Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

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

Tag: feedback

  • Portfolio Management: Role of Autonomy

    I’m a huge fan of Real Options. Along with Cynefin, it is one of the models that can be very universally applied in different domains. No wonder that some time ago I proposed application of Real Options as a sense making mechanism that connects different levels of work being done in an organization.

    Simply put, potential work, be it projects or products, are options. We rarely, if ever, can effectively work on all the potential initiatives we have on our plates. That’s why we end up picking, a.k.a. committing to, only a subset of options we have.

    Each commitment to start an initiative instantly generates a set of options on a lower level of work. Once we commit to run a project there are so many ways we can structure the work and so many possible feature sets that we can end up building. We again have a set of options available and again eventually commit to execute some of them. That in turn generates the options on a layer or finer granularity work items, say individual features. It goes all the way down to the most atomic work items we have.

    Portfolio Management Real Options

    We need an accompanying mechanism to close a full feedback loop between the layers of work. We simply need to provide information back to the higher level of work. Think of situations like a project taking longer than expected. We obviously want that information to be taken into account when we are making commitments on a portfolio level. Ultimately, it means that available capabilities have changed and thus it influences the set of options we have on a portfolio level.

    Again, the similar dynamics will be seen between any of the two neighboring layers of work. Specific technical choices for features will influence how other features are built or how much time we’d need to make changes in a product.

    Portfolio Management Real Options

    The model can be easily scaled up to reflect all the layers of work that are present in an organization. In big companies there will be multiple layers of work even in the area of portfolio management only.

    The underlying observation is that we very, very rarely need information to be escalated farther than between neighboring levels of work. In other words a single feature that is late will not affect decision-making process on portfolio level. By the same token commitment to start a new project, as long as it takes into account available capabilities, will be of little interest to a feature team involved in an ongoing initiative.

    There is, however, one basic assumption that I subconsciously made when proposing this model. The assumption is about autonomy.

    Work flows down to the finer-granularity level is through a commitment at a coarser-granularity level. The commitment, however, is not only expressing good will that we want to build something. If we make a commitment to run a project we need to fund and staff it. The part of the commitment is providing people, skills and resources required to accomplish that project within expected constraints, be it time, budget, scope, etc.

    If there are other constraints that are important they need to be explicitly described once the commitment is being made. One example that comes to my mind would be around the ultimate goals for a product or a project. It can be about technical constraints – for whatever reasons technologies that a product will be built in may be fixed. Another common case would be about high level dependencies, e.g. between two interconnected systems.

    Such constraints need to be explicit and need to be expressed when the commitment is being made simply because they influence what options we will have in the lower level of work.

    There’s also another important reason why we want explicit constraints. When we move our perspective to a different level of work we also change the team that is involved in work. In the most common scenario the team context will change from PMO, through a project team to a feature team as we go down through the picture.

    And that’s exactly when autonomy kicks in. Commitment on a higher level of work generates options on a lower level. What kind of options we get depends on the constraints we set. These are all prerogatives of a team making decisions on a higher level.

    The specific choice among the available options, on the other hand, is responsibility of a team that operates on a lower level.

    Obviously, we don’t want PMO leader to tell developers how to write unit tests. That’s the extreme example though and I see violation of autonomy all over the place.

    Let’s start from the top. The role of PMO in such a scenario would be to pick initiatives that we want to run, a.k.a. make project- or product-level commitments. The part of the process would be defining relevant constraints for each commitment. These would be things like manning and funding the new initiative, sharing expectations deadlines, etc. This is supposed to provide fair amount of predictability and safety to the team that will be doing the actual work.

    One crucial part of defining constraints is making the goals of the initiative explicit. What we are trying to achieve with this product or project. In other words why we decided to invest time of that many people and that much money and we believe it was a good idea.

    And now the final part. Then PMO should get out of the way. Options are there in a product team or a project team. That team should have autonomy to pick the ones they believe are the best. Interference from the top will disable autonomy and as such will be a source of demotivation and disengagement. It is very likely that such interference would yield suboptimal choice of options too.

    The pattern remains the same when we look at any two neighboring layers of work. For example, we will see similar dynamics between a product team and a feature team.

