Taking Risks

Some people naturally love risk. I have skied, I ride a Harley, I have backpacked through parts of South East Asia but I am not a natural risk taker. Truth be told, I liked to ski on green and blue runs, I bike with full gear all the time, rarely in the city, and never in bad weather or in the dark. And when I went to Asia, I didn't have reservations but I did have detailed plans and always kept to the safe parts of the countries, never traveled alone, and had several guide books with me. I am rarely seen as a risk taker or a thrill seeker in life.

The same was true at work for me. I was naturally inclined to follow the well known paths. But I got good advice early in my career that made me view risk differently at work, and made me more willing to take bigger risks. My greatest successes came when I followed these two simple rules:

1. I was told to trust my own judgement and make things happen. If I saw a new or better way to do things, I should go for it. Leaders lead they don't follow. Sadly, my early tendency was just to complain about what was happening even when I could see a better way. It was much more satisfying and effective to take the risk to lead and fix the problems.
2. More importantly, I was advised that "if your stomach doesn't hurt a little, you probably aren't taking enough risk". A mentor of mine, Randal Leavitt, shared that with me in my late twenties after I told him that I was feeling very queasy on my current project because there were so many unknowns. He pointed out that that was good; with risk will come rewards. He did add that if I felt like vomiting, that was probably too much risk :-). I took his advice and my project was very successful. I still use "the stomach test" to this day as it has never let me down.

If you want to be a leader then you need to take calculated risks. You do not need to take crazy risks but you are not a leader if you just do standard repeatable mundane tasks. Challenge yourself and challenge your teams. Make a difference.

Less confident people are more successful

I liked this article in the HBR.  I am one of those people who consistently questions themselves. Despite being a consistent high achiever, I used to really lack self confidence. But over the years, I learned to trust my judgement and my abilities, and gain a reasonable amount of confidence. But I still avoid "winging it" and like to be prepared, I am still self-critical, and I believe that I rarely seem either arrogant or deluded. Looks like my lack of confidence, which troubled me for some time, was really a helpful trait.

10 ways to motivate your team

Leaders are typically good at motivating people. It is not always an easy task but here is my top 10 list on how to do it:

1. Give people a challenge

Talented technical people want to be able to solve problems. There is a real sense of accomplishment in finishing something that is hard. If the work itself is not really challenging at the time, find a meaningful way to add some difficulty to it. For example, a sustaining team can be challenged by been given the opportunity to rework some of the poorly written code instead of just fixing a series of one-off bugs in the code.

2. Give people a good understanding of what they are doing

Try to set as much context as you can for your team. Give them the big picture of the product.  The more they understand the "what" of the work, the better they can figure out the "how". I was recently reminded that it is good to know the "why" as well, to give people a real sense of the business and its value to customers.

I think it is also helpful to say what you are NOT doing. Its rarely stated but can really go a long way  in keeping the focus. It is a good tool to stop requirement creep.

3. Have clear goals and expectations

Make sure that your team has clear goals. These should be regularly reviewed and updated, if needed. And don't confuse tasks with goals. Yes, people need to know the daily work they need to accomplish but they also do much better when they have the higher level expectations and goals. I found that providing quarterly goals and reviewing/adjusting these worked really well (and I was not a big fan of this approach before I tried it out).  The advantage is that you get into a rhythm and the team members remember to keep the high level goals in mind.  It also allows you to overlay career goals/personal goals onto the product goals. Because there is more to work than just the task at hand.

4. Give people responsibility and authority

Let the team have responsibility and authority for the work. Trust them. You should be there to guide them but not to micromanage them.  When people get to have control of what they are doing they are much more motivated.

5. Give people the recognition they deserve

It is important to give people recognition for a job well done. You should not take the team for granted. When someone does something worthy of note, you should point it out, and congratulate them.

6. Care about your team

It is well known that if people feel that they are getting attention, their performance is higher ( the Hawthorne effect).  I used to show I cared by feeding my team home made cookies. But as groups get big, the amount of baking can be overwhelming :-) A better way is to get to know the people through conversation. You should be spending quite a bit of time with the team during work hours and talking to them (not idle conversation but real discussions about what they are doing). Side note: Yes, there will be some people who you don't necessarily care for that much.  Learn to fake it!

