Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Category: recruitment

  • On Transparency

    One of things I’ve learned throughout my career is to assume very little and expect to learn very much whenever changing a job. In terms of learning, there always is a great lesson waiting there for you, no matter what kind of an organization you’re joining. If you happen to join a crappy org this is the least you can salvage; If you join a great one, it’s like a cherry on a cake. Either way, you should always aim to learn this lesson.

    But why am I telling you this? Well, I have joined Lunar Logic very recently. From what I could say before, the company was a kick-ass Ruby on Rails development shop with a very open and straightforward culture. I didn’t even try to assume much more.

    One thing hasn’t been a surprise; We really are a kick-ass Rails development shop. The other has been a surprise though. I mean, I expected transparency within Lunar Logic, but its level is just stunning. In a positive way of course.

    An open discussion about monthly financials, which obviously are public? Fair enough. Questioning the value of running a specific project? Perfectly OK. Sharing critical opinions on a leader’s decisions? Encouraged. Regular lean coffees where every employee can come up with any subject, even one that would be considered embarrassing in almost any organization I can think of? You’re welcome. I can hardly come up with an example of a taboo topic. In all this, and let me stress this, everyone gets honest and straightforward answers.

    Does it mean that the company is easier to lead? Um, no. One needs to think about each and every decision because it will be shared with everyone. Each piece of information should be handled as it was public. After all, it is public. So basically your goal, as a leader of such an organization, is to be fair, whatever you do. There’s no place for deception, trickery or lies.

    One could think that, assuming goodwill, it is a default mode of running a company. It’s not. It’s very unusual to hear about, let alone work at, such an org. There are a number of implications of this approach.

    • It is challenging for leaders. You can’t hide behind “that’s not for you to know” answer or meaningless blah blah. People won’t buy it. This is, by the way probably, the number one reason why this approach is so uncommon.
    • It helps to build trust between people. Dramatically. I don’t say you get trust for free, because it never happens, but it is way easier.
    • It eliminates us versus them mentality. Sure, not everyone is equal and not everyone has the same role in the company, but transparency makes everyone understand better everyone else’s contributions, thus eliminates many sources of potential conflicts.
    • It heavily influences relationships with customers. It’s much easier to be open and honest with clients if this is exactly what you do every day internally. I know companies that wouldn’t treat this one as a plus, but being a client, well, ask yourself what kind of a vendor you’d like to work with.

    All in all, transparency is like a health-meter of an organizational culture. I don’t say that it automatically means that the org is successful, too. You can have a great culture and still go out of business. I just say that if you’re looking for a great place to work, transparency should be very, very high on a list of qualities you value. Possibly on the very top of the list, like it is in my case.

    By the way, if you are a manager or a company leader, ask yourself: how many things wouldn’t you reveal to your team?

    This post wouldn’t be complete without giving credits to Paul Klipp, who is the creator of this unusual organizational culture. I can say that during first few weeks I’ve already learned more about building great teams and exceptional organizations from Paul than from any leader I worked with throughout my career. It goes way beyond just a transparency bit but that’s a completely different story. Or rather a few of them. Do expect me to share them soon.

  • What Do You Want To Do In Two Years From Now?

    As a manager of 130-something people I often have these chats on what opportunities people have to grow within the organization. You know, with such crowd you can pretty safely assume that people do want to grow, to change their role, to get promoted. So they eventually land on a sofa in my office to discuss their future.

    On one hand these discussions are always challenging. I mean we’re discussing here one’s future. That’s a serious matter. On the other most of the time I find it easy to share a flurry of ideas on where someone could push their career.

    The context of organization is pretty much set – we know what we do, we roughly know how we do it and we definitely know how, in general, we want to improve it. And yet people often need a lot of guidance to show them what they can do in a couple years from now.

    One thing is people often constrain themselves to just the lowest hanging fruit. I’m a developer so the next step is senior developer. Then a tech lead and then a software development manager. Oh so creative. How about business analysis, project management, product management, quality assurance (yes, this one too) or what have you?

    While we are going beyond mental constraints, why not running a startup, consulting or freelancing?

    Or simply doing the same thing you do and rightshifting at the same time? Do you really need a new title on a business card to feel fulfilled? Maybe you just like what you already do and the fun comes when you shift toward improved effectiveness?

