Entries tagged as ‘Culture’
Today I am going to do something that I’ve totally shied away from while I’ve been looking for a job. I’m going to write about an interview that I had this week. Yes, really. Part of my brain is still screaming “NOOOO don’t do it!”, but I’m going to override that. Hopefully that’s not a bad idea, but here goes.
First off, this is a position that I really, really want. Since I’ve been interviewing it is one of only a very few that I have been very excited about. This isn’t pretend excited, this is chomping at the bit to get started excited. I was beginning to wonder if such a job exists or not… well, it does.
The reason for this post is because I learned something completely new and different. I’ve done a lot of interviewing. I mean a LOT. I’ve probably personally interviewed well over 100 people. I’ve asked technical questions, I’ve asked behavioral question, I’ve made people really squirm. On the other side of the interview table, I’ve learned to answer questions with stories about my past rather than general feel good statements. This week I learned an interview technique that applies extremely well when you are interviewing for a role that has many different interpretations. Ask the interviewee to present what the role means to them in 10 minutes or less. SO Simple. Duh! I should have thought of this!
Actually, it’s a little more than that:
- Describe what you think that this role is
- Describe how you’d approach this particular role in this company
- Describe what makes you uniquely qualified for this role
So simple. But yet, so effective. I put together 8 slides and presented them to a panel of interviewers who then asked me questions about my background and my presentation. It was a quick, effective way to get to understand how a person would approach a job. I’m going to remember this for when I am interviewing to fill positions again.
So, you’re probably wondering… how did my interview go? I’m cautiously optimistic. My one regret is that I wasn’t able to sit down with everyone individually. It is much harder for me to make a connection with people when I am talking to a roomful. I don’t know how much that hurt me.
Categories: How Tos · Personal · Tactical
Tagged: Communication, Culture, Job Search, Problem Solving, Public Speaking
As the economy is starting to turn around, a lot of companies are going to get back into a hiring mode. Since it’s probably been a while since you’ve had to think about this stuff, I thought it would be good to put together a list of pointers to help you make sure that a new person has the worst possible on-boarding experience ever.
- Leave the person sitting unattended for hours at a time – Nothing says you’re insignificant and we don’t really care that you’re part of our team like this one. If you tell them that you want to meet with them first thing in the morning on their first day – make sure to show up at least an hour late. They can cool their heels in the receptionist area waiting. You know you have more important things to do.
- Ignore the person’s background when you provide training – Just because everyone is different doesn’t mean you need to customize how you bring them up to speed. It’s much easier to just train everyone the same way regardless of what they know. So what if it is frustrating for someone that really knows what they are doing – or is too complicated for someone who has never done the job before.
- Forget them around lunchtime – This one is especially entertaining if the person is new to the area and has no idea where to go to get some food on their first day. Leaving them behind at lunch is a great way to be able to talk about how annoying it is to train the new guy.
- Don’t have their computer systems and accounts setup – This is best for people whose jobs really depend on computer access. Give them some out of date printouts to read while they wait a week (or more) for their computer to show up. Nothing says loving like dry hardcopy in an 8pt font.
- Give them the worst desk and chair in the office – Especially effective if you can find a “trick” chair that has a habit of tipping over or has a bad pneumatic lift mechanism.
- Don’t provide them with a buddy – Buddies get bothered with all of the stupid questions. If you don’t provide one, the new hire will have to figure everything out for themselves.
- Make sure to hit on your new coworker – This doesn’t scream “awkward situation” for a new person trying to learn their way around their new office and among their new coworkers.
Clearly I’m being facetious with my advice, but I’ve had all of these things happen to me at one time or another when I’ve started a new job. Here’s hoping that my next position won’t provide me with a new way to expand my list!
