Entries from March 2009
Thought that title would catch your attention. I found it in this New York Times article about learning how to think. The basic gist of the article is that we listen too much to “experts” and those experts are all to often wrong. The author supposes that is why financial experts were able to lead the US into the state of affairs we are now in. The funny thing is that studies show that there actually is an inverse correlation between the amount of fame that an expert has garnered and how often they are right. Experts that are more famous are ones that journalists can count on to have strong opinions and clear coherent presentation of those very black and white opinions. They are great for a sound bite.
The article references a professor at the University of California, Berkeley – Dr. Philip Tetlock. Full disclosure, I haven’t read his book that was referenced in this article.
“Mr. Tetlock called experts such as these the “hedgehogs,” after a famous distinction by the late Sir Isaiah Berlin (my favorite philosopher) between hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs tend to have a focused worldview, an ideological leaning, strong convictions; foxes are more cautious, more centrist, more likely to adjust their views, more pragmatic, more prone to self-doubt, more inclined to see complexity and nuance. And it turns out that while foxes don’t give great sound-bites, they are far more likely to get things right.
This was the distinction that mattered most among the forecasters, not whether they had expertise. Over all, the foxes did significantly better, both in areas they knew well and in areas they didn’t. “
This resonated with me because in engineering there are a lot of people that believe in logic and believe in black and white thinking as the way to solve problems. For many years I was one of those engineers. You were RIGHT or you were WRONG. You got it or you didn’t. It was important to be opinionated in order to be respected. Debates turned into religious wars. Those who were confident and had the ability to fluently articulate their point of view could bully the less confident into decisions that often turned out to be bad ones.
I’ve been in the industry for a long time. The funny thing is that the longer I am in engineering the more I doubt my ability to make those snap decisions. I haven’t gotten into a flame war in a very long time. I want to make sure to listen to the voices that are normally silenced by the louder and more confident. Sometimes it take a lot of effort to get those opinions out. They do take much longer for the owner to synthesize and rationalize. Just because someone isn’t fast on their feet and isn’t able to pin down what is bothering them right there on the spot doesn’t mean that their gut feeling isn’t valid. Many times it is really important. Without that perspective bad decisions can be made.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Confidence, Listening
This Forbes article is almost 2 years old, but it is still worth reading.
“You see, as the more heroic, charismatic styles of leadership were grabbing the headlines over the past decades, another more silently effective leader has been taking hold. Jim Collins in Good to Great calls these individuals “Level 5″ leaders, and he once referred to them as “tofu leaders”–executives who are somewhat bland, mix really well with everything around them, and still provide necessary sustenance. Sure, a more heroic, Welch-esque approach is still needed in some circles and business environments, but in a by-gone era, results aren’t enough.”
I think that we’ve all been taught that a good leader has to be really charismatic and results oriented to be effective. I think that in some instances it can help, but in others it really doesn’t. In today’s environment caring only about the results and not the relationships will really hurt a leader. Right now employees are not feeling particularly loyal to their employers in this age of downsizing, outsourcing, and paycheck and benefits reductions. If their leaders just continue to push hard for results and maintain their larger than life personas without any regard to how it is impacting their teams there will eventually be mutiny in one form or another. Productivity will go down. Morale will be affected. When the job market opens up people will leave.
The corporate leaders that I found to be most effective were the ones that were pragmatic and open. They expected results – no doubt, but I would not say that they had a movie star super high energy personality. They engaged the companies that I worked at by sharing almost everything that was going on, allowing all the employees to contribute to solving the problems in their own unique ways. By fostering this openness in the entire organization it helped forge stronger relationships across the various teams. When employees knew exactly what the sales pipeline and revenue numbers looked liked and what the corporate burn rate was on a month to month basis it helped them make much better decisions when it came to spending money. Knowing what problems the sales team was running into in the field informed the product management and engineering teams as well. Being open about the strengths and weaknesses of the product helped marketing and sales do their jobs better. In these companies the silos were limited, and communication was good. There was a distinct sense of “we’re all in this together” and we all know what the company priorities are. We didn’t need a ra-ra leader to spin tall tales full of hype. In fact, the times that I worked for companies with those kinds of leaders it seemed that the organization as a whole recoiled from slick messaging as if touched by a hot poker.
My advice is that leaders should reward and promote the quiet influencers and relationship builders. They can get so much done without leaving as much as a ripple in their wake. They aren’t noisy, they aren’t polarizing. What they are is effective and their people will generally do whatever it takes to be successful because of the relationships that they have within and across their teams.