    One could say that having much power it’s easy to come up with different ideas but I do as I preach. I mean I consider myself a leader. My current team has, at the moment, 130ish people. The previous one had 4. Another 35. In each and every of them I was self-developing like crazy. In each role I could imagine myself in a year being in any of others as well as doing a bunch of different things. I didn’t feel constrained either by the current situation or by current organization. These things change very rapidly in IT.

    When you are asked a question what you want to do in two year time (and believe me, I ask this question a lot) it’s not a question about current options in your organization but it’s a challenge to your mental constraints.

    As simple as that. No one is going to offer you a project management position or their biggest software development division unless they’re convinced you will manage. You won’t convince them using your will solely. You need to know what it takes to do the job, understand different approaches and have a vision of your own path.

    My wild-ass guess is that you don’t know all that at the moment. That’s great. Because I’m not going to judge anyone on their current knowledge. I’m going to judge them on their potential and their urge to learn.

    With such attitude you render your mental constraints irrelevant and you don’t need to ask anyone about your options anymore. You know the answer.

  • Learn! Or How to Get a Better Job

    A couple of days ago I had a chance to speak at a local meetup. It probably won’t come as a surprise that I was speaking on Kanban. In fact, it was a test run of one of my presentations I was preparing for one of big events. The point is, only few people shown up.

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t complain. Actually, such events are always win-win. Speaker gets some valuable feedback and an audience attends a session for free, which they would have to pay for otherwise. My end of the deal worked fine – I’ve already improved the session basing on feedback I received. However, I was somehow surprised, and in a negative way, that only few people popped up.

    Well, maybe “surprise” isn’t the right word. If you asked me I would say that most people didn’t really care to exploit chances to learn, so they wouldn’t use this one either. People, in general, don’t want to learn. They don’t, even if they state otherwise. People, again, in general, are lazy. They are, even if they deny.

    So no, I didn’t expect wild crowds even though I believe the message about the meetup reached quite a bunch of people. I see the same pattern whenever me, or my friends, are involved in organization of a local community events.

    However, since I always consider a glass half-full I see a good side of the situation too. If you happen to be the part of this small bunch of people and you actually care to exploit any occasions to learn, not only do you unwind yourself but you also become a demanded employee on a job market.

    I was discussing with one of my friends how does he see himself as an engineer. His point was that he wasn’t a rock star developer. My point was sort of similar. He wasn’t a rock star developer… yet.

    What I consider as one of his biggest strengths is his urge to learn. He doesn’t have a problem to invest a couple of hours of evening or weekend to attend local community event. He does this as A, it is a chance to learn and B, it is an occasion to meet interesting people and exchange experience with them.

    What he basically does is he’s consciously working on becoming a better professional than he is right now. So if you asked me about his value on job market I wouldn’t answer talking about what he knows at the moment, but what kind of potential the guy has and how he is using it. Give me the choice among him and another developer who is very skilled but have a regular “I don’t give a damn” approach and it would be a no-brainer for me when it comes to choose who I want to work with.

    Sometimes I hear complaints about different trainings or presentations people attend. It wasn’t that stunningly mind-blowing, or the trainer could have been better, or two third of content wasn’t new at all or whatever else. Now, let me stress it, in my whole life I’ve never been on a training, conference or meetup where I wasn’t able to learn anything at all. Yes, it is true that sometimes you learn by negative examples, meaning the only thing you get is knowledge how not to do things. But it is still a lesson, and a valuable one!

    So even though I expect people don’t give a damn I’m still surprised why it is so. If I asked all these people whether they want their career to be just a bit better they would agree in a second. And yet they do nothing to improve the situation they’re in.

    If I counted all the hours I voluntarily spent on learning, including all the ramblings I share on this blog it would be hell lot of time. And believe me; I don’t regret any minute spent on this, even though I learned many things I don’t use at the moment. And no, no one paid me for that. It was just an investment on my side. The investment, which pays off, as I’m better professional today than I was yesterday. Or so I hope.

    This basically means that if you happen to hire me you don’t just buy what I am today, but you also get all the potential I’m striving to exploit. The same I look for when I hire. I look at who you can become in a couple of years, not only what you’re worth now.

    Why am I writing all that? I do, to make you move your butt, look for occasions to learn and exploit them! Yes, I have selfish motivation as well. Next time I do something in local community I want to see more faces popping up. I want to see more people who strive to learn since it means there are more people I want to hire. And now that you asked, yes, I consider it win-win.