Motivation: would your employees buy their own supplies?

This came from a local paper, but surely many teachers around the country behave similarly:

Like many colleagues, she said she spent about $100 on back-to-school supplies. She said she expected to spend another $400 of her own money over the rest of the school year.

Let's put it another way: suppose $500 is 1% of the teacher's annual wages, which seems like a fairly reasonable estimate.  They're spending money not for the employer, but for what you would call "clients", who should and are expected to provide for themselves. 

Now take a typical bond trader, and 1% of their salary is $5k to $10k.  (Yes, it could be a lot more.)  Would you think they would spend that much every year on client problems?  They might ask their company to pay, but if they didn't, how many do you think would dig into their own pockets?

The article goes on to say that many of these teachers have spouses that have lost their jobs due to the recession.  They spend the money anyway because they want to make sure every child has equal opportunity, and they want to provide a good environment.

How do you get an employee to care so much about their job that they take the quality of their work so personally?

Sure, it helps that teaching can be very rewarding.  Teaching can provide a meaningful purpose, which Dan Pink identifies as one of the three critical factors for employee motivation.

Another aspect is professional pride.  Teachers have a vision of how they want the lesson plan they've created to go, and every kid that doesn't have the right supplies is an obstacle to achieving that.  I know a number of software developers who pay for many pieces of software and hardware so that they can do their jobs better.  In both cases, autonomy about how to achieve their goals -- the teachers create their own lesson plans, the programmers can use their own tools -- imparts ownership of the results.  Yes, this covers both of the other primary inputs that Dan Pink discusses.

One personal aspect, though, is simply getting employees deeply involved with their customers.  Teachers see theirs everyday, and the desire to help springs forth.  (Or else, they become overwhelmed by it, shut down, and just see it as another job, the kids' problems as not part of their job description.)

Being around other people, personally sharing in their problems, unlocks a natural instinct to want to get involved.  We sometimes purposefully avoid knowing anything because we know beforehand that once we even put a toe in the water, we'll be compelled to jump all the way in.

If you're running software teams, get them in front of the users as much as possible, as much as the users allow.  That's one strong argument against separate support and development teams.  Programmers who see their users more won't need any more motivation than that to rush back and work quickly on that bug that seems so small (hey, there are workarounds!) but is in fact a major pain and awfully embarrassing.

Drive: audit yourself

Drive offers a tool for measuring autonomy, one of the three tenets of Management 3.0.  Audit your workplace or your team. How much input do you or your team members have over:

• Tasks -- responsibilities and main tasks.  Can they decide what they work on, what goals they want to set, what their priorities are?

• Time -- work schedule.  Who decides when the "work day" starts and ends?  If there's rotational coverage of some kind, who determined what rotation was required and how was the coverage assigned?  Do you require people to spend time commuting?

• Team -- who they partner and interact with.  Do they get to pick their project team members or are people assigned?  Can they decide to divide the work up with others any way they choose?  How much freedom do they have to interact with customers or business partners, or senior managers for that matter?

• Tools -- how they're supposed to do it.  Tasks are what they're supposed to do; tools are the method.  For programmers, it could include architectures, IDEs, even languages: who chooses?  Are there a lot strict processes in place -- check in these things, fill out this form, then get sign-offs from these people, then schedule your release only on Fridays -- or is it totally free?

Compile the ratings given by everyone on your team or department or whatever level you desire. 

Being completely autonomous in every aspect of the job might be undesirable.  For example, jobs that require customer interaction have to consider the customers' hours and locations.  You'll have to get creative to find ways to bring more autonomy to that area of the.

Also, average scores might be fine, but a low score in one area might indicate an place to focus.

Your problem on one sheet

A3 management process:

A3 is the name for a large sheet of paper (17″ x 11″). With the A3 technique, it is filled up with useful information. Space is intentionally limited to make sure only the most relevant information is shared.

I like the balance between a large sheet and having to fit everything on it.  By the end, it probably does not seem large.  I also suspect that being forced to review the sheet in public with everyone forces other decisions and assumptions out in the daylight; no hidden agendas.

I'd love to see someone use it or at least some real examples.  It'd be difficult to show up to a meeting at my company with one, but then again I once thought doing Agile at all would be impossible at an investment bank.