7. Eliminate the bullsh&%

To keep your team focused you need to keep the irritants away from them. Doing this won't motivate your team but not doing this will definitely hurt the motivation. Lots of valuable time will be spent complaining instead of working.

8. Make money a non-issue

Pay your people well and take the issue of money off the table. You won't see developers work harder because they make more. But you will see them work less if they feel like they are not paid enough. They view the lower pay as not being valued.

As for special bonus programs, I have never seen these programs really work. In fact the $50 spot bonuses at one company were probably just as effective as the $2k bonuses because what really was working was the recognition.

9. Set an example

If you want your team to be motivated, you need to be motivated yourself. The team will see if you don't care about what you are doing. It is hard to be "on" all the time and so you don't need to be but if you don't believe in what you are doing, you need to change something. Either find a way to get engaged or leave. Because if you are not motivated, your team will not be either.

10. Engage a few people to help motivate others

You don't need to motivate the entire team by yourself. Sometimes it is easier to motivate a few key players and get them to influence and motivate the people in their sphere of influence. Another trick is to get the typical naysayers on board. You don't use them to motivate people, you just get them to stop demotivating people, which they easily and often do by saving negative things or pointing out problems (and then you should really ask yourself if it is worth continuing to have them on your team).
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Hopefully these tips will help you to motivate your teams.

I have not had any formal Organizational Behaviour training but I did get MBA training vicariously through my husband (he got the real deal). He mentioned Frederick Herzberg to me some time ago. If you are interested in his thoughts on motivation and leadership, check this out:
http://www.businessballs.com/herzberg.htm

Dan Pink also has some interesting ideas on motivation in his book Drive. Check out this video. Even if you don't agree on the content the presentation is very entertaining and well worth the 10 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Is your organization stuck?

I read Seth Godin's blog regularly. It doesn't always resonate with me, but I really enjoyed his post called Understanding Stuck. Partly because every time we fly my husband comments sarcastically about how lucky it was that they explained how seat belts work. But mostly because I have worked in organization that got stuck.

Many of us in the organization tried to make changes to get us unstuck, but typically we were told "No, you can't change that. This is how we do it here.", when we tried to fix a broken process or tool.  The ironic part for me was that I had established a number of these processes. Now, years later I was being stopped from making necessary changes. There seemed to be some mysticism about how we worked; as though the processes had been handed to us, fully developed, from on high. It was frustrating. We did get things changed but it took an extraordinary effort. We definitely could have used a clean slate. I wonder if we would have had the courage to take that step?

If your organization is stuck, I would give the clean slate prescription a try.

Be a great communicator

Effective communication is key to good leadership. As a leader you need to be constantly communicating with your team. You need to be providing them with direction, inspiration and insight. And you also need to be listening to them, clarifying your message, and addressing their concerns.

This is an important topic and it fills many books. I can't cover it all, but here are some guidelines for communication that I have adopted over the years:

• Be clear and consistent with your message 
• If you are trying to get your team to understand a new concept or to move in a new direction, it is very important that you make your point clearly. It is also extremely important to be consistent each time you give the message. Inconsistency can result in confusion. To do this well, you need to purposeful in your communication (your days of winging it may be numbered!). 
• Provide as much information as you can
• Over communication is better than under communication. Give as much context to the message as you can. The more people know, the better they understand what you are saying. I have found that explaining how I made a decision makes it much easier for people to accept the decision even if they disagree. 
• Repeat the message
• You will need to repeat your message for it to sink in. It may be unnatural for you to repeat yourself because you may feel like you are nagging or boring the team. But the fact is that you need to repeat your message until you see others talking about it; until the team has really internalized it.
• Tell the truth
• It is important for you to tell the truth when you communicate. I talked about this in a previous blog but because it is important I repeat it :-) . Don't make things up. Do your research. Know what you are talking about. 
• Know your audience
• Not all people will want or need the same level of detail in communication. If you provide too many technical details to a non technical crowd you may bore them. If you provide too few technical details to a technical crowd, they may think you don't understand the subject or that you don't understand them. In both cases, your message will likely be lost. 
• Make personal connections 
• It is very helpful in communicating to be able to make personal connections. In a presentation or a meeting, you want to be engaging the individuals. To help with that, you should make a point of getting to know the people on your team. And in emails, where appropriate, making a personal connection is always helpful.  If you want to highlight an accomplishment, it is best if you can be as detailed as possible, talking about specific people, teams, and actions. 
• Communicate often 
• You should be communicating with your team as often as you can. Much of it can be informal or one on one, but it is important to communicate with your whole team. This can be difficult if you have remote members of the team. You need to remember them. You need to make a real effort to communicate often to your entire team. A special note here regarding remote teams: it is important to know about and respect their time zone and their culture. Include the remote teams but do it reasonably. (My coworkers and bosses in Silicon Valley loved to call me after 7pm EST and on stat holidays such as Canada Day)
• Listen
• Communication is a two way street. You need to listen to what people tell you and use that information. If your actions show that you have listened, they are more likely to continue to listen to you. As well, if you are going to make an impact on an organization, you need to understand the organization and that is much easier if you listen to what the members tell you.  It takes time but it is worth it. At one job, I was consistently the voice of development for the executives. When I would get asked how I knew what the developer's thought, my answer was always the same ... I asked them and they told me. 

