Monthly Archives: March 2009

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” Charles Darwin

Posted on March 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Recently I found a reference to something known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Basically the premise is that this effect is an example of cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”[1]. They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average.

The study made the following 4 predictions:

Prediction 1. Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria.
Prediction 2. Incompetent individuals will suffer from deficient metacognitive skills, in that they will be less able than their more competent peers to recognize competence when they see it—be it their own or anyone else’s.
Prediction 3. Incompetent individuals will be less able than their more competent peers to gain insight into their true level of performance by means of social comparison information. In particular, because of their difficulty recognizing competence in others, incompetent individuals will be unable to use information about the choices and performances of others to form more accurate impressions of their own ability.
Prediction 4. The incompetent can gain insight about their shortcomings, but this comes (paradoxically) by making them more competent, thus providing them the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize that they have performed poorly.

Loosely translated this means that the more incompetent you are the less you are able to realize that you are incompetent and therefore the higher you rate your competence. In this study they found that people in the lowest quartile actually rated themselves *above* average. Conversely the more competent you are the more you know what you know and what you don’t know and you are subsequently likely to rate your competence lower than it actually is. Additionally the less competent you are the harder it is for you to be able to recognize true competence in others! I find this completely fascinating.

I have to give credit for this post to Steve Yegge’s blog where in this entry he talks about this phenomenon with respect to engineering hiring. He was a programmer at Amazon and at Google. Here are the links to his two blogs in case you want a timesuck that will last for days. He has a unique perspective and I really enjoy reading his writing.
Steve Yegge’s Amazon blog
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Steve Yegge’s Blog Rants

[1]Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6): 1121–34. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121. PMID 10626367. http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf.

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Ways to Make the Most of a Negative Job Review

Posted on March 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

I recently found this article in my queue of possible postings and reread it. I think that has wonderful advice for those who have gotten some less than stellar performance feedback. As a leader I would love to have people on my staff follow through with these ideas if they were in this situation.

“News of the worst unemployment numbers in 16 years is enough to create plenty of job jitters for most workers. But, with performance-review season in full swing, some people are bound to hear negative comments. In a tough economy, a bad review can seem insurmountable. But you can recover if you are “willing to self-assess and be open-minded to what is being told” to you, says Barbara Mohl, president of HRConnected, a human resources consulting firm. Here’s how to bounce back:” Wall Street Journal Article

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Snow? also known as: How to Have a Really Productive Day

Posted on March 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Well, it is always entertaining when snow is forecast in the South. It is even stranger when this happens in March – it’s supposed to be warm in March, this is when Spring starts.

How many accidents will there be on our highways before 7am? Will there be any bread, milk or eggs left at the grocery store? Doubt it! I grew up in the Northeast. I am used to making it to work no matter what. I also have fond memories of taking “snow” days and driving 4 hours in the worst possible conditions to Vermont to go skiing for the day. I was like the postman…. neither rain nor snow nor dark of night (or something like that). Boy times have changed. Now I won’t venture out if we get 2″ of snow. It’s not me – I still can drive in the stuff, I just don’t trust that anyone else around me has a clue. Here in Raleigh we had an event a few years back where over 3,000 school children ended up sleeping at their schools because the snow started during the day. People spent 8 hours on the roads trying to get home. It was insanity. I do my best to avoid it if at all possible now.

That said – a snow day isn’t all fun and games. I find that there is nothing better than a good snow day to catch up on work that I have been putting off. A lot of times these items need a long block of uninterrupted concentration that is hard to get at work. Some of those items are the ones that I’ve been dreading. I know they’re important, I know that I’ll be better off once they’re done, but they are difficult to start. Recently I spent a day creating custom reports that gave me the information that I needed to better assess product quality. My team already had a lot of reports, but none of them were giving me the high level dashboard that I wanted to be able to glance at and get a good feeling of the health of our software at any given moment. It was well worth the effort. I use those reports every day now.

Snow days are also really great for taking a break from the day to day work and looking at the bigger picture. I love being able to spend a day planning for the future and assessing risks. It’s great preparation that helps keep product on track longterm. Having the ability to disassociate myself from my regular work environment makes this type of thinking easier to do.

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Gaining Perspective

Posted on March 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Coming from an engineering background sometimes I find that I have to work extra hard to gain perspective. This is especially true about the product that I happen to be working on at any given time. I think that I’ve actually gotten a lot better at it, but sometimes things happen that make me realize that I can fall prey to the common traps:

It isn’t good enough. Geez, if we only could have fit in these three (four, fifty, hundred – if we’re going to be unrealistic – let’s do it to the max!) features then it would be EXCELLENT. All we are doing is fixing bugs – there are too many problems! Oh no, look at the documentation, nobody is going to read this tripe, and if they do it won’t help them!

As a manager I know that always seeing the bad and never seeing the good can really hurt morale. People feel like things will never get better. However, invariably they do – or the product is destined to get canceled. The funny thing is that in my experience canceled projects tended to be the ones where people didn’t see the bad – they believed all of the hype about how wonderful and market changing what they were working on was. Maybe it made them complacent and it led them to put out a buggier product than if they were worried about how it would be received.

One thing that has always helped me gain perspective is to put out a Beta or an early adopter release that a few key trusted customers were able to use. Nothing will help set you straight like a customer telling you that the product is crap… or conversely that they were incredibly pleased by how stable it is and how they pushed it to its limits. Getting that kind of message back to the development organization is wonderful. Actually in either case it is. Better to fail (and learn from and fix the problems) with a trusted customer than an entire market. Also better to hear sooner rather than later that a product is doing really well. That can help motivate the final push to release in ways that management encouragement alone cannot.

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Adding a New Team Member

Posted on March 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

How can you tell if someone is going to fit into your team and become a productive member? It can be really hard to figure out without seeing the person working. Sports team typically have try-outs, or the coach will go out on scouting trips to see athletes in action. This helps to determine raw ability but it doesn’t help in figuring out if the person is a cultural match. We’ve all seen what happens when a prima donna star performer acts out. It can really blow the morale of the entire team.

Another thing that can blow morale is when a team member is added who just can’t keep up. Somehow you and your team made a bad decision to bring them onto the team. This isn’t good either. The team gets frustrated with the individual, even if they like him or her as a person. The individual can feel like they are being attacked. Recently we added a new team mate to our volleyball team. Unfortunately our captain didn’t spend enough time finding out the actual skill level of this person. It was bad. Basic technique was not there. She had no experience running the offense that we were playing. She was always standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because her skills were weak our captain would have her setup in places where she would do the least damage. This meant a lot of the time that she was out of position and the rest of the team wasn’t aware of what he was doing. People got downright angry. She also took balls away from people. Balls that were called (i.e. “mine”/ “I got it”). Balls that truly belonged to someone else by definition of the game. She did this to me a few times. One time I knocked her down because I didn’t see her step in front of me as I was running at full speed to set a ball. Someone was going to get hurt. Our captain needed to talk to her about the mismatch in skill level and the danger to her and to the team.

Luckily when you make a mistake like this at work, nobody will get injured – at least not physically. First step – make sure that your hiring process is rigorous and that you really screen people before you hire them. If it is possible to bring a person on as a temporary contractor or on probation – DO SO! Have a trial period to make sure that they will work out before you commit to them. Step two – make sure they have all the resources they need to do their job. If not, you are setting them up to fail. Step three – if after screening carefully and providing resources you find that the person cannot successfully do the job… do what is right for the team. Let the person go. This is also humane for the person who knows that they don’t fit in and aren’t able to keep up.

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