Situation: You, the project manager, have just been called to represent your project at the next IT Steering Committee meeting, a meeting that includes the CEO and is held once every three months.
It can be daunting to be called before a group of 'C' levels, VPs and other executives when you aren't used to it. When you are used to it it's even worse because any naive thoughts you may have had of a group making reasoned business decisions based on open dialog and fact have long since evaporated. Steering Committees are some percentage true to their charters and the other percentage a hot bed of corporate politics. The percentages vary from company to company and within companies, from month to month.
Your first thoughts upon receiving the invitation were mixed--pride and fear. Good. Appropriate. The devil on your left shoulder whispered in your ear "Don't worry, it's no big deal. You know what's going on in the project, just relax and go to the meeting. They just want to tell you what a good job you're doing." The angel on your right shoulder whispered "This is a big deal. Get prepared, thoroughly prepared."
The first thing you did right when your manager told you your presence was expected at the next IT Steering Committee meeting was to ask why. When the answer was vague (your manager isn't on the committee) you did the second right thing, you arranged a few minutes with the project's sponsor (who is on the committee) to find out why and ask a number of other questions.
The answer to 'why' might range from "Project Managers are invited randomly so that they get the experience of executive level dialog and exposure to the management team. It is all a part of our employee development program" (not likely) to "This is a critical project and not everyone feels they have a handle on it." (whoops, is your communication plan not working?) to any number of reasons. The important thing is to find out why they want you there so that once you are there you can satisfy them.
I'll tell you now that you performed well because you listened to the angel on your right shoulder and because you knew in advance not only why you were invited, but what senior executives want in general.
What do they (Executives) want in general? They want the project finished and the benefits on which it was sold accruing. You and others may want the project for the project itself, after all its your job for the moment. They don't, it's a means to an end, full stop. What they want from you: competence, in control, working to achieve the benefits for the company promised by the project (vs. the details of the project.) Be aware that they look at project managers as commodities. One PM isn't working swap another in. It can't be that hard to learn MS Project, right? I don't think this way but most of them do.
Let's look back on your performance and see why it went well...
The sponsor told you you were invited because Sales was questioning the importance of the project, especially in light of the recent three month delay. You also found out where you were in the agenda, who else would be there, what they thought of the project, how to dress, how early to show up, the fact that it would be a good idea to have a few slides to show and a hand-out, and that your sponsor was a good guy and would support you. Then you were on your own.
You prepared your message and you visualized the end result. You practiced over and over in your mind driving to work. You did a dry run with your spouse. You prepared simple materials to hand out--bullet points and pictures, the detailed information planned for verbal delivery, detailed documentation written in case you had to distribute something. You made sure your project binder was up-to-date and indexed and you brought it to the meeting.
During the meeting you kept your cool and always appeared attentive and interested, but never cock-sure. You watched the body language.
Here is what happened:
You were introduced by the chair, the CIO. You had barely started when the VP of Sales interrupted. "These damn IT projects are like the pork and barrel Congress. Full of fat and low on delivery. For example, look at functions 12.1.4.5 and 12.1.4.6, if I can navigate this requirements spec properly! Where the hell did they come from?" You wanted to say "Then why did you sign off on the requirements document, you monkey?" but you didn't. Instead, you went to your project binder, found the data, and were able to say "Those functions were proposed by Mr. Bell A. Whistle at the user workshop held in Atlanta last month. The full group approved them as items with significant business benefit but not essential for version one. The development cost was estimated as low so they were included in the User Requirements Document for version 1." Then you stopped talking. Good, you answered his question. Everyone knows the Sales VP signed off and everyone knows he was represented at the workshop.
You continued with your presentation. The delay in your project was due to a change request from Sales that took several weeks to clarify, and this was your next topic. Your sponsor had coached you on how to phrase this part of your presentation. After your brought up the delay and why, the room went nuts--finger pointing, accusations, red faces. You did your job, you stayed out of it. As project manager you need to navigate politics, but it is not your job to resolve it, certainly not at the level you saw being played out before your eyes. You soaked it all in and kept an expression that communicated interest and professional concern. In fact the argument had little to do with your project.
When the dust settled you had an action item to modify the functionality of the software slightly and the direction that if the supplier gave you a hard time you should refer them to the sponsor. You began to finish your presentation but it was clear from the expressions in the room that the reason you'd been invited had been taken care of. You asked if there were any questions. There weren't. You thanked everyone and went back to work.
End note:
This little tale had a happy ending. Sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes there isn't anything you can do about it. In my tale there is an assumption that your project was approved because the steering committee 'power field' leaned toward supporting it. Sometimes, very rarely, but in my experience, projects are approved to discredit the sponsor. If that had been the case in my tale above you would still have survived because everyone (who counts) would know why your project was crushed, and everyone would respect the fact that you kept your cool and professionalism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Gage is an independent consultant with extensive international and cross-industry consulting and line management experience. Getting the highly unlikely done is the hallmark of his career.
Mr. Gage teaches a variety of project management classes in partnership with Fog City Consulting. These classes count toward Personal Development Units (PDUs) with the Project Management Institute (PMI). Links to these classes can be found on his web site https://sites.google.com/site/gageinnovation
I would love to hear from you. If you found an article interesting or not, please comment. Thanks in advance!
Contact information for Mr. Gage can be found on http://www.linkedin.com/in/glengage
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Glen_Gage
More...
