Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

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

Tag: status quo

  • Don’t Ask For Permission

    “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

    ~ Grace Hopper

    As a leader of more than a hundred people I often get asked questions that I don’t really know how to answer. Well, I probably could answer pretty easily, although I don’t think “who, the hell, even asks such questions” or “maybe I could come up with some random piece of advice if you really need one” are really the type of answers they are looking for.

    On such occasions my default answer is Grace Hopper’s famous quotation.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of total anarchy. I do appreciate some order and asking for permission is an integral part of most of orders I know, if not all of them. However, when in doubt just take the advice from Grace Hopper.

    You may wonder whether this approach backfires on me sometimes. Oh yes, it does. I guarantee you this. Not very often, but pretty regularly. On such occasions, for a brief moment I wish that guy had asked what to do and had not simply done as he liked. But then I realize how much of a bottleneck I’d be with this attitude.

    Heck, not only would I be a bottleneck but also I’d restrain many of the great initiatives my teams pursue. I would tell them over and over again how much they’re begging for failure. Or even better – I’d keep them from failing. Except, eventually, they don’t fail. Damn those guys, they just don’t want to fail even though I predicted that.

    Actually, even when they fail, it is still better. After all, a failure is the best teacher and, as a bonus, I can use my clairvoyant hat: “Told you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

    When you think about it, the worst thing which can happen is that you might need to explain to a few very important guys why your team did what they did. And believe me, it doesn’t happen very often. It’s a pretty low price for all the great initiatives people pursue, the results they achieve, and the culture you all help to create.

    On a side note: when we are on the subject of culture, it probably is a cultural thing, but I find it interesting that we actually need to encourage people to go beyond hierarchies, procedures and rules. Otherwise many of them are naturally inclined to preserve the status quo.

    Status quo is likely nothing you’d like to preserve.

    So next time you have any doubts, just do the goddamn thing and ask for forgiveness. If you even need to do this after the fact, that is.

    Yes, I am well aware that quite a bunch of people from my team are going to read it.

    Yes, I know that some of them will take the advice to heart.

    Yes, I am pretty sure that they will use it in a way that (on occasions) will kick me in my butt. Hard.

    And yes, I am still happy with that. This is a tiny price for what I get in exchange.

    After all, if your butt isn’t kicked at all, you’re likely failing as a leader.

  • 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.

  • Fighting with Status Quo

    Last time I wrote about status quo and how it becomes protected value within companies. I could tell you countless stories of people being (mentally) hurt by status quo. I could tell barely a few of these when status quo was defeated.

    How to fight with status quo then?

    A short answer is: change rules of the game. Until new status quo emerges everything will be different.

    To elaborate a bit more, status quo is painful in terms of lost opportunities. Every time some talented and eager engineer hits the glass ceiling or a poor candidate is promoted over a good one or suboptimal organization is sustained the company loses. It loses in terms of productivity, performance and employee satisfaction. At the end it loses money since at the same cost there could be done more or there could be done equally much but at lower cost.

    A good supporting question is: who sees all these problems?

    Everyone who tried to improve something but failed because reluctance of people happy with whatever it is today. That would be one group. Another one will be made of few people who are high enough in organizational structure to see how things work, but at the same time have no real power, or interest, to change it.

    Another supporting question: can these people introduce change?

    No, they don’t. They don’t have enough power. They are either too junior or too new or work too far from the core of the organization. Sometimes they would even try to fight the reality just to learn they have virtually no chance to win. Status quo defenders are numerous and powerful and they prevailed many try-outs like this.

    If you came to this point you can basically do two things:

    • Change behavior of people who defend status quo. To succeed with this you need to open their eyes first. It may be possible but it doesn’t have to. How to do this? Well, bottom-up approach doesn’t work. If it did their attitude would already be different. What you need is someone with respect. Someone who would coach status quo keepers showing them ways of improvement. Make them aware there are different styles of management. Make them aware how they can improve their leadership. Make them aware how much they can personally gain if they enable changes in their teams. If this approach succeeds game rules will start changing slowly but constantly. Unfortunately this would work only when you have managers who were unaware of the problems. If they were consciously maintaining status quo chances are good your efforts would be ignored.
    • Get someone experienced and give her power to change things. It could be one of these peripheral managers but as an insider she would be naturally perceived as an enemy by her colleagues. It’s better to get an outsider, someone who successfully cleaned up a company or two. Hire her and give her enough power to allow her to enforce changes over the current organization. Let the outsider change the rules. If you choose your candidate wisely, you’ll go through a number of clashes, some people will leave, other will be fired but in the end organization will work better. Why? Because every significant change in the company, every leaving, creates opportunities for those who want to improve organization and destroys at least a few glass ceilings. Of course you can rebuild every flawed element you’ve just destroyed but after all one of reasons you have your superhero outsider is to prevent that happening.

