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Help Someone: Fire Them! July 29, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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3 comments

In my last post, I wrote about helping successful people succeed even more by finding them opportunities outside of your organization.We can’t always accommodate every successful person; good leaders help these high-achievers by letting them go to excel somewhere else.  It’s hard, but it’s necessary.

But what of those who are not succeeding in your team?  Ironically, you use the same solution: you let them go to excel somewhere else.  It may be even harder, but it’s certainly just as necessary.

Typically, a person is failing in your organization because they cannot handle their job.  We’ve all been in this position, recognizing that an employee simply is not going to be successful for a variety of reasons.  In these cases, after exhausting every way to make them successful in their current spot, we must find ways to make them successful somewhere else.

For people who truly want to succeed, this can ultimately be a rewarding experience.  I once had a person who worked for me as a Unix administrator.  Believe it or not, this was his dream job, but for everyone else it was a nightmare.  He was simply not cut out for the world of Unix systems administration.  As his performance declined, I finally had to sit this person down and give them the bad news: he was being removed from the Unix admin team.

Tears literally rolled down his cheeks as he saw his dream job disappear.  But we did not fire this person.  Recognizing the desire but acknowledging the skills mismatch, we moved him to the email management team.  And he thrived!  He became the greatest email admin ever, and grew to love that job.  Later, he shared with me that being cut from the Unix group as the best thing that ever happened to him. The pain of breaking his heart led to the joy of unforeseen success.

But what if you don’t have a great alternative position for someone who cannot handle their job?  You still must let them go, but it is up to them to find their new opportunity.  Even when we have to fire someone, it is still in their best interest.  Someone who is not succeeding in their current position is not happy.  That negative influence makes everyone unhappy.  By moving them out so they can find a place to be happy, everyone ultimately wins.

I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to fire a number of people. In almost every case, when they ask why, I explain how they will be incapable of succeeding in their current position.  I try to show them that moving to a new opportunity really is for the best, but that’s hard to see right away. But when that person moves on to some place new, where they can succeed and become happy, they will look back on being fired as a good thing.  Getting let go is always awful, but it can be the cathartic moment that leads to unimagined success.

Most people hate the thought of firing someone and will avoid doing it at almost any cost.  That’s a bad decision and the mark of a weak leader.  If you can honestly say that you have exhausted every tool at your disposal to help someone succeed, you have no choice but to let them go. Retaining poor performers to avoid an unpleasant confrontation hurts them, hurts your team, and ultimately hurts you.  Good leaders fire unsuccessful people.

And therein lies the importance of firing someone.  You are not punishing them for poor performance; you are releasing them to deliver a better performance somewhere else.  In these cases, the only true failure is the leader who does not have the wherewithal to fire someone so that they can succeed somewhere else.

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Here Or There? July 27, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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3 comments

I believe that a leader is responsible for the success of his or her people.  There are two simple rules to make sure that happens:

  1. Help everyone succeed.
  2. Hopefully, here.

Our job is to follow rule 1.  Through a combination of coaching, mentoring, challenging, prodding, wheedling, and cajoling, we want to make our people successful.

Ideally, we also want to achieve rule 2. We want our people to be successful while they are on our team.  Their individual success contributes to the team’s success, and that’s good for everyone. But the unfortunate reality is that most people will achieve rule 1 but break rule 2.  Why?

Sometimes, a member of your team is growing and succeeding faster than you can support them within your organization.  Particularly in these constrained times, there are few opportunities to create new positions to reward and challenge these high achievers.  In these cases, people may leave your organization to become even more successful somewhere else.  Ideally, you’ll help them find that new place, even if it means that you’ll lose a good person.

That’s a challenge to your leadership skills.  “A” leaders will help a high-flier move on, sad to lose a great person but happy to see them go on to bigger and better things.  “B” leaders hoard their best people, denying them the chance to excel by trapping them in their existing positions.  That’s a selfish way to run a business, and those good people will someday just quit anyway.

