Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

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

Tag: learning

  • Specifics of Voluntary Projects

    Recently I told you about TEDxKrakow and how great idea it is to get engaged in a project like that if you want to get some experience in project management.

    No one commented that voluntary projects can’t be exactly the same as typical commercial projects even though I pretty much expected to hear this kind of argument. I did because it would be well-grounded. Voluntary projects are specific because, well, they are voluntary.

    OK, so where are differences?

    • No managers. No one is a boss. No one can just tell others they have to do something. There is no easy path. You have to earn your power before you can use it. People won’t start listening to you just because you are able to talk loudly. You have to show that you are doing at least as much by yourself and/or earn their trust before you start shouting your orders all over the place.
    • More talking. Talking is easy, talking is cheap. Unfortunately talking doesn’t get things done. People tend to throw great ideas as long as someone else is supposed to make them real. Unfortunately it sometimes turns into much talking and little doing as there isn’t really a business client who would make quick decisions on what is must-have and what is nice-to-have. A pretty good playground for doers I’d say.
    • More freedom. Unlike in typical projects you actually choose what you’re going to do. It’s like the open auction – I have this and that tasks unassigned, who’s going to take them over? Specialization works pretty similar though – we tend to choose things we are competent at and avoid those we suck at.
    • It’s easier to shine. In voluntary projects no one wants to get all the credit. After all it isn’t a place where people are going to build their whole careers. Chances are good that your effort will be properly credited. Just choose your tasks wisely and then deliver what you promised to deliver. Since in voluntary projects over-promising is just as common as in all others it should be enough to make you stand out.

    There is one more thing. It is real fun to be a part of this kind of project. But, after all, I’m not sure if it is a general rule or TEDxKrakow I used as example is fun to work on or fantastic people I met in this venture made it so. Or maybe all above are true.

    And if you haven’t yet registered to this fine event do it while you still can.

  • Learning Project Management Basics

    A question about starting career in project management is heard pretty often. A question about value of different project management certifications usually follows.

    There is a bunch of standard answers for these questions. Apply for junior role in project management. Attend a course. Help your PM in her job. Get a certificate (this or another). Buy and read a stack of books on project management etc.

    I have another answer. Actually the answer isn’t exactly mine. I’ve ruthlessly stolen it from Scott Berkun.

    Go, run a project.

    “How? I mean I’m yet trying to get project management job, remember?”

    Pretty much everything which happens around you is a kind of project. If you invite a group of friend for a dinner it is a project. If that doesn’t sound like a real project think bigger. Maybe you can organize vacations for friends?

    “Yeah, and what do I learn from such a simple thing?”

    Don’t tell me it’s easy – I’m just finalizing sailing trip for 25 people. And, believe me, friends aren’t the best clients you can find around. It requires the same skills you’ll be using once you get your PM job to organize this kind of trip.

    “Maybe that’s a nice idea but I don’t have 25 friends.”

    That sucks, man. But you definitely have some non-profit organization which would appreciate some help in their projects. And they do have a lot of them. And they’d love your help they’d get for free (non-profit often means non-paying too).

    “But, you know, this whole non-profit stiff isn’t really something I’d like to work on.”

    Um, you think once you are a project manager you’ll be able to choose projects you like and reject those you don’t. I have a bad news for you. You won’t. You know life isn’t as nice as they told you.

    “OK, but how it helps me to learn project management?”

    You basically organize a group of people to do what you want. They come to a meeting point. They go to target place where they’re warmly welcomed by your hosts. People know when they can go watch latest World Cup match and when they should bring you a cold beer in exchange for organizing this great trip. Earlier everyone paid you their share of costs so you could have paid for your shelter.

    This isn’t much different from project management in real world. You make people doing what you want. They work on a project tasks of your choice. Everyone knows when they’re free to learn new technology and when they should focus of finishing before deadline. Earlier people agreed on plan of splitting tasks and build a schedule etc.

    “What about all the formal stuff? I don’t have to create technical specifications when I organize a trip for friends.”