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Getting Really Good at Agile [Ron Lichty]
From the speaker at the next Engineering Leadership SIG event, April 15, 2010:
The first half of Mike Cohn's book, "Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum", isn't so much about how to be successful with agile as how to be successful replacing non-agile with agile, selling agile, and transitioning to agile.Mike Cohn is neither a wild-eyed dogmatist professing the one true way nor an ivory-tower philosopher; he's a pragmatist. He devotes entire chapters to helping scrum evangelists decide whether to start with a pilot or go all-in across the organization, whether to pilot publicly or in stealth, what factors might prevent success, how to swing things your way, how to approach a transition in steps, picking the right first project and first team, and how soon to adopt agile technical practices like simple design, pair programming, TDD, continuous builds, refactoring, and automated testing. He notes from the first chapter that agile implementations are hard and don't always "take" - and explains why. He recommends solutions to the many conundrums and traps that agile teams face.
About midway through the book, as you're reading insights into teamwork, you realize that this book is not just about transitioning to agile but about getting really good at agile - and that you're going to need to read it not just once but come back to it for new insights again and again. The fact is it's stuffed with tips, guides, data, approaches, failures, successes, and helpful hints of every kind.
Part of what makes this book important for me is repeatedly reading observations consistent with my own experience, but drawing on so many more experiences with agile that it results in emergent patterns, as well as in truths that are too often left unsaid. Then there are the surprises that come from reading an author who is remarkably well-read across genres. He does us all the favor of reviewing and summarizing scads of studies and surveys that demonstrate why agile is worth the effort, with data on productivity gains, lower costs, improved employee engagement and job satisfaction, faster time to market, higher quality and, importantly, stakeholder satisfaction gains.
What's the role of a manager of a self-organizing team? One of them, agile gurus seem to agree, is exercising subtle control (as opposed to command-and-control) and Mike provides an entire framework for debugging team problems and influencing their success. This will be one of those chapters I know I'll revisit repeatedly.
In another example, Mike remarkably provides what in essence is a crash course in change, and that chapter alone, while loaded with specifics about making a change to agile, could be used by any technical leader making a technology-and-culture change of any kind. Know why shopping carts were introduced and how shoppers were convinced to use them? Mike does, and effectively uses the example to teach change leadership. How does a leader deal with the skeptics and the saboteurs, the diehards and the followers certain to show up on your teams? How do you sway the uncertain to get on board?
Cohn is practical right down to the challenges from facilities and h.r., the likelihood agile transitions will face waterfall-driven expectations, and strategies for coexisting with other approaches, regulatory standards and processes. Importantly, he provides helpful anecdotes and examples from companies large and small. He's familiar enough with other process changes your company may have attempted to be able to compare and contrast and differentiate the substance and style of scrum from everything that came before.
While Cohn is sometimes unsatisfying - drilling down not quite far enough in sharing what's worked - in its 400-plus pages, it's remarkable how few of these unsatisfying examples there are.
Finally, I should point out that though it may not be immediately obvious, there's one more group of readers for whom this book has enormous value: Agile wannabes who know their current process isn't working. They frequently have heard of agile but have no idea what it looks like or how to sell it. If you're one of those, you also need to read this book. Mike Cohn over and over offers advice and examples and data that will give you aha after aha as you build a picture of what a truly effective process can look like - and how yours could become functional like his.
If you're interested, there's a longer version of this review at:
http://ronlichty.blogspot.com/2010/04/book-review-succeeding-with-agile.html
_________________________________________
Ron Lichty is a "VPE of Fix-It," providing interim and on-demand VP Engineering services to optimize software organizations and efforts. He specializes in solving problems like painfully slow product development, past-due estimates with no delivery in sight, snafus from geographically dispersed teams, scalability stymied by sluggish data integration, productivity bridled by uncertainty, an "order-taking mentality" from teams that should be proactive, and teams unable to break out of research and move on to development and delivery. He also untangles organizational knots, creates roadmaps everyone can follow, builds communications with other parts of the organization, coaches and trains organizations in agile and scrum, and gets teams productive and focused on delivery, quality and customers. Small tweaks, dramatic impacts. He'll be presenting the SDForum's April 15 Engineering Leadership SIG topic on how agile changes the development manager role group in Palo Alto: "If Agile Teams Are Self-Directing, What Do Managers Do?" His book on managing software developers and software development teams, "Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Wisdom for Managing Software People and Projects", is forthcoming.
More...
The first half of Mike Cohn's book, "Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum", isn't so much about how to be successful with agile as how to be successful replacing non-agile with agile, selling agile, and transitioning to agile.Mike Cohn is neither a wild-eyed dogmatist professing the one true way nor an ivory-tower philosopher; he's a pragmatist. He devotes entire chapters to helping scrum evangelists decide whether to start with a pilot or go all-in across the organization, whether to pilot publicly or in stealth, what factors might prevent success, how to swing things your way, how to approach a transition in steps, picking the right first project and first team, and how soon to adopt agile technical practices like simple design, pair programming, TDD, continuous builds, refactoring, and automated testing. He notes from the first chapter that agile implementations are hard and don't always "take" - and explains why. He recommends solutions to the many conundrums and traps that agile teams face.
About midway through the book, as you're reading insights into teamwork, you realize that this book is not just about transitioning to agile but about getting really good at agile - and that you're going to need to read it not just once but come back to it for new insights again and again. The fact is it's stuffed with tips, guides, data, approaches, failures, successes, and helpful hints of every kind.
Part of what makes this book important for me is repeatedly reading observations consistent with my own experience, but drawing on so many more experiences with agile that it results in emergent patterns, as well as in truths that are too often left unsaid. Then there are the surprises that come from reading an author who is remarkably well-read across genres. He does us all the favor of reviewing and summarizing scads of studies and surveys that demonstrate why agile is worth the effort, with data on productivity gains, lower costs, improved employee engagement and job satisfaction, faster time to market, higher quality and, importantly, stakeholder satisfaction gains.
What's the role of a manager of a self-organizing team? One of them, agile gurus seem to agree, is exercising subtle control (as opposed to command-and-control) and Mike provides an entire framework for debugging team problems and influencing their success. This will be one of those chapters I know I'll revisit repeatedly.
