Category Archives: Leadership

I often work with internal development teams who are struggling to improve their value to the organization. Individually they each have a job to do and most of them work very hard at it. As a team, the results are not always as valuable as the effort would indicate. I believe that the problem centers on the perceived value of work and the focus on the people doing it.

In a Hospital the focus is on the doctors, in a school board the teachers, in an airline it is the pilots, and in a development shop it is the developers who are regarded as the highest value providers. This solitary view diminishes the value of the contributors to that value. Value must be viewed holistically. Lets be clear that I am not simply stating some old hackneyed saying that everyone is valuable and that we have to treat them that way. I’ll leave that for a different discussion. What I am saying is that if that solitary view is taken, then the doctors, pilots, teachers and software developers taking that view will find themselves less able to maximize their own value.

Within teams the same thing happens where certain members are viewed as more valuable than others. In the case of an internal product development shop within an organization, many of the developers that I have worked with tend to view others and their roles rather simplistically and the business analyst or business relationship manager/customer representative role is often regarded as unnecessary. The role of a tester is often seen as nothing more than icing on the cake or a coat of paint at the end of the production line, yet those two roles are key for ensuring that what is developed provides maximum value to the customer.

Aside from the developers, the business relationship manager AND a representative from testing should be present at all stages of development, though some organizations will have dedicated quality control people in place with overlapping responsibilities.

It may sound counterintuitive to involve testing before you have anything to test, but recognize that they have to be involved early enough to at least develop the tests if nothing else. I view early involvement of testing even more critically however, not necessarily because they will know what tests to run, but because they are less likely to be satisfied that the acceptance criteria has been established. Other roles do not tend to focus as much or push so hard for clear acceptance criteria as those whose role is to generate the evidence that the criteria has been met.

What do I mean by acceptance criteria?

When organizations buy software they typically perform an evaluation to make sure that it meets their needs by comparing one product to another, or at the very least checking to see if a single product meets their requirements. They don’t simply test to ensure that the screen functions work correctly.

Why is it then that in developing in-house products for their own consumption, companies (and specifically development teams) often overlook such an evaluation? Sure requirements are gathered, but aside from providing a guiding direction for development, the requirements are never seen again. Instead, usability is considered the main success criteria and clicking through screens is the test.

When I see these projects I wonder then what are the chances that what is usable can be deployed, supported or even provide any business results? Many do not consider any of those criteria, but they would if the testing group was involved in helping establish acceptance criteria with each of the stakeholders from the outset. Your test team is not simply people with just enough low level skills to move a mouse or click a button, their value is in the advanced skills that they possess in helping you establish acceptance criteria.
 

Acceptance Criteria

 I have created this process visual to demonstrate how new experiences can be used to flush out old experiences thereby creating a better outlook for the future. 

If you don't seek new useful experiences, you will be stuck with the ones you have already had. If they were good experiences that you hold on to, that may not be that bad particularly when it comes to predicting the future, but if they were bad, that's really bad...

Experience pipeline

The current lens
Psychologists believe that one will tend to view that which is currently being experiencing as well as very recent experiences, through a lens determined by past experiences. If past experiences are all bad, then one is likely to predict that future experiences will be bad as well. In fact, even current and very recent experiences that may well have been positive can become tainted. The lens becomes murky and one may perceive otherwise good experiences as bad or negative.

Polishing your outlook and that of your employees
You’ve probably heard the expression that pessimist see a glass as half empty and that optimists see a glass as half full. In my first job I was told that realists know that if you stick around long enough someone is going to have to clean that glass.

What we need is a tool for keeping that glass clean. Psychologists have tools for helping people through past experiences, and the skills to employ them in ways that can help people deal with negative or traumatic experiences of their past. If you truly have something that is holding you back, traumatic or otherwise, these are good people to talk to, and my simple model does not attempt to replace them. It simply takes the work of good people such as Dr. Martin Seligman, and others, and depicts one of the key concepts into something that can be understood quickly and easily.

My view is that if our brains are computers, we need to flush out the memory buffers. I believe that on a daily basis we can maintain our own looking glass. While preparing for day-to-day interactions, a person can benefit from simply stacking the deck in their favor by lining up enough sure-fire successes and positive experiences intended to displace past experiences of negative outcomes.

Simplistically this means that in addition to our regular routines, planning in advance a few things that are easily achievable, and then reflecting on the positive aspects of each event soon after. From a management perspective this may mean moving away from compliance metrics (perfect or not) and towards progress metrics (are we moving in the right direction).

The goal is to pad the past with positive experiences thereby flushing out the bad. As more challenging things come along, the likelihood that one will predict their outcome as negative, will be reduced, and we can take on more challenging situations more readily.

As we continue, in addition to no longer spinning otherwise good experiences as bad, I maintain that even the negative events will be perceived as not so bad. You can’t do this easily if your past experiences are all negative. The dog that was rescued from an abusive owner may no longer remember why it flinches when a hand is raised, but eventually that negative subconscious memory in the distant past just might be flushed from the queue to make room for the positive experience of an outstretched hand containing a treat.

If you are a manager it might just be worth looking at how your outstretched hand is perceived. People don’t need treats to perform, but they do need positive experiences. Are people moving towards or away from the outstretched hands in your workplace?
 