"The real challenge of outsourcing"

From Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae:

It's clear to me there are only two paths.  One path is to take every repetitive, by-the-book task in your organization and outsource it or mechanized it.  The other path is to take every repetitive, by-the-book task in your organization and give the people who do that task the freedom, the incentive, and yes, the imperative to do something that cannot be outsourced.

Either what you're doing is repetitive, in which case you ought to outsource it, or it's homemade, insightful, and filled with initiative and judgement, in which case you can charge for it.

Too often, managers try to have it both ways, and end up with clever, skilled people who move on due to boredom, or "idiots" who can't do the job.  Their failure to make a strategic choice ends up in a bad personnel result.

Similarly, software development -- including app support -- should be thought of similarly.  Programmers, almost by definition, should not be doing something twice.  Give the clever, skilled ones the freedom to minimize the mundane and repetitive.  And if you still have a lot of it around, you've probably kept the wrong ones.

A chance to rate yourself

Today offers a great chance to rate yourself.

Other firms are hiring. Your coders are probably taking calls from headhunters looking to place them.

How many have you lost to competitors? Not counting unique opportunities or clear upgrades -- but basically the same job for maybe a little more money.

Count those as marks against you. Everyone who stays who you want to keep as marks for you. If you're sitting on over 80%, take a bow, you've been doing something right.

It's not the cockroach you see that should worry you

You probably heard about the man with no arms who couldn't cash a check. A Bank of America branch manager turned him away because their rules require fingerprints. No exceptions.

That manager surely got an earful, possibly a demotion.

The web overflows with customer horror stories dealing with BofA "customer service". I ran across another one the other day without trying, simply because one of the blogs that I regularly read had a personal experience.

Whether or not BofA's service falls short (or even it's standard among banks), the real point here is that bank executives will likely erupt in furor and disbelief at their employee's behavior.

What should concern them more are the thousands of examples that fall just below the line of ridiculousness -- equally aggravating, no less insensitive to their customers, but without the farcical aspects -- and then the millions of occurrences that annoy and dismiss their customers just slightly less, all of which go unnoticed and unreported by local news. Such a massive visible failure signifies massive numbers of failures below the surface.

I'm willing to bet that BofA trains its retail banking staff to behave very rigidly, probably in an attempt to reduce mistakes and minimize costs. Eventually, a rules-based culture breeds a system of automatons that only know the rules.

Competence

Just an example I ran across in a book recently of how circumstances can make someone seem excellent or incompetent.

He lay there feeling sorry for himself, musing on how being around a bunch off twenty-five-year-olds made him act like a twelve-year-old, whereas when he was working across the river, truly working, he felt centered and unself-conscious, his deepest talents sometimes emerging quick and true.

- From Clockers, by Richard Price.

A manager's job is to identify and try to create the context that enables people's excellence to emerge.

Passion and motivation

Philip Broughton, in Ahead of the Curve, goes on an enjoyable rant about our current obession about:

Why was it then that every speaker who came to Harvard Business School demanded we be "passionate" about our work? ...[Perhaps] the word passion was just another form of corporate coercion. It was no longer enough simply to do a job that you found okay for a reasonable financial reward. You had to say you were passionate about your work even if you found the work meaningless and unsatisfying. And then, of course, if it was your passion, why wouldn't you want to stay in he office until late at night and all weekend long? Didn't you say it was your passion?

...[Another] explanation was that businesses used the word passion because it reflected what they wanted their employees to feel. Work at its best should be about passion, not just drudgery. A few lucky souls might feel genuine passion for their work, but companies used the word so freely, I sensed, because it set a loftier goal for their activities than mere profits. To be in the business of business was not enough. You had to be about something bigger. [Emphasis his.]

"Passionate" is just the modern lexicon for "self-motivated". After everyone figured out that they should put "self-motivated" on their resumes, similar to how everyone puts "good communication skills", the verbal bar had to be raised to separate the herd again.

Having employees with motivation solves a lot of problems. If you can hire self-motivated people, then the company needs fewer managers, and the managers look better.

However, I maintain that motivation equally comes from the managers and the company as much as it does from the individual.

If you've got unmotivated employees, it may not be the hiring practices that need re-working. Motivating employees is one of the most difficult and central tasks that a manager does.

