellow team members down than upsetting the boss.  

Finally, we need to understand that the business practices that exploit people are just as destructive to the business because exploitation will extend to clients and shareholders.  People working 110 hours a week are no good to anyone and for a CEO to tolerate something like that is short-sided.  

So pushing people to exhaustion is not intelligent, and it is not agile.  Why people work long hours and tolerate abuse, and poor conditions need examination.  Finally, leaders need to look more clearly at their business and what it does to the people who work there.  The clock is ticking for Goldman Sachs.  

Until next time. 

Agile guiding the three tribes of business

The tribes of business create a tower of babble.

I am grateful to be blogging again.  I took a week off to address some health issues.  Recovery from illness is nature’s way of forcing a person to review priorities.  It makes you take stock of what is essential.  I have spent the last ten years of my life involved with the agile reformation.  It is clear to me one of the biggest challenges faced by agile practitioners is helping others change the mindset from a command and control perspective to an agile view. It is going to require coaching and patience.  Today, I want to discuss the leading challenge coaches and scrum masters face.

Since Frederich Winslow Taylor published “Principles of Scientific Management,” over one hundred years ago corporations separated their workforce into three distinct tribes.    The workers who did the manufacturing, service, or sales work.  The next group was the owners or executives who Karl Marx called the bourgeois.  The final collection were managers.  The tribes formed a lopsided pyramid where power resided at the top, and those at the bottom were expected to carry out orders without question.  When we discuss “top-down” management it is executives giving orders to professionals.  The professionals then made sure the orders were performed by those doing the work.

The modern manager has only existed since the founding of the Harvard Business School in 1908.  Management training often began in the office and shop floor.  After the founding of the M.B.A. program at Harvard, growing corporations could hire college-educated people who understood finance and the legal aspects of running a large business.  Managers had formal training equal to doctors and attorneys.  The professional-managerial class created a disconnect between those who did the work and those who employed the labor. 

Labor unions and economic growth helped to conceal the disconnect between workers and managers.  The events of the 1980s helped change the dynamic.  The government slashed regulations and curtailed labor unions; business leaders wanted to do more with less.  Business outsourced non-essential parts of the company and contractors replaced full-time workers.  Finally, manufacturing was off-shored to countries with lower labor costs.  Each step along this path, it was professional managers who made those strategies work.

For creative activities like software development, entertainment, and advertising, the more with less approach was not working.  With no knowledge of the work, executives would give orders.  Managers could manage work but have no idea how long it would take to complete the job.  Finally, workers did not care what they were doing or why they were doing it so long as they got paid.  Work would linger, and projects would run over-budget.  Meanwhile, customers were receiving low-quality products which were not meeting their demands.  It was ugly, and everyone in the business world through it was healthy.

Because they felt there was a better way to do work instead of “top-down” management, some of the biggest names in project management created the agile manifesto.  Organizations would now benefit from workers interacting directly with customers.  Small teams would lead change instead of bourgeois executives coercing people to do things against their will.  The pyramid of workers, executives and professionals would be tipped over with all three tribes working toward a common goal of helping the customers.  It was utopian and viewed the world through the lens of engineering.

Since that moment, agile is eating the world.  Successful companies in the global economy embrace the concepts of agile and those who do not flounder.  The reality is much more complicated.  Dark Scrum is a constant challenge in the business world.  Bad Agile is everywhere, and plenty of bad actors are attempting to capitalize on the spread of agile.

Scrum masters and coaches are innovating and attempting to change business for the better.  To effect change, we need to stick to the basics and the agile manifesto and agile principles.  We need to embrace scaling for more substantial organizations, but we should not be bound to one particular scaling framework.  Finally, we need to embrace our technical excellence and increase soft skills.  I am a big fan of Kim Scott’s “Radical Candor,” and I am beginning to embrace “Co-Active Coaching.”  Together, by understanding how the different tribes of the business interact, by practicing technical excellence, and finally, by perfecting soft skills we can make the lopsided pyramid of the contemporary business world a better place.

Until next time.

The Strength of Technology Pros

No rest for technology

Technology is not for the meek.  A software developer is relearning their craft every 18 months.  Technology companies come and go with regularity.  Businesses rely on software to remain profitable and when the software does not work it costs lives.  The men and women who work in this business have to be tough.  Part of that toughness is the realization you have to deal with failure and frustration.  This week on the blog, I will discuss these central conditions of technology.