Although these guidelines can be helpful, if you don't use them correctly, you could end up in some trouble. To help with that, remember to avoid the following pitfalls:

• Empty communication
• You should never communicate with a team if you have nothing to say or if what you are saying has no real meaning. You have probably been in a meeting where you rolled your eyes, looked at your watch, or played games on your smartphone. Don't be the person who called that meeting! You have probably also read that congratulatory email that was so generic that it was meaningless. Don`t be the person that sends that email. Make sure you have something to communicate. 
• Interrupting your team
• Unless you absolutely need to communicate something right away, make sure that you are not interrupting your team. This is a bad habit that I have. I will often ask just because I would like an answer and not because I really need an answer right away. Development is a concentration intense activity and interrupting a developer and getting them to context switch costs time.  To avoid interrupting, I now usually swing by their desk or text them and ask them to drop by when they have a break. 
• Talking too much
• You can actually talk too much or too long. When you do that you waste people's time. I have worked for someone who loved to talk and could talk for hours. Although much of the information was useful, it could have been said in half the time. Don't take any more time than you need. Be respectful of their time. 
• Taking too long to respond
• There will be times when you get asked a question and you just can't answer right away, so you let the people know you will get back to them. Make sure you do. I have seen so many people say they will and then they either don't response or respond so long after the question was asked that it might as well have been left unanswered. People don`t forget it when you do this. The next time they have questions or concerns, they may just decide not to bother bringing them to you. This pitfall was the primary reason that one of my colleagues lost the faith of his team and eventually was moved to the side. He was genuine in his wanting to understand the issues but never did a thing with the information he was given. 
• Keeping secrets unnecessarily
• It is necessary some time to keep things confidential. But too often, information that is not confidential is kept secret. The thinking is that not everyone needs to know everything. That is true, but people like to know what is going on and giving them information is almost always beneficial. I have seen too many times when rumours started just because of a lack of information. And as we know, rumours can be very disruptive. 
• Surprising your team 
• This is one area where I tend to get a lot of disagreement when I make this suggestion. My view is that you should not completely surprise your team (unless you are throwing them a party!). If there is big news (good or bad) or a change you are trying to make, I recommend bringing in a few key people and talking to them about it in advance of the wider announcement. Then when you roll it out to a larger group, although some will be surprised, not everyone will, and having people other than you who understand the change will help. This approach takes more time and planning but if there are any concerns, it will come up in these early discussion and you can adjust so that your message becomes clearer and more impactful. 

There are many ways of communicating and many facets to communication. Solid presentations skills are essential. One of the best resources for this is Power Presentations. Jerry Wiessman's book, Presenting to Win, is pretty helpful but if you have the opportunity, I would highly recommend taking his course. Jerry is very knowledgeable and the course provided me, my peers, and my team members with effective and immediate tools for improving our presentations.

Email can be a very effective way to communicate, but use it wisely. It should not be a substitute for face to face communication. In my next role, I am going to insist that email is something that is only read two to three times a day and is for sharing information that needs to be written down but not actioned immediately. Instead of email, I encourage you to to walk over to see them, pick up the phone, or open a chat window and have the discussion that way instead (but try not to interrupt them when they are concentrating). Reading email should not take up most of your day. If it does, there is something wrong. Trust me. I have been there.

