The April 21 meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG of the SD Forum featured a talk on Product Management by Rich Mironov. His presentation was outstanding, one of the best I have seen at an Engineering Leadership SIG event. Here is a summary of Mironov’s talk.
Overview of Product Managment
Mironov began by stating Product Management engages in four areas:
· Product
· People and Organization
· Process
· Technical Knowledge
and an effective Product Manager must have some knowledge and background in all four areas.
Before proceeding further with his actual talk, Mironov asked the audience to take a few minutes and list some good and some bad experiences with Product Management.
Examples from the audience of good experiences with Product Management:
· Focus
· Good technical knowledge
· Made decisive product decisions
· Infectious enthusiasm
· Good financial analysis
· Voice of the customer
Examples of bad experiences:
· No business plan
· Senior management undercut product management
· Undefined product management role
· Threw specification over the fence
· Feature du jour
· Old product preconception
· Product management thinks they have good technical knowledge
· “I know what the customer wants.”
· No view of competitive product
Not all bad experiences were the result of product management.
What Does a Product Manger Do?
· Drives delivery and market acceptance
· Targets market segments, not individual customers
· Resolves competing priorities
· Drives acceptance and adaptation
· Makes money
· Even internal projects need to have willing customers
How Does Product Management Interact with the Rest of the Organization?
Product Management works with:
· Developers
· Executives
· Marketing and Sales – more broadly, markets and customers.
Product Management provides some specific inputs to developers:
· Market information
· Priorities
· Requirements
· User stories
· Roadmaps
And the developers provide Product Management a working product.
Product Management provides a different set of inputs to marketing and sales:
· Segments
· Benefits and features
· Prices
· Qualification
· Demonstrations
And Marketing and Sales provides Product Management with field input and market feedback.
It is essential for product managers to talk with actual customers. Ideally, one-third of their time they should be engaged with customers. A more realistic goal is one-fifth of their time with customers.
Product Management provides a third set of inputs to executives:
· Strategy
· Forecasts
· Competitive intelligence
And the executive team provides Product Management a Yes/No decision on a particular product or project, along with budgets, staffing and funding.
Mironov noted engineers become product managers as a path to becoming part of the senior executive team.
Planning Horizons and the Agile SW Process
From the Agile framework comes the hierarchy Daily – Sprint – Release – Product portfolio – Strategy. Product managers start in the center of this hierarchy – Release and Product Portfolio – but will find themselves from time to time engaged at all levels of the hierarchy.
The Nature of Product Management’s Role
There is no rational sequence for Product Management.
· All aspects must be worked in parallel.
· It is interrupt driven.
· Bottom-up shapes top-down and top-down shapes bottoms-up.
· Product Management must provide strategy, judgment and integration as well as execution.
· Every Product Manager should spend a significant amount of time with customers.
Good Product Managers drive decisions despite uncertainties and contradictory goals.
Since Product Management is a collection of people-related skills, it requires mentoring; difficult to get it on your own without strong role models. And one the most valuable aspects of Mironov’s presentation was his emphasis on how Product Management can fail. Knowing what can go wrong can be much more helpful than merely learning about successes.
Example Product Management Failure Modes
The first set of examples show how a Product Manager can fail when working with an Agile team:
· Product Manager only works part-time on Product Management.
· Lack of detail on stories (e.g. why the product is superior, or what are customers looking for in the product line)
· Hand waving and bluster.
· Best of intentions but pulled in too many directions
· “Build what I meant”
The second set of examples show how a Product Manager can fail in the market:
· Weak on the real world – pricing, discounts, upgrades and packaging
· Disconnected from other teams.
· Belief in rational users
· Trade off company-wide product strategy for product level features.
· Assume a few customers represent the market.
Mironov closed on a very positive theme, how you can help Product Management.
Seven Ways to Help Product Management
· Ask about Use Cases and customer problems
· Do not demand that Product Managers be as technical as engineers.
· Not every user story becomes a feature
· Expect Product Managers to translate features into customer-relevant benefits
· Ask about forecasts, shipments and revenue
· Quietly sit in on some customer meetings
· Channel your Inner Product Manager
More...
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Project Leadership Lessons from a Heart-wrenching Tragedy [Kimberly Wiefling]
As you may know, Kimberly Wiefling has extensive business and personal contacts in Japan. Here she discusses her reaction to the recent earthquake and tsunami disaster, and finds some lessons for product management and engineering leadership.
