Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

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

Tag: trust

  • (Don’t) Change Your Job

    Few of us have comfort not to worry, or think, of changing a job ever again. If you’re not one of those few, this post is for you.

    I have easily gone through way more than a hundred of exit interviews. No, it doesn’t mean that I changed job that many times. This means that so many people left my teams. Nothing to brag about, I guess. Anyway, if there’s a reason for leaving one’s job I’ve heard it. And I’ve heard it from a person who I knew and worked with for quite a while.

    Obviously, more often than not I tried hard to keep people around and missed those who decided to leave. This wouldn’t make me an objective adviser at a time. However, from a perspective of time, once what had been about to happen already happened, I believe I can go beyond emotions and biases and be pretty objective.

    There’s one thing that I noticed in my attitude when I talk to people about leaving. I feel and act differently when I try to keep on board someone who I believe may be making a good decision than in cases when I’m pretty sure they are making a mistake. While I don’t think any of you would find my feelings even mildly amusing, what is interesting is that my compass seems to be working surprisingly well.

    So how the hell do I sense whether changing a job is a good idea or not?

    It’s pretty much one thing. What’s more it sounds obvious. Surprisingly enough people very rarely follow the hunch.

    It’s all about how values of an organization one is about to join are aligned with their own values.

    Yup, that’s it.

    I mean, seriously. Ask people what they value. It’s an individual thing so they’d come up with all sorts of stuff, like respect, safety, trust, transparency, challenges, health, happiness, authenticity, quality, learning, perspectives and whatnot. Interestingly, very, very few people I know would say “more money” and in such cases they’d likely have pretty good reason for that (which is fair enough too).

    A nice thing is we can get pretty good hints whether these values are respected and embraced at our workplaces-to-be.

    “You can’t know” one would say. Well, you can. It’s enough to realize one thing. Every publicly or semi-publicly known action of a company is emanation of how it operates inside. In other words if you want to know what is valued in any given org just pay attention to how that company acts publicly.

    Are they worth of trust as a business partner? Why should they be as an employer? Do they care about well-being of their clients? Why should they care about yours? Do they respect any partner they work with? If not, why would you assume their respect would be extended to employees?

    I don’t say that without a reason. It’s not a rare occasion when there’s a value match or at least there’s nothing that would indicate the opposite. At the same time I’ve seen way too many bad decisions ignoring the obvious hints. As you may guess it didn’t work very well.

    So here’s my advice: ask yourself what is important for you. If an employer-to-be shares the key values with you then go for it. And yes, I do understand that I actually may be encouraging some of my people to look for alternatives. I don’t mind. After all, if I consider myself a leader I should care about well-being of my team, shouldn’t I?

    At the same time if your employer-to-be doesn’t seem to share your values this is a single most powerful signal to take into consideration. It means that the whole setup would suck eventually.

    And yes, it’s enough to look at, or ask about, relationships with partners or clients.

    It’s all about values and you can’t lie about values. If you are fair to your partners you’re going to be fair to your employees. And vice versa.

    Few people would take consider it when thinking about changing a job. Don’t be one of them.

  • What Does Project Management Mean to Me

    I was poked to answer the question on meaning of project management by Shim Marom. Since my work, and this blog, evolved away from covering what can be called traditional project management approach long ago I thought it may be a good occasion to restate the purpose of the blog as well.

    Se here it is.

    Getting the stuff done

    The simplest answer, from the top of my head, is that project management is all about making it happen. Of course it’s not a single person’s effort. It’s more orchestration of all the stuff happening around but at end of the day the discussion always starts with what got delivered.

    But wait…

    “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

    ~Peter Drucker

    Getting the right stuff done

    The discussion on the right stuff is primarily product management / product ownership thing but most definitely it’s not beyond the scope of what I consider project management. After all, if you’re doing the wrong thing there’s no credit to anyone. A project manager isn’t an exception here.

    So yes, it starts with grasping the business case, understanding how the project corresponds to it and actively working on that match.

    When we are on the right thing though, it’s inevitable that doing right thing versus doing thing right argument will pop up…

    Getting the right stuff done right

    Getting the thing right is about the quality. If there’s no quality built-in it’s going to come back to you and bite you in the butt. Painfully. While I’m as far as possible from introducing oppression tools like quality procedures and such stuff, quality doesn’t automagically happen. One needs to create environment where high quality thrives and is encouraged.

    What exactly the high quality means is obviously contextual but from my experience it’s not that difficult to describe the quality in any given context.

    If nothing else you can always make the next project better than the last one.

    Getting the right stuff done right and improving

    This brings me to one of the areas I sunk into when I started flirting with Kanban – continuous improvement. There should be no pride in doing same stuff again and again. Unless you’re a freaking genius and know it all about project management, that is.