Dead zones

Dead zones occur when the app you work on or the business you support stops growing and starts shrinking.

At first, it's not too bad: there's too many people, and so plenty of hands can help with any problem. Occasionally turf wars break out if people find others encroaching on their traditional area.

Then, inevitably, layoffs reduce the numbers, and the survivors take on larger work loads, usually involving mundane tasks far below their pay grade. Prospects for promotion or developing on new technologies plummet. Morale suffers. Welcome to the dead zone.

The first instinct is to run to your headhunter. I recommend regularly evaluating one's position for learning opportunities and career growth, so this obviously is as good a time as any.

But I also maintain that a dead zone offers some interesting aspects that can be learned from. Here's a brief list:

1. refactoring. During growth times, everyone pumps out code quickly. Slow times can be useful for revisiting things and doing it right.
2. good coding methods. While refactoring, basically you're learning how you should have done it. Next time you build something, you can now do it correctly from the start.
3. processes. What could have been changed in the org so that the "right way" could have happened the first time? Code reviews? Automated unit tests?
4. innovation. During growth, the solution to almost every problem is more people and more code. With strictly limited money and people, think of elegant and creative solutions.
5. expectations management. "No, can't do it" may become the answer to an increasing number of work requests. Learn how to say it while maintaining good ties with users and your boss, and without becoming Mr. or Ms. Negative.
6. team motivation. A stock-picker finds out how good they are in a down market, not by making 30% when everything's up. Same if you're a leader: are you really a good leader or just been getting by because things have been going well? Time to find out.
7. org experiments. Often, org resistance is down because people are trying to figure out what's going on. This is a good time to suggest things you haven't tried before, for example, iterations or daily scrums. Or, more radical things like combining the QA and analyst roles. You can sell almost anything as long as you can make a plausible argument around "efficiency" or "new skills".
8. new responsibilities. People will leave, responsibilities will open up. While some might not be that desirable, and some are, and can be claimed just by doing the work. Should things turn around in the group, you'll emerge as one of the veterans.
9. recharge. The overall pace may slow a bit. Invest in yourself: sleep more, read books, learn new technologies or skills.

The financial world, in the absence of being able to create new financial products, is creating lots of dead zones. They go by the name of wind-down groups and "bad banks". Other industries face similar situations.

Do not stay in this situation out of laziness! If that's in your nature, then force yourself to leave. But if you're a naturally ambitious person, this can still be an interesting, educational time.

Crisis management by being visible

Being visible is often encouraged during a crisis. When the software isn't working right, I try to next to my business users, take the heat, then figure out how to can make a quick improvement.

Similarly, when a company is doing badly, the leaders need to get in front of their groups. The leaders showing their faces can help rally the troops.

It's sad to report, then, that the opposite seems to be happening in my group. While the CEO has done a good job with his emails, our group leaders have really botched it.

The head of the business unit has scheduled, canceled, and rescheduled his meeting with the IT staff four times. The CIO has scheduled, canceled, and rescheduled his meeting with our IT staff three times. Both of these meetings are now scheduled for late this month. We'll see what happens.

Meeting the "people", spreading optimism, sharing a vision -- this is one of the completely free things that a leader can do that can make a big difference. It assures people that their work is important and valued. Canceling, on the other hand, demonstrates that many other things have priority.

Yes, I'm sure both of these men are busy. But they also surely know the importance of keeping commitments. If their schedules prevent them from making a one hour commitment, they shouldn't do it. At this point, we'd be far better off if they'd simply never bothered.

If being visible helps with crisis management, what does being noticeably invisible do?

Everyone becomes incompetent

The quote comes from this chapter in Scott Berkun's book Beautiful Teams. I particularly like the first and last sentences of this excerpt:

If enough big things go wrong, everyone becomes incompetent. Everyone gets ugly. People quit. Despair rose. Managers stormed out of meetings and heavy things were thrown across boardrooms. Months flew by and therapy bills rose. As other parts of the project were completed, we tried not to notice the gaping Channels-shaped black hole at our center, slowly pulling everything inside.

I remember Channels well. I never used it, and always disabled it immediately, and occasionally it would reappear again. It was intrusively annoying, much like Windows Messenger now.