Pardon me if I’m not my normally humorous self. I’m obsessing on disaster these days after the recent quake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant tragedies in Japan. While there have been plenty of tragedies in the past that could have consumed my emotional bandwidth (see the complete list on Wikipedia if you don’t already feel like self-medicating with tequila), this is much more personal. Just about every month for the last five years I’ve flown to Japan to work for a couple of weeks. From my home in the Silicon Valley, Japan seemed a long way off. Until now, that is.
On March 11 at 4:00 AM the iPhone on my bed table rang. It was my dad calling from my parents' home in Florida. “Get up! Your friends are in trouble.” he said. I don’t know what he thought I could do about a natural disaster occurring over 5,000 miles away, but that’s my dad -- no matter how dire the circumstances, he always thinks there’s something a person can do to make a positive difference.
Through my work with global Japanese companies I’ve met thousands of people who live in Japan. Many I consider friends, and some are as precious to me as my dear ol’ dad. I had just returned from Asia two days ago, and I was in Tokyo only five days before the quake struck. So up I got, and immediately scoured the internet for news from Nippon. Needless to say, what I saw was tragic beyond comprehension.
As the disaster unfolded before my eyes, I watched a tsunami wash away an entire village. At that moment, any illusion of separateness I may have felt was washed away with that village and those lives. This was not an event that I perceived as happening to “strangers,” people distant from me. No, at that moment, with so many ties to people living in Japan, I strongly felt that this was happening to “us.”
Shared Pain Focuses the Mind
Immediately I felt an overwhelming urge to help. Figuring out how to help took a while, but there was no question that I needed to be a part of the solution. I could fill this article with the personal stories of people I know, and how they are carrying on in the face of a continuing series of threats and disasters, but there are plenty of places you can read about that. Instead, let’s honor the memory of those who have suffered and died by exploring what this experience can teach us about being better project leaders. I’ve boiled it down to the following three insights for starters, though there are surely more lessons to be learned:
· “We-centric thinking” clarifies the goal and focuses people on finding solutions.
· The human mind has a limited ability to imagine risks. There is no bottom to “worse.”
· “Possibility thinking” is effective even in tragic and seemingly impossible situations.
Crisis Creates Clarity
The moment I grasped the situation in Japan (thanks to horrifyingly vivid videos on the web and graphic descriptions of events from my friends living there), I was immediately willing to do whatever necessary. The overarching goal was so clear, and the need so immediate and compelling, that I was willing to do whatever I could to help. I started contacting people on both sides of the Pacific to see what could be done, and so did many others. Perhaps most inspiringly, the people of Japan reached out to help each other with a depth of compassion and selflessness that left the world in awe. One American woman living near the affected region wrote us that, in this time of food shortages, she returns home each night to find that someone has left food on her doorstep. Heck, after forgetting to pack my lunch for a recent university alumni picnic, I sat, foodless, with a couple who never even offered me so much as an olive.
Imagine if everyone involved in a challenging project first and foremost had an attitude of “What can I do to help?” What if each of the people involved on your project – teammates, sponsors, executives, suppliers, and customers – brought that attitude to every meeting and discussion? Don’t get me wrong, I believe that most people intend to help, even if that intention is buried deep within their psyche. But it gets obscured by time pressures, differing perceptions of the goals, and competition for resources, not to mention pride, turf wars, and ego.
Over the years I’ve noticed a sort of fragmentation that occurs in some project ecosystems that can be summed up as “us vs. them.” In stressful project environments (which is basically all of them, but who's counting?) I’ve noticed a variety of different schisms:
· Our company vs. the customer
· Our project team vs. the execs
· Me vs. “the others”
When I facilitate team effectiveness workshops, I sometimes divide the participants into two groups and locate them in opposite corners of the room, giving both groups the same instructions: get the other group to come to their corner of the room. Then I sit back and watch. Even when the entire group is comprised of people from the same company, even the same division – people who know each other, for crying out loud – successfully completing the task by simply having the groups switch positions is a solution that eludes them for as long as 23 minutes. (Yes, that’s the world record, but I’m sworn to secrecy which company it was.) Separating people by as little as 4 meters is enough to cause the “us vs. them” syndrome.
