Motivate Others Instead of Bossing Them

Motivation is Powerful

The biggest challenge for a coach or leader is motivating others.  If anyone could do it, the world would be a different place.  Problems like hunger, climate change, and a properly fitting pair of slacks would quickly happen because people would want to address those problems.  In reality, we struggle with these challenges because it is hard to motivate others, and there is an entire group of people who want to discourage people from thinking there are solutions to these issues.  Motivation is getting people to swim against the current of conventional wisdom. 

 

Motivating others is a full-time job.  It requires the application of soft techniques of persuasion and other times the blunt force of human resources.  People want to feel useful and challenged, but often they settle for security and routine.  A leader needs to work with these messy people and give them a chance to rise to their circumstances.  I struggle with this because I come from a command and control environment.  I would discover later in my career; this approach does not work with technical or creative professionals. 

 

The global economy has shifted from building things to creating experiences, services, and ideas.  It is a complicated process, and it requires more than following orders.  It requires looking at things from different perspectives.  The creative process requires a sense of craft.  Finally, it demands that people look at problems and question established answers.  People who excel at these skills are rarely the type to follow orders.  

Because we rely on information and creativity more than ever, leaders need to convince people why things need to happen instead of what needs to happen.  Give a problem to a bunch of creative people and tell them why it needs solving; you will be surprised by the effort they will put into solving it.  Telling people why something is essential creates a common cause with the team.  Explaining the urgency and necessity gives importance to work.  People with purpose are better than those with a plan.

So as a leader, you need to show others where you want them to be rather than telling them. Act as an example by listening to others and avoid asking someone to do something you would not do yourself.  Support others as they struggle to come up with solutions and listen to what others have to say.   It is surprising what you will learn.  

I do not have a magic recipe for motivating others.  Each day, I do my best to explain why certain things should happen.  The team should be concerned with how it should happen.  Finally, try to be an example for others to emulate.  Motivating others is not an easy process, but if you can do it right, the results are deeply satisfying.  

Until next time. 

A Little Empathy Goes a Long Way

Empathy is a big deal.

As a scrum master, one of the most important qualities you can have is empathy.  It is a special quality where you can put yourself in someone else’s situation and understand the world from their perspective.  It means operating outside your comfort zone.  Today, I would like to discuss the importance of empathy for a scrum master.

Working for a large organization is hard.  Employees often feel alienated from their work and coworkers. I think a significant reason for this situation is many people in leadership roles do not understand what it takes to provide the goods and services their organization offers.  These leaders are good at managing budgets and capacity but little else. It is where empathy matters.  As a leader, you need to walk a mile in another person’s shoes.  If a leader cannot do that in reality, then they must attempt the thought experiment to see the world from the perspective of the employee.

When a leader sees the organization from the perspective of the people interacting with customers several changes take place.  First, they see the people doing the work as people instead of resources who are disposable.  Next, they understand the systems and equipment the employees are using might not be meeting the needs of the customers.  Another by-product of this exercise is leadership understands how long it takes actually to build something.  It gives leadership insight into which deadlines are real and which are fiction.  Finally, leaders discover which activities generate value and which ones do not.

Early in my career, a mentor I respect said I should never order a person to do something I would not do myself.  I still follow those directions today.  It is why I go to meetings, so my coders get a chance to write software.  It is why I fill out expense forms and project requests; so the people doing the work do not have to do it.  It is part of the servant leadership I try to practice each day. So have some empathy for the people who work for you.  You will be surprised by what you might discover.

Until next time.

The Hero's journey is no substitute for a product

A hero's journey is not a substitute for a product.

Each entrepreneur goes through a sort of hero’s journey.  If they are lucky, once that journey is finished they will emerge out of the other side stronger, wiser, and accomplishing something amazing.  It is no secret the technology world uses the language of science fiction and fantasy.  That is why a company which becomes extremely profitable it is called a unicorn.  As an agilest and entrepreneur, I convince myself that I am lucky and smart enough to aspire to this status.  It is the story I tell myself.  In the dark moments, it is what keeps me going.  This week, I want to talk about when story telling crosses the shadowy line from inspiration to deception.