Bad projects take on a life of their own, and even good people can get taken down by them. We like to believe that good project and team management and solid developers prevent or overcome bad projects, but that's often not true. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

Everyone, to a person, will end up working on a fair number of bad projects in their careers. In some cases, there's nothing you can do about them -- except learn from them. Figure out what made them bad, understand the warning signs, and consider what might have made a difference.

From reading Berkun, I get the sense he does this very well, which make his Microsoft anecdotes very powerful.

Make it easy

When I started graduate school, I could do about 12 laps. Yesterday, after almost 3 years, I swam a mile for the first time: 32 laps. As you might imagine, it took lots of work, and regular "practice", 2 or 3 times a week.

This might paint a picture of me as a very driven person or someone very conscientious about healthy living, but the fact is, I had help from external forces: free use of the pool for students, availability of the pool during late hours, cheap locker rental and towel usage fees.

Take away even one of those factors, and it's likely I wouldn't have done it.

Many times as development managers, we like to create laws that result in good code. "Check in all your code immediately, create unit tests first, indent your code" etc.

That's fine, as far as it goes, and then the second thing that has to happen is the manager needs to make it as easy as possible to obey.

I find agile methods help in this area. An experienced developer, who already believes, can set up the continuous build environment or create the TDD base modules. The others, who need coaxing along, can then participate with little, or at least much reduced, effort.

Management tools include the carrot and the stick, but for "good health" processes and admin, I suggest taking the time to make it easy.

Give the country singer the writing tasks

I'm still watching Celebrity Apprentice. In fact, it's the only show I watch -- not because it's the best show on, but it comes on at a convenient time for me, and after following a show for a while, it's more interesting.

The show offers numerous examples of bad project management on a weekly basis. Donald Trump may be the worst manager I've ever seen.

One trend I noticed: Almost every week, someone says something like, "I hate [Bob]. He's a useless slacker and an idiot." This usually happens on the team that loses. Then, the next week, Bob will be a shining star, usually if that team wins.

The key to a contestant's output almost always revolves around the task(s) they're given. Did they understand what's expected of them? Did they feel the task utilizes their skills? Did they understand the value of it? Did they feel they could contribute more? In many cases, contestants weren't even assigned tasks.

Country singer Clint Black pisses people off regularly, but this week, everyone loved his ideas involving clever text snippets. Herschel Walker alternates between being non-existent to highly useful, depending on how straightforward the work is. As a counter example, Jesse James, of West Coast Choppers fame, makes heavy contributions in design and marketing, but this week he held back valuable donors from his team (so that he could save them for his own use).

That guy on your team who you hate because you think he's selfish, a slacker, and an idiot? If you're the project manager, maybe that's your fault.

So influence me already!

Personal note: I have to admit, my job over the past several months has been a challenge.

For the past several years, I ran teams of various sizes, 4 - 16 people. But, since a major change last year, no one has reported to me. Everyone that I worked with reported to someone else. My role, on several projects, has been basically that of an "advisor". I was expected to have expertise, and to utilize that expertise in these projects to help guide them to success.

In other words, I generated my own responsibilities. My job was to identify work that needed to be done, and then convince others. If they agreed, they committed their own time or that of team members; if not, they could just ignore me.

My responsibilities have thus been entirely about influencing others. It's a role that requires my active effort. As with a lot of coders, my first instinct is to identify something that needs to be done and then just do it myself.

Once, on a big testing day, I felt we needed a central command point. I wasn't sure why. But, I arranged for an all-day open conference line, and told people I'd just wait there in case issues came up. Then I sat on the call, not really sure if anyone would need it. Over the course of the day, many people popped in and out, and we resolved a lot of problems quickly.

All of this has convinced me that managing requires fewer direct commands and more persuasion, motivation, selling -- various manners of putting oneself out in public in a vulnerable way. By this demonstration of beliefs in action, one can influence others. That's really what the game of management is about.

7 things that make a good manager

My manager being out on jury duty has led me to continue to muse about what makes a good manager. I'm thinking about it in terms of software teams, which means managers on car production lines could be very different.

I figure I've had about 20 jobs in my life, starting with the afternoon paper route I took on when I was 10. So, I must have had around 30 direct managers during that time. Surprisingly, I can only think of one or two that I absolutely could not work with. Of course, some were mediocre, but still had valuable good qualities. Several have been outstanding. Perhaps I have been lucky.