Many people have romantic notions about scientists, engineers, and software professionals.  The stereotype is that we are super smart and socially awkward individuals who spend their days making inventions and applications which change the world.  The reality of technology is less glamorous; it is hours, weeks, and months of frustration.  It is executives and financers demanding the work to be finished immediately.  It is cold coffee and stale pizza.  It is loneliness and frustration.  In the end, you might have a brief moment which feels like the creator is touching your shoulder but those moments are rare.  Often you will see a solution to a problem which has dominated your life and now you will have to make it work for others.

It means traditional methods cannot measure these workers.  Science is notoriously fickle when it comes to new advancements.  Computer software is a handmade and messy process prone to error and cost overruns.  Software is eating the world, but it depends on a small segment of the world population to build it.  Innovation and invention do not fit neatly into a project plan.  The realities and pressures of technology create unhealthy levels of stress.

The heavy intellectual lifting combined with the anxiety caused by deadline pressure creates a toxic stew of emotions which can lead to physical problems.  Obesity and heart disease are common among software professionals.  Self-medication with cannabis and alcohol are also common within the trade.  All of my contemporaries have recounted stores of insomnia and anxiousness caused by grappling with a severe challenge.  For those outside the profession, the levels of stress and frustration are extreme.  To a developer, it is just another day at the office.

Creativity and innovation are difficult.  The pressure we place on people leading innovation efforts is unhealthy.  The repercussions are professional burn out, defective products, and the risk of cascading failure within complex systems which maintain the global economy.  In many respects, we live in a magical age.  Today’s smartphones are more powerful than the computers which put people on the moon.  With a few swipes, we can order food and find a possible romantic partner to share it with us.  Information can swirl around the globe in seconds and we have millions of people using the internet to solve problems only a century ago would have had the attention of a small group of specialists.  It is a fantastic period to be alive, but the cost is that many people take for granted these advances and forget they are the product of the human mind rather than magic.

It is why I say technology is not for the meek. It requires intelligence, training, and the ability to tolerate frustration and failure.  The strength has helped build the global economy, and I have enjoyed a peripheral role in this process.  Technology people are different, but they have to be; otherwise, the magical world we live in would not exist.

Until next time.

A lack of skin in the game for employees

From the blog: ON ART AND AESTHETICS

Last week I talked about three types of cultural factors which can make an agile implementation challenging.  I also spent some time catching up with some of my contemporaries discussing the application of Agile at different firms.  It was a disappointing discussion.  This week I want to talk about agile and the lack of follow through in many organizations.

I started thinking about the inability for the organization to improve their agile maturity when fellow agilest David Koontz posted an article from the Harvard Business review about the failure of digital transformation at many firms. It opened my eyes.  I then noticed a new book published by the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb called “Skin in the Game,” about the uneven relationships we create in the labor market.  The most telling passage was the following.

“True, a contractor has a downside, a financial penalty that can be built into the contract, in addition to reputational costs. But consider that an employee will always have more risk. And conditional on someone being an employee, such a person will be risk-averse. By being employees they signal a certain type of domestication.”

In short, being an employee of a large company creates people afraid of risk and rocking the boat. The company through its leadership and culture incentivizes particular behavior.  The employee trades their skills and dependability in exchange for a paycheck.  It creates situations where conscientious people tolerate ignorance and inefficiency because they say, “…that is how we have always done it.” Thanks to this submissiveness large firms stagnate and die.

It also explains to me why agile coaches are contractors.  In the words of Ken Schwaber, agile holds a mirror up to an organization.  Many organizations are not equipped professionally or psychologically to look at that reflection because they would see the incentives they have created are perverse and the services they offer are not meeting customer needs.  It is like being in the Jean-Paul Sartre novel “Nausea.”  The world we know crumbles away, and we see the disorienting reality of how things are working. Confronted with this we have three choices:

1. Wallow in despair and impotence
2. Ignore the truth and pretend nothing has happened
3. Take action and try to make change

The modern corporation incentivizes employees to make the first two choices.  Those who choose the third option either quit or the company fires them.