People need not leave your company to become successful.  They may need to leave your organization to grow and thrive in a different part of the company.  That’s a wonderful scenario for all concerned: the individual gets to succeed, the company retains a great employee, and you gain an ambassador for IT in a different part of the company.

This last benefit can be a huge one.  Very few people outside of IT understand how we really function.  This lack of understanding can lead to confusion, disappointment, and conflict.  By placing experienced IT people into other groups, you create an opportunity for others to learn more about IT, defusing those confrontations and gaining the trust of the business.

Even when good people must leave the company to move on, you should be happy to help them find success elsewhere.  While the future daily interaction with them will be far smaller, having good relationships with other companies always helps.  You never know when you might have to call on that person to assist with a problem, smooth a negotiation, or reach out to someone else.

I’ve had the privilege of being part of both of these scenarios.  It is rewarding to see IT people move on to successful roles elsewhere in the company, and to see how they bring positive benefits back to IT in their new position.  I’ve also mentored people who were struggling with a new opportunity, advising them to take it even when it meant they were leaving my company.  When I see them succeed in their new company, how could I have advised them any other way?  When they provided a beneficial connection to someone in their company, that’s just icing on the cake.

When all is said and done, all that matters is rule 1.  You must achieve rule 1, even at the expense of rule 2.  As a leader, are you ready to let your best people go to succeed somewhere else?

Broadway Leadership July 24, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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3 comments

I recently spent a long weekend in New York City.  Among other things, I was able to attend three Broadway shows in three nights.  This is a rare treat; my love of Broadway theater goes back to my childhood.  I was part of many productions in high school, even if my professional career (ahem!) never really took off the way I might have hoped.

Although I have come to accept that I will never win a Tony, I carry with me the lessons learned from my days on the stage of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School.  Many of the core skills of the theater can help all of us be better leaders.

Leadership is about communication, and communication is about getting up in front of people.  More people fear public speaking than dying, and the only way to overcome that fear is to get up and do it, over and over.  If nothing else, being in a show will teach you how to get up in front of a group of strangers and do all sorts of foolish things.  With that experience, making a simple business presentation is child’s play.

But effective communication is more than just getting up and speaking.  Theater teaches you to face the audience, to keep your face in the lights, to project, to speak clearly, to wait for laughs and applause.  You learn how to read an audience, and how to develop pacing and timing.  These kind of communication skills will benefit anyone, but are a core component of every effective leader.

Theater experience goes beyond performing.  As part of a troupe, actors rely on each other to deliver a unified performance.  The analogies to business teams are obvious, but the subtleties of the stage bear repeating.  Respect the other actors and give them their time in the spotlight. Don’t step on someone else’s lines (or applause!).  When you sing and dance, since and dance together.  And when you take a curtain call, make sure everyone gets to take a bow.

For many of us, gaining theater experience now is not an option, although community theater always beckons.  As an alternative, organizations like Toastmasters can provide excellent training in public speaking.  For our children, however, it is not too late to encourage them to try out for a play at school, or to get involved in some aspect of performing.  The lifetime benefits of that experience will be invaluable.

Even if you will never walk the boards and feel the lights, you can always attend a performance, either on Broadway or when a touring company comes to your town. In this day of digital everything presented on screens we hold in our hands, it is entrancing to sit and watch live people sing, dance, and act along with live musicians playing live music. It is magical and inspiring, and it is something everyone needs to experience.

Never forget: every leader is a performer, whether you like it or not.  Break  a leg!

For Those About To Rock July 22, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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2 comments

My very first job as a software developer was as a compiler writer.  I worked at Harris Corporation as part of a team developing the compiler for the Harris Programming Language. HPL was designed in the days when having your own programming language made perfect sense, and it took a crew of us to maintain the seven-pass compiler that produced code to run on both IBM mainframes and 8086 microprocessors.

The compiler was written in HPL, of course, and I began writing toy programs to learn the new language.  In the course of my experiments, I uncovered dozens of bugs in the compiler. I dutifully recorded each and every one as an APAR (Authorized Program Analysis and Report).  Over a period of a week or so, I accumulated several dozen APARs.