    Portfolio Management Real Options Autonomy

    The influence on which options get executed happens through definition of constraints and not by enforcing a specific choice of options. Those different levels of work are, in a way, isolated between each other by the mechanism of commitment that yields options on a lower level, feedback loops going up and finally by distributing authority and maintaining autonomy to make decisions within own sphere of influence.

    Unsurprisingly the latter gets abused fairly commonly, which is exactly why we need to be more aware and mindful about the issue.

  • On Feedback (Again)

    I’ve heard that question quite a few times after I shared my feedback with somebody: “What am I supposed to do with such feedback?”

    The question may imply that feedback e.g. wasn’t “actionable” or something. Anyway, I have an answer for that. It goes:

    “Whatever the hell you want.”

    Yup. Exactly that. In fact this is precisely what I’d love you to do.

    As the opposite to: getting defensive, explaining yourself, finding excuses, bringing other interpretations, and so on and so forth.

    Feedback is not an attack. You don’t need to defend yourself. It isn’t an interrogation either. You don’t need to explain yourself. And most of all it isn’t a goddamn appraisal. You don’t need to maximize the score.

    It is feedback. I’m sharing some observations and opinions that somehow relate to your work, actions, behaviors, attitude, etc.

    I don’t intend to change you. I want to provide you with more information so that your decisions about your further course of action are informed better. You can disagree with the part or the whole of the message you get. You can interpret it in a vastly different way. You can confront that with other feedback that is contrary to mine. That is all just perfect. You can ignore it altogether and I’m still fine with that.

    Remember? Whatever the hell you want.

    The reason is I know it is subjective. No matter how much I try to make it factual it is always about interpreting facts. And I don’t try to make it purely factual. In fact, the system in knowledge work is built of people and interactions between these people. How objective can “facts” about interpersonal relationships be? Is there even an objective truth there? Or is it rather a combination of interpretations that can be more or less aligned one with the other?

    So no, I’m not trying to convince you that my point is even valid. It’s how I perceive specific situation and how I feel. Oh, it isn’t factual, someone would say. Well, the fact is that I perceive and I feel so and so. Do you want to discuss with such a fact? Didn’t think so.

    I am well aware that my perceptions and my feelings aren’t universal truths. That’s why it is you who decide what to do with the feedback or whether to do anything at all.

    There is the other part of the story. I sometimes receive feedback and I’m like “Thank you. I’m not going to change that.” What I see as a reaction is that someone is either discouraged or even pissed off with my reaction.

    I mean, they did expect me to comply with what they shared with me. I don’t differentiate here feedback on work I do from feedback on my behaviors. It’s just, for whatever reasons, I decide that I don’t want to change that specific thing.

    That doesn’t make me any less grateful for feedback I got by the way.

    It’s just that now we turned the tables. Now it’s: Whatever the hell I want.

    If you want to make me compliant with whatever just make it explicit. At least we’ll have common understanding.

    Feedback’s role, the way I perceive it, is not compliance. It is providing information about one’s behaviors, actions and attitudes and their impact. It is, as its name suggests, about feeding one back with information, not about changing one or making them doing what somebody else want them to do.

    If you give me feedback with a clear intention to change me or even worse to make me do what you want you are likely to end up being disappointed.

    It will happen despite the fact that I treat that feedback as factual and fair. It is factual since fact is that you think and feel whatever you think and feel. It is fair for the very same reason.

    At the same time it is subjective. Objective feedback, as long as it touches interactions between people, is a mirage. Or an oxymoron. Stop pursuing objectivity. To make it clear: it doesn’t make such feedback any less valuable.

    Once we understand that it enables the whole new level of discussing feedback both ways.

    Ultimately it’s: “I share that with you. Do whatever the hell you want with this.”

    And: “Thank you for sharing. I will do whatever the hell I want with this, indeed.”

    Only then it truly is valuable feedback.

  • Personal Ritual Dissent

    If I got a dollar each time I heard someone mentioning that they’d like to get more feedback I would be filthy rich by now. Heck, if I got a dollar each time I personally said that I would still got a decent sum. Most of us do want and like to get feedback. Most of us would love to get more of that.

    There’s obviously one thing to consider, which is what kind of feedback and received in what context is most useful for us. I’ve heard a lot of theories on that. One example is that we should always focus on positive or supportive feedback as people would improve their weaknesses subconsciously while they’re working on their strengths. Another is infamous feedback sandwich, which tells that each critical bit should but in the middle of two supportive ones. There are dozens of these.