So as a scrum master or agile coach we are stuck making a change at the margins and moving on when we cannot do anymore.  The global economy continues to spin, and nothing seems to change. It is easy to get discouraged, but the size and diversity of the agile reformation continue to grow.  According to Scrum.org, over 100,000 people are trained at Scrum.  Figures from the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance are harder to come by, but eighteen years ago the manifesto began with fifteen people in a ski lodge.   The growth of the movement has been increasing and today’s consultants and practitioners will become tomorrow’s managers, directors, and executives.  It is a matter of time, and the Agile reformation will be driving reform inside the business establishment.

So perverse incentives prevent businesses from being more innovative and agile. The good news is the agile reformation is growing and with this growth will come increasing acceptance.  It will not be easy, but it will be worth it.

Until next time.

Empathetic relations come before education

As an agile coach and scrum master, I find myself in a peculiar place.  I have been with one organization for five years, and I am unable to increase their agile maturity.  We are stuck.  We are going through the motions of agile but work is not sustainable, and dysfunction exists between the business partners and the development team.  This week, I face an agile implementation which is stagnating.

As an agile coach and scrum master, you need to take a hard look at yourself and how you do your job.  It is lonely and unforgiving.  You need to evaluate how you can improve and how you help others.  In many respects, you are acting like a teacher, therapist and camp counselor. 

Where do teachers go for support?  How do therapists deal with human suffering without being crushed by its weight?  What does a camp counselor do when they cannot be enthusiastic?  The answer to all of these questions is they depend on the support of peers and more experienced professionals.  There is an entire branch of therapists who treat other therapists.  Teachers have support groups and working teams.  Camp counselors rely on directors and adult leaders for support.

Scrum masters are very alone and are misfits in many organizations.  They belong to a company, but they spend a majority of their time fighting the corporate culture to meet goals.  Their managers misunderstand them and because they do not have any real authority often ignored by others.   For me, I depend on the support of others from the agile coaches’ symposium in Chicago.  I count on my immediate manager and interact with other coaches on LinkedIn. 

I depend on these people like a drowning person clings to piece of driftwood. Leading organizational change requires the stamina of an Olympic athlete, the patience of Job, and the self-esteem of Rod Blagojevich.  Few people have all three of these traits.  It is why I have to depend on the coaching of others.  It is a both a means to improve and receive the support I need to get through the day. 

Currently, I am dealing with exceptional levels of toxicity from business partners.  The situation has deteriorated so much one product owner will not speak to me directly but will tell someone else to convey information to me.  It may be acceptable behavior for mean girls in high school but is outrageous for a business person to act in such a fashion.  All I can do it take responsibility for this professional failure and make the best of the situation. 

Someone I respect said, “Empathetic relations come before education.”  This week that message clobbered me like a sixteen-ton weight.  Crushed by this new knowledge and experience, it occurs to me that I can not just attempt to teach others the skills of agile with the power dynamic of a teacher to a student.  For greater agile maturity at an organization, the coach needs to relate to the business partners as peers. 

If agile is going to grow then, people must want to be open, committed, focused, courageous, and respectful.  It is now clear to me I cannot use the coaching style of a movie director or drill sergeant.  I cannot be a teacher at this stage.  My knowledge needs to be offered as a friend.  If not, then agile will stagnate and not mature at an organization. 

A failure is a useful tool.  It educates more than any success possibly could.  This week, I experienced a failure I might not recover from at my current firm.  Whatever the future might bring, the lessons are going to stick with me the rest of my career.

Until next time.

When to hang it up

Sometimes you have to pack your bags.

Last week I spoke about “struggle” and what I felt it meant.  It inspired a strong reaction from a few people.  Watching this reaction, it dawned on me, I was witnessing a conversation I had three years ago.  Each of us have moments in our careers where we consider leaving and going someplace else. Some of us have that choice forced upon us while others have a “moment of clarity” and then give their notice to their boss.  This week I want to talk about when it is time to leave.

I have been a software consultant and full time software developer for many years.  It was filled with frustration and failure.  Additionally, when I was a consultant I was often treated like high paid “help” who was supposed to keep his head down, mouth shut, and ignore the dysfunction which surrounded me.  I even completed a project early for a client and instead of being rewarded with an extension I was thanked and promptly rolled off.  I have been fired a week before Christmas and had to explain it my former spouse.  I have looked over my shoulder worried I was not good enough and smart enough to work with the other developers in my company.  I needed to make change.

