Three Envelopes April 20, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Best Of 2009, Denial, Leadership, Management Skills, Responsibility
10 comments
According to the apocryphal story, a person is hired to replace someone who was fired for poor performance. Excited about his new job, he arrives in the recently vacated office to find the desk empty except for three envelopes left there by the now-departed predecessor. Numbered 1, 2, and 3, a short note explains that they are to be opened only when the owner has really messed things up at work. Our new hire sticks them in a drawer and forgets about them.
That is, until six months later, when he really messes things up. Facing a tough situation, he remembers the envelopes. He tears open envelope #1 to find a slip of paper that reads, “Blame your predecessor.” Perfect! He concocts a story that pins the problems on the previous employee and deftly sidesteps blame for the issue.
Another six months go by, and again our friend is in trouble. This time, the envelopes are fresh in his mind, so he opens #2. “Blame your coworkers,” it advises. He does, and once again avoids taking the fall for a problem he caused.
It should come as no surprise that six months later, he’s in trouble again. Fortunately, there is still another envelope. He opens number 3, to find one last bit of advice: “Prepare three envelopes.”
A person’s character can be neatly judged when we see how they handle mistakes. We are all human; we all fail. When confronted with that failure, our next move paints a picture of how we handle responsibility and blame. Do you step up and own the problem, or do you reach for an envelope?
Good people step up. They acknowledge the problem, accept the blame, and work doubly hard to correct the problem. It is a sad commentary on our world today that most people are pleasantly surprised when you do this. While you may not be able to completely rectify the problem, you will earn some measure of respect by taking ownership of the issue. The problem may not be fixed, but your character is intact.
Bad people step away. They look to blame anyone except themselves, and will sacrifice anyone to protect themselves. Blaming predecessors and coworkers will work for a while, but you will eventually run out of envelopes. The problems remain, but you will not. And your character will be irreparably tarnished.
We all have three envelopes available to us, every day. We’ll all make mistakes at some point. When that happens, don’t reach for an envelope. Own it, fix it, and move on.
Your Next 10,000 April 17, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Best Of 2009, Leadership, Management Skills
2 comments
In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell explores why people are really successful. I’ve included the book on my reading list, but can save you the full read by cutting to the chase: Luck and timing.
OK, to be honest, there are a few other factors that make the book worth reading. One of them is the magic of 10,000 hours. Gladwell found that, regardless of the field, it takes about 10,000 hours to get good at something. Violin, hockey, computer programming: whatever the skill, the very best put in 10,000 solid hours of practice before achieving real success in their field.
This holds true for leadership as well. For years, I’ve noticed that job postings for management positions often require a minimum of five years management experience. Hmmm. Five years is equal to 10,000 hours of management experience. While not explicitly stating it, people have intuitively recognized the 10,000-hour rule for a long time.
Getting your 10,000 hours takes commitment, no matter what your field of expertise. My concern is not with the 10,000 hours you’ve managed to amass at this point, but with the 10,000 you’ll need to get to the next stage of your career.
Are you content with your current position? Do you aspire to take on more responsibility and to accomplish more things? Most people, no matter how happy they may be, desire to do more and contribute more. Among those with such aspirations, some actually have a plan to get there. But I fear that even among those with a plan, few have realized that they need to amass 10,000 hours to be really good when they get there.
If you are a technical contributor who aspires to be a manager, how are you accumulating 10,000 hours of management experience? If you are a team leader who hopes to lead larger groups, how are you getting your 10,000 hours of managing other managers? If you are a CIO who hopes to take on other operational responsibilities, how are you getting 10,000 hours of finance or operations experience?
10,000 hours is a lot of time, especially when your current job occupies 2,000 hours of time each year. How do you make this happen? Even if you put in an extra 4 hours a day, it could take 10 years to get those hours!
First the good news: you probably don’t need the full 10,000 hours to make a career transition. But you do need some experience, probably on the order of 2-4,000 hours, to make a successful change that will let you get the remaining 6-8,000 at a faster pace. Even so, 2-4,000 hours is a big investment of time. How do you do it?
First, simply recognizing that you need it is a good first step. Armed with that daunting realization, you can develop a formal plan to put in your time. While some people have jobs that allow them to take on additional responsibilities independent of their main commitment, most of us do not. In that case, you need to seek out opportunities to combine your current job with your desired job. The technical contributor should look for project management opportunities, while the team lead could seek out ways to lead their peers. C-level executives can look for cross-organization openings, and CIOs in particular can often find ways to get deep exposure to other parts of the company. And anyone can volunteer in a local charitable organization; that’s a whole different kind of leadership experience that would serve anyone well.