Here's my list of the most important things that a manager does, in order:

1. creates an environment that enables you to succeed. This can include both positive attributes (e.g., gives you enough authority to make the decisions that you need to, provides access to the required resources) and negative (e.g., beats back and filters scope changes and new requests, shields you from the political noise).

2. challenges you with "stretch" assignments in new areas. This could be new technology, leadership, or new responsibilities. In any case, you face the requirement to develop new skills, and that keeps it interesting. Of course, you have to be ready for it, and a good manager knows how far to stretch you.

3. ensures you are properly rewarded for your efforts. Many developers I've worked with have a difficult time asking for a raise or expressing their desire to be promoted. A good manager takes care of that and fights hard to get you recognized, while you are toiling away behind the scenes, away from the spotlight.

Both 2 and 3 are really flip sides of the same coin: motivation. There are numerous ways to motivate people, but they essentially boil down to personal development or public recognition. Everyone wants both, but everyone also has priorities, so some people will prefer 2 to 3, and others the reverse.

4. mentors and teaches. I have really appreciated managers that were vastly better than me, and I loved to step back and watch them work. The great ones explained their methods, identified areas where I could improve, and presented these issues to me in a way that encouraged me to do better -- as opposed to feeling worse and inadequate.

5. provides vision. At the "worker bee" level, it can be hard to see where the department is heading, much less the company. You might feel your efforts are Sisyphean, pointless. A good manager provides strategic direction and explains how your efforts contribute to that, while maintaining honesty and authenticity.

6. organizes the team to encourage interaction. Your co-workers represent your best learning opportunities. A group that works together will be more powerful than a bunch of individuals pursuing their own goals. Frequent and positive interactions often require the right structure or the right incentives to encourage them.

7. acts as a friend. Some people have told me they didn't want to be too "chummy" with their workers out of fear that they wouldn't get the respect they needed on the job. I've never understood this. I consider myself friends with all of the best managers I've had -- people I would want to invite to my sister's wedding. I maintain that it's always easier to work with people that you have a friendly rapport with than those you have only a business relationship with. Especially in software development, respect comes from being effective, useful, and knowledgeable, not from having a commanding personality.

Are you a good manager?

One simple measure of your value as an employee: when you say you're taking a few days off, how concerned is your manager?

Does the opposite also hold true? Yes, it's a crude measure, and it's just one, but I think it goes the other way, too.

If you manage people, do you think they're relieved when you're out of the office, or are they worried? Are they more productive, or less?

My boss has jury duty, so she's out for at least a couple days, and possible more. That worries me. Every day that she's out, I get increasingly bogged down by administrivia, "emergency of the hour" fire drills, unfocused and not well considered requests, and thorny problems that don't seem to have good answers. These issues grow until, after a couple weeks, it takes most of my day.

One of the most important jobs of a manager is clearing and filtering impediments, interruptions, and distractions so that the people that work for you can do their jobs. Clearly, my manager does that.

On the other hand, we've all heard of the opposite type, too -- the kind you wish would just leave you alone. The kind that everyone's glad when he's on vacation. I've been fortunate not to have very many of these in long career.

Do you manage people? Which type are you?

The volunteers that work for you

What if you viewed the people that worked for you as volunteers?

Volunteers, of course, don't owe you anything. Treat them like crap, and they'll disappear.

How would your management techniques change? How would you motivate them? How would you get the bad, boring jobs done?

It's not impossible. I've worked at several organizations where the volunteers were willing to do mundane, thankless, even painful jobs at great personal effort. Sometimes, I was that volunteer.

It's an important question, because in a very real way -- more than ever, and even moreso in the future -- that's what they are: volunteers. They can leave, especially the ones you need the most. And "the cause" is more near and dear to their hearts than any a non-profit could offer: a job that interests and challenges them (while offering financial rewards, of course).

Maybe it's the game that's the problem

Watching the season premiere of Celebrity Apprentice last Sunday, one of the contestants made a comment that shocked me. (I watched the kickoff last year too, and that was the only episode I saw.)

The comment was that Dennis Rodman should be fired from the team because Rodman didn't have a good work ethic. What?