With my own money, I took my Certified Scrum Master training.  I was feeling despair and working as a heads down developer was taking a toll on me.  This was a chance to practice what I preached about Agile.  After becoming an architect at a different firm, they learned about my Scrum Master training and made me the servant leader of development team.  Looking back on that experience, I realize that I was raw, cocky and untested.  One developer openly rebelled against me right away and I would spend weeks and months attempting to effect change.

That was three years ago.  Now, I am training product owners for division of my company, serving as a scrum master, and being “spun off” as my firm splits into three companies.  In those three years, being in the trenches as a scrum master has made me a much better servant leader.  I am even participating in the company mentoring program.  I voiced that I was restless and frustrated with the pace of change I am trying to effect and it looks like someone listened. For me, it is a sign that I need to stay because big changes are coming and my peers and superiors see that I should be part of that change.

I will only speak for myself but if you cannot get training through your work and if you are asked to do one thing but are rewarded for doing something else then it is time to leave.  Before I started working as a scrum master, I was a senior developer for a food company.  I was talking about a software project with a superior and he said I should start over because it didn’t look like something he could use on his iPad.  It was the final straw and with-in a month I was gone.  Since then, that company has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in agile consulting and they laid-off over 100 people, mostly older workers, in order to be more nimble.  They could have saved a lot of money and preserved those jobs if they just figured out how to keep me and allow me to spread agile through the firm.  I am glad I am no longer there.

Each member of the agile community is responsible for his or her own career.  We have to make choices every day about what we do and who we serve.  We also need to remember that we need to serve ourselves.  If we are unhappy or frustrated with what we are doing then we need to change.  If that means leaving one company to go to another then so be it.  For me, I am staying where I am.  I am entering an exciting time of change and I look forward to the challenges.  When I can’t say that any more then I have to quit.

Until next time.

Reputation is not licence to be a jerk

We know lots of people like this.  A few of them 
 set the conversation of the technology world.
 Image courtesy of Slate.com.

The world of technology is filled with plenty of smart, talented and colorful personalities.  This dynamic was one of the reasons why I was drawn to the business.  This week I want to talk about of these colorful personalities and how he represents some of the worst impulses in the technology business.

There are plenty of stereotypes in the technology business.  These are reinforced by popular culture in productions as diverse as James Bond movies, the Fox series 24, and the HBO program Silicon Valley.  Having over 18 years’ experience in the business, I have seen many of these stereotypes in real life.  I have also met plenty of great people who are unique and innovative in every way.

By any standard, Alex St. John should be seen as one of the leading minds in the technology field. He was self-educated and self-taught.  He created the DirectX technology which powers Xbox and just about every PC game on Windows.  His work helped make Microsoft the power house it is and he earned further accolades founding his own company.  This kind of achievement should make St. John a good will ambassador for the technology field instead, he is coming off as a colossal jerk.

I can provide numerous examples which have already been articulated elsewhere on the web.  These offenses break down into three categories.

• He does not see the value of women in technology.  Exhibit A.
• He thinks that exploitative work conditions in the software business, particularly, the game business are acceptable.  Exhibit B.
• Finally, anyone who disagrees with him is a “whiner” of not willing to work hard.  Exhibit C.

I have stated repeatedly, technology needs more women.  The fresh perspective they provide to technology is essential to improving product quality.  It also makes the office less like a Mongol raiding party and more like a 21st century work place.  The less testosterone in technology the better.

Next repeated studies have shown that long hours are a hindrance to productivity rather than a boon.  Notions of “crunch” time and working eighty hour work weeks are exploitative and boarder on the illegal practice of wage theft.  Additionally, the twelve principle of Agile discourage this mindset stressing development should sustainable.  To St. John and others developer burn-out, turnover, and alienation are the cost of doing business.  Technology workers are not different that sweatshop workers and they should be grateful for the conditions.

Finally, St. Jon has ridiculed people who disagree with him about issues of diversity and exploitation of tech workers by claiming they are not ambitious enough or smart enough to understand his arguments.  In St. John’s world, I would have died of a heart attack because I would be living on steady diet of caffeine, pizza, and stress.  The technology world has undermined two of my marriages because of high stress, turn over, and uncertain employment conditions.  It is hard to keep good employees if they don’t see or sleep with their significant others.  I consider myself a valuable professional to any organization, but to St. John, I am just a pencil to be ground down into a nub to be replaced by someone else just as disposable.