Carl Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis, articulated the idea the human species has a “collective unconsciousness.”  This collective unconsciousness is the common characters or myths humans use to describe themselves.  The collective unconsciousness also describes what the human species aspires to become.

Joseph Campbell then built on Jung’s work in 1948 with his book, “The Hero with A Thousand Faces,” which talks about the similarities between the mythologies of western and tribal cultures.  Roman Gods were compared with the traditions of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines.  The similarities were too hard to ignore.  We had academic proof that the human species has a common story telling tradition.

Now that this knowledge was out in the open it did not take long for others to exploit it.  One of them was a University of Southern California graduate, who just has a hit film entitled “American Graffiti.”  The other was a technology entrepreneur who cultivated the image of a mystic shaman while he sold music players and later phones.

To be successful, a company needed a story and a heroic figure to pitch that story to the media and client.  It was a way of cutting through the clutter and getting the message out.  That lesson was not lost on Elizabeth Holms who dropped out of Stanford to found her company Theranos.   She created an image which was a frittata of Hitchcock’s icy blond, Steve Jobs techno shaman, and the elegant intelligence of Meryl Streep.  Her story was simple, she was going to change the world making blood testing affordable and less invasive.  She was smart enough and stubborn enough to found a company and make it happen.

The technology press swallowed the story hook, line and sinker.  Soon she was featured in press write ups, on television promoting her company, and receiving millions of dollars in venture capital.  I will not go into the details of Theranos and the fraud they committed.  Vanity Fair Magazine has already done an outstanding job on that front.  Suffice to say, Elizabeth Holms had a good story to sell but didn’t have a product.  Her blood testing tool was nothing but fantasy.

The lesson here is that every story should have a grounding in reality.  You cannot change the world with your products if your products do not work.  The rumpled engineers have to build something before the myth makers in sales and marketing come along.  Telegenic good looks and a story are not a substitute for business acumen and a product.

Anyone who grew up during the stupid and giddy time of the dot.com bubble should have known how this story was going to end.  They chose to ignore it and suspend disbelief because the story was good.  Instead of a hero’s journey, what the public got was a true crime story of fraud and greed.
It is a sobering lesson for an entrepreneur and consumer.  I hope that we are smart enough to recognize it before it happens again.

Until next time.

March of the Flaming Squirrels

Pay attention to the Squirrels.

I have spent over 18 years working in technology.  In that time, it still surprises me how many people think what I do is magic.  Furthermore, those people think setting up complicated database and web systems are like plugging in a lamp and turning on a switch.  This creates all sorts of insane and absurd situations in the work place.

When I was a young person, one of the key measures of success was the ability to handle large piles of work with deadlines.  The metaphor my teachers used was the story of a squirrel.  Squirrels hibernate during the winter months but they still need to eat so during the summer months they spend a majority of their time gathering food to store for the winter.  They also binge eat in the fall so they have enough fat to hibernate.

I took this metaphor to heart and applied it to my undergraduate and graduate work.  Each day I spent a little time reading writing and gathering nuggets of information to help myself become successful.  It worked and it seems like a good strategy.  You do little things today so that big challenges of tomorrow don’t seem so daunting.  Then I became a software professional.

The technology world has too much work and not enough qualified people to do the work.  So instead of small efforts adding up to eventual success it takes super-human effort to prevent getting swamped from the demands of the business.  It is a like being a squirrel which is caught in a forest fire.  You still have to gather food but you also confront the grim reality of painful death.

I am spending much of my time telling business people why these “fires” are bad for the business and the software developers.  As author Jimmy Leppert says, “…firefighting creates a culture of arsonists.”  In my mind, where there are arsonists there are millions of dollars of destruction and countless maimed and dead animals.  The software developers become squirrels set ablaze.