On projects, as long as the illusion of separateness persists we can find ourselves working at cross-purposes with the very people needed to achieve the project goals. When instead we view ourselves as “we,” we’re unencumbered by the obstacles of ego, hierarchy and competition. Adrift on the same iceberg, we’re instantly united in helping each other find solutions that enable us to step safely onto the shore of success. When we create this sense of unity among the various stakeholders in our projects (ideally without the presence of an external hazard, natural or man-made) we get everyone involved and focused on making a positive difference.
There Is No Bottom to Worse
In view of the fact that multiple layers of backup systems failed in the Fukushima nuclear power plants, I’m of the opinion that human beings have no imagination for disaster.
In “Scrappy Business Contingency Planning” the author (and my friend), Michael Seese, admonishes those doing disaster planning not to focus on what kind of disaster might interrupt power – only on what to do when that power is interrupted, as it will surely be. Michael has a talent for gloom and doom thinking, but I doubt that even he could have imagined all of the ways things could go badly wrong at the power plants. When I asked him to comment on the unfolding nuclear nightmare he said “In some sense, I see the Japanese response to the events at Fukushima as being like our Y2K preparation efforts. I worked on several Y2K remediation projects. I couldn't help but smile when – after the clock struck midnight and our world didn't grind to a halt – people said, "Nothing happened! Look at all that money that was wasted." Of course, nothing happened – because we spent that time, effort, and money. It's the same thing in Japan. Who could say what would have happened had they not pumped in sea water, and dumped more water in by helicopter?
One takeaway from this disaster is that business contingency plans need to tested, and re-tested. Of course, it's not practical to test a nuclear meltdown. But hopefully the lessons learned at Fukushima Daiichi will enable Japan – and other countries – to make their nuclear power plants safer.”
Yes, let’s all hope so. I know some people think “dilution is the solution to pollution”; our vast oceans can only absorb so much radioactivity.
The human mind has a limited ability to imagine risk. Even in Japan, where risk aversion, attention detail, and avoidance of failure are legendary (almost a national pastime), engineers failed to imagine the recent catastrophic string of events and design around them. In my experience, no amount of risk assessment and planning captures all possibilities. Things can always be worse than we imagined.
The Best Is Always Yet to Come
“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” John W. Gardner, US administrator (1912 - 2002)
Faced with the choice to either give up hope or trudge on in a hopeless cause, I'm prone to choose trudging. Why? Because if I’ve learned anything in 20 years of leading, and working on, all kinds of projects with varying degrees of impossibility, it’s that human beings – myself included – are notoriously poor judges of when something is hopeless.
Even in the most dire circumstances, asking “What does this make possible that wasn’t possible before?” helps open the mind to creative ideas and breakthrough thinking. I’ve been pondering this in relationship to the quake/tsunami/nuclear triple tragedy, and so far I’ve come up with a few possibilities:
This will bring the world closer to Japan. People all over the world have voiced their admiration of the dignity, compassion and selflessness of the people of Japan. My friends in Japan are a bit amused by how much attention the press is giving to the headline “There’s no looting!” To them, they can’t imagine why anyone would loot. While some cynics say it’s just that negative events aren’t being reported, I disagree. I can personally testify to getting my wallet back with over 30,000 yen in it after leaving it in a Tokyo taxi. The driver delivered it to my hotel for free, left it at the front desk, and it was returned to me the next morning.
This will bring Japan closer to their neighbors. After years of icy relationships, Korea and China sent help to Japan . . . and Japan accepted.
This will bring the people of Japan closer to each other. Disasters have a way of recalibrating us about what’s important. In a country where avoiding risk is almost a national pastime, living with the daily threat of aftershocks and longer-term consequences of nuclear contamination are likely to shift thinking about risk. Now that daily life is risky, perhaps other kinds of risk-taking, like innovation and breakthrough thinking, won’t seem quite as dangerous by comparison. As Helen Keller said, “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
I think it’s pretty safe to say that any project you or I may be working on can’t be nearly as dreadful as the situation unfolding in Japan. Consequently, I’m quite certain that we can find some “great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems” in whatever project currently stymies us. Even if it’s true that the situation is hopeless, the illusion that we can make a difference can inspire us to build capabilities that make the next situation less so. There are advantages to leading your team as if the best is yet to come while dealing with the current reality. Jim Collins labeled this “The Stockdale Paradox”:
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” - Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale
The New Normal
Some of my colleagues at ALC Education in Tokyo slept on the 19th floor of their office building the night of the quake as they waited for trains to resume operation. Others – parents with stranded children – walked for six hours or more to get home to them. In the weeks that followed they weathered power shortages, devastating news of the missing and the dead, and ongoing scares from aftershocks and radiation. Through it all the people of Japan are inspiring the entire world through their stunning examples of selflessness and compassion—two ingredients that I feel quite sure I can use to improve my next project. I hope we’ll all emerge committed to applying these and the other lessons learned to our projects and our lives as life on Earth returns to the “new normal.”
