A pressing deadline is a powerful thing. Without a deadline, ideas can drown each other competing for supremacy in a sea of data. People use and abuse their own value functions to find fault with any possible approach. But faced with a deadline, thinkers break out of analysis paralysis and become doers. Of course, an unrealistic deadline just causes panic and sloppy work as people scramble to meet impossible goals and push themselves deep into technical debt.
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In praise of deadlines
October 20th, 2009 — Management, Software Development
Hanging out with the braintrust
October 14th, 2009 — EMC
Today was EMC’s third annual innovation conference, and as one of over 700 employees who submitted an idea I was invited to attend the proceedings at our local regional leg of the global event.
Peer to peer development
October 6th, 2009 — Software Development
Sorry Napster fans, I’m talking about a different kind of P2P here … career development in a peer-driven context.
In nearly every group I’ve joined, some bright developers eventually banded together and decided they were frustrated at feeling out of touch with the industry. The answer has always been some sort of peer-driven career development effort. For example, back in the late 90s, I remember we set up a regular meeting which the entire Navisphere development organization was invited to. Each week (or was it month?) a speaker would present on something new they had learned. Occasionally, a guest speaker from another organization would present on something they were doing. The speaking responsibility rotated among volunteers until we realized it was basically the same 3 people over and over again, and it fizzled out.
Why I almost love Mixero
September 29th, 2009 — Social Media
I’ve been tinkering with twitter for almost two years now, on multiple accounts, trying to find the perfect way to integrate it into my daily life. And while my activity level on twitter has never been consistent, one thing has — the growth in the number of people I’m following. I realized early on that there comes a time when you have to decide whether to be lean in who you follow, or whether you have to start counting on tools to help you organize the data flow.
Never one to turn down a chance to play with tools, I’ve taken the latter approach (though in moderation; I still follow less than a thousand people). My latest twitter client is the Mixero beta, and after talking about it with a friend I decided it was time to do a little writeup. See, Mixero is almost great, but it’s the almost that is nagging at me week after week. I’m hoping that when it goes GA, we’ll see the client I know it can be….
From the “no kidding” department
September 22nd, 2009 — Corporate
Watson Wyatt surprised nobody this week when they released results of a new study that showed massive drops in employee engagement and morale of late. Well, that’s not entirely true … some of what they said surprised me. Here’s a quote:
Employee engagement levels for all workers at the companies surveyed have dropped 9 percent since last year, and close to 25 percent for top performers.
If one assumes that in general top performers are more engaged than their peers, this stat suggests maybe the engagement levels, well, leveled. There’s one more ugly stat in there:
Forty-one percent of employees indicate that changes have had an adverse impact on quality and customer service, while only 17 percent of employers believe this is the case.
So let’s get this straight. We’ve got massive disconnect between corporate perception and employee perception, and our most critical people are disengaged and uninspired.
What’s a manager to do?
Well, you could do worse than to model your response after what successful companies do during times like these: invest in the things that matter most, take market share, and be ready to emerge from the rough times stronger than your competitors.
Now more than ever it’s important to get the little things right. You may have zero budget, zero time, and nothing but grim news. But you’ve got to find ways to invest in your relationships with your co-workers.
Say hello to Hiren
September 14th, 2009 — EMC
Last week, I was part of a conversation with some co-workers who spoke about another employee and his prolific blog and said, “isn’t that a sign that he doesn’t have much to do?”
If only the truth were that simple.
Another co-worker asked me when I usually did my blogging. I told him the truth — I usually get Monday’s blog entry written on Sunday night, unless I’m lucky enough to have had a great idea during the previous week in which case Sunday night is for putting the finishing touches on a post which I started earlier. A productive week is one where another topic pops up during the week and I’m able to get some words down “on paper” on a weeknight.
I very rarely work on this blog during the business day; I just don’t have time.
I know the same holds true for another Ionix blogger I’d like to introduce you to this week: Hiren Doshi, who writes Practice Agile, a brand new blog about agile development seen through the lens of someone working at EMC Ionix. I’ve worked with Hiren for a few years now in various capacities and he “gets it.” I’m glad he’s dipping his toe in the blogging pool and I look forward to reading more from him. He and I are working on projects that interact, so if you pay enough attention to what we both talk about you can get a pretty good idea of what working in this little neighborhood of EMC Ionix is probably like.
Know your (social media) norms
September 8th, 2009 — Corporate, Social Media
(Those of you old enough to remember Cheers, I’m not talking about that Norm.)