Categories: How Tos · Leadership
Tagged: Attitude, Culture, Respect
December 28, 2009 · 1 Comment
There are times when my profession really frustrates me. I don’t know what it is about engineering and programming, but it sure seems to attract a lot of homogeneous people – like hires like. A lot of people are most comfortable working with people who are like themselves. I’ve worked in offices where I am literally the only (or one of a very few) woman in a sea of white men. Working in a geographically diverse company (West coast offices help here) tends to improve upon diversity somewhat, adding Indian and Asian influences, but there are still few women in engineering. The best software engineering team I ever led was diverse – both from a gender and cultural perspective. I somehow put together a team that was close to 50% female, and represented the US, Canada, China, the Philippines, Turkey, and India. We were white, black, yellow and brown. We were conservative, we were liberal. We were single, married, with kids and without. We were Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Agnostic. It didn’t matter, we were a team. There was mutual respect for everyone’s unique abilities and contributions. We didn’t always agree, and there certainly were different viewpoints, which actually improved what the team was able to accomplish. Everyone did their best to approach their differences with kindness and a good sense of humor.
This team reflects my life. I pick my friends based on what kind of a person they are. Do they share my hobbies? Are they kind? Mean-spirited people who take advantage of others need not apply. The older I get, the less I care about differences, I always look for similarities. What’s important??
- Age? No. I have friends much younger than I am, and also quite a bit older. Zest for life is what is important.
- Religion? No. Just don’t try to convert me. I’ll accept whatever you believe as being the best thing for you.
- Gender? No. I’ve met wonderful men and women and count both among my closest friends. Both sexes can also be miserable and unkind.
- Sexual Orientation? No. Gay, Lesbian, Straight. It’s not a choice for someone – why should I use it as a choice when finding friends? What matters is self-respect and honesty.
- Politics? No. Though, sometimes it is easiest just to agree to disagree on this one. It’s always interesting to hear other opinions and reasons for them.
- Nationality? No. Latina, European (too many to count!), Asian, Middle Eastern – I count them all among my friends.
Maybe I am a little naive, but I think under it all we are more similar than different. We are all human. Yes, our experiences and our culture let us have different perspectives, but this is what good relationships are about. Who wants to sit around with people that are exactly the same as you? What can you possibly learn?
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Appearance, Culture, Diversity, Social Networks, Women in Business
November 24, 2009 · 1 Comment
Well, this topic is a little bit more technical than my usual postings. I recently had an e-mail exchange with someone on this topic and decided that it could make a pretty good post as well. Senior management can drive significant improvements in software quality by encouraging certain practices and behaviors in a development organization. Sometimes this means changing the culture of the organization to see problems as an opportunity to improve rather than an opportunity to initiate a witch hunt.
In a dysfunctional development culture software bugs are seen as failures that should not occur and should be hidden at all costs. Development teams and test teams are adversaries – fighting over the differences between designating a problem as just a “user error” vs an actual problem in the code. The worst instance of this that I have ever seen is a developer arguing that there wasn’t a problem – the code was working as designed. Nevermind that the design as it currently stood was something that would cause the customer untold amount of pain in order to work around. You’re supposed to test to the design right? No – actually you’re supposed to test based on the requirements.
First off, the team has to determine the best ways to find problems as early as possible in the development process – and with the least amount of manual effort. The concept of continuous integration is key here. Every time a programmer checks in a software change it should initiate an incremental product build automatically. This incremental build then should also kick off a base set of regression test cases to test the software functionality. BAM! The problem will be identified before a full build gets done at night *AND* you know exactly which check in to the source code repository caused it. This is awesome. It is easy to fix a problem if you know exactly where to look. If you wait a week or two to do a build you are looking through possibly hundreds of checkins to identify possible candidates that could have caused the failure. Now, granted sometimes this means that the change has to be backed out in order to do some serious refactoring. However, better to do this now rather than during system test. Full nightly builds are also crucial. Sometimes two independent changes can each work, but when you put them together all hell breaks lose. The full build should start from scratch – no reuse of any object files or libraries (unless they are third party code that hasn’t changed). It also should have a full set of “smoke” or regression tests associated with it that test more than just the basic functionality of the code. Another key point that a lot of people miss is that if software is checked in right before the nightly build starts it should NOT be included in the build if the incremental build testing it has not been yet run. It should be included the next day.