If you’d like to donate to the Japan Relief Fund, one option is through the American Red Cross:
https://american.redcross.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=ntld_main
Kimberly Wiefling is the author of Scrappy Project Management, one of the top-ranked project management books on Amazon in the US, published in Japanese, and growing in popularity around the world. She splits her work time between the US and Japan.
More...
Pardon me if I’m not my normally humorous self. I’m obsessing on disaster these days after the recent quake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant tragedies in Japan. While there have been plenty of tragedies in the past that could have consumed my emotional bandwidth (see the complete list on Wikipedia if you don’t already feel like self-medicating with tequila), this is much more personal. Just about every month for the last five years I’ve flown to Japan to work for a couple of weeks. From my home in the Silicon Valley, Japan seemed a long way off. Until now, that is.
On March 11 at 4:00 AM the iPhone on my bed table rang. It was my dad calling from my parents' home in Florida. “Get up! Your friends are in trouble.” he said. I don’t know what he thought I could do about a natural disaster occurring over 5,000 miles away, but that’s my dad -- no matter how dire the circumstances, he always thinks there’s something a person can do to make a positive difference.
Through my work with global Japanese companies I’ve met thousands of people who live in Japan. Many I consider friends, and some are as precious to me as my dear ol’ dad. I had just returned from Asia two days ago, and I was in Tokyo only five days before the quake struck. So up I got, and immediately scoured the internet for news from Nippon. Needless to say, what I saw was tragic beyond comprehension.
As the disaster unfolded before my eyes, I watched a tsunami wash away an entire village. At that moment, any illusion of separateness I may have felt was washed away with that village and those lives. This was not an event that I perceived as happening to “strangers,” people distant from me. No, at that moment, with so many ties to people living in Japan, I strongly felt that this was happening to “us.”
Shared Pain Focuses the Mind
Immediately I felt an overwhelming urge to help. Figuring out how to help took a while, but there was no question that I needed to be a part of the solution. I could fill this article with the personal stories of people I know, and how they are carrying on in the face of a continuing series of threats and disasters, but there are plenty of places you can read about that. Instead, let’s honor the memory of those who have suffered and died by exploring what this experience can teach us about being better project leaders. I’ve boiled it down to the following three insights for starters, though there are surely more lessons to be learned:
· “We-centric thinking” clarifies the goal and focuses people on finding solutions.
· The human mind has a limited ability to imagine risks. There is no bottom to “worse.”
· “Possibility thinking” is effective even in tragic and seemingly impossible situations.
Crisis Creates Clarity
The moment I grasped the situation in Japan (thanks to horrifyingly vivid videos on the web and graphic descriptions of events from my friends living there), I was immediately willing to do whatever necessary. The overarching goal was so clear, and the need so immediate and compelling, that I was willing to do whatever I could to help. I started contacting people on both sides of the Pacific to see what could be done, and so did many others. Perhaps most inspiringly, the people of Japan reached out to help each other with a depth of compassion and selflessness that left the world in awe. One American woman living near the affected region wrote us that, in this time of food shortages, she returns home each night to find that someone has left food on her doorstep. Heck, after forgetting to pack my lunch for a recent university alumni picnic, I sat, foodless, with a couple who never even offered me so much as an olive.
Imagine if everyone involved in a challenging project first and foremost had an attitude of “What can I do to help?” What if each of the people involved on your project – teammates, sponsors, executives, suppliers, and customers – brought that attitude to every meeting and discussion? Don’t get me wrong, I believe that most people intend to help, even if that intention is buried deep within their psyche. But it gets obscured by time pressures, differing perceptions of the goals, and competition for resources, not to mention pride, turf wars, and ego.
