Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

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

Tag: decision making

  • Is Growth Necessary for Survival?

    Is Growth Necessary for Survival?

    I shared one of those quick thoughts on Bluesky as a knee-jerk reaction to yet another message encouraging startups to get on a fast-growth path.

    As luck would have it, Matt Barcomb challenged me on that remark. It turned into an exchange, where we quickly started uncovering deeper layers of strategy and portfolio decisions.

    Survival versus Growth

    The starting point is a basic observation that there are situations where survival and growth are aligned, even dependent on each other. However, there are also cases where this assertion doesn’t hold, up to a point where growth is harmful.

    As a metaphor, no species in nature grows infinitely. While a tree sapling’s survival may depend on its growth, making the process indefinite would compromise the tree’s resilience.

    Organizations work similarly, even if Bezoses and Musks of this world would deny it. That is, as long as we are willing to consider standard rules of the business game.

    There’s obviously the too big to fail phenomenon, which we’ve seen in action many times. However, it applies only to very few companies, and even when it applies, the subjects of the theory don’t end up any healthier at the end of treatment.

    For the rest of us, we may accept that growth and survivability are not always aligned.

    What follows is that when forced to choose, we should select survival over growth. If we live to see another day, we can return to growing tomorrow. The opposite doesn’t work nearly as well.

    Long-term versus Short-term

    However, as Matt points out, prioritizing survivability may lead us toward short-termism. We may always play it safe, and as a result, miss potential opportunities for big wins.

    Missing big opportunities may, in turn, be as well an existential threat, except it would develop in the long term. Consider the infamous Kodak digital photography fiasco as a perfect example.

    By the way, that example showcases that survivability is as much a short-term concern as a long-term one.

    Still, I understand that the “focus on survival first” mantra likely biases us toward what’s immediately visible in front of us. So, let’s explicitly consider survivability and time horizon as two separate dimensions.

    Opportunistic Thriving

    We can consider any combination of low or high survivability with either short-term or long-term focus.

    Any strategy threatening the company’s existence and falling into a short time frame would be suicidal (bottom left of the diagram). No sane organization would consciously venture into this territory.

    We may want, however, to stick with potentially dangerous plans with a long-term focus. This would be true when a risky move also has a huge potential upside (upper left part of the diagram). In this case, the scale of the possible gain would justify our risk-accepting strategy.

    That’s the latter part of the “sure things and wild swings” approach, also known as the barbell strategy proposed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

    However, if we go for the wild swings, we want to overcompensate them with sure things (Taleb suggests a 9:1 ratio). These safe bets consider primarily a predictable future and focus on preservation (bottom right of the diagram).

    If we combine the two, we land with something we can call opportunistic thriving (upper right of the diagram). We would mix some high-risk bets with a largely conservative strategy and exploit emerging chances for growth, new business, etc.

    At the end of the day, we align growth with survival, right?

    Hold your horses…

    Unfavorable Conditions

    We’re free to explore all options if the conditions are supportive, i.e., the company is already in a safe place and has resources to allocate freely among different options.

    But what if we had to make a choice? What if opportunistic thriving wasn’t an option? What if we had to make a trade-off between preservation and risky bets with huge potential upside?

    Such a situation would happen when we face unfavorable conditions. One classic example would be whether to retain the team when a downturn hits the company.

    Sticking with the proven team means maintaining options for the rebound once an opportunity arises. Here and now, however, we sustain the costs and, thus, incur financial losses.

    Playing the preservation scenario would mean layoffs and improving the financials in the short term. It would also trigger all the additional costs of rebuilding the team once the unfavorable condition is over.

    Sometimes, the trade-off is a point on a scale, e.g., how many people we lay off. Other times, it is binary, e.g., whether to engage in a risky endeavor.

    In either case, it would be a choice to prioritize long-termism over preservation or vice versa.

    Available Options

    If we assess that situation from a helicopter perspective, we realize that not all the options are available.

    To stick with the example of layoffs, we’d like to sustain the team and not incur losses. That would place us in the desired opportunistic thriving area.

    A simple fact that we consider what to do means it’s not an option. In other words, the part of the landscape becomes unavailable.

    We’d love to be as far into the upper-right part as possible, but that’s precisely the space that becomes inaccessible first. The greater the challenges an organization faces, the farther the unavailable area reaches.