    Personally, I couldn’t be farther from that. That’s why I have an ambition to improve. Improve the way I work but also improve the way everyone around works. It’s not that easy as it sounds though. The prerequisites are: understanding how the work gets done and learning like hell.

    Without understanding work we are like children in the fog – clueless and lost. Learning means that we broaden our horizons and go beyond that carrot and stick method our first managers were using all the time.

    Getting the right stuff done right, improving and building trust

    This one is a classic last but not least. In fact, I believe that without trust you will struggle across the board. And I mean trust here in a very broad sense. One, it is about building trust within a team. Without that people wouldn’t become vulnerable, thus would restrain to become transparent. Without that a project manager would always have limited information of what’s happening in an endeavor they’re supposed to lead.

    Second, and more importantly, it’s about building trust with a client. That’s where the real fun starts. It’s really rare when a client would take the first step and will start to be open, transparent and vulnerable. The good part is that they will likely do so once they see it on the other side. But this is fear that every project manager, and every team member, has to overcome by themselves.

    The example, as usually, should go from leaders.

    So this is it. I believe this definition works well for me right now and the stuff I deal with fits the picture neatly. It doesn’t matter whether I talk about Kanban, organizational culture or team management. It doesn’t matter whether I deal with a portfolio level, a project level or a task level. It’s all there.

    Project management is about getting the right stuff done right, improving and building trust.

  • No Authenticity, No Leadership

    There’s one thing about me that virtually every boss I’ve had so far has tried to correct. If you look at me all my emotions are painted on my face. You just can’t fail guessing whether I’m happy, worried, tired, excited, etc. I’ve heard so many times that I should do something about that since having people see my negative emotions definitely isn’t a good thing.

    You know, they see you worried so they instantly start worrying too and you don’t want to have worried people.

    I think I’ve even tried to change that. Fortunately, I’ve failed. Not that I don’t see how leader’s emotions can influence team’s behaviors. I do. And I know that sometimes I’m not helping, sorry for that.

    On the other hand, I’m honest and transparent this way. I’m all for honesty. I believe that transparency is a crucial ingredient for building a healthy team or a strong organization. In the worst case this attitude is a mixed blessing.

    But that’s not why I won’t try to change the behavior any more. I won’t do it because it’s who I am.

    One doesn’t have to like it. Such attitude doesn’t fit every organizational culture (and I learned it the hard way). But you aren’t a leader if you aren’t authentic.

    I was reminded that recently by Gwyn Teatro with her story about what leadership is. One bit I really loved:

    The man was successful because he did not pretend to be anyone else. His communication style included fun, laughter and humility. It worked for him simply because it is who he is.

    More than about anything else it’s about authenticity. People catch false tones sooner than you think. Then, they start guessing what really happens under the mask. It’s likely that their guesses are worse than the truth that one tries to hide. After all we are a creative bunch, aren’t we? It soon becomes worse: they don’t listen to the truth, even when it bites their butts. They just know better thanks to the gossips and far-fetched hunches. Their “leader” hasn’t been authentic so what’s the point of trusting him?

    So no, I’m not trading my authenticity for anything. Not worth it.

  • Flying Office

    I’ve been working as a manager for the vast majority of my career. Teams I led consisted between a couple to 150 people, most of them being bigger than 20. Throughout that time I’ve had my own office once. And I don’t think it’s been a good idea.

    I decided to move to the office as I didn’t really see any reasonable setup that would work with a team spread across 40 rooms. It was then, when I first thought about the idea of sitting with one team for a week or two before moving to another office to join another team. I didn’t decide to pursue the idea though.

    The thing that kept me from doing that was the organizational culture. I was a parachute boss for everyone and the division hadn’t existed before as a single entity, thus there was very little to no trust to me, or between teams.

    If I’d popped one day in a random office stating that I’d been planning to sit in for a couple of weeks it would have been interpreted as spying on the team (or some other, more sophisticated form of repression).

    Fortunately, this time the situation is different. The organizational culture in Lunar Logic is way more open. No one assumes that the boss has bad intentions. In fact, I’ve had first discussions with people being concerned about my actions just a couple of weeks after I joined.

    It takes courage to go to your new boss and interrogate them about their plans and intentions. Such an attitude means that people voluntarily become vulnerable. It also sets up a completely different environment a leader acts in.

    So this time I’m not going to have a private office, not a chance. After just a few weeks spent in a neutral place I fetched myself a flying office. What’s that? A bean bag, a laptop table and a cardboard box.