We're talking about one of the greatest rebounders and defenders in the history of basketball. He won two Defensive Players of the Year awards. He once had 34 rebounds in a single game. His contracts often contained memberships to 24-hour weight-lifting gyms, because he worked out so much.

Clearly, he does not suffer from a work ethic problem.

But, it is also true that Rodman contributed very little to his team on Celebrity Apprentice. He required heavy coaxing for every small effort.

He stated that it was never clear to him what everyone's role was, including his own. He could have been just rationalizing his bad behavior, but there is still some truth there. Rodman's the kind of guy who needs to know his role, who likes to focus. In his basketball career, he didn't look to score very often.

The primary challenge of a software development manager is to motivate the team. People aren't successful, and often the reason is, "He wasn't motivated" or "She wasn't a hard worker." This is particularly relevant to software development because most companies want only self-motivated coders, due to the solitary nature of so much of the work. "Here's the source code, here's a problem description, go to it." Frequently, there's no training. If you're the right person, you'll figure it out.

Yet, how many Dennis Rodman's get the boot as a result? No doubt, motivating someone like Rodman is a huge challenge. (Fortunately, he would surely hate coding.) On the wrong team or with the wrong coach, Rodman was only a disruption, a "bad apple." Instead, he was a major factor in 5 championship teams.

Some people really do have a poor work ethic. A software manager has to distinguish the ones who aren't motivated from the ones aren't getting the right motivation.

So let me change that sentence. The primary challenge of a software development manager is to figure out what motivates each team member. Everything else flows from there.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a corporate holiday manufactured to boost sales during a slow time. It's a totally transparent marketing manipulation scheme catered to women.

That doesn't prevent millions of women from loving it all the same. After all, everyone likes to be appreciated.

When do you take time to tell your team how much you appreciate them? This is a serious matter, and something that doesn't happen enough. Studies show positive reinforcement is more effective and longer-lasting than negative.

The annual review doesn't count, though it should happen there as well. (Positive comments should outnumber the negative ones.)

Maybe you're thinking, "We have an event just for this already: our annual holiday party." But, that's a gift of the company, not from you, and if your company parties are anything like mine, what typically happens is people use the party to interact and bond with people outside their group. That's actually a great use of the party, and it also means you should have something separate.

How about an annual appreciation lunch with each team member? Or a party that is planned ahead and advertised specifically as a "team appreciation party"?

Sound contrived? Surely it is, but that won't stop your team from liking it and feeling appreciated all the same.

(Just don't do it on Valentine's Day.)

Good person, wrong role?

A friend of mine recently lamented to me about the difficulties of hiring. "These guys come with beautiful resumes and rock solid recommendations, and then they come and are so disappointing." I'm sure anyone involved in hiring knows exactly what my friend is talking about.
To some degree, just chalk it up to the intrinstic difficulties of hiring. Even legendarily thorough and expensive processes employed at places like Google and Goldman, Sachs let in a fair share of low performers.

However, a book I read lately brought another cause to mind. David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice is, like all of his books, a collection of funny short stories. The stories are always personal vignettes involving his family or some trip he took. His new books always get to the top levels of the sales charts. I have read several, and they never fail to make me laugh.

Holidays on Ice is unique in that it also contains a few purely fictional stories.

His fictional stories stunk. I can't think of any real clunkers from among the dozens of his personal stories spanning multiple books, but I found every one of the fiction stories to be unamusing and uninteresting.

If you were evaluating his writing, and happened to read only his fiction, you'd walk away thinking, "Everyone talks so highly of this guy, but he can't write!"

I think this points to a simple truth: people can be hugely talented and accomplished, but it still requires getting them into the right role. The right role is not a title. The Vice-President role under John McCain would have been vastly different than it will be under Barack Obama. Same title, different role.

Getting someone into the right role can be very difficult. Sometimes there's a mismatch with the company culture. Some people are highly accomplished but not good team players. Or, vice versa, they are solid team players, but that makes them ineffective on a team of stars. A personal narrative writer assigned to fiction.

A good manager should be evaluating and searching for the right roles and responsibilities for each team member. This is the first step in empowering and motivating your employees. It is also never-ending. If that sounds like a lot of work, it is, which is why a rigorous hiring process can pay for itself.

But hiring will only get you so far, and then it's time to manage.