Over ten years ago we moved from the crowded suburbs to a dream location on the Rideau waterway just outside of Ottawa. Between 1826 and 1832, our particular stretch of river became part of the Rideau Canal system that links the Ottawa to Kingston. (In fact you could travel all the way to Florida from our back yard without ever going in the ocean).

Kingston, located on Lake Ontario where it meets the mighty Saint Laurence River, was the capital of Canada at the time. The route from By-Town (now Ottawa) was constructed as a supply route to Kingston. (The route was identified as a good idea during the war of 1812 between Canada and the United States).

Cargo could travel from Montreal, up the Ottawa River, down the canal systems of lakes and rivers, and in to Kingston. This was to be a much safer route than taking the Saint Lawrence River, with American shooting at the steam vessels during the war.

The Canal system was not finished (in fact, not even begun) until after the war.

Our stretch of river has been the home of a water ski club since the 1970s or earlier. It was a perfect place to move to and raise our kids.

This year we found out that our enjoyment of the waterway is threatened. Parks Canada is proposing a no-wake zone for our stretch of the river. No more skiing off of our dock.

The majority of the homeowners that I have spoken to in this area have commented that they enjoy seeing the boats and kids enjoying themselves on the river. There are also a few who do not. This issue has pitted the swimmers, the canoers, the boaters the kayakers and the fishermen against each other. People who have never been in a kayak complain that the boats are disturbing the kayakers. We have canoed and kayaked here for years. In a canoe boat waves are a nuisance. In a kayak the waves are a non-issue.

Kids tubing

There is a lot of mis-information around this issue, and my fear is that we will see another law in place as yet another example of a knee jerk reaction to a perceived situation that could be resolved other ways. There are already laws. There is also common sense that could be applied.

While many boaters are responsible and alert, a simple swim buoy anchored by a home owner at a reasonable distance from shore is a simple way to protect swimmers from the few careless boaters, just like swim areas have been using for years.

People also complain about big off shore style race boats. In my experience, they come by once a year, usually around Canada Day on their way back from the down town festivities. Some find this troublesome, while others find this once a year event exiting.

One of my roles in my consulting business is to advise senior management on how to assess risk. Let's be clear, this is a separate discussion from personal likes and dislikes.

The two primary factors in risk management are likelihood and impact.

Risk Quadrants

So what can be done?

The two primary options for dealing with risk are not just elimination, but also simply risk reduction. In other words reducing the likelihood or the impact to an acceptable level. Too many times total elimination is seen as the only way, and one person’s personal preference is often regarded as more important than tolerance for each other.

As for the tools, enforcement is often seen as the only way, when awareness could be used as a tool to provide positive results.

One example

In order to reduce the risk of a canoe being disturbed by a boat, here are some potential ways of mitigating that risk:

Options

• Eliminate the boats
• Eliminate the canoes
• Force people with green canoes to paint them safety orange for better visibility
• Educate the boaters and the people with canoes of existing regulations, common sense and courtesy 

This is just one example, but the same approach can be applied to any issue, weather those issues are on the river, the shop floor, or the executive suite.

Kids getting along and working together

If only the resolution to any problem was as easy as this simple knee-jerk reaction.

Do we know the reason that Bob is underperforming? Could it be that we ourselves have set Bob up to fail by giving Bob a bad process to follow, or a weak link in Bob’s supply chain?

And what of this magic tool? While it might be clear that we could benefit from the output that such a tool might provide, will we get that output from this tool in this environment used in this way?

When faced with a problem, the knee jerk reaction used by many is to solve it by treating the symptom and jumping to solutions.

Working on the assembly line, Bob trips and bumps into a car, causing a dent or scratch. Bob has done this more than once, so the natural conclusion is that our fictitious Bob is a clumsy oaf who is not careful enough. Bob gets replaced without first considering the cause of Bob’s apparent clumsiness. Did we check to see if Bob has a habit of going out for a liquid lunch and returning to work inebriated, and what about that loose cable that lays about the floor haphazardly? Then there is the assembly line process set up in such a way that Bob has to remember to duck each time a part moves along the conveyor system. No, the problem is Bob. He is the one denting cars, so he needs to be removed.

In another instance we have an organization that has implemented a change management system for assessing risks before approving a change within the environment. Any functional group that wants to make a change has to submit their plans for approval, so that other functional groups are aware that the change is coming and can asses its impact on their area. Some groups are not following the process, but the solution is obvious. We must need a software tool that we can all use to enter change requests for all to see.

That certainly will solve the problem….or will it? Never mind those who are supposed to be seeking approval for their changes that view the requirement to seek approval as an unnecessary waste of time. Too much red tape to bother with. Then there are the people reviewing the changes for approval who see themselves as enforcers rather than trusted advisors, able to so no, and unwilling to say yes.

So, while my colleagues may advise buying new tools, and avoiding the hiring of a person named Bob, Robert, William or Bill, when I am asked what to do about the situation I will lead with my typical consultant answer – refined by me over many years of working with Bob’s and Tom’s and Sally’s – "It depends. Lets begin by looking at the process."

© Wayne McKinnon, 2011 www.M2HV.com