    In other words, under unfavorable conditions, we’re forced to make these difficult trade-offs.

    Decision Portfolio

    But wait! While any single decision may force us to choose, the whole portfolio of decisions provides an opportunity for a diverse distribution. That way, we can hedge our risks and, through that, push the “unavailability line” back.

    That’s what the barbell strategy is all about. We actively distribute our investments across the landscape. It’s like Moneyball applied to business decisions.

    Whenever you can’t get one ideal bet (hire a star, in Moneyball terms), make a few non-ideal ones that, when combined, would deliver a comparable result (hire a few role-players with the right skills/stats, in Moneyball terms).

    Center of Gravity

    All the decisions (or bets) create a center of gravity. Interestingly, it won’t necessarily be a simple output of the weight of the bets (the size of the dots in the diagram) and their relative position.

    More forces are in play here.

    The right combination of investments may push the center of gravity in the desired direction (up and to the right). Again, in Moneyball terms, it’s like winning having a team of underdogs.

    From an organization’s perspective, what interests us most is how any decision in our portfolio affects the center of gravity. That one risky project with low chances of succeeding may be just what we need to improve our long-term relevance. Even if that swing is really wild.

    Cost of Too Many Commitments

    A brute force tactic of having a diverse enough decision portfolio may be considered. That, however, would create a whole different set of problems.

    In the past, I wrote about how too many projects at the portfolio level is a major issue for any organization. I considered how portfolio decisions are, in fact, commitments. I analyzed how overcommitment affects the Cost of Delay and can ruin the bottom line.

    It all boils down to the same conclusion: too many commitments are detrimental to (organizational) health.

    To visualize it in the landscape we created, we need to add a pulling force. It will move the center of gravity toward the bottom left corner of the diagram. Yes, straight down to our Death Valley.

    The strength of this pulling force will be proportional to the scale of overcommitment. And the relationship between the two will be exponential.

    The more bets we make, the lower the chances we’ll be able to deliver on any. Once we are already overloaded, adding more commitments will make the situation increasingly perilous.

    So, the balance we aim to strike is to have sufficient diversity in our decisions and, simultaneously, to have as few commitments as possible.

    The Startup’s Challenge

    The entire discussion with Matt began with my remark on the startup ecosystem, pushing aspiring entrepreneurs to grow at all costs.

    While the reasoning stands true for startups—especially early-stage startups—two observations make the consideration more challenging for them.

    First, by definition, they start under unfavorable conditions. And they stay so for a better part of their lifecycle. As a result, the simple shot for opportunistic thriving is unavailable for them from the outset.

    Second, the degree to which the conditions are unfavorable for early-stage startups is far greater than what established companies face. There’s no core business to rely on just yet. The runway is typically short as the availability of funding remains limited.

    The environment is challenging enough that the diversity of the bets portfolio must be compromised. And that’s precisely where my original thought falls into place.

    Fledgling enterprises, way more than established businesses, will be forced to choose between preservation and wild swings exclusively. The latter is typically characterized by a strong push for rapid growth.

    If that’s the choice, I’d go for survival. After all, dead companies don’t really grow.

  • Why Wouldn’t an Intern Fire a CEO?

    Why Wouldn’t an Intern Fire a CEO?

    The question seems completely wrong. Obviously, because they can’t. An intern could not possibly let go of a CEO.

    But what if they could? Would they? And if not, why?

    Right now, you may be thinking, “But Pawel, what do you mean by imagining an intern could fire a CEO? It’s a completely abstract problem.”

    It is not. In fact, at Lunar it is possible.

    Radical Autonomy

    I wrote about our radical way of distributing autonomy many times before. In short, anyone can make any decision (in a structured way). So why don’t people abuse that power?

    Why don’t I need to worry that an intern would launch a letting go process for me?

    And yes, they totally can.

    While this decision is somewhat more complicated than the vast majority of others, anyone has the authority to start this process. Including people who joined us yesterday.

    The Dynamic of the Organizational Culture

    Whenever we join a new group, we tend to be more withdrawn than whatever is our norm. That’s one of the basic social dynamics.