In another example, Mike remarkably provides what in essence is a crash course in change, and that chapter alone, while loaded with specifics about making a change to agile, could be used by any technical leader making a technology-and-culture change of any kind. Know why shopping carts were introduced and how shoppers were convinced to use them? Mike does, and effectively uses the example to teach change leadership. How does a leader deal with the skeptics and the saboteurs, the diehards and the followers certain to show up on your teams? How do you sway the uncertain to get on board?
Cohn is practical right down to the challenges from facilities and h.r., the likelihood agile transitions will face waterfall-driven expectations, and strategies for coexisting with other approaches, regulatory standards and processes. Importantly, he provides helpful anecdotes and examples from companies large and small. He's familiar enough with other process changes your company may have attempted to be able to compare and contrast and differentiate the substance and style of scrum from everything that came before.
While Cohn is sometimes unsatisfying - drilling down not quite far enough in sharing what's worked - in its 400-plus pages, it's remarkable how few of these unsatisfying examples there are.
Finally, I should point out that though it may not be immediately obvious, there's one more group of readers for whom this book has enormous value: Agile wannabes who know their current process isn't working. They frequently have heard of agile but have no idea what it looks like or how to sell it. If you're one of those, you also need to read this book. Mike Cohn over and over offers advice and examples and data that will give you aha after aha as you build a picture of what a truly effective process can look like - and how yours could become functional like his.
If you're interested, there's a longer version of this review at:
http://ronlichty.blogspot.com/2010/04/book-review-succeeding-with-agile.html
_________________________________________
Ron Lichty is a "VPE of Fix-It," providing interim and on-demand VP Engineering services to optimize software organizations and efforts. He specializes in solving problems like painfully slow product development, past-due estimates with no delivery in sight, snafus from geographically dispersed teams, scalability stymied by sluggish data integration, productivity bridled by uncertainty, an "order-taking mentality" from teams that should be proactive, and teams unable to break out of research and move on to development and delivery. He also untangles organizational knots, creates roadmaps everyone can follow, builds communications with other parts of the organization, coaches and trains organizations in agile and scrum, and gets teams productive and focused on delivery, quality and customers. Small tweaks, dramatic impacts. He'll be presenting the SDForum's April 15 Engineering Leadership SIG topic on how agile changes the development manager role group in Palo Alto: "If Agile Teams Are Self-Directing, What Do Managers Do?" His book on managing software developers and software development teams, "Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Wisdom for Managing Software People and Projects", is forthcoming.
More...
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Transparency [Rino Jose]
We say we want transparency in decision-making, transparency within our organizations...but do we really mean it?
Transparency within organizations is a good thing. It means that teams and functions are communicating freely. It's a sign that decisions are being made with more information and more scrutiny. It indicates that the organization is executing efficiently.
When problems arise in transparent organizations, people can see them immediately and from different perspectives. The organization can respond quickly to unexpected events and save valuable time. Organizational goals can be modified, and the people can quickly realign their activities.
There are three main reasons that keep organizations from being transparent. The first is that most organizations have unintentionally developed a "culture of opacity". You can see this when people say their information needs to be filtered and controlled because others can't understand it out of context. You can also see this when people don't trust their own teams to report information. Some organizationl roles exist simply to filter and throttle information.
A second reason is that it can take a lot of effort to be transparent. There may not be an easy way to communicate what's happening or why. People may not even be able to track all of the information that's being generated by their teams, creating a kind of opacity by default. Technology, however, has advanced to the point where this should no longer be an issue. There are tools that can reduce the effort of tracking and presenting information so it's less than negligible (i.e., they actually cut the effort of what you're doing today as they provide transparency for your team).
The third main reason is that...
One of the things I said about breaking a "cycle of distrust" was that someone had to go first, to make the first gesture. Transparency is a perfect example of this. We can't say we want transparency within our organizations if we ourselves are not willing to reveal how we make our own decisions. Someone must take the first step.
Why is it so hard to do this? If we feel the need to hide something, we should question that. If it's because we don't trust others in the organization, we should question that, too. Get to the root of distrust and eliminate it. If it's beyond your authority, find someone with more clout. There are always people with influence that want the organization to run well. It's likely that they aren't able to see where the problems are. Build a window into your team so they can see for themselves.
(originally posted on Management Revolution)
_________________________________________
Rino Jose is the principal co-founder of Lakeway Technologies, a startup that develops web apps for automating engineering and project management. He has developed software and managed software teams professionally for over 15 years. As a manager and management consultant, he has led turnarounds for multiple engineering teams. Rino holds a B.S. from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania with cross-disciplinary focus between Engineering, Computer Science, and the Wharton Business School.
More...
Transparency is a Sign of Efficiency
Transparency within organizations is a good thing. It means that teams and functions are communicating freely. It's a sign that decisions are being made with more information and more scrutiny. It indicates that the organization is executing efficiently.
When problems arise in transparent organizations, people can see them immediately and from different perspectives. The organization can respond quickly to unexpected events and save valuable time. Organizational goals can be modified, and the people can quickly realign their activities.
Why Aren't Organizations More Transparent?
There are three main reasons that keep organizations from being transparent. The first is that most organizations have unintentionally developed a "culture of opacity". You can see this when people say their information needs to be filtered and controlled because others can't understand it out of context. You can also see this when people don't trust their own teams to report information. Some organizationl roles exist simply to filter and throttle information.
A second reason is that it can take a lot of effort to be transparent. There may not be an easy way to communicate what's happening or why. People may not even be able to track all of the information that's being generated by their teams, creating a kind of opacity by default. Technology, however, has advanced to the point where this should no longer be an issue. There are tools that can reduce the effort of tracking and presenting information so it's less than negligible (i.e., they actually cut the effort of what you're doing today as they provide transparency for your team).