    As I write this I’m perfectly aware how rare are cases when companies decide to undertake such actions. But every time I hear about another management failure which is triggered by defending status quo (and believe me I hear that a lot) I have the same thought: “Why won’t you, my dear execs, do anything to heal your organization?”

    I surely am biased but it happens now and then that I believe I have a few recipes which would instantly improve overall performance, let alone some consistent work on fundamentals. After all management isn’t that hard if you have someone to learn from.

  • Big Companies Are The Best… In Maintaining Status Quo

    What happens when company grows from 10 to 100 people?

    Initially there’s a group of highly motivated and hard working people led by one or a couple of visionaries. Everyone knows each other well. Everyone knows what anyone else is doing at the moment. Then some success happens and organization grows. At the beginning it scales up trouble-free. Somewhere along the way teams emerge. Suddenly company needs a few managers. Who is promoted? What a question. Of course those who were in the pack when employee counter was one-digit.

    First hierarchy self-emerges. No one really thinks about this much. After all it’s all about a couple of teams, not full-blown organization. Then the company grows further and by the time it reaches 100 people there are probably at least two levels of management. First managers add new folks to their teams to the point they need middle management to deal with their 30-something people.

    Note: at that point there still isn’t much planning when it comes to organizing company structure. It is created in the meantime while people aren’t focusing on their work.

    What happens when company grows from 100 to 1000 people?

    By the time organization has 100 employees self-emergent structure becomes suboptimal. It is no longer a bunch of people working toward common success. If you don’t hire great candidates only, and let’s face it: you don’t, there are some people on board who just work there and don’t really care for anything beyond their paycheck. There are also few managers who shouldn’t become managers at all but should stick to engineering. To add some spice the company still grows at constant rate.

    The bigger it grows the more power management gets. Execs no longer work with line employees most of the time. They work with excel sheets and if they meet someone they are other execs or senior managers at best. Real power is moved one level down – to managers who make hiring decisions, promote employees and deal with all people-related issues. Who are they? Remember this few veterans who were around from the very beginning and become very first managers in the company? Well, now each of them leads one of multi-team departments with close to 100 pairs of hands each.

    Sure, there are reorganizations but most likely they happen out of the center of the company. Core remains unchanged. Why? Well, that is damn good question.

    A short answer is: because big organizations are great in maintaining status quo. I don’t want to argue whether a few hundred people make a company big (it does not) but somewhere between 100 and 1000 people this attitude appears and it is there for good.

    And here’s a long answer.

    • Think about management skills of early-managers. Most likely it is their first management job. Most likely they were engineers initially. I’ll be brutally honest: chances are good they doesn’t really suit management job. The problem is they don’t even know that. They can’t. They may even do their best and still suck as managers. If they have grown with the company they may lack just good role-models in management. I could bet my money against their management skills in this situation and, on average, I would win.
    • Now, put yourself in shoes of these veterans. They are with the company from the beginning. They career seems to be well-earned. They aren’t aware they may suck at what they do. When they were engineers they had simple verification of their work: test passed, client didn’t complain thus everything was good. With management it isn’t so easy. Their team won’t come to them to say they suck. Hey, you just don’t go to tell such things to your boss. We can even consider managers are aware they suck a bit. And what would they do? Resign to leave a position for someone better? You must be kidding me.
    • So what do execs do with this? Pretty much nothing. They’re chewing through their Excel sheets and as far as numbers are fine everything else is too. And if numbers start to stink who would they talk to anyway? Well, managers I guess. They’re disconnected with most of the rest of people for a long time already.

    Maintaining status quo is a safe choice for everyone who has enough power to make any important decision in the company. Those who see problems and would like to change something are either somewhere on periphery of organization or very low in hierarchy structure. The former aren’t taken seriously the latter hit the glass ceiling.

    What more, existing status quo propels the same behavior all over again. If the company promoted three out of four engineers from early setup to senior management the fourth one pretty much expects the same. And most likely he will get the promotion, no matter whether he was the best candidate or not.

    Of course you can find counterexamples. I don’t say every company works that way. I guess when Google hit 500th employee mark they were still nothing like that. I know startup where all 3 co-founders had experience in management so they aren’t likely to hit this reef either. I know companies which will never make it past 50 people so they definitely shouldn’t care about these issues.

    Anyway more often than not defending status quo is a problem. I’ve seen it at all stages from few dozens to few thousands of people. And it always looks like decision-makers weren’t aware of the fact or, if they were, like they didn’t care. When company grows to specific size it is just easier that way.

    In the next posting I’ll give an idea what can be done to change the situation. Stay tuned.