I have a similar concern regarding meetings. They are a great way to communicate but they need to have a purpose and they need to have minutes that document the outcome. If it was not worth writing down, then it was not worth having the meeting (the exception to this is one on one meetings with your team members where minutes are not necessary). I have lived the scenario where I had 40 hours of meetings most weeks. It resulted in me not paying attention in the meetings, not having time to listen to my employees, not having the time to get my messaging clear, and generally resorting to after hours email for most of my regular communication. The meetings started a cascade of bad communication habits that were extremely hard to break. I will never get myself into that position again. If you are there, find a way to get out. You probably don't need to be in as many meetings as you are scheduled to be in (ask to read the minutes!).

Communication is very important and must be done wisely. I have been reading a lot lately about agile and lean methodologies. Among other things, these methodologies promote keeping things simple, focusing on adding value, eliminating waste, and empowering the team. A lot of the guidelines I have provided are aligned with these principles. Don't waste your team's time with communication - make sure it is adding value and giving them the information they need to make their own decisions. Keep the communication simple but make it effective.

Reverse Leaders - from HBR

I wanted to share this article on Reverse Leaders from an HBR blog. It was not a term I had heard before. Reverse Leaders are those true leaders in the ranks of the company. You should be seeking them out, supporting them and engaging. Check it out.

Find the Reverse Leaders in Your Midst

Be Trustworthy

You must be trustworthy to be a leader. When things are going really well, it is pretty easy to get people to follow, but when things get tough (and they inevitably do), they will only follow you if they really trust you.  Trust is something that is easy to earn but unfortunately even easier to lose. And regaining trust is pretty difficult (you don’t get to act like a teenager and sob and beg to be trusted and promise you will never ever ever ever break their trust again).

In order to be trusted, you must

·         Be Credible

·         Be Fair

·         Be Open

·         Mean what you say; say what you mean

Be Credible:  As a leader in software, you must be able to speak intelligently about the product you are working on, ask insightful questions about it, and make good decisions regarding it.  You do not need to be smarter than everyone, but you must know enough that the people following you believe you are a capable contributor; that you are adding value.  If you rely on your team for every decision, they begin to see you just as a gate keeper, paper pusher or meeting attender, and they no longer really trust you (or perhaps they never did).  You don’t need to be the expert in every subject but you do need to know enough to be conversant – read all of the design documents, play with the product, do research into competitors, look at the code – stretch yourself, embrace learning. It will pay off.

Be Fair:   The Merriam Webster definition of fair is “marked by impartiality and honesty; free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism”.  As a leader you must treat people fairly. That is not to say that you must treat people equally; but you should be prepared and able to defend any inequalities. There will be times when you give someone a promotion, or a special project or a bonus; and you should be able to explain to others why this one person was singled out.  When you treat people fairly, you are respected; when you treat people unfairly, the team will notice and will lose faith in you.

Be Open:  It is important to be open with your team. Telling the truth is very powerful. So explain how decisions are made; tell them when you disagree with a corporate decision but explain why you must follow nonetheless; tell them when you made a bad decision and why the current one is the right one; tell them when you don’t understand something, or let them know that a change may be coming before it impacts them. People generally dislike surprises, change, and edicts from on high. The more information they have the better; keep them in the loop.  Do not mistake being open and telling the truth for telling your team everything; there will be plenty of times where you do need to keep information confidential. But whenever you can, do communicate and be open with your team. They will appreciate it.

Mean what you say; say what you mean.  Expanding upon this could take an entire blog post, so I will only touch on the highlights regarding trust. Leaders need to:

• Keep commitments. If you set up a meeting, go to the meeting on time. If you say you will write an email, write it. If you say you will get back to someone to help with a problem, get back to them. Better to under commit than under deliver. If you meet your commitments, your team will learn they can rely on you. 
• Make people accountable.  Just as you must keep your commitments, you should hold your team accountable for their commitments.  If you ask for something to be done, you must make sure that your team did it. And if they did not, you need to address the issue. The team will know that when you ask for something, you really mean it. 
• Only ask for what you need:  If you ask for things and they are never used, people will begin to doubt you. So, make sure you only ask for that which you need, otherwise you will be viewed as someone who wastes others' time. 

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to keep your commitments. If you keep yours, your team is more likely to keep theirs.  You can't fake it. The only way to act "holier than thou" is actually to be "holier than thou". In this area, you really need to lead by example.

Being trustworthy is key to being a great leader. When your team trusts you, you will be able to lead them to complete seemingly impossible tasks. Do your best to earn and keep their trust.