The third main reason is that...
Transparency Requires Trust
One of the things I said about breaking a "cycle of distrust" was that someone had to go first, to make the first gesture. Transparency is a perfect example of this. We can't say we want transparency within our organizations if we ourselves are not willing to reveal how we make our own decisions. Someone must take the first step.
Why is it so hard to do this? If we feel the need to hide something, we should question that. If it's because we don't trust others in the organization, we should question that, too. Get to the root of distrust and eliminate it. If it's beyond your authority, find someone with more clout. There are always people with influence that want the organization to run well. It's likely that they aren't able to see where the problems are. Build a window into your team so they can see for themselves.
(originally posted on Management Revolution)
_________________________________________
Rino Jose is the principal co-founder of Lakeway Technologies, a startup that develops web apps for automating engineering and project management. He has developed software and managed software teams professionally for over 15 years. As a manager and management consultant, he has led turnarounds for multiple engineering teams. Rino holds a B.S. from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania with cross-disciplinary focus between Engineering, Computer Science, and the Wharton Business School.
More...
Friday, March 20, 2009
Can I Get Back to You on That? [Courtney Behm]
It seems to me that our daily responsiveness is decreasing in spite of the increase in the number of tools we have to stay in touch. We use email, voicemail, smart phones, audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, online presentations, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes we actually sit down and look each other in the eye, though this may be an endangered activity. I have meetings where we all sit at our cubicles, a hand’s breadth from each other and join the meeting by conference call. What is that about???
With all these great toys, and the assumption that no one is all that far from a transmission medium, why is it that I still need to send email after email, leave voicemail after voicemail, have meeting after meeting and sometimes just grab people by the collar in the hallway before something gets done? I can think of lots of reasons why it’s so difficult. Crazy busy. Slipped my mind. Something came up. Boss called a meeting. Flat tire. YaddaYadda. I can’t argue with any of these, I’ve been there myself.
But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. I think the looming reality of so many ways to connect seduces us into thinking we are actually communicating. And the absence of the requirement to actually show up for a meeting means we are listening with one ear while we doing something else. We fool ourselves that we are paying attention, but we would probably be hard pressed to repeat what was said in the past 5 sentences. So action items go unexecuted, and decisions are forgotten, and people don’t follow through on their commitments.
Let’s take this one step further, past the operational aspects of how you title an email, or leave a voice message, or make use of the alarm function in your smartphone to get people’s attention. Let’s talk about personal responsibility, and the struggle most of us have when it comes to taking it. We have unfortunately confused the taking of responsibility with accepting blame, and our survival instincts militate against it. Blame means punishment, pain, embarrassment, rejection, and avoiding it starts early. Toddlers who can barely talk will point vaguely out the window at an invisible perpetrator when Mom comes in and says, “Who threw the spaghetti on the floor?”
Unfortunately, being effective at whatever we do requires that we accept personal responsibility. Making excuses is all well and good, but at the end of the day, we either do or we don’t do.Unfortunately, the more lines of communication we have running, the more our electronic tentacles will bind us, and the more commitments we will be asked to make. We want to be good corporate citizens, so we end up taking on more than we can handle, and dancing as fast as we can, hoping that the impossible commitment we just made will magically come out all right. Or we simply fail to respond, as we can’t be held accountable for something we never agreed to in the first place.
It’s not an easy proposition, but we must learn to take this glut of messages and information and slow down the information transfer to a speed we can handle if we are going to thrive in today’s communication overload. When I take a few moments to reflect on my breadth of commitments, and triage my incoming requests, I create a sorting process that allows me to function at my most productive. If I try to be in too many places at once, or go on radio silence, I continue to disappoint myself and my stakeholders. To create, build, deliver and prosper, I need to be as consistently reliable as I am accessible, and remain accountable for my actions. So in that spirit…Mom? The spaghetti? I guess you could say that was… me.
____________________
Courtney Behm holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Performing Arts and Communication, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. In her corporate career, she has worked for wildly successful companies, and those struggling to stay afloat in the ocean of change. Through her consulting company, Viewpoint Solutions (www.ViewpointSolutions.com), she has helped a diverse client base, including Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the San Jose/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, find creative solutions to classic business problems. An accomplished speaker, Courtney uses a combination of language, humor, insight and front-line experience to offer a fresh perspective on life in the fast lane. In 2006, she returned to the corporate world, and is currently Senior Project Manager at i365, A Seagate Company. She is writing a book on how to lead effectively in a time of constant change, and collaborating on a book on Personal Career Management.
With all these great toys, and the assumption that no one is all that far from a transmission medium, why is it that I still need to send email after email, leave voicemail after voicemail, have meeting after meeting and sometimes just grab people by the collar in the hallway before something gets done? I can think of lots of reasons why it’s so difficult. Crazy busy. Slipped my mind. Something came up. Boss called a meeting. Flat tire. YaddaYadda. I can’t argue with any of these, I’ve been there myself.
But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. I think the looming reality of so many ways to connect seduces us into thinking we are actually communicating. And the absence of the requirement to actually show up for a meeting means we are listening with one ear while we doing something else. We fool ourselves that we are paying attention, but we would probably be hard pressed to repeat what was said in the past 5 sentences. So action items go unexecuted, and decisions are forgotten, and people don’t follow through on their commitments.
Let’s take this one step further, past the operational aspects of how you title an email, or leave a voice message, or make use of the alarm function in your smartphone to get people’s attention. Let’s talk about personal responsibility, and the struggle most of us have when it comes to taking it. We have unfortunately confused the taking of responsibility with accepting blame, and our survival instincts militate against it. Blame means punishment, pain, embarrassment, rejection, and avoiding it starts early. Toddlers who can barely talk will point vaguely out the window at an invisible perpetrator when Mom comes in and says, “Who threw the spaghetti on the floor?”