I think that a lot of good quality improvements also can be driven through metrics – you just have to pick the right ones. For example, I’ve never seen a lot of success with Lines of Code written. Some software is inherently much more complex. Frequently the engineers writing the least number of lines of code are doing the hardest work – and the most sensitive from a reliability / failure perspective. They also can generate the most number of bugs per lines of code because of this sensitivity.
Overall bug trends as different levels of smoke, unit, and system test are run have been very helpful however. The number of bugs should ramp up steeply when heavy development and testing commences. Over time the number of new bugs (and total open) will level off, and then should drop just as steeply when the product is ready to ship. Using that data to determine the overall health of the product is key. However, once management starts to use that data to find the organization or individual who is to “blame” for the code instability strange things happen. The culture needs to be setup in a way to encourage people to track all bugs. If individuals worry about being blamed they will stop formally tracking their bugs and will even try to negotiate with test groups to make bugs disappear. It is an odd phenomenon, but it can be easily mitigated by how the organization reacts to finding bugs. Finding bugs is a *good* thing. The earlier you find them, and the fact that the customer didn’t is most important!
This clearly leads into test driven design methods. Whenever you plan to add new functionality, you add the automated tests first to go along with it. When the code is done, the tests better pass. Whenever a new bug is discovered you add a new test that clearly shows the problem and can later prove the fix for that bug actually worked. By doing this a product develops a full set of test cases as it grows. There is no need for a big test case development push at the end. Quality is tested in from the start.
Categories: Technology
Tagged: Collaboration, Competition, Culture, Quality
I recently read a blog post written by a friend and former colleague of mine that made me think about how important focus is. For background – see Don’t Die in the Wrong Lake by themadepeacock. He describes a scenario where his former employer was so focused on one particular industry that she killed the company by ignoring all of the other possibilities. This is when too much focus – or even more specifically the wrong focus is very bad.
To play the devil’s advocate, I have to say that normally, strong focus is very good. There is nothing worse than working for a company with very limited resources (time, money and people) that is trying to be everything to everybody. Diversity in focus is great for profitable companies and especially profitable companies that want to grow into other industries and have the means to do so. Too much diversity can kill a small company just as quickly as the wrong focus can.
First of all, small companies are highly dependent upon each one of their customers. This is because typically small companies only have a few of them. If you only have 10 customers it is really painful to lose 1 of them. For a bigger company losing one customer is only bad if it is a really high profile large customer.
If you are a customer of a small company, you know that you are taking a risk in buying from them. If you are working with Joe’s Software Emporium you don’t know if the company will be around for the long haul or not. Joe is clearly not IBM. The reason you *are* working with Joe is because he can provide you with something very specific that no one else can provide. This may mean a particular piece of functionality, a particular customer service capability, or even just the fact that you can get something small and simple at a price point that larger companies may not be interested in selling as an independent product (it’s not worth their effort). Joe’s customers are dependent on his focus. They care about what he is providing to them now, and how it will meet their needs in the future. What if Joe decided to put most of his resources on another product that his customer’s aren’t interested in – splitting his focus? He might lose his current customers trying to get different ones.
I’ve worked for a number of companies that decided not to focus on the product that they were successfully selling in the market place even though it could be improved and its revenue could be grown significantly. Instead, these companies started multiple new efforts, sometimes it almost felt like the flavor of the week. What this caused was significant alienation of their existing customer base as well as frustration at the employee level. Some employees could clearly see the customer problems and were powerless to stop them due to a lack of resources. Other employees were getting whip-sawed among multiple top priorities and were never able to focus (there’s that word again) successfully on getting anything done.
Remember – focus is good. It’s only the wrong focus that is bad.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Culture, Leadership, Priorities, Productivity
Ok ok… Too many book reviews! I know. Unfortunately this last book that needs to go back to the library TODAY is going to drive many many more of them. I just finished Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check. 