    First, we observe and learn. Subconsciously (or consciously), we look for patterns to understand the group’s norms. What’s acceptable? What’s not acceptable? What’s rewarded? What’s punished?

    We orient ourselves in a new environment.

    That’s precisely what happens in an organization when a new person joins. Even when rules as written say something, we observe whether it’s really so. After all, if rules contradict the norms, it’s the latter which prevails.

    No one will fire the big guns before they learn to navigate a new environment well.

    Peer Pressure as Safety Mechanism

    OK, but the same intern will still not fire a CEO 6 months later when they already learned the norms. Why?

    In a system based on distributed autonomy (again, anyone can make any decision; that’s the ultimate distribution), we have very different power dynamics.

    We don’t have a person in power entitled to make the call, that entitlement being the ultimate get out of jail free card. After all, there’s no one else to make that decision.

    In this case, anyone can act. But then, such a decision will be judged, challenged, commented on. If it’s controversial, let alone outrageous, people will be very vocal when opposing it.

    Through that, we introduced peer pressure as a safety mechanism that basically prevents the most extravagant decisions from being made.

    Reputation as Currency

    What follows is that whoever volunteers to make any decision makes a bet. A bet of their reputation. If the decision goes well, the bet is won.

    The more obvious the decision, the smaller the bet.

    After all, if everyone thinks something is a good idea, it’s unlikely that they’ll complain, even if it goes sideways.

    It’s a different beast altogether when the call is controversial. If I go against a big group, I better end up right, or my reputation as a decision-maker gets slashed.

    Before anyone’s ready to make such a bet, they must accumulate some of that reputation. Which means they will have been around long enough that we no longer talk about an intern firing a CEO.

    In fact, when someone is around that long, and they still want to fire me, well, they probably have some damn good arguments.

    By the way, if you’re interested, the most radical proposal coming from a fresh hire we’ve ever discussed was changing the salary system. Admittedly, a serious call, yet it didn’t even reach a stage where it was an actual proposed decision. The person gave up way sooner after receiving peer feedback.

  • (Non-)Challenges of Distributed Decision-Making

    (Non-)Challenges of Distributed Decision-Making

    An internet discussion (yeah, I know, quite a bad idea for a trigger) inspired me to share some of the uncommon things we do at Lunar when it comes to decision-making.

    In short, as Lunar, anyone can make any decision as long as they go through an advisory process. The latter means consulting with people with expertise on the topic and those affected by a decision.

    Very few edge cases (like letting people go) have a somewhat different process, but the vast majority of calls follow the pattern described above.

    So how come people don’t get extravagant and give themselves hefty raises, go for super-fancy events, buy tons of gadgets, etc.?

    Care

    There are a few prerequisites to distributing autonomy that I could spend hours talking about. In fact, I’m doing exactly that during my course (called Progressive Organizations) at a local university. Anyway, for this consideration, the key prerequisite is care.

    When I say care is needed when we give people the power to make (any) decisions, it means that they need to feel responsible for the outcomes of their calls. Whatever happens, good or bad, they won’t be like, “Meh. Whatever.”

    They will care.

    That is enough to avoid an obvious extravaganza. After all, if we can predict something might be, well, not very wise or cause controversy, we’d think twice before putting our reputation at stake.

    Hard decisions

    It’s easy to make an obvious call. Let’s organize a company offsite! We’ve been doing it to great success for a decade, so it’s kinda no-brainer, isn’t it?

    But when it comes to tough choices, believe me, people don’t queue up to pick up the responsibility. It’s where it falls to the usual suspects: people who you’d consider leaders.

    And sensibly so. After all, these are people who are equipped with experience, knowledge, and intuition for such situations. They’ve been doing it for years. That’s one of the reasons we keep them around.

    Also, when in doubt about whether going for this fancy conference abroad is extravagant or not, the leaders would use past experiences and provide some context.

    “Why wouldn’t you consider a more local event instead? Here’s one we’ve sent people to, and they’ve been happy.”

    “Have you considered how everyone might treat these trips if we treat such an escapade norm?”

    And suddenly, no one really wants to push for that.

    Learning the culture

    I love one challenge I often get when I talk about radical autonomy. “What stops people from giving themselves a hefty raise?”

    That’s the best part. Nothing. And they still don’t do it.