Unfortunately, being effective at whatever we do requires that we accept personal responsibility. Making excuses is all well and good, but at the end of the day, we either do or we don’t do.Unfortunately, the more lines of communication we have running, the more our electronic tentacles will bind us, and the more commitments we will be asked to make. We want to be good corporate citizens, so we end up taking on more than we can handle, and dancing as fast as we can, hoping that the impossible commitment we just made will magically come out all right. Or we simply fail to respond, as we can’t be held accountable for something we never agreed to in the first place.
It’s not an easy proposition, but we must learn to take this glut of messages and information and slow down the information transfer to a speed we can handle if we are going to thrive in today’s communication overload. When I take a few moments to reflect on my breadth of commitments, and triage my incoming requests, I create a sorting process that allows me to function at my most productive. If I try to be in too many places at once, or go on radio silence, I continue to disappoint myself and my stakeholders. To create, build, deliver and prosper, I need to be as consistently reliable as I am accessible, and remain accountable for my actions. So in that spirit…Mom? The spaghetti? I guess you could say that was… me.
____________________
Courtney Behm holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Performing Arts and Communication, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. In her corporate career, she has worked for wildly successful companies, and those struggling to stay afloat in the ocean of change. Through her consulting company, Viewpoint Solutions (www.ViewpointSolutions.com), she has helped a diverse client base, including Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the San Jose/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, find creative solutions to classic business problems. An accomplished speaker, Courtney uses a combination of language, humor, insight and front-line experience to offer a fresh perspective on life in the fast lane. In 2006, she returned to the corporate world, and is currently Senior Project Manager at i365, A Seagate Company. She is writing a book on how to lead effectively in a time of constant change, and collaborating on a book on Personal Career Management.
More...
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Softer Stuff [Gretchen Sand]
Jane Divinski and I walk occasionally and, recently, while on a hilltop in Rancho San Antonio, she asked if I would consider writing a piece for this blog. I was a bit perplexed as I am not an engineer and said as much. Jane's reply was something like this – “Your recruiting specialty is engineers. You know a lot of technical leaders and have to evaluate their strengths every day.” OK. I got it. Here goes....
Engineering leadership is a huge domain, one that expands and contracts appropriate to each situation. It includes technical knowledge, management competencies, and the softer behavioral leadership stuff which we can call leadership style. It's often the softer stuff that trips up professionals on their career journey. The candidate who does not make a personal connection, demonstrating an attractive leadership style during an interview will lose to the one who does. Finely tuned competencies in planning for the future, communicating graciously, behaving consistently, and inspiring others to their greatness are hallmarks of leadership. Leadership style is developed and comes from practice, learning, correcting and retuning the big and little things that matter in our behaviors.
Below, we'll take a brief look at just a few elements leadership style and ask a few provocative questions about how these elements could manifest. Some of these observations come from some recent conversations with industry leaders; others were inspired by a book I've read more than once: The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. They are real life heroes for me.
Communication skills. How well do you engage with people? Do you make eye contact? Are you approachable? Do you cut people off in mid sentence to get your point verbalized? Take notes so as to not lose an important point vs. interrupting. What is your style of asking questions? Do you come off as the grand inquisitor or as someone sincerely, generously asking a question. Then, how well do you listen to the answers? Would your team say you demonstrate the ability to listen and to ask questions that matter? Can you convey a highly technical concept clearly to decision makers in the non-technical community? How well do you communicate what is truly important in the moment?
Presence. This is how you show up - are you on time, appropriately dressed, attentive, ready for the meeting, with your research done in advance? You only get ONE chance to make a good first impression. Would you like your team to emulate your behavior? When interviewing for a new situation, ask what success will look like - what will it do for the organization? Learn who the stakeholders are - ask to interview with them so you can best understand what is needed and wanted. Learn what is missing in the organization that will make a difference. Then, present what you can do in alignment with that. Are you truly a good fit for the team? Is the team a good fit for you?
Charisma – You have an attracting style with a healthy dose of humility. People are inspired by your presence on the project. You get calls from people wanting to learn your opinion. You listen to what is asked and are responsive vs. bowling over the audience with all the great things you've done or would do. You remember to check your ego at the door. You ask for help. You know it is perfectly OK to say "I don't know" if that's really your answer to a question. How would you boss describe your ability to attract talent to your organization? Would you hire you?
Curiosity. You have a breadth of curiosity and knowledge about your company and your industry. You learned about its history, competitors, performance, management team, and its potential for growth – sometimes by consulting other leaders. This will truly help with your decision-making (see decisiveness, below). Knowing what matters will keep your work and your team moving forward. You consult with your team on how they would solve a problem. You know what your peer's specialties are and call on them for advice. Thinking about a really tough technical challenge you helped solve last year, who did you call on for help? Did you give them credit? Thank them? (see charisma and humility, above) Do you surround yourself with people who help you look at the bigger picture?
Competence and Vision. When articulating the future of your organization, you present a crisp forward-looking plan. It is actionable and includes a road map to success with measurable milestones. Your vision inspires people to bring their passion to work. They own the project with you. As an engineering leader, you are aware of the big picture, the world outside of the technical domain. Your plans acknowledge where the technology or science fits in the big scheme of things. Your style is to pursue a technology path for the good of the organization not because it’s a fun and really thorny problem to work. You acknowledge when you need help getting the work done and get it in a timely manner.
Decisiveness. You have just a few filters you use to make decisions quickly. Leaders listen, decide and act based on the current situation and knowledge. Leaders are hired not because they never make a mistake, but because they learn from mistakes and succeed in spite of them. Leaders have the power of their convictions and are not easily influenced by the issue du jour.