Bottom line, if you do not agree with St. John, then you are neither smart nor talented enough to work in technology.  This may explain why he is spending more time coaching CEO’s and HR professionals on how to recruit technology talent than actually managing technology talent.  I have worked for people like St. John who are convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority. It is not fun and I consider those periods the low points of my career.  Technology is changing thanks to agile and efforts to improve diversity.  Faced with the changing environment you can, lead, follow, or get out of the way.  I think that St. John is about to get trampled to death.

Until next time.

Sharpening the Saw for the Scrum Master

Even a chain saw needs to be sharpened.

Being a scrum master is a calling.  It isn’t like being a catholic priest but is certainly is a calling because you are leading change in your organization.  It is not easy and it requires a bit of missionary zeal.  Because, if you are part of a business reformation it is going to require a level of commitment not typical in most cubical dwelling workplaces.  Having priests and nuns in my extended family, I always wondered why they went on retreats.  This week, it dawned on me why and I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.

In the book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” one of the seven habits they suggest is known as sharpening the saw.  This is what author Stephen R. Covey calls the opportunity to take a break, train and learn new skills because if you do not you will be like a saw which is over used.  After a while the blade will dull and it will be unable to cut anything.  So highly effective people take time to read, learn new things, and relax.

Since working as a member of a religious order requires incredible people skills, hours of listening, and zero compensation; the risk of burn out is very high.  This is why I think the retreat came into being.  It is a chance for priests and nuns to be among their own kind.  They share stories.  They pray.  They spend time away from the people they are supposed to be serving.  It is not just about the religious mission of these people.  It occurs to me that it is a necessary survival tool in order to do their jobs.

Being a scrum master is one of the hardest jobs in technology.  You are a servant leader of software developers who are notoriously hard to lead.  Contemporary business culture is still struggling to integrate the message of the Agile Manifesto and the principles of agile.  Business leaders expect agile to work in organizations without training their people or hiring people to work full time as product owners.  It is exhausting.  For every success, there are countless failures and you are always expected to be upbeat and willing to continuously improve.

So this week, I am going to take some time to sharpen the saw.  I am going to clean my house, read a trashy pulp novel, and go to a museum or two.  I might even binge watch a few episodes of Dr. Who in order to prepare for the new season.  I am taking my retreat.  I suspect that it is just what the doctor ordered.

Until next time.

Danger signals for the Scrum Master

Stress is not sexy.

There is nothing glamorous or exciting about being exhausted.  This week on the blog I wanted to talk about some things you need to pay attention too when they come up.

You want to throw things at the office: We toss paper into the waste paper basket.  But what I am talking about is much more serious and frightening.  I was on a conference call after less than six hours of sleep during 72 hours of production issues.  I picked up my mouse and wanted to throw it into my monitor.  I did the next best thing which was walk away from my desk.

You want to spend your time insulting others rather than helping them: Lack of sleep and the pressure of the job can transform a saint into a green hulking rage monster.  If you find yourself wanting to insult your staff or belittle them you need a break.  Your direct reports should not have to suffer because you are too tired to think straight.

You let things go you normally would not allow:  When someone says, “I don’t care” it usually means that they do not have the energy to pay attention to the details.  That is a recipe for failure and a bigger accident to follow.

Your staff starts asking you if you are ok:  Being a manager means warring a “mask of command.”  If you drop that mask and your staff starts seriously wondering if you are up to the job; you may need to take a step back.

You are not sleeping: If you can’t lay down and get some sleep at the end of the day.  This is a serious danger sign.  You need to finish up what you are working on and try to uncoil because not sleeping can create situations similar to being intoxicated.

You can’t focus: Leadership and technology require concentration.  If you can’t concentrate you are sunk.  Taking time off to step away from the project or just the office is going to do you a great deal of good.

Each of these things happened to me this week and I knew the danger signs.  I told my boss and he was good enough to let me work from home.  It was very positive and helped me get through a very rough period.  It also protected my staff.  Life is too short to work for bosses who are struggling to keep it together.  

Until next time.

The Power of No

Sometimes it just needs to be said.

This week I wanted to discuss something which is pretty important to every business person and entrepreneur I know.  For years we have been taught the importance of yes, getting other people to say yes, saying yes to the deal, and making sure you say yes to any reasonable request.  People who say no are not team players or willing to succeed.  The reality is that saying no is as just as important to success as saying yes.