    On one hand there’s a bit of truth in each. On the other I call bullshit.

    I don’t believe there’s a single, universal way of delivering and / or receiving feedback that works in majority of cases. Personally, while I like to hear positive feedback as it makes me feel good, I really learn when I get critical feedback. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be very constructive or factual feedback; I typically can make much sense out of non-constructive opinions too. And I don’t give a damn whether you add a sandwich to the mix.

    There are better ways of delivering feedback when we think about an individual context, but there is a universal answer in a general case. This means that the most useful feedback should be adjusted to the person who receives it. A nice thing is that we can tweak the situation so we get what works for us.

    If you learn from feedback in a similar way that I do, meaning that critical feedback is what makes you change, the following part is for you.

    I learned about the idea of ritual dissent some time ago. Back then I didn’t even know that it is Dave Snowden who should be attributed for creating it. Anyway, the basic idea is to create a situation where a group tears an idea apart looking for all the potential risks or holes. After a spokesperson presents an idea while everyone else remains silent, there’s a part when everyone dissents the idea while a spokesperson remains silent.

    There may be two goals in doing that. One is obviously improving the idea itself by making it risk-proof. The other part is that ritual dissent can be treated as a listening exercise. It’s not that easy to remain silent when someone tears your idea apart. At the same time this is what differentiates it from a futile discussion full of personal opinions.

    So here’s an idea: if you look for critical feedback you can use the same pattern in a personal context.

    No, it’s not a theoretical idea. I’ve done that.

    It hurt. A freaking lot.

    And I got more of what I wanted in half an hour than over the course of past year.

    And it was awesome. Once emotions wore out, that is.

    The thing is that adopting ritual dissent in personal context is, well, very personal. I was asking to be criticized. In fact, not-critical feedback was forbidden. No matter how much I learn from critical feedback it was nothing pleasant.

    I would even consider that idea as “don’t try that at home” one unless one has self-awareness in terms of how they’re going to react for such critique. Having a psychologist around when doing that wouldn’t be a bad idea.

    There are a couple things that make it work but two are essential. One is trust. I don’t say that everyone needs to fully trust a person being dissed. What is full trust anyway? However, there has be a decent level of trust so that anything that gets said won’t be used again anyone in any way. It may make the whole thing a bit tricky especially for managers or leaders where some sort of power relationship is involved.

    At the same time there’s a lot of followership. Once a few people who feel safe start dissenting others join. Especially when they see that a dissented person doesn’t break the rules and keeps the mouth shut.

    Another thing that makes personal ritual dissent work is listening, which is an inherent part of the exercise. It is a double-edged sword. On one hand the dissed person remains silent so the whole thing doesn’t turn into futile discussion. On the other the silence creates the pressure on the group. Someone eventually has to speak up even if it means going out of their comfort zone.

    An interesting thing is that it’s nothing pleasant on either end. The exercise, which we run mid-day, was basically a killjoy. At the same time it spurred a lot of spin-off discussions afterwards, which is a reason why I wouldn’t do it at the very end of a day.

    The best part is that getting critical feedback is not the ultimate value of the exercise. Since it creates a lot of tension and moves people out of the comfort zones it breaks some mental barriers that people had, thus makes sharing feedback later way easier.

    After all sharing one critical opinion is nowhere close to dissing someone collectively for half an hour in a row.

    Finally, some of feedback won’t be really addressed to the person who asked for a personal ritual dissent. It may be formulated in a way as it was so, but the real addressee would be somewhere else in a room and hopefully they’d get it too.

    So if feeling like shit for (at least) a few hours is a price you’re willing to pay for a ton of valuable feedback, this is an idea for you. Would you dare?

  • Brickell Key Award Nomination

    I’m on cloud nine. I was nominated to this year’s Brickell Key Award. For those of you who don’t know what that is, Brickell Key Award is the way of honoring people that have shown leadership and contributions in Lean Kanban community. I wouldn’t fancy the award that much if not the list of people who won it during previous years: Jim Benson, David Joyce, Arne Roock, Russel Healy, Richard Hensley and Alisson Vale

    There’s another part of the story. I’m simply honored to be in the company of Jabe Bloom, Yuval Yeret, Hakan Forss, Chris Shinkle and Troy Magennis as the nominees. In fact, my humility suggests me to question whether I even belong to this splendid pack.