    Flying office

    A bean bag works extremely well as a sitting device. It is extra-comfortable for short periods of time. On the other hand it would be painful, and unhealthy, to sit there for 8 hours. The latter reminds me that leader’s place isn’t on their butt but on their feet – running around, removing obstacles and solving problems.

    A laptop table solves a problem with keeping a laptop on, well, you lap, which, despite its name, isn’t the most convenient way of working.

    And I use a recycled cardboard box to store all my office belongings, which is simply a handful of sticky notes and a couple of pens and markers.

    This way I can grab my flying office to my hands and move it to the place where I’m needed or I feel like I can be helpful. I need just a bit of space in a corner or by the wall and done – a new office set up.

    Surprisingly, sitting in the corner and almost on the floor has a few unexpected advantages . First, you need very little physical space, which means you will fit to almost any room (unless it is already packed beyond any healthy limits). Second, this way you become almost invisible, which definitely helps if your goal is to understand how the team functions, and not just scratch the surface.

    Third, and arguably most importantly, you strip yourself from status symbols. Instead of a huge desk dubbed by your colleagues as the airstrip, a leather armchair and a locker just the simplest set that does the job.

    All in all, you’re way more accessible and much less intimidating. Isn’t that something every single leader should strive for?

    The flying office isn’t only very mobile; it also renders quite a few barriers that leaders often face irrelevant. Bringing oneself to a floor level is a challenge for ego though, but I’d say it is a good thing too.

    All you need to start it is just a bit of trust.

    Honestly, I regret I didn’t try it, despite the odds, when the only other option was a private office. I can hardly think of a different setup now, that I potentially have half a dozen more common solutions.

    How about you? Given that your team doesn’t work in a single room, are you courageous enough to try?

  • On Transparency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Trainers, SMART Goals and Context

    Every time I’m on some kind of management training I have this vague feeling of disconnection. I mean I do assume a trainer is a competent person who saw way more different work environments than I ever would. They also are trained trainers meaning they know all the tricks how work with a group, what are effective learning techniques, how to make training entertaining etc. That’s what I expect after all.

    And yet, I can’t help thinking their knowledge is somehow shallow.

    To take the first example – for me it’s now time of performance appraisals. I spend long hours (days actually) talking with, and about, managers from my team. One of parts of such appraisals should be goal setting. Now, ask any of those trainers teaching you how to run a good performance appraisal and they would tell you that goals should be SMART.

    Great. The problem is pretty few of goals I set are really SMART. Does mean I’m a crappy manager?

    Well, many of those goals are hardly measurable. Let me give you an example. I, as a senior manager, care much about building trust relationships with managers in my team because I strongly believe it is a crucial factor of success for the whole organization. How should I, or my boss, set a SMART goal for me in this area? “Gain trust of n managers by the end of the year.” As if it was kind of badge or something. Darn trust isn’t measurable! And even if it was setting such goal would be just dumb. Is getting trust of more people better than getting trust of right people? And how do you define “right people,” huh?

    This is exactly the problem of many trainers. They have their recipes. They know how to sell them. The question is: do they care to come down to learn a specific situation, understand a real problem and adjust their tool to a context?

    Most likely they don’t.

    Thus my vague feeling of disconnection and difficulties whenever I try to apply trainers’ recipes in real-life situations. Well, I don’t really do that but I like to imagine I do and I point every single hole I see in them.

    It is a problem of reality. It is so painfully specific. It’s never general. It can’t be described with a set of rules which are always true. Yet I’m being told over and over again there are such rules. Rules, which just work. I would even believe in that but, unfortunately, every time I try to apply them they seem so irrelevant.

    What is my lesson today? Understand a context. Many rules may sound reasonable during training but unless you apply the context you can’t judge their real value. And few people are willing to sell you a difficult truth: it’s never about recipes; it’s always about people who use them.

    Advertisement: Atlantic Global – provider of Project Management software.

     

  • Communication: Quality versus Quantity

    I believe in transparency and openness. I believe a manager should share almost as much information as possible with their teams. I believe the manager should always explain their motives and drivers of decisions they make.

    In short I believe in much talking.

    Sometimes when a meeting is finished I don’t feel as if I convinced my interlocutor to a decision I make. That’s fair. That’s fair as long as I tried. This basically means a lot of talking.

    However, I learned a lesson today about talking much. After my lengthy tirade which I wanted to explain myself with I heard a response:

    “You should have said: ‘trust me’ in the first place instead of all that.”

    Ouch. That hurt. I mean why haven’t I thought about that? Yes, it is a simple message but a powerful one. The message which makes or breaks the relationship. After that you either live up to expectations or there’s no chance of building trust whatsoever. Yet, as long as you actually plan to do the former, it will yield better results.