Over the years I’ve noticed a sort of fragmentation that occurs in some project ecosystems that can be summed up as “us vs. them.” In stressful project environments (which is basically all of them, but who's counting?) I’ve noticed a variety of different schisms:
· Our company vs. the customer
· Our project team vs. the execs
· Me vs. “the others”
When I facilitate team effectiveness workshops, I sometimes divide the participants into two groups and locate them in opposite corners of the room, giving both groups the same instructions: get the other group to come to their corner of the room. Then I sit back and watch. Even when the entire group is comprised of people from the same company, even the same division – people who know each other, for crying out loud – successfully completing the task by simply having the groups switch positions is a solution that eludes them for as long as 23 minutes. (Yes, that’s the world record, but I’m sworn to secrecy which company it was.) Separating people by as little as 4 meters is enough to cause the “us vs. them” syndrome.
On projects, as long as the illusion of separateness persists we can find ourselves working at cross-purposes with the very people needed to achieve the project goals. When instead we view ourselves as “we,” we’re unencumbered by the obstacles of ego, hierarchy and competition. Adrift on the same iceberg, we’re instantly united in helping each other find solutions that enable us to step safely onto the shore of success. When we create this sense of unity among the various stakeholders in our projects (ideally without the presence of an external hazard, natural or man-made) we get everyone involved and focused on making a positive difference.
There Is No Bottom to Worse
In view of the fact that multiple layers of backup systems failed in the Fukushima nuclear power plants, I’m of the opinion that human beings have no imagination for disaster.
In “Scrappy Business Contingency Planning” the author (and my friend), Michael Seese, admonishes those doing disaster planning not to focus on what kind of disaster might interrupt power – only on what to do when that power is interrupted, as it will surely be. Michael has a talent for gloom and doom thinking, but I doubt that even he could have imagined all of the ways things could go badly wrong at the power plants. When I asked him to comment on the unfolding nuclear nightmare he said “In some sense, I see the Japanese response to the events at Fukushima as being like our Y2K preparation efforts. I worked on several Y2K remediation projects. I couldn't help but smile when – after the clock struck midnight and our world didn't grind to a halt – people said, "Nothing happened! Look at all that money that was wasted." Of course, nothing happened – because we spent that time, effort, and money. It's the same thing in Japan. Who could say what would have happened had they not pumped in sea water, and dumped more water in by helicopter?
One takeaway from this disaster is that business contingency plans need to tested, and re-tested. Of course, it's not practical to test a nuclear meltdown. But hopefully the lessons learned at Fukushima Daiichi will enable Japan – and other countries – to make their nuclear power plants safer.”
Yes, let’s all hope so. I know some people think “dilution is the solution to pollution”; our vast oceans can only absorb so much radioactivity.
The human mind has a limited ability to imagine risk. Even in Japan, where risk aversion, attention detail, and avoidance of failure are legendary (almost a national pastime), engineers failed to imagine the recent catastrophic string of events and design around them. In my experience, no amount of risk assessment and planning captures all possibilities. Things can always be worse than we imagined.
The Best Is Always Yet to Come
“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” John W. Gardner, US administrator (1912 - 2002)
Faced with the choice to either give up hope or trudge on in a hopeless cause, I'm prone to choose trudging. Why? Because if I’ve learned anything in 20 years of leading, and working on, all kinds of projects with varying degrees of impossibility, it’s that human beings – myself included – are notoriously poor judges of when something is hopeless.
Even in the most dire circumstances, asking “What does this make possible that wasn’t possible before?” helps open the mind to creative ideas and breakthrough thinking. I’ve been pondering this in relationship to the quake/tsunami/nuclear triple tragedy, and so far I’ve come up with a few possibilities:
This will bring the world closer to Japan. People all over the world have voiced their admiration of the dignity, compassion and selflessness of the people of Japan. My friends in Japan are a bit amused by how much attention the press is giving to the headline “There’s no looting!” To them, they can’t imagine why anyone would loot. While some cynics say it’s just that negative events aren’t being reported, I disagree. I can personally testify to getting my wallet back with over 30,000 yen in it after leaving it in a Tokyo taxi. The driver delivered it to my hotel for free, left it at the front desk, and it was returned to me the next morning.
This will bring Japan closer to their neighbors. After years of icy relationships, Korea and China sent help to Japan . . . and Japan accepted.