At the end of my “training” I delivered my stack of APARs to my boss.  He flipped through them, commended me on my diligent and thorough work, and handed the stack back to me:  “Fix ’em!”

What?  Who could have predicted this unexpected turn of events? Here I was, heroically finding all sorts of flaws and gaps in their compiler, and this was my reward?

Fortunately, my teammates were forgiving of the enthusiastic, albeit selfishly misguided, newby and put up with my insulting list of APARs.  Those bugs weren’t news to anyone but me: the team knew that they existed but involved features that were unused by the developers, so the bugs never affected actual users. If I’d spent more time talking to the team instead of poking at their code, I’d have learned that.

Everyone on a team is in the same boat, for better or worse.  Someone decides where the boat is going and gets to steer.  Everyone else has a choice: rock the boat to express your displeasure at the chosen destination, or row as hard as you can to get there.

Choosing to rock can be a risky decision.  Sometimes, a little rocking gets the leader’s attention and results in a positive course change.  Sometimes you rock too hard and capsize the boat.  And sometimes the rocking scares everyone else in the boat, and they throw you overboard. Fortunately, I learned that my rocking was inappropriate, and I settled down to row.

Choosing to row is the safer path, but not always the wise one.  Helping the boat get to the wrong destination is never a good thing, but working with the team is important.  When you are sitting in the boat, you can’t see what the helmsman can see.  Unless you are sure he is headed for a rocky landing, your best bet may be to row as hard as you can.

As a leader with your hand on the tiller, are you paying attention to the crew or staring off at the horizon? Is someone gently rocking, trying to get your attention?  Is everyone pulling together to keep things moving? Only you can make that call, and only if you are keenly aware of each member in your crew.

Sometimes we rock, and often we row.  What’s your choice today?

Go Away! July 15, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership, Random Musings.
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5 comments

As the summer reaches it peak, let’s all take moment to consider the importance of vacations.

This seems patently obvious; I doubt that many people would come out against vacations in any sort of popularity contest.  For many of us, though, vacations can generate a lot of talk but very little action.  As our jobs become busier and busier, it can get harder and harder to actually set aside time and get away for a while.

However, leaders need to set examples for their people, and vacations are no exception.  If you think vacations are important, lead by example and take one!  Here’s why:

  • You really need the time to get away.
  • Your people really need you to go away.

For you: go somewhere and clear your head. Break free of overwhelming detail to get a fresh perspective on everything: life, work, family, and everything else that is important to you.  I find that my best thinking is done during extended absences from work, when time and distance gives a perspective that is simply not available in the daily trenches of your job.

Whenever I get away, I typically return with a laundry list of ideas.  Solutions to nagging problems suddenly gel and new paths to explore present themselves.  It is refreshing and invigorating to be able to step away and refocus on everything.

For your people: I don’t mean to chip away at your fragile ego, but your company will survive in your absence.  So will your organization, if you are doing things right.  There is no clearer sign of a bad leader than when his team collapses in his absence.  If you are micromanaging the world to the point that nothing happens when you are away, you are not serving your people, your company, or yourself.

Your team needs a chance to run things while you are away.  Ideally, they are completely capable of running things anyway.  Your absence simply lets them prove that to themselves. Dealing with things in your absence lets them explore solutions on their own, deal with details without pulling you in (or you horning in!), and resolve things from start to finish.  Not only do they get crucial experience, they get a huge boost of confidence.

Recently, many companies have stopped allowing people to roll vacation days over from one year to the next.  While there are clear financial benefits to this policy, I think the personnel benefits are far more important.  We all know of those folks who simply never take vacations, accruing weeks and weeks of time off in the process.  While a tiny minority of people really are saving for that eight-week excursion around the world, most people are simply never going to take that time. By forcing people to take their time each year, you force people to help themselves with a much-needed diversion.

Resolve to take time off.  Encourage your people to do the same, and set a good example by going on vacation. The time you spend away may be the best thing you do to improve the time you spend at work!