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Leadership Types, Productivity, Relationships, Transparency
Forbes article:
“The key to building trust in both good and bad times is to realize that none of us is as smart as all of us. There are companies that have embraced this simple truth and used it to maintain trust before, during and, we’re sure, after this economic downturn. All these companies seem to have two characteristics in common.”
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Management, Trust
In the last two weeks I had two of my direct reports say some things to me that took a lot of courage. One of them told me that there were things that I could do better to improve the way I was running my organization. The other told me that I was steamrolling them with my experience and not listening to their ideas. (albeit in a more tactful way) Neither one of them felt all that comfortable doing these things, but I am really proud that they showed the courage to do so. I know that I thanked one of them. The other, I talked through why I was doing what I was doing and I think we got to an understanding, though I regret not saying thank you. In any event I didn’t get mad. I didn’t stonewall. I really tried my best to understand and empathize with their positions. I put my feelings on the back burner and listened.
Looking back, I recognized a few things. I never would have said what they said to me to a manager that I didn’t respect. There wouldn’t have been any point to it. I also wouldn’t have said what they said to me to a manager that I didn’t trust to take the comments as a desire to work together better. There have only been a few managers in my career that I would have felt comfortable enough to talk to frankly. Most of my managers didn’t really make constructive feedback feel like a welcome experience. I probably should have stepped into that uncomfortable place more often and tried it out. Who knows – it might have really improved our relationship.
Do you trust your manager? Would you sit them down and tell them exactly what you are feeling and how they are impacting you or how they could improve? Do you think that your direct reports would do the same for you? If not, what can you do to change that?
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Listening, Relationships, Trust
This is directed at executives looking for a job, but much of this advice is applicable regardless of where you are on the corporate ladder:
Korn/Ferry’s Career Playbook: Winning Strategies in Today’s Job Market
In early 2009, The Korn/Ferry Institute launched a new thought leadership series called “Korn/Ferry’s Career Playbook: Winning Strategies in Today’s Job Market” to address executive job seekers’ most frequent and pressing questions.
The first article in the series explores the best ways for an executive to ensure a positive outcome to their job search, and is based on insights from a number of seasoned Korn/Ferry consultants who were interviewed for the piece.
Article
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Job Search
I thought that I would share a presentation that I gave at last year’s IGDA Leadership Forum. In this I talk about management techniques and behaviors that I have found help reduce staff turnover.
You can find the video here.
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Leadership, Management, Public Speaking
Making the Case for Unequal Pay and Perks
Treating top performers the same as weaker ones is “strategic suicide,” say backers of a compensation revolution
By Michelle Conlin – Business Week
This article surprised me, not because of its content, but because this was considered a “new” idea. Maybe it is just the fact that I’ve been working in small startup companies in high tech for many years that makes me familiar with this. I’ve always recognized that there are a very small handful of employees that a company cannot live without. These are the employees that invariably get the biggest salaries, bonuses, and perks. As a manager these are the folks that you have to take care of.
I know that during the dotcom bubble everyone received big pay raises. If your company didn’t value you as much as you liked – all you had to do was go somewhere else. If you worked for a large company with a big bankroll you likely held onto that big salary increase during the downdraft. If you were an under performer at a small company and you were overpaid you invariably were laid off. It probably took you a while to find another job, and you probably took a pretty good pay cut. If you were a top employee you either were held onto at all costs, or if your company shut down one of your many contacts snapped you up – and not at a bargain price.
I suspect this article really is targeting larger companies that typically have had large HR organizations who flattened salaries to average toward the market mid-point.
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Performance Reviews
Have you ever worked on a high-stress project where it seems like the entire team becomes ill? Typically a cold or flu runs rampant through the organization. It hops from one key person to another and it seems that nobody is spared. People work until they drop, making others sick. I’ve found that this happens near the end of a long hard push. Everyone is tired. Everyone has been working long hours. It seems to be at its worst when a deadline just isn’t being met no matter how hard the team works. Everyone is disappointed, people feel like they are failing, no matter how audacious or impossible the goal.
I firmly believe that the people affected this way have some key characteristics in common.
- The first one is that they care. I mean they really care about the success of the project and they will do everything within their power to ensure that success.
- The second is they don’t have experience with failure. I’ve found that once you’ve looked into the ugly maw of a botched project or a failed company and survive that you realize that no matter how much you want to succeed that sometimes you can’t force that success no matter how hard you try. There are times that these things quite frankly are out of your control.
- The third is that they don’t take care of themselves first.