. Full disclosure, I *love* Guy Kawasaki and I have ever since I read “The Macintosh Way” back in 1993 when I worked for IBM. My team was trying to learn how to evangelize products like the did at Apple – and Guy was the best.
He still hasn’t changed. He is funny, he uses great stories to illustrate his points, AND he brings in a lot of published experts to help him make his case. Hence my realization that I will be reading more books – many many more books. This is a fantastic book for anyone who wants to start or run a company. A bit of the content in here can be found on his blog as well as some in the presentation “The Art of the Start” which you can find on my twitter feed.
One of my favorite quotes is “If the two most popular words in your company are “partner” and “strategic,” and “partner” has become a verb, and “strategic” is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense, it’s time for a reality check.” This is so true. If the partnership doesn’t enhance BOTH of your bottom lines in some way then it isn’t worth doing!
Other concepts that I have seen in real life before include:
- For a new product – add 6 months to a year to your scheduled ship date depending on the status of your prototype.
- For new product sales – take your “conservative” top down estimate and divide it by 100!
Yep, sounds crazy but I’ve worked for companies creating very complex new products that were well over a year late! One was a startup, one was a big company that should have known better.
I’ve also been in all hands meetings where month after month the sales pipeline looked so huge, but nothing ever managed to close. Because the sales projections were so high we all felt like a bunch of losers. It takes a lot of time to sell a new product if you are an unproven startup!
This book is great. It talks about raising money, planning and executing, innovating, marketing and much much more. I highly recommend it.
Categories: Book Reviews · Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Culture, Management
I just finished the revised and expanded edition of “The Extraordinary Leader – Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders” by John Zenger & Joseph Folkman. 
I found it to be a very worthwhile read and enjoyed it very much. For once I’ve found a management book that really doesn’t push one leadership style or behavior over others. What they found is that there is a set of competencies that are important. However, strangely enough, no one competency is more important than any of the others. Additionally a great leader doesn’t have to be good at all of them. A good leader just has to be exceptional at a few in order to be considered great. This determination wasn’t come about through “gut feeling” or their experiences, but through a very large study.
There were a number of takeaways for me. The first is that sometimes an organization will attempt to force fit leaders into a mold. If you don’t lead a certain way, no matter how good of a leader you are, you won’t be successful there. That is really a shame. “Rigidly defined competencies also may have the unintended consequence of creating cookie-cutter people inside the organization. If the competency system was implemented, would everyone appear to be cut from the same mold? How, then, does the organization attract and retain the maverick who is so valuable in challenging the status quo? Are the wild ducks killed just after they hatch? The concern is that, over time, sameness creates a homogeneity that becomes mind-numbing, and the culture devolves into one of anti-innovation.”
One organization that was studied that allowed leaders to find their own strengths and not be forced into a mold is one that most people would not expect to exhibit those characteristics. That organization was the US Marine Corp. I was completely impressed by the ways that the Marines cultivate leadership throughout their organization. Leadership training is something that everyone receives and it is ongoing. This is not an 8 hour seminar or a one week class like the corporate world provides. “Rather than being rigid and insisting that everyone perform in a similar style or process, the Marines understand that there are many effective leadership patterns. The Marines have discovered that some of their leaders succeed because of their technical expertise. Others are powerful team builders. Still others excel in their organizational skills. Some are extraordinary in their ability to see the potential in people and their ability to bring it out. Rather than force-fit their leaders ino any one mold, those responsible for leadership development observe the natural strengths and encourage the leader to magnify that quality.”
Categories: Book Reviews · Leadership
Tagged: Culture, Leadership Types, Team Building
Unshackling Employees from a Wall Street Journal Blog talks about ways that even staid industries like the banking industry can take advantage of empowering their employees.