    When you join a new group–any new group–two things happen. First, you influence the group. You provide a new behavior, perspective, thoughts, needs, etc. However, the bigger the group, the smaller your influence. After all, you’re but one person.

    More importantly, though, the group influences you, too. Whatever is the norm in how they behave, what they do, what is accepted and what is not, strongly influences how you act. That’s obvious. We want to belong.

    The very same thing works when anyone joins an organization. No one on their first day (or week or month) attempts to reinvent how things are done here. We wait and orient ourselves. We observe and learn norms.

    With decision-making, it means considering how, when, and what kind of decisions they make. What triggers controversy, and what goes as expected.

    So, if a healthy norm is that we try to keep our payroll fair, no one in a blatant way violates the norm. It would be too high of a price to pay in social credit.

    Not making decisions

    OK, but that whole thing means that we departed from the idea that every decision has a designated decision-maker. My team leader accepts my time off requests, my director gives me a raise, and a VP greenlights strategic efforts. We’re no longer there. It’s like anyone who wants to act acts.

    And if no one wants to act… Then what?

    Ultimately, there are the most mundane or unpleasant decisions that no one would fancy. Show a person who actually likes to let people go because of economic reasons, and I’ll show you a psychopath.

    Normally, we’d have a designated person who is responsible for those tough calls, but hey, we gave up on that idea.

    We do, however, have a person who serves as a safety net. In Lunar case, it’s me. I’d do anything that no one else is willing to do (and yes, that’s why I throw rotten food from a fridge in our cantina). Part of that burden is making the toughest decisions.

    Think of it not as a designated decision-maker but rather as a fallback decision-maker.

    Is it enough?

    Would that be all that needs to work in order to distribute autonomy? Especially when we talk about the most radical way of doing it (remember, anyone can make any decision).

    Surely not.

    And I’m happy to be challenged. We most likely have a good answer to that. We have been using this system for 12 years, and it’s doing just fine.

    If I learned anything during that time, the most difficult parts are really not the ones people think. And the gain from everyone’s involvement and care is immense.

  • Autonomy and Authority

    These days I speak extensively about how we designed Lunar Logic as an organization. After all, going through a transition from a traditional management model to a situation where company has no managers at all is quite an achievement. One of the pillars of managerless organizational design is autonomy.

    After all, decisions won’t just make themselves. Someone has to call the shots. Once we got rid of managers, who would normally make almost all decisions, we need everyone else to embrace decision making. For that to happen, we need to distribute autonomy.

    Interestingly enough, when Don Reinertsen, who I respect a lot, talks about decentralizing control he uses somewhat different wording.

    Decentralizing control requires decentralizing both the authority to make decisions and the information required to make these decisions correctly.

    Don Reinertsen

    Authority refers to a formal power to make a decision. However, I tend to make a clear distinction between authority and autonomy. Ultimately, as a manger, I can give my team authority to make a decision. However, at the same time I can instantiate fear or pressure on decision-makers so before they actually make their call they would ask me what I think about the topic and go with my advice. This mean that even if authority was distributed autonomy is not there.

    Corollary to that, I may not have formal authority but I can feel courageous enough to make a decision. If that is an acceptable part of an organizational culture it means that I may have autonomy without authority. By the way the latter case is interesting as it pictures the attitude I’m very fond of: ask forgiveness rather than get a permission.

    I’m not going to fundamentally disagree with Don Reinertsen, though. As a matter of fact, we are on the same page as he follows up with his train of thought.

    To enable lower organizational levels to make decisions, we need to give them authority, information, and practice. Without practice and the freedom to fail upon occasion, they will not take control of these decisions.

    Don Reinertsen

    In the first quote Don is talking about prerequisites to decentralize control. In the second he focuses on enabling it. He adds a crucial part: people need to practice. This, as a consequence, means that occasionally they will fail, a.k.a. make bad decisions.

    And that’s exactly what autonomy is in its core.

    In vast majority of cases autonomy is derived from authority. It doesn’t work the other way around, though. In fact, situation of having formal authority but no real autonomy to make a decision is fairly common. It is also the worst thing we can do if we want people to feel more accountable for an organization they’re with.

    Not only do they realize that the power they got is virtual but once it happens they’re not even back to square one. It’s worse. They got burned. So they’re not jumping on that autonomy bandwagon again when they are asked to get more involved in decision making.