I blame a lot of things for this.  Project are funded poorly with a fixed bid mindset.  Americans do a poor job training people to be engineers and technical professionals.  Many business leaders who manage software project have no practical knowledge about how software works.  Finally, short term thinking among business investors and leaders exacerbate this forest fire thinking.  Thus, your organization, which is a fragile ecosystem resembling a forest, is beset by arsonists with flame throwers and chain saws.

I do not have any cures for these problems but I do want to point them out so people who are smarter and more influential can fix them. In order to fix a problem, you need to understand what is causing it.  So if you see your technology staff running around like flaming squirrels you should be smart enough to kick the arsonists out of your organization.

Until next time.

Say No to Ugly Metrics

One of the perks of my job it that I get to interact with plenty of talented and smart people.  One of them is Andrew Keener and I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with him over beer to discuss game theory, the philosophy of social contract theory and metrics to improve scrum teams.  It was heady stuff and I enjoyed every moment of it and wanted to share a little of the experience with you.

Keener has a very in depth discussion of scrum in metrics on his blog on linkedin.  I will let you read that on your own.  This week I wanted to discuss his notion of ugly metrics.  According to Keener, an ugly metric is one that reinforces the dysfunction of the organization rather than provide a means to improve performance.  Business people want to measure productivity and provide objective measures for how the people under them are doing.  The trouble is that for a creative endeavor like software development it is hard to come up with meaningful ways to do the measurement.

I try to track things which are concrete like bugs in production, how many story points successfully completed by the team, and number of stories flagged as technical debt by the team.  This way we have a means to see where we are and how we can improve. If I started using these metrics as a means of performance then my developers would begin to game the system to drive up their numbers. This inspired the famous 1995 comic strip from Scott Adams below.

So as a scrum master it is our duty to measure things which are relevant to our teams.  It is also important to use those measurements to inspire positive behavior and performance rather than encourage dysfunction in the team.  Otherwise, you are no different than the pointy haired boss Scott Adams loves to mock in his comic strip.

Until next time.

Show some love for the product owner

Show your product owner some respect.

I spend a lot of time talking about agile and what it means to be a scrum master.  This week I wanted to change things up a little bit because I think many of us in the agile community have been neglecting one of the most important people in the agile process- the product owner.

I am a big fan of Roman Pichler’s book on product ownership.  In it, he says that being a product owner is one of the hardest jobs in technology.  You need to understand the nature of the business, be able to act as a liaison to the technical team, and finally understand the nature of building software.  I would like to add a few more.  A product owner should be able to advocate the priorities for the business, they should act as a cheerleader for the team, and most importantly they need to be empowered to say no.

Too often in large organizations, executives treat their departments like feudal kingdoms.  The only way to get promoted or advance is to serve at the pleasure of the lord or lady running the department.  This forces the people working under these feudal rulers to avoid telling the truth about project progress and saying no to situations which are misguided.  It is up to the product owner to act as this informed chancellor to the lord or lady of the department.  This delicate balancing act is not for the meek.

Making matters worse, if that projects in large organizations are funded by the project instead of by the department.  This means the product owner is not a full time position but rather someone appointed by an executive because they have some project management experience.  So in essence you have a product owner who is not empowered, not able to say no, and has no vested interest in the project being successful.

This is where I spend a great deal of my time trying to train product owners as they come and go in the organization.  I teach them how to write user stories.  I teach them how to write given, when, then statements to help the developers with test driven development.  I also try to help them navigate the weird world of technology as they are asked countless questions by the development team for situations they never considered.

I work with three product teams over two continents.  I also have two very different product owners.  I have to be respectful and firm to both of them.  I also feel a great deal of empathy.  They are working one of the hardest jobs in technology.  I also understand that I can be eccentric, mercurial, and a little tightly wound so their job is just a little more difficult.

So the next time you get cranky with your product owner; take a step back and think for a moment.  They are working in one of the hardest jobs in technology.  They are also working with you and your goofy technology team.  Show a little love and respect.

Until next time.