    I’ve never been a part of Lean Kanban community for material gains as I still (happily) sit on practitioner’s side of the fence and use occasional consulting gigs mainly as a way of sharpening the saw. It gives me comfort of straight talking, as I’m not trying to sell anything to anyone. Probably if you read my writings, heard me speaking at events or simply talked with me you know what attitude I’m taking about. After all whenever learning something new last thing you want is a rosy picture.

    My hope would be that my efforts helped you and your teams understand what Kanban is and how to implement it successfully. If it was so and you want to share some of the love this is the right time let know the selection committee (or simply leave a comment under the post which is awesome too).

    By the way, if you want to share some hate because I misled you or something, that is fine too. I love critical feedback, and it’s definitely helpful for the selection committee as well.

  • Feedback Culture

    This is a rant. I’m sorry.

    We have our mouths full of feedback. We are eager to get feedback on our work. We consider sharing feedback as a crucial part of the work of any leader. Feedback this. Feedback that.

    Yeah, that’s all true. Except we’re missing one part.

    When it comes to leaving our comfort zones, we instantly start sucking at sharing feedback. We suck big time. You don’t like how our folks from PR team dealt with a recent initiative, right? After all you are just telling me that. So why won’t you just go and tell them? Brilliant, isn’t it?

    It’s pretty easy, you know. You use your mouth to construct these things called words and you build sentences out of words. And then the magic happens – you can transmit the message using sentences. Voila!

    That’s easy. Really. Just remember to be honest. Share the message in a straightforward way. Don’t judge. You will manage. I believe in you.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not freaking out over a single situation. I see this as a pattern. Actually, whenever I see any questions regarding feedback my default answer is “honest and straightforward.” The problem is this answer doesn’t seem to very popular. Actually beating around the bush or simply “don’t tell anything” types of answers seems to be the standard behavior for many.

    So why, oh why, are you surprised that you don’t get much quality feedback? After all you too are contributing to building this sick organization that is just afraid to share any. It’s simple – if no one shares feedback no one receives it either. It doesn’t populate like freaking lemmings or something.

    And while we are on this topic, well, it’s not only how you (don’t) share feedback; it’s also how you receive it. Next time someone wants to share something critical about you or your work, try this: STFU and listen. The other person has just moved their butt out of their comfort zone to tell you something they think is important. The least you shall do is to let them do their part. But you should do better – listen and try to learn something from it. A simple “thank you” seems proper too.

    You may even disagree with the merits of the feedback but it isn’t some kind of odd negotiation or something. No one is trying to win this discussion with you. No one is attacking you. So spare me the drama and don’t get all defensive. It neither helps you nor the other guy.

    Most of all, it definitely does nothing good to the feedback culture you may try to introduce into your organization. Not to mention building trust.

    If you really want to build an open feedback culture in your company, start sharing and stop being a jerk, I mean defensive, when you receive feedback. If your organization doesn’t appreciate this, think again whether it is the right organization to be with.

    Now that you asked, yes, such an attitude means that you become vulnerable in front of your superiors, peers and colleagues. And yes, it is a crucial part of building trust. I don’t know how it is in your case but I wouldn’t like to work for an organization that is incapable of building trust. Would you?

  • On Feedback

    I’m not a native English speaker, which basically means my English is far from perfect. Not a surprise, eh? Anyway, it happens sometimes when one of natives I’m talking with corrects me or specifically points one of mistakes I keep making.

    And I’m really thankful for that.

    I’m thankful most of the time such feedback happens instantly so I can refer to the mistake and at least try to correct it somehow.

    This is what happened recently when one of my friends pointed one of pronunciation mistakes I keep making. It worked. It did because feedback loop was short. It worked even better because it was critical feedback. I didn’t get support for all the words I pronounce correctly. It was just a short message: “you’re doing this wrong.”

    Of course it is my thing to decide whether I want to do something about this. Nevertheless I can hardly think of positive feedback I could receive that would be that helpful.

    When you think about this, it is contradictory to what we often hear about delivering feedback. It isn’t uncommon that we are thought how we should focus on positives because this is how we “build” people and not “destroy” them. Even more, delivering positive feedback is way more pleasant and for most people easier as well. It is tempting to avoid the critical part.