    That’s, by the way, another case that portraits that cultural change are not safe to fail.

    Long story short, don’t confuse authority with autonomy. If you really care about your organization take care of distributing both, not only the former.

  • Organizational Culture and Hand Cream

    The other day we had a brief discussion at Lunar Logic on an idea that the company should provide hand cream for us. While normally we don’t really discuss such petty expenses, this time quite a few people got involved.

    One could say that the discussion itself cost the company more than a stash of hand cream that would suffice for several years. And they would be right.

    Why was I involved then? And why would I write about it afterwards?

    The thing is we don’t make decisions in isolation. Of course we can look at any decision in individual context. It’s all about hand cream and several dollars, right?

    Not really. Or at least not only. The meta-decision that was being made was about what is the extent to which the company provides its employees with stuff. It was about setting, or rather resetting, what benefits are available.

    Of course, at any company there are things that almost everyone would use, like coffee and tea, paper towels etc. These are no-brainers.

    But then, very quickly we enter the land of less obvious options. Like a hand cream. Ultimately not everyone would be using it. I’m betting around half of people maybe. So we’re making a small nice gesture to some.

    The question is: should we be making such small nice gestures to other groups?

    We have quite a bunch of people who are cooking lunches at the office. Should we buy cooking oil for them? Or spices? These would all be small expenses after all.

    So how about free food available at the office? Well, given that we have a couple vegans, healthy load of vegetarians, some burger lovers, a diabetic, a couple people on gluten-free diet and a couple more trying to lose a few pounds there would always be someone left out. These aren’t obvious decisions anymore.

    These kind of calls are really about deciding about where we set the limits. What is acceptable. It’s not about hand cream. It’s about what rationale would be enough to justify an expense on the account of the company. We are talking about norms.

    Have I just said “norms”? Oh well, it seems we are talking about organizational culture now.

    organizational culture

    the behavior of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people react to their actions

    includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs, and habits

    Wikipedia

    Simply put organizational culture is a sum of behaviors of everyone in an organization. Not only behaviors themselves, though, but also what drives these behaviors: shared values, common principles, rules and norms.

    This is why I got involved in the discussion about hand cream. The trigger was realization that we are just about to change a norm and I’d rather have an explicit discussion about that beforehand. Such a change may affect the common attitude from “we’re not doing such things here” to “yeah, we’ve seen that happening before so it’s OK.”

    What’s more, giving all sorts of benefits away is not something that can be taken back seamlessly. As Daniel Kahneman in his profound book Thinking Fast and Slow points we think differently about something that we gain than about something that we lose.

    In other words getting hand cream is all fine and nice but almost instantly it becomes a new norm that hand cream is there. We’ve just set new expectation level. Once we stop supplying cream we would perceive that as a loss. The cost of removing a benefit would be bigger than a gain we got from introducing it.

    That’s why we can’t label changes that affect organizational culture as safe to fail. Like in: let’s try the hand cream thing and if people don’t care we’ll just stop buying it. When we are touching organizational culture there’s no rollback button. Even when we technically bring the situation back to the square one, culturally it’s different because we have a new experience so we look at things differently.

    That’s why I will get involved occasionally in discussions like the one about hand cream. And that’s why it was worth a blog post.

  • Decision Making Process

    I’m a strong proponent of participatory leadership model where everyone takes part in leading a team or even an organization. A part of leading is making decisions. After all if all decisions still have to be made, or at least approved, by a manager it isn’t much of participatory leadership.

    (Benevolent) Dictatorship

    The most typical starting point is that someone with power makes all decisions. As a result commonly seen hierarchies are just complicated structures of dictatorships. As a manager within my small kingdom I can do what I want as long as I don’t cross the line drawn by my overlord.

    Of course there are managers who invite the whole team to share their input or even distribute particular decisions to team members. There are leaders who use their power for the good of their people. It may be benevolent dictatorship. It is still dictatorship though.

    This model works fairly well as long as we have good leaders. Indecisiveness isn’t a super-common issue and if it is there’s at least one person who clearly is responsible. Often leaders have fair experience in their roles thus they are well-suited to make the calls they make.