    Oh, really? You don’t? That’s interesting… OK, just joking. All the formal stuff will differ among companies so it isn’t so important anyway. Of course you should know what WBS is and understand how to find critical path, but that’s not a rocket science.

    What more usually candidates for project management positions lack practical knowledge – lack of understanding of some technical terms isn’t so common.

    So go, find a project and run it. After all there aren’t many things which would match your friends thanking you for a great trip and asking whether you’re organizing it next year too. This single thing is worth the whole effort. The funny thing is it works similarly in projects you run at work.

    By the way, I’d use the same method to learn leadership.

  • People Are Lazy

    The other day I was asked to write an article for our company’s intranet portal. The first thing which came to my mind was “no one would read it.” Well, probably few people would but not many more.

    You might say I have a sad view of humanity, and you’d probably be right, but I kind of lost enthusiasm to systemic attempts to spread knowledge within organizations. And I mean here all things like intranet news sites, internal corporate blogs, knowledge bases, company magazines etc.

    In theory, as long as you have at least a few dozens of people on board, these things are great. They have no weak points. There are a couple of leaders who organize site/blog/magazine/you name it, then there is a group of producers who work on content and then there is a vast majority who consumes all the stuff.

    That’s the theory. In practice first two groups (leaders and producers) are rarely a problem. The problem is people don’t give a shit about your news site, blog, knowledge base and magazine. They couldn’t care less whether they might learn something from there. People just don’t want to learn.

    Scott Berkun recently shared his thought why the world is a mess in general (read not only the post, but comments too). His conclusions are that people don’t listen and don’t read either. This actually supports the theory I offer above – even if you take the effort to create a gem or two and drop it into your intranet portal no one would read, no one would notice.

    Actually not willing to learn, listen and read are just symptoms. And yes, there’s a single disease behind them all. People are lazy. They don’t learn because it’s easier to leave things as they are. They don’t read because skimming takes less effort. They don’t listen because trying to genuinely understand what other are saying is hard, much harder than just waiting for your turn to speak.

    Note, I don’t say I’m not lazy. If I have problems with motivating myself while working at home that’s exactly because I am. If I tend to procrastinate most of housekeeping tasks, like fixing the lamp or securing a shelf to a wall, the reason is the same. Scott may be no different by the way.

    Now, before you tell me that I’m over-generalizing, I know that. The same as you know that most people fit the picture above. When I look at statistics for recent articles on the intranet site I see that less than 10% of people in the organization read them. So when asked whether I would write an article on Kanban to be published there I wanted to answer with something like “I write about goddamn Kanban at least one every two weeks on my goddamn blog which you may find typing my goddamn name into goddamn Google. I did two goddamn presentations recently and sent goddamn links to two thirds of folks within the goddamn company. Shouldn’t that be enough for pretty much anyone here to find a goddamn article on goddamn Kanban?”

    But now when you ask, I will write the (goddamn) article. It is worth helping people even if just 10% of them care. And it might make me look less lazy too. You know, I just aspire to be in to 10% of population.

  • Should You Encourage People to Learn?

    A very interesting discussion followed one of my recent posts about people not willing to learn. There were a few different threads there but the one brought by David Moran is definitely worth its own post.

    David pointed it is manager’s responsibility to create learning opportunities and incentives for people to exploit them.

    At the first thought I wanted to agree with that. But after a while I started going through different teams and people I worked with. I recalled multiple situations when opportunities were just waiting but somehow barely anyone was willing to exploit them. The rest preferred to do nothing.

    I believe most of the time it is not the lack of opportunities which is a problem but lack of will. Now the question is: whether a manager or a leader should create incentives for people around? If so what kind of incentives should it be?

    First of all, I don’t believe in all kinds of extrinsic incentives which are aimed to encourage people to learn. If you set a certification or exam passed as a prerequisite for someone to be promoted people would get certification just to get promotion. They won’t treat it as a chance to learn but as one of tasks on ‘getting promoted’ checklist. You get what you measure. If you measure a number of certificates you will get a lot of these.