    My lesson is: yes, transparency and openness are important but it doesn’t necessarily mean more words. At the end of the day it’s about communication quality, not quantity (if you can’t go with quality go with quantity though).

    And this is the lesson I’m thankful for.

    By the way: we often follow our emotions instead of facts. I don’t say it’s bad. It’s just something to remember when dealing with people.

  • Give Honesty a Try

    I use to say that you can’t lose being honest with me. There is no potential downside – only upside. I have no problems with critical opinions on me, others or the organization we’re part of. I don’t necessarily have to agree with these opinions but I want, and need, to know them. After all, if I don’t know you don’t like something odds are I won’t do anything to change it.

    I know there are different managers out there and openness and honesty don’t have to work equally well in each case. However, if you have to hide your opinions and play someone else to survive in a decent health in the organization then, well, I wouldn’t like to be a part of such company in the first place.

    For the sake of this argument consider you really can openly talk with your bosses about your problems and frustrations, if you have any. Will you just be honest like you’d be when describing the situation to your friend over a pint of beer?

    From my experience: many people are not.

    I don’t get it. Let’s say my decision pissed you off or you felt my opinion was unfair. We can sit down and discuss it through. I make mistakes. Everyone does. I change my mind when I face reasonable arguments. So please, challenge me. Challenge my opinions and my decisions.

    When your only reaction is venting in front of your colleagues then you do no good to me, to the company and, most importantly, to yourself. What are you trying to achieve that way? Is that what you believe works in the long run? I mean, really?

    If you choose being honest, be honest consequently. Being so only to some point is um… quite the opposite of being honest.

    I have one more advice: even if you don’t trust your manager give them a try. Maybe they won’t appreciate your open and straightforward attitude. In such case your situation will suck anyway so you don’t lose much. Fortunately, there are many managers who don’t work that way and you just can’t lose being honest with them.

    Like me, for example.

  • Trust Isn’t Measurable

    I have a question for you. And yes this is one of this dumb black-or-white questions which don’t take into consideration the world is just gray.

    If you had to choose a vendor among the one which you trust more and the one which can be paid less what would be your choice?

    I pretty much expect most of us would say we would choose the trusted one. However what I see everyday people do the opposite. They tend to base on a price heavily.

    Of course the question is flawed since it assumes that everything else is equal which is never true. However the message I’m trying to send here is that, despite what we say, we tend to make our decision basing on things we are able to measure. We can easily say this offer is $10000 cheaper than the other; we can easily say that this schedule is a month shorter than that etc.

    Unfortunately we can’t say that our trust for the company A is at 5 and for the company B is at 7 (whatever 5 and 7 means). Personally I would probably be able to state that I trust one vendor somewhat more than another but it would be totally personal and your opinion about these companies will likely to differ much. And even if we both agreed we would have hard time trying to describe what exactly “somewhat more trust” means and why it is worth ten thousands more to our decision-makers.

    And that’s why I’m not really surprised we tend to act differently than we use to say we’d do. The reason is simple.

    Trust isn’t measurable.

    Every time we face the task to compare few things we tend to base on aspects we can measure and that’s where trust falls short.

    Luckily enough sometimes we are able to forget about this whole comparison thing and decide we just want to do business with a trusted partner. Even if they would be more expensive if we took an effort to compare their offer to others, which we don’t do anyway because, well, we decided to go with these trusted folks in the first place.

    With trust in place business relationships tend to be significantly better. And yes, I can explain it. More trust means more transparency. More transparency means more information shared. More information shared means better knowledge about the situation. Better knowledge about the situation means better planning. Better planning means better outcomes. And better outcomes usually strengthen business relationship.

    I would choose trust over price. If I stated I’d do it every single time I would lie (I did actually) but when it’s my own call or I’m strong enough to defend the decision trust trumps the price.

  • Role of Trust

    It is said that formal agreements are for bad times. As far as everything goes well we can forget about papers even when there are some of these. Either way it’s all about trust.

    A question: what happens when a subcontractor doesn’t do their work well? Do you take a signed papers and count forfeits? Or you trust them and you believe you can find a solution which is acceptable for both sides?

    What about relations with your bosses or your customers?

    Probably in each situation we have a different level of pain. Sometimes we’d use our formal weapons faster, sometimes we’d try to avoid that as long as possible. Where’s the difference? Trust. The more you trust someone the longer you’ll be talking with them as human with another human, not as lawyer with another lawyer.

    There are people who you don’t trust much, maybe you just don’t know them or they let you down before. When doing business with them you’d focus on formal agreements much. There are those who you don’t trust at all and you won’t do anything with them even if they’d pay you well. Of course there are also people who you trust much and their word weights even more than signed paper.

    Which kind of people do you work for now? Which kind would like to work for? If answers differ think about it.