    The model isn’t ideal form a perspective of promoting participatory leadership. If we want more people to be more involved in leading a team or an organization we want them to make decisions. And I mean truly make decisions. Not as in “I propose to do this but I ask you, dear manager, to approve this so that responsibility is, in fact, on you.” I mean situations when team members make their calls and feel accountable for them.

    I’d go even further and propose that in truly participatory leadership model team members acting as leaders would make calls that their managers wouldn’t.

    This isn’t going to happen with a classic decision making process.

    Consensus

    A natural alternative is a consensus-driven decision making process. A situation where we look for a solution that everyone agrees on.

    This one definitely allows escaping dictatorship model caveats. It doesn’t come for free though.

    Looking for consensus doesn’t mean looking for the best option, but rather looking for the least controversial option. These two are very rarely synonymous. Another issue is the tiredness effect. After a long discussion people switch to “I don’t care anymore, let someone make that decision finally and move on.”

    Not to mention that the whole decision making process suddenly gets really time-consuming for many people.

    While in theory consensus solves accountability problem – everyone agreed to a decision – in practice the picture isn’t that rosy. If I didn’t take active part in the discussion or my objections were ignored I don’t feel like it’s my decision. Also if the decision was made by a group I will likely feel that responsibility is distributed and thus diluted.

    One interesting flavor of consensus-driven decision making is when people really care about the decision even though it is controversial. It’s not that they want to avoid participation or even responsibility. It’s just consensus is unlikely, if even possible.

    Such a discussion may turn into an unproductive shit storm, which doesn’t help in reaching any common solution and yet it is emotionally taxing.

    Advisory Process

    There is a very interesting middle ground.

    My pursuit of participatory leadership decision making became a major obstacle. I declined to use my dictatorship power on many occasions encouraging people to make their own calls. The answer for a question starting with “Can I…” would simply be “Well, can you?” That worked up to some point.

    It builds the right attitude, it helps to participate in leading and it makes people feel accountable. The problem starts when such a decision would affect many people. In such a case we tend to retreat back to one of the previous models: we either seek consensus or look for a dictator to make that call for us.

    Not a particularly good choice.

    I found the solution while looking at how no management companies deal with that challenge. Basically, everyone acts as they had dictatorship power (within constraints). However, before anyone makes their call they are obliged to consult with people who have expert knowledge on the subject as well as with those who will be affected by the

    This is called advisory process. We look for an advice from those who can provide us valuable insight either because they know more about the subject or because their stakes are in play. Ultimately, a decision is made by a single person though. Interestingly enough, a decision-maker doesn’t have to take all the insight from advisory process into account. Sometimes it is not even possible.

    Accountability is clearly there. Healthy level of discussion about the decisions is there as well.

    Constraints

    The key part of going with such decision making scheme is a clear definition of constraints. Basically, a dictator, whoever that is in a given context, gives up power for specific types of decisions.

    The moment a team member makes a call that is vetoed the whole mechanism is pretty much rendered irrelevant. It suggests that people can make the decisions only as long as a manager likes them. This isn’t just a form of dictatorship but a malicious one.

    These constraints may be defined in any sort of way, e.g. just a set of specific decisions or decisions that don’t incur cost beyond some limit, etc. Clarity is important as misunderstanding on that account can have exactly the same outcomes as ignoring the rules. After all if I believe I could have made a decision and it turns are not to be true I will be disappointed and disengaged. It doesn’t matter what exactly was the root cause.

    Setting constraints is also a mechanism that allows smooth transition from benevolent dictatorship to a participatory model. One super difficult challenge is to learn that I, as a manager, lost control and some decisions will be made differently than I’d make them. It’s better to test how it works with safe to fail experiments before applying the new model to serious stuff.

    It also addresses a potential threat of someone willing to exploit the system for their own gain.

    Learning the ropes is surprisingly simple. It doesn’t force people to go too far out of their comfort zones and yet it builds a sense of leadership across the board. Finally it provides a nice option for transition from the old decision making scheme.

    And the best thing of all – it is applicable on any level of organization. It can be at the very top of the company, which is what no management organizations do, but it can be done just within a team by its manager.

  • In Defense of Difficult Decisions

    I made quite a bunch of difficult decisions in my professional life. I underestimated their negative impact a few times. I received a lot of flak for making them in the first place. And I would probably make vast majority of them again if I had a chance.