    The results are even worse when you create a negative incentive, i.e. you don’t get bonus money (you’d earned) unless you submit your monthly article to knowledge base (seen that). What you get there in majority of cases is just a load of crap which looks a bit like knowledge base article. After all no one will read it anyway so why bother?

    What options do you have then? Well, you can simply talk with people encouraging them to learn. “You may find this conference interesting.” “Taking language course would be a great for you.” “I’d appreciate that certification.” Unfortunately it usually works with people who are self-learners in the first place and don’t really need an incentive – the opportunity is enough (and they probably find opportunities by themselves anyway). The rest will most likely agree with you but will still do nothing.

    You may of course promote self-learners over the rest and most of us probably do it since people who feel an urge to learn are generally considered as great professionals. Unfortunately this mechanism isn’t completely obvious and is pretty hard to measure (how would you measure self-learning attitude?) so its educational value is close to zero.

    Coming back to the point, I don’t think that it is manager’s responsibility to build incentives for people to learn. I think the role of a leader ends somewhere between supporting everyone’s efforts to learn and creating opportunities. Besides if learning is enforced it won’t build any significant value.

    And yes, it is manager’s role to have a knowledgeable and ever-learning team but forcing people to learn is neither the only nor the best available approach.

  • People Don’t Want to Learn

    I attended a few meetings recently. They all were one thing in common: someone made some effort to create opportunity for others to learn. It doesn’t really matter if that’s downloading Mike Cohn’s video or preparing and delivering a presentation in person. It is the effort addressed to others. It’s like saying: “Hey, I found this presentation valuable and believe we have a lot to learn from it. I will find a room where we can see it and discuss it.”

    And then just 5 out of few dozens of invited people come.

    That’s because, in general, people don’t care if you want to (and can) teach them something. They don’t want to learn. Chances are you don’t agree you are alike. That’s fine. But in this situation face it: you’re a minority.

    If you belonged to majority you wouldn’t give a damn about your colleague inviting you to a local developers’ meet-up. You wouldn’t feel like watching video from the major conference from your area of interests. And when I say majority I think like 90-95% of people.

    That’s right. I believe barely one tenth people care to learn even when they can do it effortlessly. This is by the way rejecting to become a better professional.

    But at least one third, if not a half, will complain how limited their learning options are. How they can’t meet with authorities in workplace or how they weren’t allowed to attend an overpriced course.

    But there’s a good news too. It’s pretty easy to stand out the crowd – we just need to use opportunities to learn we have.

  • What Makes You a Great Professional

    I have a small task for you. Think about a few people you know and you consider them as great professionals. Don’t limit yourself to any single role – choose anyone who is great no matter if he’s a manager or a developer or a dustman. Got them? Fine.

    Now a second step – try to name one attribute which is common for each of them. Something which isn’t, by definition, related to specific role or specific job. Depending on variety of people you’ve chosen this can be pretty hard, but try for a while – there must be something. Got it? Great.

    What you’re trying to achieve here is finding a kind of success factor. Something which would differentiate good from great, but at the same time probably not something which would guarantee a mediocre person to become a star. That just isn’t so easy.

    What have you chosen?

    My choice is: urge to learn.

    This is something which constantly pushes us ahead, out of our comfort zone. Even if we err along the way the overall result is positive. As the time passes we get better and better since, well, learning is all about getting better. We grow to the point when someone thinks about us when asked the question from the beginning of this post. We’re not likely to get there though, so chances are good there’s still plenty of room for self-improvement.

    Learning can be a part of your job – in this case you should be pretty happy with it. You can also do a job which doesn’t develop you much at the moment, but it is a lame excuse to stop learning. There are tons of great places to get better at whatever you do or learn something completely new. If you stick with whatever you already know you’re heading to side-track.

    I have great news for you: if you reading this, odds are you have this urge. If you take time to look for content discussing personal development in context of your domain (I don’t expect many dustmen here really) you’re well ahead of the rest of the pack. You’re here to learn something new. Otherwise why would you spend your time reading this?

    If you’ve chosen something else than urge to learn tell me what is your choice and why.