Quite Heroes Holding Back the Apocalypse

The end of the world has not happened for a reason.

A common theme in literature is how our modern conveniences separate us from devolving into a barbarous culture which makes the middle ages look like a picnic.  Books like “The Canticle of Leibowitz”, “Lord of the Flies”, and “Ready Player One” are great examples of the genre.  This week I want to talk about something you may not understand.  The only reason technology works is because hard working professionals keep it working.

Technology today has an air of glamour and money associated with it.  It was not always the case.  Engineers who worked in the boiler rooms were covered in grease and coal dust.  The person who ran the data center had paper cuts over his hands from punch cards.  The grumpy guy who maintained the AS/400 couldn’t get clothes that fit because he never slept normal hours or ate right because he kept the business running.  These people were the unsung heroes of the industrial revolution and the first wave of computing.

Today, software rules everything we do from business transactions via EDI to the latest trading algorithms used by stock brokers.  This week I discovered just how deep the rabbit hole goes in my own firm.  Minor changes that seem insignificant can have major consequences, in my case consequences which can total seven figures.  It is a revelation and it is terrifying.

It is up to software engineers, scrum masters, and business people to work together to help keep the world civilized.  It is not easy.  It requires sacrifices from families as parents work late nights getting a release ready for production.  Spouses will have to put up with impotence and sleeplessness as scrum masters grapple with obstacles and how to circumvent them.  Finally, children will have to understand that a ball game will get missed or recital skipped because a server went down and needs to be patched.  Technology workers are well compensated but that compensation comes with accepting some painful trade-offs.

Today, technology people not only in the United States but around the world are struggling to keep the global economy working.  Developers in Northern Ireland are working with engineers in India for merchantmen in Hong Kong.  Project managers in Europe and the United States, are struggling to keep the trains running on time and the projects on track.  This is a very human activity to get machines to try and play nice with other machines.  It is a human struggle that goes on each day and not many people see it.

So the next time you are enjoying air conditioning, clean drinking water, wi-fi or the latest microbrew remember you enjoy these vestiges of civilization because someone sacrificed bringing them to you.  These silent professionals are the ones who make civilization possible.

Until next time.

The Virtues of Agile: Focus

Focus Matters

This is the last of our series of articles about the virtues of Agile.  This week we cover the topic of focus.

Countless leadership books and seminars have said that focus is one of the most important skills a person or group can have if they want to succeed.  My favorite book on the subject incorporates science fiction into this scholarship.  For a software developer, focus is the key component to getting work done because it requires a tremendous amount of concentration to create software.  So of all the agile virtues, why have I saved focus for last?

This is because I strongly believe that focus comes about when the other four agile virtues are practiced.  I feel that it is not possible to have focus unless your teams have courage to get the job done, they respect each other and outsiders, are open to new ideas and challenges, and have commitment to get the job done.  The other four virtues act as lenses which generate the focus necessary to achieve goals.

I also feel this is easier said than done.  Today a person faces more distractions and obstacles to focus than any other period in contemporary business.  E-mail, instant messages, social media, and endless meetings seem to tug and pull at us like evil seagulls looking for a snack.  Add to the mix the office politics which accompanies an organization and you have a toxic stew of distractions.

This is why I like the scrum process so much.  A developer or scrum master can concentrate on a fixed goal for a fixed period.  It is easy to tell someone asking for additional features to say, “…that is a great idea we will put it into the backlog and then we can discuss it during sprint planning.”  Requests for favors go away because developers who work for me just direct those requests to the business owner and scrum master to prioritize.  This cuts down on “me to!” development which doesn’t add value but adds complexity to the project.

I am also discovering that focus needs to be reinforced on the team.  A scrum master should always say what the overall goal of the project is and how meeting sprint goals is just another land mark along the way.  A scrum master also should keep meetings to a minimum so that people who work under him or her can concentrate on what it takes to get the job done.  Finally, as a leader, the scrum master should pick a few attainable goals and stick with them.  This should create focus for the rest of the team.  If this strategy is good enough for the Secretary of the Navy then it is good enough for me.