    When we are on feedback loops I have one obvious association. Agile in its core is about feedback loops, and short ones. We have iterations so we deliver working software fast and receive feedback from clients. Or even better, we have steady flow so we don’t wait till the end of sprint to get this knowledge about the very next feature we complete. We build (and possibly deploy too) continuously so we know whether what we’ve build is even working. And of course we have unit tests that tell us how our code works against predefined criteria.

    It is all about feedback loops, right?

    Of course we expect to learn that whatever we’ve built is the thing clients wanted, our code hasn’t broken the build and all the tests are green. However, on occasion, something will be less than perfect. A feature will work not exactly the way a client expected, a build will explode, a bunch of tests will go red or pronunciation of a word will be creepy.

    Are we offended by this feedback?

    Didn’t think so. What more, it helps us improve. It is timely, specific and… critical. So why, oh why are we that reluctant to share critical feedback?

    It would be way more harmful strategy to wait long before closing a feedback loop, no matter what the feedback is. Would it really tell you something if I pointed you this two-line change in code you did 4 months ago, that broke a couple of unit tests? Meaningless, isn’t it? By the way: this is why I don’t fancy performance reviews, even though I see the point of doing them in specific environments.

    Whenever you think of sharing feedback with people think about feedback you get from your build process or tests – it doesn’t matter that much whether it is positive or critical; what makes the difference is the fact it is quick and factual.

    You can hardly go wrong with timely and factual feedback, no matter whether it is supportive or not.

  • Instant Feedback Culture

    There is said a lot about feedback. We continuously learn how important it is and how to deliver it in constructive way. Yet still, for many of us, me included, delivering feedback is difficult.

    I already hear you nodding your heads and saying “yes, especially critical feedback is a hard part.”

    Well, no. Not at all.

    I mean when it comes to critical feedback we happen to fail to do it constructively, but at least we do it. Positive (supportive or however you want to call it) is a different animal though. It’s easier to do it constructively. The problem is every now and then we forget to do it at all.

    But I have a solution. Yay!

    It is totally simple. That’s a good part. Unfortunately there’s also bad news for you. Prerequisites are difficult to achieve.

    OK, the method. I call it instant feedback culture. Why culture? Well, it is the part of organizational culture. The rest is pretty self-explanatory – you deliver feedback instantly. Has someone just said or done something you want to comment on in either a positive or a negative way? Use the Nike way: just do it. Do it instantly or almost instantly. Why “almost?” Um, not all the feedback you want to deliver publicly and the situation or behavior you have feedback on might have happened in a big group.

    You don’t keep it for later, for dreadful performance appraisal or something. You don’t wait until you forget it, which is by far the most common thing to happen. In some way you just get it out of the chest.

    Simple enough, isn’t it?

    Now the hard part. Prerequisites.

    First, trust. Unless you all trust each other it won’t happen. OK, it may happen partially, between people who trust each other, even if you can’t say that virtually everyone trusts anyone else. However, bear in mind that it’s like with number communication paths: between two people, there is one, between three there are there, with four people you have 6, etc. It doesn’t scale up linearly but exponentially. And the more people you get on trust side the more value they get out of instant feedback culture.

    Second, openness. It works both ways: one has to be ready to honestly share what they think and on the other side they need to accept an incoming message. I don’t have to to agree uncritically with it, let alone doing something about it, but I should accept and appreciate someone cared enough to share it.

    Doesn’t look difficult? Believe me, it is. Actually if you asked me what is a single biggest challenge in leading teams I will point building trust as it is totally intangible, yet crucial to get this entity called “a team” working.

    Anyway, considering you’re doing great and these prerequisites aren’t an issue for you, introducing instant feedback culture should be a piece of cake. Just remember to share every little bit of feedback instantly. Don’t wait until it fades away to oblivion. Don’t wait till there is an occasion because by this time it can be totally irrelevant or meaningless. Start sharing your feedback instantly and do it consistently.

    Others will follow. After all we like to receive feedback, especially a pleasant part of it. This way we get relevant feedback and get it quickly so it actually is easy to do something about the thing which is under discussion. Either do more of it (if a feedback is supportive) or change it (it it’s not).

    Soon you will see feedback flying all around in different directions and people, armed with new knowledge, will be improving much faster.

    So go, try introducing instant feedback culture. Considering that your team is ready for it, that is.