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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?

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?

The ABCs of Hiring July 1, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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9 comments

Few of us get to assemble our teams from scratch.  Most likely, we acquire a team as we move into a new position.  Much like a college football coach that inherits players recruited by his predecessor, we have to play the game with the team with have.

Over time, we get to reshape the team to our liking.  As folks move on to new opportunities, or as you “assist” folks in moving on to new opportunities, you’ll get the chance to bring new people to your team.  This is a big test for any leader.  People understand that you are not fully responsible for the team you inherit, but they won’t be as compassionate when someone you brought to the team drops the ball.

There’s a simple rule for hiring that should shape these decisions:

A people hire other A people.  B people hire C people.

When asked, every leader will insist that they hire only the best, brightest candidates.  But do they?

The best leaders surround themselves with people smarter than they are.  The best teams to lead are those where you are the dumbest person in the room.  If you are the smartest person in the room, your team has a serious problem. Find experts in the pertinent domains, create a culture that supports their efforts, and get out of the way.

Sadly, not every leader is the best leader.  Lesser leaders hire lesser people, intended to make themselves look good.  The result is a team of people that collectively rank just below the skills of the leader.  Given that any leader following this strategy is less than stellar, the entire team winds up being mediocre at best.

Few leaders will admit that they are intentionally hiring sub-standard candidates to make themselves look good.  Where, then, is this rule being applied? By everyone around you, that’s where.

People will closely scrutinize your every hiring decision.  Their assessment of each new candidate will reflect on you.  If you make good hiring decisions, people will notice.  If you make bad hiring decisions, people will notice and talk about it.  You may claim (and even believe) that you are hiring A players, but every C player you bring aboard knocks you further down the scale to becoming a B leader.

This ABC rule goes beyond technical ability.  It’s even more important when people consider the fit of your candidates into the current culture.  The ease with which your new team members integrate into the culture says a lot about how much you respect that culture.  If you diminish the importance of culture in your hiring decisions, you can lose the support of your existing team.  You may also make it much harder for your new people to succeed in their new role.

No one wants to be thought of as a B or C leader.  Seek out the A candidates while hiring, and you’ll go a long way to ensuring your own success as an A leader.

Swing, Batter-Batter-Batter! June 29, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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9 comments

It’s easy to tell when a youth baseball team is struggling: they fall silent.  If the silence persists for any length of time, the coach (or a parent in the stands) will yell out, “Let’s hear a little chatter out there!”  This request hopefully refocuses the team as they start talking again.

Baseball chatter falls into two broad categories: inane repetitive noise and helpful advice between the players.  The inane noise is designed to annoy and distract the opposing team, especially the pitcher and batter as they duel at the plate.  The helpful advice is more important: players call out potential defensive plays, adjust coverage, warn about possible bunts or steals, and so forth.

The parallels for any support team, and especially IT organizations, is obvious.  A happy team is constantly communicating with themselves, in matters both large and small.  As changes occur and problems arise, they go out of their way to make sure people know what is going on.  The communication is fluid and consistent.  Ideally, most of the chatter should fall into the “helpful advice” category, although it could be fun to taunt your DBA during a big upgrade. (“Drop, table-table-table!”)

As a leader, are you listening for chatter in your team?  Are you even in a position to hear it?  Chatter is in the break room, the hallways, and the parking lot.  It’s both verbal and electronic, via Twitter, SMS, and instant messaging. Chatter isn’t in the formal memos, project charters, and design documents.  It may not even be in the general email flow.  In fact, formal communication is the enemy of chatter.

When teams get bogged down in Memos and Documents, they stop chattering.  They begin to formalize their communication, creating paper trails and looking to cover their read ends.  They think before sharing and selectively reveal information to suit their own agendas.  This kind of thinking, putting self before team, is disastrous for any group.  If it persists, the whole group will fail.

Leaders must create a culture that promotes chatter.  This includes both physical and cultural components:

  • Does the work environment provide places for people to gather and chatter?  Are teams co-located so they naturally interact?  Are there places for groups to meet informally?  Is it easy to see when people have gathered, so that others can join the conversation?
  • Are people inclined to chatter?  It’s easy for people to send email back and forth all day.  Do you encourage them to get up and actually engage in conversations?  Do you walk around and engage in conversations?  Do you provide positive feedback to groups when you see them gathering and chattering?  Do you use chatter to communicate to your direct reports?

Stuffy, staid environments inhibit chatter.  Do you work in such an environment?  Have you inadvertently created one?  Here’s an easy test: from your office, can you occasionally hear laughter?  If your people are not enjoying themselves to the point where they laugh every now and then, how can you expect them to chatter?  How often do you laugh with your team?

Our work teams are more complicated than a baseball team, but the core value of chatter is just as important.  We can’t simply call out and make them start chattering.  We have to build environments and foster cultures that make people chatter on their own.  Are your people chattering?

Getting Through Adversity June 17, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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2 comments

The current recession has generated countless articles and blog postings on leadership during tough times.  I’ve been hit with surveys on the topic, as well as innumerable offers for seminars and courses to help me through these times. All of these offers, articles, and surveys have the same approach: how to cut back, do more with less, and still maintain productivity in spite of limited resources.

This is not another one of those articles.

Leading in difficult times is not about making your budget work.  It’s not about figuring out who to let go, or which project to cancel, or how to adjust ROI to reflect the new austerity.  Those things are important, but they are all part of managing during difficult times.  We’re supposed to know how to do these things.  If you can’t, what are you doing in charge?  Anyone can succeed in good times; if you can’t manage in bad times, what can you manage?

Leading in tough times is about getting your people through the tough times.  The tight budget, the reduced projects, the smaller staff all result in stressed, nervous people.  They worry about their jobs and their families.  They look for any small sign that something is wrong.  Even small things get blown out of proportion, resulting in rumors and distractions.

Our job is to keep that from happening.  Leaders make sure their people are secure, informed, and as comfortable as possible.  We need to project confidence and competence.  Our people need to know that a steady hand is on the tiller and that things are being managed correctly.

If we appear nervous or unsure in difficult times, our people will reflect that back to us.  If we are calm and collected, they’ll pick up on that as well. While our situation is often not our choice, our attitude is. We need to choose wisely every day.

The best way to keep our team calm and sure is to communicate with them, all the time, in things large and small.  Don’t mislead them.  Don’t sugar-coat bad news.  Offer your honest opinions on the situation and help them understand what you are doing and how they will be affected.  This isn’t easy, but every good leader needs to learn these skills.

The current downturn may not end for a while.  Your team’s ability to succeed in spite of the situation has nothing to do with how you manage in the current climate.  It’s all about how you lead them through it.  What are you doing to lead them to the better days ahead?