It won’t be easy, but success never is. That’s the other side effect of the 10,000-hour rule: only those who really want it badly enough will get the hours. Everyone else will fall by the wayside. And that is one of the other big lessons of Outliers: success comes to those who work really hard for a long time. Are you up to it? Are you an outlier?
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Bad Salesman! April 15, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Leadership, Relationships, Sales
9 comments
I get a lot of cold sales calls. I can only take a few, and most get either redirected or ignored. I know that sounds harsh, but that is the reality. My people get a lot of sales calls. They can only take a few, and most get ignored. I know that sounds harsh, but that is the reality.
If you are a salesperson, and you are cold-calling me or my team, and we do not return your call, you have your answer. That may not be the most polite way of conveying the answer, but please, move on. We’re busy and you’re busy. Spend your time with a more lucrative customer.
I have tremendous respect for salespeople and how hard their job is. I really appreciate the great salespeople that partner with me and make me successful. I get really frustrated when a bad salesperson makes the rest of them look bad. Like the other day, for example.
Out of the blue, I get blind-copied on an email sent to my systems manager from some salesperson. In it, the salesperson is complaining about how my manager won’t make time for him, and how we could be saving so much money if only he would return the salesperson’s call. The inference, of course, is that my manager is negligent and that I need to step in and do something about it.
In reality, I am pleased to see that my manager has been ignoring an incompetent salesperson. He scores brownie points, and the salesperson (and their company) is banished from consideration by me for the rest of my career.
What kind of salesperson actually believes that this is an effective sales technique? Are they sitting back in their office, confident that this will break things loose on our end and result in a big sale? If so, they are sadly mistaken. When faced with a choice between some anonymous outside party and a member of my hardworking team, who do they think I am going to pick?
What kind of leader would take action based on this email? Clearly, someone must have at some point, to give all these bad salespeople some hope that this tactic would work. Let’s put it this way: those leaders are not making smart choices. Imagine how demoralizing it is for an employee to be taken to task by his boss based on an anonymous outside comment by a salesperson!
Salespeople who resort to this kind of tactic give all the good salespeople a bad name. Leaders who respond to it make the rest of the leaders look bad as well. Let all make good choices, no matter which side of the sales process you are on.
Get It In Writing April 13, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Management Skills, Project Management, Technology, Users
1 comment so far
When I worked in R&D, we shared our building with another group whose job was to improve engineering productivity. They took their job quite seriously and had a mandate to investigate any aspect of the engineering groups that appeared to be in need of improved productivity. They weren’t engineers, but they did claim to understand process and project management, and they often used a new acronym, TQM, as a sign that they were on the cutting edge of this kind of stuff.
As you can imagine, the engineers were not overly enamored of this group. Fortunately, the productivity team must have decided that our R&D group was beyond help, productivity-wise, since my group was rarely the target of their attention. On the whole, our groups got along pretty well and often shared information.
At some point, a few folks from the productivity group got involved in a fairly elaborate project, working with another division in my company. They were very excited about this project, which involved some fancy new computer system to collect and analyze a lot of data. The more this woman talked, the more excited she got about the project, and the more doubtful I became of her chances of success.
After a bit, I asked her about system performance. The data volume was large and the analysis was complex. Even with the best current technology, a functional solution would be a challenge to build. Would the system be able to perform well? Would the users be happy with response time?
She didn’t miss a beat. “Of course, it will perform well! We wrote that into the requirements!”
And off she went. With the stroke of a pen, she had solved any and all performance issues this new system might have. As you might imagine, the project never finished, for a variety of reasons.
It is easy to listen to this story and laugh at the naivete of non-IT people. How could anyone design such a complicated system and them make it perform well with a simple written requirement?
The deeper lesson (you knew there would be a deeper lesson, right?) is that someone failed to educate this person as to the real complexity of her project. Non-IT people cannot understand what we do. Unfortunately, when we do it well, we make it look very easy. When it looks easy, people assume that it is easy and base their world on that assumption. This results in projects that fail to meet user expectations.
Users do not want to know the details of our technology. But they need to know when things are really hard or really expensive. If they probe, you can explain why. We owe them enough information, matched to their curiosity, so that they can appropriately plan and manage their world. If we fail to do that, we have failed them, no matter how well our technology works.
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