Daily we read stories about work life balance and what it takes to be successful.  A common theme in many of these articles is the ability to say yes.  It is easy to see why coaches and mentors say this.  Saying yes is easy; doing what you promised when you say yes is hard.  This way it is easier to make a promise and break it because you can always ask for forgiveness.  Business is filled with plenty of people who can make promises but cannot fulfill them.  This situation means that as a business person or leader you spend a majority of your time in a constant state of distrust because you do not know who is telling the truth and who is just saying what you want to hear.  It is madness.

This is why “no” is so powerful.  Because it cuts through the phoniness of typical business interactions and lets people know what is really going on.  The word “no” builds trust because they can honestly engage in pragmatic discussions about what can and can’t be done. I am not advocating being negative or reflexively saying no all the time but the judicious use of the word no can make your life much easier.

Let me give you a few examples:

• Can you stay late tonight – “No, my daughter is playing softball tonight.  Can I come in early tomorrow or work on this after the game”
• I need this software by X – “No we do not have enough developers or time to build all those features.”
• Can you build this software for a fixed bid – “No, this does not compensate properly for the work we do.  Feel free to take your chances with someone else”
• Can you take an extra project – “No, I am flattered but I want to devote my attention to these other projects and make them successful.  I might not give this new project the attention it deserves”

In each of those examples, saying no sets limits.  You are not being negative or hostile you are just setting limits to prevent others from exploiting your desire to help them.  There are plenty of people in business who don’t respect limits and those are people who have high turn-over and bad work environments.  By outlining limits you act as a warning sign to people in authority.  They have to hire more people or redo budgets rather than taking undo advantage of people working for them.  It also prevents vendors or clients from making demands which might cost you money.

So the next time you are tempted to say yes, take a deep breath and remember the power of no.  It may just save you time, money and aggravation.

Until next time.

A Little Help from My Friends and Family.

It is nice having people look out for you.

The biggest enemy of an entrepreneur is time.  Time to get your business up and running.  Time to develop your product.  Finally, time to pivot your business to deal with a changing market place.  It is exhausting and I do not think that I could keep it up without the help and direction of my friends and family.  This week on the blog I want to discuss the unsung heroes of the entrepreneurial movement.  

Many people have this weird notion that being an entrepreneur is a lonely business where and individual eats, breathes, and sleeps his business all day long to the exclusion of everything else.  There is a kernel of truth to this as we spend countless hours building products, refining sales pitches and marketing our organization.  It can be all consuming.  This is why it is up to friends and family to step in and make sure that you are taking time out to focus on your physical and mental health.  An entrepreneur is worthless if they are not sleeping and they are even more worthless when all they can discuss is the market capitalization of their start up.

Family members remind you to get a good meal and take some time off on the weekend.  Friends offer to play cards or have a beer with you and discuss something, anything other than work.  I am deeply grateful for the help and assistance they have given me over the years.  Without them, I would be an emotional ball of putty with frayed nerves.

Until next time.

Getting Past the Rough spots

The life of an entrepreneur is filled with exhilarating ups and harrowing downs.  This was one of those weeks where I was pretty low.  Fortunately, I have the support of family and friends who believe in me.  This gets me through the rough times.  So for all of you who follow the blog and my business thank you and I look forward to more news and progress reports in the coming weeks. 

Until Next time.

Entrepreneur Exhaustion

I am spent and it is starting to show.

One of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is finding time.  You are under time pressure for new releases.  You are under time pressure for you day job.  If you work in the world of technology you are under time pressure to be the next big thing.  I am running into the challenge and it is starting to drain me.

This is going to be a short blog this week because I am dealing with exhaustion.  I took a three day weekend attempt to enjoy myself and it is clear that my body and spirit are broken in some fashion.   I have had trouble focusing on my day job and I have not been able to code with any dedication in over a month.   It is frustrating but I know recognize that the main culprit is exhaustion.  I spent the month of January rushing a prototype out to production to have it rejected by the client when I asked them to start paying me for the work. 

I have another project in the works along with the usual bug fixes and other pieces work necessary for the business.  There just isn't time to stop and take a breather.  This is affecting the quality of the work and how much I can get done.  Thus, beginning March 9th, I am going to slow down a bit.  I will start concentrating on product already constructed and move on from there. 

If I don't take this rest I am going to be an emotional and physical wreck who is not going to be able to help anyone; including myself.

Until next time.