Integrity. Honesty is everything. Everything you do should be publishable on this blog or the front page of a newspaper. You give others' a good reputation to live up to. You are good for your word. You admit to making a mistake. It’s easy for you to say why you left your last position or are looking for a new situation – and – you have a strong bridge to your past.
There a whole lot more to write about here. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I'm wool gathering about a piece that speaks to the traits of the engineering leader as the hiring authority.... There are schools, books, and organizations devoted to the study of Engineering Leadership and its importance to our work universe. Read a book on leadership at least once a year. Our valley is an extraordinary tribute to the work and dedication of engineering leaders. We really do have rocket scientists working nearby. There are really smart people making very difficult decisions daily about the future of technology just down the road from you. Take the time to get to know a leader outside of you immediate milieu. Explore what engineering leadership means to them. Look at what it means to you. Write a blog piece about it.
____________________________
Gretchen Sand is Senior Partner and co-founder of Skyline Recruiting Corporation solving staffing challenges for Silicon Valley high-tech companies since 2001. Gretchen's focus is placement of senior individual contributors and executives in the engineering and product management domains. Prior to founding Skyline in September 2001, Gretchen served as Vice President, Business Development and COO for Lloyd-Ritter Consulting where she got her start as an engineering recruiter in 1996. Prior to 1996, Gretchen worked for Lockheed Corporation in many functions of the product development value chain: program planning and management, operations management, new business development, and systems engineering. More about Skyline Recruiting Corporation can be learned at: http://www.skylinerecruiting.com
Engineering leadership is a huge domain, one that expands and contracts appropriate to each situation. It includes technical knowledge, management competencies, and the softer behavioral leadership stuff which we can call leadership style. It's often the softer stuff that trips up professionals on their career journey. The candidate who does not make a personal connection, demonstrating an attractive leadership style during an interview will lose to the one who does. Finely tuned competencies in planning for the future, communicating graciously, behaving consistently, and inspiring others to their greatness are hallmarks of leadership. Leadership style is developed and comes from practice, learning, correcting and retuning the big and little things that matter in our behaviors.
Below, we'll take a brief look at just a few elements leadership style and ask a few provocative questions about how these elements could manifest. Some of these observations come from some recent conversations with industry leaders; others were inspired by a book I've read more than once: The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. They are real life heroes for me.
Communication skills. How well do you engage with people? Do you make eye contact? Are you approachable? Do you cut people off in mid sentence to get your point verbalized? Take notes so as to not lose an important point vs. interrupting. What is your style of asking questions? Do you come off as the grand inquisitor or as someone sincerely, generously asking a question. Then, how well do you listen to the answers? Would your team say you demonstrate the ability to listen and to ask questions that matter? Can you convey a highly technical concept clearly to decision makers in the non-technical community? How well do you communicate what is truly important in the moment?
Presence. This is how you show up - are you on time, appropriately dressed, attentive, ready for the meeting, with your research done in advance? You only get ONE chance to make a good first impression. Would you like your team to emulate your behavior? When interviewing for a new situation, ask what success will look like - what will it do for the organization? Learn who the stakeholders are - ask to interview with them so you can best understand what is needed and wanted. Learn what is missing in the organization that will make a difference. Then, present what you can do in alignment with that. Are you truly a good fit for the team? Is the team a good fit for you?
Charisma – You have an attracting style with a healthy dose of humility. People are inspired by your presence on the project. You get calls from people wanting to learn your opinion. You listen to what is asked and are responsive vs. bowling over the audience with all the great things you've done or would do. You remember to check your ego at the door. You ask for help. You know it is perfectly OK to say "I don't know" if that's really your answer to a question. How would you boss describe your ability to attract talent to your organization? Would you hire you?
Curiosity. You have a breadth of curiosity and knowledge about your company and your industry. You learned about its history, competitors, performance, management team, and its potential for growth – sometimes by consulting other leaders. This will truly help with your decision-making (see decisiveness, below). Knowing what matters will keep your work and your team moving forward. You consult with your team on how they would solve a problem. You know what your peer's specialties are and call on them for advice. Thinking about a really tough technical challenge you helped solve last year, who did you call on for help? Did you give them credit? Thank them? (see charisma and humility, above) Do you surround yourself with people who help you look at the bigger picture?
Competence and Vision. When articulating the future of your organization, you present a crisp forward-looking plan. It is actionable and includes a road map to success with measurable milestones. Your vision inspires people to bring their passion to work. They own the project with you. As an engineering leader, you are aware of the big picture, the world outside of the technical domain. Your plans acknowledge where the technology or science fits in the big scheme of things. Your style is to pursue a technology path for the good of the organization not because it’s a fun and really thorny problem to work. You acknowledge when you need help getting the work done and get it in a timely manner.
Decisiveness. You have just a few filters you use to make decisions quickly. Leaders listen, decide and act based on the current situation and knowledge. Leaders are hired not because they never make a mistake, but because they learn from mistakes and succeed in spite of them. Leaders have the power of their convictions and are not easily influenced by the issue du jour.
Integrity. Honesty is everything. Everything you do should be publishable on this blog or the front page of a newspaper. You give others' a good reputation to live up to. You are good for your word. You admit to making a mistake. It’s easy for you to say why you left your last position or are looking for a new situation – and – you have a strong bridge to your past.
There a whole lot more to write about here. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I'm wool gathering about a piece that speaks to the traits of the engineering leader as the hiring authority.... There are schools, books, and organizations devoted to the study of Engineering Leadership and its importance to our work universe. Read a book on leadership at least once a year. Our valley is an extraordinary tribute to the work and dedication of engineering leaders. We really do have rocket scientists working nearby. There are really smart people making very difficult decisions daily about the future of technology just down the road from you. Take the time to get to know a leader outside of you immediate milieu. Explore what engineering leadership means to them. Look at what it means to you. Write a blog piece about it.
