On Becoming a Leader

Image from: 1.00 FTE

One of my favorite bloggers, Art Petty, has a post about the Nine Key Professional Capabilities Required by Our Times.   While I agree that all of his capabilities are important, they miss what has to come first.  Developing a hard skill.  In this brave new world, managers need to develop (or better yet, have developed before they become managers) a hard skill.

Let me define what I mean.  A hard skill is the ability to do something that takes time to learn (I'll go with Gladwell's 10,000 hours), some measure of talent and some exposure to something that prevents you from being exposed to other things.

For example, coding.  It probably takes about 10,000 hours to become a competent developer.  Also, you need some mental ability and intelligence.  And finally, cultivating your coding skills prevents you from doing other things. [Editor: For you, that would be dating.]

Carpentry, plumbing, wiring a network, becoming a CPA, learning the sales process etc. are all examples of skills.  The days of being a manager (or leader) who has an MBA and can do some analysis in Excel are gone.  The days of middle management are gone.

If you want to be a manager or a leader in this brave new world, you have to be able to deliver something which requires cultivated skills in addition to being an authentic, empathetic manager/leader.

Facts are facts.  Between China, India, the Philippines, Brazil and the rest of the developing world, there are about 3 billion more people that you have to compete with to be a manager/leader.  Americans and Europeans have a much higher standard of living, however, people from the developing world are willing to work much harder and will happily adjust you out on your keister.

If you want to become a leader, first develop a skill.

Are You the One-Eyed Man in the Land of the Blind or The Blind Leading the Blind?

This is a copy of the blog post I did for the Silicon Valley "Art of Project Management" Blog.

Have you ever asked yourself this question?  I have.  There were times I thought I was sure I knew what our team had to do and how to get there.  Then there were other times when we were making progress against our plan, but the project wasn't progressing.   I've most often encountered this when business people overseeing the project become frustrated with the lack of tangible benefits.

The One-Eyed Man in the Land of the Blind

Working on projects, this is the best feeling in the world.  Once you get the taste of this feeling, you're hooked on project work for life.  The mystical experience of talking with people prior to a release or implementation, knowing that you are going to provide capabilities that people cannot imagine.  

You talk to them, explain how they will know things they cannot find out today.  Then one day, there's a demo where the abstract idea becomes a visible reality.  Something they couldn't imagine becomes something they can't live without.  

A couple months after the release and people are not able to imagine how they did their jobs before.  It's almost as empowering as learning to read.  [Editor: and that wasn't so long ago for you, was it?]

The Blind Leading the Blind

Then there is the other scenario, where one side is "showing" progress while teams are frantically trying to figure something out.  Sort of like a magician draws your attention to one spot, while the real work is going on somewhere else.  I've often thought learning magic tricks would be excellent training for Project Managers.  The trick of disappearing from certain meetings or being in two places at the same time.  Either one would make project life much better.

So for what you're doing right now, are you the one-eyed man in the land of the blind or the blind leading the blind?

Economies of Scale vs Alignment

Is it easier to align five people or five hundred?  There's an old Dilbert cartoon which discusses how to determine the IQ of a meeting.  Start with 100 and then subtract 5 for every person added. [Editor: I subtract 10 for you.]

Everytime someone is added, complexity is added.  Agreement, understanding, shared vision, the ability to communicate effectively all become more difficult as more people are added.  If less is so obviously more, why do we continually add people?

Economies of Scale

The industrial revolution and the 20th century demonstrated the benefits of economies of scale.  It costs $3,000 to make 100 of Adam Smith's pins, however it only costs $4,000 to make 1,000 pins.  The price for each pin goes from $30 to $4.  

Where fixed costs are high and you have to build factories and assembly lines and have marketing departments and sales teams, economies of scale make a lot of sense.  Is that the world we face?

Less is More

In a world where you can outsource manufacturing, marketing, legal and accounting functions and focus only on the real areas you know, do you need the extra departments?  Do you need the headachs finding, hiring, training and aligning all those people?

Age Old Warning about Miss Aligned Interests

Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall.

Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.

All the kings horses 

And all the kings men,

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

I worked on Wall St and have deep emotions for the people who work there.  However, Wall St always had a problem in that it was all about money and profit justified anything.

Are your hopes and dreams aligned with the company where you work?  It's very easy to point fingers and accuse people of doing horrible or foolish things, but what about the things your doing?  Could you stand up to the same scrutiny?

Get angry and demand answers about the incompetence that passed for leadership on Wall St, but then think hard about your own leadership, your own company and your own actions.  If you had had the same temptations, you might have done the same things.

Consider Wall St an example of the failings of leadership, because with all the kings horses and all the kings men and huge sums of money wasted [Editor: Steady], we will not put Humpty together again.

Leaders Intentionally Blind

But I’d shut my eyes in the sentry-box, so I didn’t see nothin’ wrong.

- Rudyard Kipling

There's plenty of evidence that leadership has failed in many financial institutions and the costs are going to be horrendous.  If a leader chooses not to see, hear or speak about evil, whatever the excuses of complexity are, nothing else can be aligned.

One could argue that financial instruments had become so complex that it was not practical for leaders to understand and be savvy about what was happening.  If that is the case, then they are no longer leaders.  Other, possibly more accurate terms, spring to mind, but we will not go down that path.

It is very popular to talk about people as being leaders.  Somehow it seems this word has some semantic coolness about it that everyone wants to be associated with.  There's another "L" word which somehow seems more accurate - lemmings.  

It is frequently pointed out, lemmings as a whole, have a lousy reputation, but no lemming has ever been singled out for their foolishness, neither has one ever been identified as a leader.

Next time people are bandying around the title "Leader", ask yourself if they are truly a leader or simply the lead lemming?  Then ask if you really want to align yourself with where they are going?

Photo Credit: Mr Rad

The Misunderstood Story of King Midas

Many people are familar with the story of King Midas.  The old miser who wanted money so badly he asked the gods to make everything he touched turn to gold.  Unfortunately the lesson of Midas is often misunderstood.

Was the lesson about the perils of arvice and greed?  No, not really.

The gods didn't punnish the miser for being greedy, they punnished him for not understanding the real value of money.  Money or gold, in and of itself, is not worth anything.  You can't eat it, build with it, write with it or anything else.  It's value comes from its ability to be exchanged for things which are truely valuable: food, water, houses etc.  

It was only upon being granted his wish that Midas realized the true value of gold.

Do you want money or the valuable things money enables you to buy?

Have you aligned yourself to get money or things that are truly valuable?

Photo Credit: DigitalMoneyWorld

How to Determine a Leader’s Effectiveness?

When we talked before about our different levels, bricklayers, coaches, division heads and league commissioners, the question comes up, how to determine if they are effective?  Many times people study different factors.  In Built to Last, the eight factors one should look at are: strategy, execution, culture, structure talent, leadership, innovation, mergers and partnerships were used to determine if companies were going to last.

In Search for Excellence there were also eight factors: a bias for action, staying close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, hands on – value driven, stick to the knitting, simple form – lean staff, simultaneous loose-tight properties. [Editor: What do you know about any of these?]

All of these are excellent measure and they tell us something about the business, but they are like a thermometer with different parameters: temperature, barometric pressure, humidity etc.  They give us a lot of insight into the weather or ways to measure a company, however, no amount of studying a thermometer is going to change the weather. Likewise, someone taking the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, is so consumed by the daily details and so effected by the changing environment in which they work, that knowledge of these things doesn't predict effectiveness. 

Being familiar with these things might make someone more effective or it might make them less effective. The major determinant is going to be the influences of the outside environment. Environmental conditions (weather, altitude etc.) will affect brick laying more than strategy, past experience or culture. Whether we call someone a manager or a leader and the degree to which these ideas have an effect at different levels of the organization is an interesting question, but will it determine their effectiveness?

Beyond a certain point, do you think studying the aspects of a thermometer make you a better weatherman?  How much does one need to know about the parameters of leadership to lead?