I was paging through my reader this evening and came across an article by the always-wise Jeremiah Owyang about handling your boss’s connecting with you on Facebook. You probably know where I stand on this already, especially if you’ve read my post “Five reasons to ‘friend’ your co-workers (or boss!)“. Basically, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage if you have the opportunity to do this, and don’t.
But one thing Owyang talks about that I failed to, is how to handle being the boss and entering this situation. As a manager I’ve been in this situation a couple times, and chatted about it with co-workers over lunch. The key to avoiding difficulty is knowing (and communicating) your social media norms. For reference, here are mine, as relate to mixing work and online networking:
Saying goodbye to a legend
August 31st, 2009 — EMC
I didn’t know Dick Egan, never had a conversation with him. I knew him by reputation alone, a larger-than-life legend out of the misty past of EMC’s glory days. It’s not often you hear the words “self-made billionaire.” If you work in high tech, especially in Massachusetts (or in storage), your story and his probably intersect somewhere.
I don’t presume to speak for those who knew him. But when I came back from vacation this past weekend and saw the news of his death, it was those people I thought of, the people who helped build EMC into the place it is today, who bridged the gap between the EMC before 2001 and the EMC of 2009, who were there to see Egan’s vision and adapted it into a vision for the next century. I thought of Polly Pearson’s post about the rise of EMC’s stock during the 90s, and about Egan’s response to the Working Mother’s Experience book. I thought of the many long-tenured employees who would have memories of the early days, and wondered what they would say. I expect the coming week will bring out a lot of personal stories from those people and others.
My heart goes out to all of Egan’s Many Children, and to the large and literal family he also leaves behind.
On dodging buses
August 24th, 2009 — Corporate
The following is inspired by a number of true stories, though it is fiction:
Susan, manager of a development team, receives an email (sent to several dozen people) that the sanity test cycle is being held up because of a problem … a problem she thought had been fixed. She sends a hurried “reply to all” saying as such, asking whether the fix ever made it in. Igor knows his teammate Rosalina was ironing out some last-minute issues with the fix late last night, but doesn’t know what happened. Igor sends a reply-to-all saying “Rosalina was supposed to check in that fix,” prompting Susan to ask, in front of the same 50 people, whether the fix ever made it in, in some rather unhappy language. Rosalina replies a few moments later that the fix was held up, but that a manual workaround has been applied and testing can continue.
On the surface this looks mundane, but if you look a bit deeper it exposes some behaviors which can have a lasting negative effect on the team. It’s bad enough when your teammate throws you under a bus to get ahead … but Igor has thrown Rosalina under a bus and gained nothing out of it. This is a blame-avoidance culture gone too far. Igor is so scared of getting in trouble that his first reaction isn’t to fix the problem, it’s to dodge the incoming blame missiles.
I can’t blame Igor for what he’s done. He’s been trained, either by Susan or by other managers, to do this. But imagine everything else about the story is the same, except Igor takes the time to walk over to Rosalina’s desk, they converse for a moment, and then Rosalina responds to the email, “I was working with Igor on that problem late last night. I applied a workaround while we work out some last-minute details.”
The situation is no different, and nobody is being deceived or misled or any problems buried. It’s just a matter of changing how things get communicated.
Here’s another example.
Roger, Director of Software Engineering, sends an email to his entire management staff asking whether a certain scenario was considered when the product requirements were estimated. Bill, a Senior Manager, replies-to-all, “Li, on my staff ,was supposed to consider that. Did you, Li?”
Ouch! There’s another bus-throwing incident, this time Bill tossing Li under one for no reason. In fact, Bill made himself look worse, like someone who can’t trust his own staff. Imagine Bill instead privately contacted Li and asked about the situation, and then summarized the answer. Here are two possibilities:
“Li, on my staff, started to look at that but got pulled aside for some higher priority work. I can share the details with you if you want, Roger. If we need to go back and invest more into this, let me know and I’ll work with my team on it.”
“Li, on my staff, took a look at this and we’re all set. Feel free to swing by and we can discuss the details.”
Frankly, the reply-to-all blame dodge and/or bus-toss is one of the most distasteful behaviors I encounter from otherwise civilized professionals. We need to drill it into people’s heads that it’s a lose-lose proposal.
The most important communication skill
August 17th, 2009 — Life
So much has changed about the workplace, so many of our social interactions take place in new ways. Clearly our old communication skills are going to be less important, and we’ve got to learn new ones, right? What’s the most important communication skill you can develop these days?
What if I told you it’s the same one it was a hundred years ago?
Listening.
Hearing (or reading) comes naturally, but listening requires active investment. Active listening, empathic listening, listening with intent … these do not come naturally.