“In most organizations, the decision-making freedoms of frontline employees are highly circumscribed. Sales reps, call center staff, office managers, and assembly line workers are usually trussed up in tangle of top-down policies, “best practices,” and standard operating procedures. Yet it’s impossible to build a highly adaptable organization without first expanding the scope of employee freedom. To create an organization that’s adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to “waste” time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.”
Transparency with business information, the freedom to try new things even with the risk of failure, and a culture that doesn’t require top-down decision making is key to creativity.
Categories: Corporate Strategy · Leadership
Tagged: Creativity, Culture, Empowerment, Transparency
Recently I found the article “Distinguishing Yourself as a True Leader During Behavioral Competency Interviews” on the Korn Ferry website. This article is specifically geared toward senior leaders and executives, but there still is a lot of good information in there for anyone.
Back when I worked at Nortel Networks we made a point of using behavioral interviews for positions at all levels in our group. Frankly, I am surprised by how few organizations do this. As an interviewer you can get a much better view into how people really are, and how they will fit into your culture when you ask them to describe specific events in their career. It is crystal clear when people aren’t actually speaking from experience but are merely trying to spoon feed you what they think you want to hear. Personal and specific experiences are sometimes very difficult to talk about. Candidates who talk about them honestly come across with integrity.
Some of my favorite behavioral interview questions include:
- Tell me about the biggest disappointment that you have had in your career.
- Tell me about a time when you had to work with an unproductive person. How did you handle it?
- Tell me about a time when you had to put an employee on a performance improvement plan or had to terminate them.(for managers)
- Tell me about the project that you are most proud of. What do you consider your biggest career success?
It’s always great idea to ask followup questions. Some of mine are:
- What was the most important thing you learned from the situation?
- Were you happy with the result?
- If you had another chance, what would you have done differently?
As an interviewee I’ve found that even when your interviewer is not using the behavioral style of interviewing you can use behavioral responses to your advantage. Telling a story about your actual experiences allows the interview to better get to know you and how you actually work. It also allows them to see how you learn both from your successes and from your mistakes. Personally I have learned a lot more from my mistakes than I have from any successes that came easily.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Culture, Job Search, Learning
I’ve left a number of jobs. The excitement about what comes next is always electrifying and I’ve always been a person to look forward to the next thing. That is the fun part about leaving. Hopeful optimism as I step into the unknown. Good thing I am a “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” person and not a “stick with the evil you know instead of the evil you don’t”.
One thing that has never changed for me is that it is always so hard to say goodbye to the good folks that will be sorely missed. Once someone isn’t a coworker anymore I tend to lose my “game face” and my emotions leak out. It’s hard not to feel sad when I get a big hug from someone I really liked seeing every day. When I leave I always try and say goodbye to every person I worked with. Every single one. It is a taxing day, and this time I didn’t quite manage it. There were a few folks (and some of you read this blog) that I missed. It wasn’t intentional, our timing was just off. Goodbye – it’s been fun – best wishes – may we meet again.
There are people from each and every company that I’ve worked at that I wish I could still work with. They are all different. Some are quiet. Some are loud. Some are always serious and business-like. Some are always looking at the funny side of work. Some really pushed my buttons but they made me a better person in times of confrontation. Some are sensitive and helped me to realize when I might be stepping on toes. I’ve tried to keep in touch with most of the people I developed a connection with. Sometimes it is difficult because work was the only common interest. Other times old coworker became lifetime friends. And, one of my favorites is when old coworkers become new coworkers under different circumstances. It’s so nice to see a friendly face that I know I can trust.
When my old coworkers and friends found out that I lost my job, I received a huge outpouring of support. Frankly, I was shocked. I got notes and phone calls from people all through the span of my career. I heard from people in CT at UTC where I worked fresh out of college, I heard from IBMers from 15 years ago that I haven’t seen since, I got great support from ex-Nortelers, those that went through the Caspian days, and of course from some ex-coworkers from my recent position. Thank you everyone – I hope to see you all again in another company someday!
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Culture, Job Search, Personality Types, Relationships