____________________________
Gretchen Sand is Senior Partner and co-founder of Skyline Recruiting Corporation solving staffing challenges for Silicon Valley high-tech companies since 2001. Gretchen's focus is placement of senior individual contributors and executives in the engineering and product management domains. Prior to founding Skyline in September 2001, Gretchen served as Vice President, Business Development and COO for Lloyd-Ritter Consulting where she got her start as an engineering recruiter in 1996. Prior to 1996, Gretchen worked for Lockheed Corporation in many functions of the product development value chain: program planning and management, operations management, new business development, and systems engineering. More about Skyline Recruiting Corporation can be learned at: http://www.skylinerecruiting.com
More...
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Leading from a Higher Ground [Courtney Behm]
Over the course of my career, I’ve been in a great many situations where I didn’t like the way things were being done. Maybe it was my boss, or the executive team, or the engineering strategy, or the marketing positioning, or the decline in revenue, or…well, you get the picture. For reasons too numerous to count, things just weren’t all that great for me and/or for everyone. And here’s my true confession: when that happened, I was only too happy to join the malcontents, to hash over and discuss and criticize and complain. It seemed to relieve the tension, to clear the air. We got things off our chest. We said it like it was. We felt powerful and smart because we understood what was REALLY happening, we saw through the smoke screen, we couldn’t be fooled, and we knew the Emperor had no clothes.
Things began to change for me when I was working at Wang Labs during their precipitous decline in fortunes. Every day presented new opportunities for us anxious and disbelieving employees to kibitz and second guess every corporate decision. The clouds of misery were everywhere, and we tried to talk ourselves out of our frustration by over-analyzing every little event. Then one day my boss called me into her office. “Courtney,” she said, “you are unbelievably good at distilling the truth of a situation down to two or three well chosen phrases that allow everyone to see clearly what is actually going on.” As I was beginning to puff up a bit with pride, she continued, “And sometimes you just shouldn’t do it.” Ouch!
This gave me a lot to think about, and in the ensuing years I’ve spent a great deal of time working with this complex question: when is it appropriate to “tell it like it is” and when is it more valuable to find the possibility in the situation, to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to calm the waters? This question speaks directly to what kind of leader we want to be.
It’s pretty easy to gather people around you when you take the low road. We are a rather whiny species -- quick to blame, to cite grievance, to demand satisfaction. In my capacity as articulate complainer, I found lots of validation for my opinions. But those opinions, however well expressed, positioned me as a negative leader. I was unwittingly making myself and everyone around me more miserable by focusing on what was broken, by amplifying what we were afraid of or angry about, and as a cohort, we couldn’t go anywhere but down.
We may not always have control of the important influences in our lives. The economy, the demand for our product, the weather, the competition – these often arise to impact us from what seems like another universe. But we always have an opportunity to be calm and trustworthy. To listen quietly. To validate someone’s discomfort without throwing gasoline on the fire. To acknowledge difficulties and still offer a way out. To hold our ground. To give people the benefit of the doubt. To use language that strengthens, rather than fans dissatisfaction. I’m not talking about blind optimism here, that is about as effective as using a smile for your umbrella. I’m talking about focusing on what is possible, reminding us that we have the power to make things happen, and affirming our strength and courage.
No one is perfect, and no one leads perfectly. But when things are moving fast, and chaos reigns, and uncertainty is the order of the day, we need to offer leadership that inspires, that energizes, that motivates. This is the kind of leadership that brings us out of difficulties and back to prosperity. Every one of us has an opportunity every day to make great changes in our organizations and our lives by leading from a higher ground.
____________________
Courtney Behm holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Performing Arts and Communication, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. In her corporate career, she has worked for wildly successful companies, and those struggling to stay afloat in the ocean of change. Through her consulting company, Viewpoint Solutions (www.ViewpointSolutions.com), she has helped a diverse client base, including Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the San Jose/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, find creative solutions to classic business problems. An accomplished speaker, Courtney uses a combination of language, humor, insight and front-line experience to offer a fresh perspective on life in the fast lane. In 2006, she returned to the corporate world, and is currently Senior Project Manager at i365, A Seagate Company. She is writing a book on how to lead effectively in a time of constant change, and collaborating on a book on Personal Career Management.
Things began to change for me when I was working at Wang Labs during their precipitous decline in fortunes. Every day presented new opportunities for us anxious and disbelieving employees to kibitz and second guess every corporate decision. The clouds of misery were everywhere, and we tried to talk ourselves out of our frustration by over-analyzing every little event. Then one day my boss called me into her office. “Courtney,” she said, “you are unbelievably good at distilling the truth of a situation down to two or three well chosen phrases that allow everyone to see clearly what is actually going on.” As I was beginning to puff up a bit with pride, she continued, “And sometimes you just shouldn’t do it.” Ouch!
This gave me a lot to think about, and in the ensuing years I’ve spent a great deal of time working with this complex question: when is it appropriate to “tell it like it is” and when is it more valuable to find the possibility in the situation, to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to calm the waters? This question speaks directly to what kind of leader we want to be.
It’s pretty easy to gather people around you when you take the low road. We are a rather whiny species -- quick to blame, to cite grievance, to demand satisfaction. In my capacity as articulate complainer, I found lots of validation for my opinions. But those opinions, however well expressed, positioned me as a negative leader. I was unwittingly making myself and everyone around me more miserable by focusing on what was broken, by amplifying what we were afraid of or angry about, and as a cohort, we couldn’t go anywhere but down.