    I also restrained myself and didn’t make a few harsh decisions. Sometimes I wanted to do it but couldn’t, sometimes I could but didn’t have guts and sometimes I just didn’t want to deal with consequences. Given the chance I would likely act differently in these situations.

    It seems I’m a bit gung-ho when it comes to fighting status quo. Why?

    Well, first thing is that whenever you’re reading a story how a company was turned around the story always has this big change, which eventually results in a new, better situation. If you’re doing great that’s fine – do more of whatever you’re doing.

    However, pretty few of us are in a position where we can say that we’re doing totally fine. It means that we need to try, sometimes hard, to change things around us. It means that we need guts to make difficult decisions on occasions.

    What kind of decisions you ask? Well, so far the most difficult decisions I made were somehow connected with people. It was either about letting them go, which may be just a neat metaphor for firing, or not giving them what they wanted, or moving them out of their comfort zones.

    After all, if everyone around is happy with your decisions, they aren’t difficult.

    So we come back to the question which so far I’m trying to avoid answering to. Why am I willing to face unpleasant consequences instead of just accepting status quo?

    One answer would be that I’m physically unable to accept mediocrity. I mean, in the long run. It doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to work in an organization that sucks. I did, at least once, and even though the starting point was really appalling, the thing which kept me there was a chance to change things around. The thing which frustrates me way more, and mean much, much more, is when you aren’t allowed to improve the situation even if you want it badly. Then, it doesn’t really matter what the starting point is. It may be decent but if it isn’t going to change my frustration will grow. And I don’t like to be frustrated, thus guts to make difficult decisions.

    Another answer would be that the real change more often than not requires difficult decisions. I like a metaphor I learned years ago from one of my friends: “powdering shit.” It doesn’t make it smell better or be more pleasant. It’s just fooling yourself – “it is powder, you see, not shit.” Well, no, not really. It smells like shit, looks like shit, it is shit. Sorry. Powdering it doesn’t improve it. At all. You want to change the aroma? Clean the mess. Get your hands dirty. There’s no easy way. The only way is difficult (and unpleasant). Thus difficult decisions again.

    It doesn’t mean that bold decisions are a way to go in each and every situation. No. The problem is, it’s way easier to find people who prefer accepting mediocre status quo than painful changes for the better. 4 out of 5 people (OK, I’ve just made up this statistic) will prefer to wait to the least possible (possible, not reasonable) moment before they make a difficult decision. Sometimes this waiting takes years. Years of mediocrity or, even worse, years of witnessing how the situation slowly deteriorates to the point where company goes out of business.

    And this is another reason for difficult decisions. There are few people having guts to make them. People, in general, would likely accept them, even though some of them would complain, but they don’t make them. Ever. Unless forced. Even if they say otherwise. After all, who likes to do unpleasant tasks? So yes, my gung-ho approach sort of compensates ultra-conservative approach of majority, thus difficult decisions once more.

    Now, don’t understand me wrong – difficulty that goes along with a decision doesn’t automatically make it a good one. You can be wrong with a difficult choice as well as with an easy one, except in former case it will hurt you badly. No risk, no fun, they say.

    However, when I think about wrong decisions I made, somehow majority of them are those which seemed ease at the time of making them. It was sort of accepting status quo. “It was always like this, why would you want to change it?”

    To make it better. To make our teams better. To make our work better. To make our products better. To catch up with ever-changing business environment. Or, in other words, to keep the organization alive in the long run. Not a bad motivation, eh?

  • The Worst Management Task Ever

    If you asked me to point a single thing, which I hate most in senior management role, I wouldn’t have any problems with the answer. It would be firing people. On my personal hate scale there’s firing, then huge, huge void and only then other unpleasant things and tasks to do.

    Each time I fire someone I feel like a complete jerk. It doesn’t matter that the decision is well-grounded. It doesn’t even matter when I’m proven, after some time, it was the right choice. It isn’t any easier.

    And the next time you do it doesn’t become any easier either. I mean if executing such decisions is easy for you and you feel comfortable firing people there must be something seriously wrong with you.