I’ve been in situations where I’ve worked 100+ hour weeks. I’ve worked 6 and 7 days a week for long stretches at a time. I’ve spent death march weekends and holidays in the office. I’m not proud of it, it doesn’t reflect well on work-life balance. At the time it was necessary for company survival. When I made sure to spend some time to take care of myself – eat right – exercise – get enough sleep I fared much better. Yes, that meant that a lot of things got dropped in my life. My yard was a wreck, my house didn’t get cleaned, my husband had to pick up all of the slack and his job isn’t a cake walk either.
I’ve learned through personal experience that the third item is key. Well, at least it is for me. I put exercise pretty close to the top priority in my life. It improves my outlook on life, reduces my stress and helps me sleep well at night. These days I work out every day at lunch including weekends. I lift weights twice a week, I do body weight exercises (pushups, chinups, dips, burpees etc) twice a week, I play volleyball for a few hours on Sundays, and I get some sort of interval training/aerobic exercise two to three times every week. Now that the weather is getting nicer I try to walk for an hour now and then, or I do yoga inside instead in the evening.
Most people resort to other tactics to survive long stretches of overtime. They live on caffeine, sugar, and fast food. They stop exercising. They get little sleep. Unfortunately this not only makes one less productive it also makes a person much more likely to get really really sick.
Remember – take care of yourself first. You’re the only you that you’ve got.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Balance, Productivity, Stress
This article from Business Week brought back a lot of memories for me about the dotcom bust. Jason Calacanis talks about a lot of very difficult decisions that he has made and that he suggests that CEOs of startups should be considering in this economic environment.
“A lot of CEOs with less than 12 months of capital left in the bank have been asking me for advice about what to do, given the massive economic turmoil we’re facing. I thought I would take the time put these various conversations into one place to help those who are “up against it,” as we say in Brooklyn. The result is intended for the entrepreneurs behind startup companies who know in their hearts that their investors have lost faith, and that Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), or Microsoft (MSFT) aren’t going to pick them up on a magic M&A carpet ride.”
From 2000-2005 I worked for a now defunct networking equipment maker. During the heyday we grew to over 350 people with 3 engineering offices spread across the US plus sales offices in Europe and Asia. All told the company spent hundreds of millions of investment dollars trying to build some really amazing next generation networking technology. A lot of that cost was due to the sheer amount of resources required to build such a product, and the exorbitant cost of developing custom ASICs. There also were a lot of bad decisions made. We had the swankest office digs I have ever seen. We had a company car at each site. We had salt water fishtanks and water walls. We had massage chairs, espresso machines, foosball tables, and pool tables. We thought it would be wise to start working on a second product line before the first was even close to completion. All in all we were going through a lot more money that we should have, and I think some of the employees recognized it early on. Back then every company was doing it. You had to have all of the perks to keep people interested in working for you in Silicon Valley.
Once the dotcom bust settled in, the board switched out most of the executive team. We developed a fiscally conservative policy and things really changed. We went from 350 people down to a little less than 100. We closed one development site and subleased a significant portion of the other two. We looked for every way to reduce costs to the minimum to survive. Unfortunately we had blown through a huge cash cushion that could have helped us weather the path to profitability. I still admire the strength of the executive team and the hard decisions that they had to make back then. They didn’t run and hide from the problem. They attacked it head on. If that type of conservative management had been in place from the start I am sure that the company would have survived and been successful. Once the dotcom bust ended the company had gone to the well one too many times and the investors sold off the IP. I saw the writing on the wall well in advance of this event and I left about a year before it occurred.
This part of my work history is really sad for me. We built a great product. We had a terrific team – and it was a very tight knit one after the company shrank. We had clear corporate goals and priorities. The economy killed us, and I believe that happened because of the sheer amount of spending that occurred. We didn’t prepare for a rainy day.
I hope your company is ready to weather the worst and is planning for survival.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Culture, Financial Prudence, Priorities, Resilience
I recently read this blog post by the CEO of zappos.com Tony Hsieh talking about developing a brand based on your company’s culture.
“So what’s a company to do if you can’t just buy your way into building the brand you want? What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term?
In a word: culture.
At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers — will happen naturally on its own.
We believe that your company’s culture and your company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up.
Your culture is your brand.
So how do you build and maintain the culture that you want?”
I’ve always been a proponent that the culture of a company is what drives its success. Employees all need to be on the same page as to what the priorities of the company are, and they really need to stand behind those priorities instead of providing lip service to them. This is a time for strong leadership. If the top executives of the company aren’t aligned on these priorities, the rest of the company will also fracture along divisional or departmental boundaries. If the leadership team isn’t bought into the priorities it will be next to impossible for the rest of the organization to be excited and driven to support them.
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Branding, Culture, Priorities