It is easy to write about scrum.  It is much harder to actually do it in the real world.  I hope that this series has given you a chance to reflect on the agile virtues and how to use them in the real world. I look forward to sharing more of my acquired wisdom in the New Year.

Have a safe and sane New Year.

Expectations in a Age of Magic

Sometimes it is rocket science.

One of the funniest social criticism ever made came from comedian Louis CK.  In his discussion with late night host Conan O’Brien, he talks about how fantastic technology has become and no one is happy with it.  I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws of predicting the future the most famous being, “Any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  This week on the blog I wanted to discuss expectation setting and getting your business partners to have realistic expectations about technology.

I was thinking about this topic this week as I was watching the coverage of the Rosetta space probe and it placing a lander on the comet.  The technical achievement was astounding.  Over ten years and one and a half billion euros we not only got to see the surface of a comet but we actually landed an object the size of a consumer dishwasher on the surface.  What made this more satisfying was how the science press and the main stream media covered the event. Both seem to admit that success or failure, the European Space Agency’s did the best it could do and that whatever happened it was a big achievement.

Wryly, I joked on LinkedIn that I was looking forward to some of my business partners saying, “If we can land something on a comet why can’t we do X with the web site.”   My mild cynicism hit a nerve because people began to comment and tweet me saying they were expecting similar answers.  This is when it hit me.  Numerous people who work with technology really do not understand how that technology works.  They just take it for granted.  It really is “indistinguishable from magic.”  They can get the weather forecast in Toronto, schedule a truck to deliver products to the city and electronically communicate with Canadian customs to avoid the truck being stopped at the border.  They do it with technologies like the internet, EDI, and Java but they really do not understand how these technologies work.  They just take it for granted that they do.

This is when more knowledgeable people need to step in with expectations.  We understand the amount of work which needs to be done and the difficulty of the tasks.  We also understand that most technology problems in a contemporary business are not technology problems.  They are people problems which could be better solved by individuals working better together.  So when someone says, I would love to have “X” on the web site; ask the hard questions and find out if these improvements are necessary.  Ask about technical debt and why the organization tolerates it.

It is the responsibility of technical professionals to act like the engineers we were trained to be rather than magicians carefully guarding our secrets.  Business partners need to understand the trade-offs which are made every day to keep the organization running.  A new feature for the billing system or web site doesn't pop into existence from the mind of the business owner.  It requires work from developers and quality specialists.  It needs to be accepted by the business.  Finally, it has to be accepted by consumers.

This is not an easy road but it is certainly easier than landing a probe on a comet.

Until next time.

The Vision Thing

We have a vision.

Technology is a shambling monster of innovation and conflicting visions.  One week, we view the future being made in virtual reality with companies like Occulus.  The next week we view self-driving cars.  It is enough to make someone’s head spin.  I myself wonder about all the new innovations and changes taking place.  As an entrepreneur, do I ride the latest trends or do I follow my own trail.  This week I want to talk about where my head and heart take me.

The two biggest trends in technology are the increase in mobile computing with smart phones and the rise of cloud computing.  I have been watching both grow for years and I have been talking about it for a long time.   I think that Microsoft has been leader in the area of cloud computing with its Azure services while they have stumbled in the area mobile devices.  I think with the launch of the Surface Pro 3 that they will have a device which will knock some competitors on their behinds.

When I founded this company four years ago I saw these trends in motion and wanted to help small and medium sized businesses take advantage of these technologies.  It is not glamorous or sexy but it felt like a niche which I could fill.  This way a small business owner has the same powers and features as a Fortune 500 firm.  They can use mobile applications and the cloud to help grow their business.  I imagine a sales person for a small firm doing a sale punching a few keys on their cell phone and the transaction going through with minimal human intervention.

This is the dream of my firm and I look forward to making it a reality.  Please contact us today and we will show you how.

Until next time.