    Yet I still think firing people is extremely important part of pretty much any management job. If you’re a senior manager you likely have power and authority to make such decisions. If you’re a team manager dealing just with your team of six or something and you don’t have that much of power, you still can convince your superior to make a tough move. Sometimes the latter is even worse as you have to do all the talking as it is you, who started the whole thing.

    OK, why is it so important then? Because this is one of methods of building great teams. As harsh as it sounds: sometimes you don’t have enough resources (meaning: time, patience, money) to make a person act on acceptable level and the best thing you can do is to split your ways.

    Don’t get me wrong, my advice still is: do everything you reasonably can to fix an underperformer. I know way too many people who started shining when given a second chance to say otherwise. But then remember that it’s a manager who is responsible for building the high-quality team, so if you just accept the underperformer in the team you basically harm the team on many different levels.

    What more, sometimes we’re out of luck and we don’t have all the time and money of the world to try virtually every possible thing one could think of. Sometimes our fixing options would be limited. Sometimes constant resistance of the underperformer will make us lose faith faster. Shit happens. We don’t live in ideal world. And then it’s time…

    Well, for many managers I know then it’s time just to accept the fact someone is underperforming. And you know what? I understand them. I understand them because firing people is so damn hard and so freaking unpleasant that I can think of thousands of reasons why I shouldn’t do that. At all. So yes, I can perfectly understand them.

    But I don’t agree with them. We are paid to do our jobs even when the jobs suck on occasions. When we make our developers write boring documentation which just has to be done it works similarly. The only difference is in level of responsibility. But we still expect our developers would deal with crappy tasks, don’t we?

    Having balls to fire people isn’t something which makes a manager. In fact, with a bit of luck we won’t need to fire anyone for years and will be able play the role of guru manager neatly. However, when time comes you better be ready to deal with the worst management task ever. Otherwise your whole team will be constantly taking big hits on morale and you no longer will be considered a rock star manager.

    If you’ve just lived through such situation for the first time I have two messages for you. First, it’s one of the most valuable experiences as a manager you can possibly have so good for you. Second, yes, I know how crappy you feel now and it’s not going to become easier next time you do this, sorry.

  • On Making Difficult Decisions

    Occasionally I receive some flak because of one of decisions I make. Almost always it is one of those decisions which changes status quo.

    Let’s take an example: an employee has an offer from a competitor. You care about her so you try to keep her offering different things, e.g. transition to a better project, raise, etc. However you keep your offer rather reasonable. Basically you don’t try to do more than you would if there were no offer from the competitor. Unfortunately eventually the employee leaves.

    A question pops up: have you done everything you could to make her stay?

    Well, basically no. You could have paid premium or let her be prima donna or whatever but you decided you want to be fair with everyone in the team and not just make her stay at all cost.

    Now it’s time to receive criticism. Hey, you could have fight for keeping status quo. Forget everyone else, now she will leave and the whole world will stop. Aargh, we’re doomed!

    Um no, not exactly. The sole fact that you can do something doesn’t automatically means you have to, or even should, do it. Making a fair decision, even if it is difficult, usually pays off in the long run. In this case you play fair with the whole team even if it means losing one good employee. On the plus side, you mitigate a risk of frustration among many people in the team. Besides, let’s face it: shit happens, sometimes people leave. Unless you work in damn cool startup, that is.

    Anyway, every time you make such decision think about longer perspective and the whole team and not about tomorrow and a single person. It will help you to make the right choice.

    Chances are good you won’t be understood in the first place. I can almost guarantee you that you won’t be considered a hero. It is way more likely you’ll be dubbed as the one who doesn’t give a damn, even though that you actually do. After all you changed status quo.

    And this is why these decisions are difficult. Otherwise they would be easy and obvious.

  • A Measure of Good Management

    One of measures of good management is a number of situations when people, not a manager, decide how to do things. When the manager allows people to make their decisions. Let them become accountable.

    I’d like to see technical design document, but you decide what should be in, what out and how the whole thing will look like. Hey, you guys will be working on that later, not me.

    We need formalized risk management in the project, but it’s you who decide how to run whole thing. You know a project team better. You know what will and what will not work.

    We have some emergency in server room in another city and it has to be dealt with. Find a way to fix the problem and to minimize impact on other tasks. I don’t have all the data to make the best choice.

    The more you hear those kinds the better manager you work with.