We may not always have control of the important influences in our lives. The economy, the demand for our product, the weather, the competition – these often arise to impact us from what seems like another universe. But we always have an opportunity to be calm and trustworthy. To listen quietly. To validate someone’s discomfort without throwing gasoline on the fire. To acknowledge difficulties and still offer a way out. To hold our ground. To give people the benefit of the doubt. To use language that strengthens, rather than fans dissatisfaction. I’m not talking about blind optimism here, that is about as effective as using a smile for your umbrella. I’m talking about focusing on what is possible, reminding us that we have the power to make things happen, and affirming our strength and courage.
No one is perfect, and no one leads perfectly. But when things are moving fast, and chaos reigns, and uncertainty is the order of the day, we need to offer leadership that inspires, that energizes, that motivates. This is the kind of leadership that brings us out of difficulties and back to prosperity. Every one of us has an opportunity every day to make great changes in our organizations and our lives by leading from a higher ground.
____________________
Courtney Behm holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Performing Arts and Communication, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. In her corporate career, she has worked for wildly successful companies, and those struggling to stay afloat in the ocean of change. Through her consulting company, Viewpoint Solutions (www.ViewpointSolutions.com), she has helped a diverse client base, including Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the San Jose/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, find creative solutions to classic business problems. An accomplished speaker, Courtney uses a combination of language, humor, insight and front-line experience to offer a fresh perspective on life in the fast lane. In 2006, she returned to the corporate world, and is currently Senior Project Manager at i365, A Seagate Company. She is writing a book on how to lead effectively in a time of constant change, and collaborating on a book on Personal Career Management.
More...
Monday, February 9, 2009
Who needs social networking anyway? [Courtney Behm]
I was a latecomer to the social networking phenomenon. Following is the substance of my usual rant, which many of you may find familiar. “Already have too many emails I can’t answer, already have enough friends, already don’t have time to keep up, can’t be bothered, (insert your personal reason here).” I was the classic business ostrich, head stuck firmly in my own corporate sand, busy busy busy all day long and really really really not interested. But then a former colleague I hadn’t heard from in years sent me a LinkedIn invitation, and I grudgingly accepted.
The world proceeded to open up. As I sat there tinkering with the “find someone you know on LinkedIn” function, I discovered a few more lost comrades, and my list grew from 1 to 10…wow! Then LinkedIn did something brilliant. They sent out emails with their lists of people from the companies I used to work for and said, do you want to be connected with these people? Before you could say, click, I had 98 people in my list, and I was beginning to get it. Over the next year, I grew my list to more than 150, in part because of my efforts, but in great measure due to other people also beginning to see the advantage of collecting the folks they had worked with in one efficient database. My admiration of the technology knew no bounds when my use of LinkedIn’s job posting and referral service actually resulted in a new job. Wow! I became, and remain, a true believer in the power of online social networking to widen my horizons far beyond the normal “keep in touch” strategies. I now have nearly 300 people in my LinkedIn contacts, and I haven’t slowed down yet.
The business side of social networking is pretty easy to make a case for. Resume posting, and asking for introductions, and getting to the decision maker because your friend Steve used to be the VP in that organization…yup, yup, yup, no doubt about it. But Facebook? What’s that about?
I had classified Facebook as a tool for 20-somethings for whom virtual communities were the same as co-located neighborhoods, and a posting the same as a phone call. I lumped it into the same bucket as MySpace, and it held no appeal for me. My first invitation to Facebook came from a friend whose kids had insisted he join. He pinged me in some degree of desperation when they told him he had to have a bigger Friend list or he wouldn’t be cool. “Dad, you’re making us look bad!” We laughed about being Facebook geezers, and wondered what we were doing there. So imagine my surprise when last year, a former colleague, then a brilliant SVP at a very large, very successful company, said to me, “Are you on Facebook? Ping me and we’ll keep in touch.” I nodded sagely, with considerable aplomb and said, “Oh, yeah, of course. See you on Facebook.” Facebook? Sheesh! What’s up with this? When I signed on, I found that Facebook had become a 24/7 grown-up family reunion, complete with photos, inspirational stories, jokes, music clips, political brawls…who knew? I Friended like crazy. Now I had a window into Shari’s marathon and Candi’s experiences at the inauguration, Greg’s favorite recordings and Samantha’s running comments on the state of the world. I saw what Woody looked like in college, and giggled at Aaron’s new baby movies. I also learned to be very cautious about visiting the sites of my young relatives, and to remember that my boss was also a Friend! Despite my scoffing, I found that Facebook was an extraordinary bonding experience with people near and far.
So I’m converted. Who needs social networking? I’d go so far as to say, don’t leave home without it. Like many of you reading this post, I’m not a natural networker. OK, I’m gregarious and I love being around people but historically, I was not good at making new contacts and keeping in touch with old ones. And I’ll tell you true, it hurt me. Overly-focused on what was right in front of me, I allowed valuable business and personal connections to drift away, carrying unrealized opportunities with them. Not only had I not continued to let them know I cared, I didn’t even know where they were. Now I have a nearly painless way to reestablish, maintain and deepen those connections. As a result, I have a richer community that warms my heart at the same time it keeps me current with what’s going on in my profession. Go ahead, try it! Link! Friend! Your career and your life will thank you.
_________________________________
Courtney Behm holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Performing Arts and Communication, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. In her corporate career, she has worked for wildly successful companies, and those struggling to stay afloat in the ocean of change. Through her consulting company, Viewpoint Solutions (www.ViewpointSolutions.com), she has helped a diverse client base, including Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the San Jose/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, find creative solutions to classic business problems. An accomplished speaker, Courtney uses a combination of language, humor, insight and front-line experience to offer a fresh perspective on life in the fast lane. In 2006, she returned to the corporate world, and is currently Senior Project Manager at i365, A Seagate Company. She is writing a book on how to lead effectively in a time of constant change, and collaborating on a book on Personal Career Management.
More...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