How Do You Define and Align Expectations at Different Levels in an Organization?

If you're a brick layer, it's very easy to determine who the best brick layer is. Count the bricks. Some smart, clever brick layer may come up with a more effective way to lay bricks.  That’s wonderful and they may become a lead brick layer and be deemed a "leader". 

If we want to improve things, we might decide that it's a good idea to have someone coach a team of brick layers. We might say that a coach should work with 11 brick layers to find ways to make them all more effective. Determining the most effective coach is pretty easy. Count the total number of bricks laid by each team. You'll find that some coaches are more effective than others. 

Experience and brick laying skills are probably important to the coach.  If the coach has previously worked as a brick layer, it's reasonable to assume they'll be more empathetic and effective. Good coaches will also have different ways of organizing their teams, different methods of laying bricks, different attitudes towards laying bricks, etc. Clever coaches will use different techniques to maximize their teams.  If you’re laying bricks in the mountains you might want different types of people than if you’re laying bricks in a dessert.  Still, it’s pretty easy to measure a coach’s effectiveness. 

Now, let's say that we want to create a larger organization. We might have a division. A division consists to 10 teams of brick layers. In order to resolve disputes and make things more organized, we might say that we have a division head. This is necessary because everyone is trying to improve so there are competitions between our brick laying teams. [Editor: teams from the Big-10 seem particularly skilled at laying bricks…]

Now, the skills necessary to be an effective division head are not necessarily the same skills necessary to be a good brick layer or even a good coach. Also, complicating the issue, how do you measure who is an effective division head? Looking at the total number of brick laid might be effective, but they are pretty far removed from the brick laying process and the things they handle on a day-to-day basis are probably not similar to the brick layers or the coaches. 

If we elevate this one more level and create a league, the problem becomes even more obvious. The league is composed of 10 divisions. Some of these divisions are in the mountains, others are in the dessert and others have to deal with great lakes and snow storms. The types of bricks that each division can get are different just as laying bricks at 2,000 feet above sea level presents different challenges from laying bricks in the dessert, which is completely different from laying bricks in the middle of a Wisconsin winter. 

How do we determine if our league commissioner is effective? A brick layer or a coach may have innovative ideas and it's easy to asses their effectiveness. But determining the effectiveness of a division or league commissioner is more problematic. 

How would you approach this?

Is it the Environment or the Actions which Make You Successful?

If you want something to be successful, do you create the environment or pull the trigger? If you are going to have a successful project, the correct environment needs to be created. Pulling the trigger is nice and that is what people will notice, but success depends upon preparation. That preparation is rarely noticed. The most aggressive actions in the wrong environment end up looking silly.

Think about it this way, do forest fires occur when someone carelessly throws away a match? Well maybe. If you throw away a lit match in a green forest with rain falling all around you, it's very unlikely a forest fire will result. If it is in the middle of a heat wave with the grass burnt brown and hot Santa Ana winds blowing at night, a roaring forest fire may result. What is critical is the environmental conditions in which the match was thrown.

It's the old line about the straw that broke the camels back. Straw is essentially weightless, but under the right conditions, it can wreck havoc. Maybe those conditions are an overloaded camel or some other environmental situation.

If you want tremendous results, look at the environment, the necessary preparation to succeed within that environment, get the preparations underway and then at the right time, pull the trigger.

Have You Prepared Yourself for the Opportunity to be Lucky?

Someone once said that luck is the intersection between preparation and opportunity. If you prepare yourself and hit on the right opportunity, you have made yourself lucky. Congratulations, you are participating in a good life. You should be happy and your friends should be happy for you.

If you want to create something, doesn't it take more than luck? You need an idea for what you want to create. You need a plan and to know what the plan will require and whether it's feasible.

If you have a feasible plan, you need to find the missing pieces. When you find the people with the correct preparation to complete your plan; you need to articulate it in such a way that, it is in their best interest to make your plan succeed. They need to see your plan as their opportunity to make themselves lucky.

If the plan requires capital or assistance to be successful, then everyone needs to see how it benefits them to have your plan succeed. They all need to provide input to fill in the missing pieces so the plan has the best chance of success.

Finally, you must have enough time. It takes time to come up with an idea, make it feasible, find the right participants, get meaningful assistance, refine the plan and then execute it successfully. All of these things are important, but they all start with you. Have you prepared yourself for the opportunity to be lucky?

Photo Credit: Eric Lafforgue

Poker and Project Management

These two are at the opposite end of the spectrum. PM is about planning, critical paths and resource allocation. It is logical, analytical and linear. Poker is about intuition, betting big when opportunity’s ripe, reading situations and constantly readjusting.

Knowing how to do both is critical. Poker shows you a lot about someone. How they manage their emotions, act when the cards fall their way, act when they’re back is up against a wall. In PM parlance, how they manage risk and success.

More importantly, you see how people react under pressure, inside and outside their circles of competence. Intuition benefits you within your circle of competence. In friendly games, dealing and calling the game circulates. You can’t always play your game, but you can pick which games, which situations and how much you bet.

If you really only know five-card stud, you’re best off betting conservatively in Omaha or Pirate’s Booty, but then going big when the situation is right in five-card stud. Sticking with what you know gives your intuition its edge.

You’ll never win if you don’t play, but you won’t win consistently if you don’t play smart. Poker compresses all of life’s lessons into a brief, pressure packed situation. Is there a better way to learn about people?

How many PMs play poker with the team? Isn’t that what you’re doing on a project?

Photo credit: Wiseacre_Photo

Does Technology Create Transparency or Mirages?

Many companies implement huge IT packages to get better visibility into what's happening and to (presumably) get more control, but this begs the question, does technology give you better transparency? Theoretically, it should and even could. Practically, technology may create mirages more effectively than a desert.

Why Does Technology Create Mirages?
Transparency comes from corporate strategies that value transparency. Technology effectively supports that approach if it exists or it obfuscates if one is not careful. If the departments and groups implementing the technology want people to know what they are doing, then you'll get a lot of transparency. If the departments and groups do not think it is in their best interest to have people know what they are doing, technology will not help; in fact, it will probably show you a corporate mirage. [Editor: Sort of like I help you look intelligent.]

Just like in the picture above, the peaceful and attractive house with bushes around it reflected in the lake is a mirage, sophisticated managers can manipulate technology to show whatever it most benefits them to present. Technology is not a magical elixir.

How can Technology Provide Transparency and Control?
If there is:

• Clear thinking about the business objectives
• Products and services that customers value
• Business models that support the required infrastructure to deliver those products and services and create reasonable profit margins
• Appropriate incentives to motivate employees to deliver those products and services

If those things exist, there will be transparency and control will not be a problem. Technology enhances the processes and systems a business uses to do its work. So, will adding technology enhance your transparency or create corporate mirages?

Photo Credit: mbz

Aligning People or Letting them Align Part II

Bill Miller made an interesting suggestion about self organizing teams. As kids playing baseball, the first decision was often who would be the two team captains. Those captains then picked the teams. Sometimes they were the two best players or more often the two players most able to help their team win. As kids, we knew what was important to win.

An interesting circle of dependencies. The kids picked the captains and the captains picked the teams. Almost an implicit contract. The group gave the captain the right to organize the team, but if the team didn't win, but they had to win to be captain in the future.

Captains changed. Sometimes one person was a captain for one sport, but not for another. Sometimes frustration over past performances lead to minor mutinies. [Editor: That will be fine, thank you.] Sometimes new leaders emerged as time went on. What's important is that the process was self regulating. If the captain helped the team win, they continued as captain.

Can Business be Self Regulating?
There are obviously differences between ten year olds playing baseball and business, though I suspect there are not as many as one might hope. How different would it be if the workers picked the manager? If the people working on a project were responsible for identifying the person most likely to make the project succeed, who would they pick? And why?

Often times in business executives picks a manager or team lead and then charge that person with assembling a team. What if the team were selected first and that teams first responsibility was to pick the team lead?

Have you heard of people taking this approach? How did it work out?