This will bring the people of Japan closer to each other. Disasters have a way of recalibrating us about what’s important. In a country where avoiding risk is almost a national pastime, living with the daily threat of aftershocks and longer-term consequences of nuclear contamination are likely to shift thinking about risk. Now that daily life is risky, perhaps other kinds of risk-taking, like innovation and breakthrough thinking, won’t seem quite as dangerous by comparison. As Helen Keller said, “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
I think it’s pretty safe to say that any project you or I may be working on can’t be nearly as dreadful as the situation unfolding in Japan. Consequently, I’m quite certain that we can find some “great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems” in whatever project currently stymies us. Even if it’s true that the situation is hopeless, the illusion that we can make a difference can inspire us to build capabilities that make the next situation less so. There are advantages to leading your team as if the best is yet to come while dealing with the current reality. Jim Collins labeled this “The Stockdale Paradox”:
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” - Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale
The New Normal
Some of my colleagues at ALC Education in Tokyo slept on the 19th floor of their office building the night of the quake as they waited for trains to resume operation. Others – parents with stranded children – walked for six hours or more to get home to them. In the weeks that followed they weathered power shortages, devastating news of the missing and the dead, and ongoing scares from aftershocks and radiation. Through it all the people of Japan are inspiring the entire world through their stunning examples of selflessness and compassion—two ingredients that I feel quite sure I can use to improve my next project. I hope we’ll all emerge committed to applying these and the other lessons learned to our projects and our lives as life on Earth returns to the “new normal.”
If you’d like to donate to the Japan Relief Fund, one option is through the American Red Cross:
https://american.redcross.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=ntld_main
Kimberly Wiefling is the author of Scrappy Project Management, one of the top-ranked project management books on Amazon in the US, published in Japanese, and growing in popularity around the world. She splits her work time between the US and Japan.
More...
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, Apr 21 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on April 21 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. Topic of the main presentation, How can we (Engineering) work better with our Product Managers -- and what do Product Managers do, anyway?, by Rich Mironov.
TITLE: How can we (Engineering) work better with our Product Managers -- and what do Product Managers do, anyway
Product Management is a poorly understood role that varies widely between companies. In addition, technical teams see only one part of the product management challenge: critical interactions with sales/marketing and executives are not visible to them. In this talk our speaker will outline the product management role, how it fits with engineering (including agile teams), and ways that engineering and PM can help each other to get great products to market.
SPEAKER: Rich Mironov http://www.mironov.com/
Rich Mironov is a serial entrepreneur, seasoned VP Product Management/ VP Marketing, go-to-market strategist and agile “product guy”. He's currently CEO of a stealth startup, and is a veteran of four earlier software tech start-ups and dozens of consulting engagements.
Rich earned his software stripes writing COBOL at HP, then spent six years in product management at Tandem Computers, launching the company’s first TCP/IP stack. At Sybase, he oversaw database connectivity to more than 40 operating systems, and shipped the first commercial solution for dynamic linking of web pages with databases (web.sql). He was the first “product guy” at four networking-related start-ups, including iPass (NASDAQ: IPAS) and AirMagnet (acquired by Flunk Networks), where he was VP Marketing/Product Management. From 2007 to 2009, he was CMO of Enthiosys, an agile product management consultancy.
Rich’s 2008 book, “The Art of Product Management” captures the best of his Product Bytes blog (2001 to 2008), and represents the scrappy entrepreneur in all of us. Rich serves on the board of SVPMA, has taught in Haas’ executive education program, and produced (chaired) the product manager/product owner track for Agile Alliance’s 2009 and 2010 conferences.
Rich has a BS Physics from Yale with a thesis on dinosaur extinction theories, and an MBA from Stanford.
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
For more information, go here.
More...
TITLE: How can we (Engineering) work better with our Product Managers -- and what do Product Managers do, anyway
Product Management is a poorly understood role that varies widely between companies. In addition, technical teams see only one part of the product management challenge: critical interactions with sales/marketing and executives are not visible to them. In this talk our speaker will outline the product management role, how it fits with engineering (including agile teams), and ways that engineering and PM can help each other to get great products to market.
SPEAKER: Rich Mironov http://www.mironov.com/
Rich Mironov is a serial entrepreneur, seasoned VP Product Management/ VP Marketing, go-to-market strategist and agile “product guy”. He's currently CEO of a stealth startup, and is a veteran of four earlier software tech start-ups and dozens of consulting engagements.
Rich earned his software stripes writing COBOL at HP, then spent six years in product management at Tandem Computers, launching the company’s first TCP/IP stack. At Sybase, he oversaw database connectivity to more than 40 operating systems, and shipped the first commercial solution for dynamic linking of web pages with databases (web.sql). He was the first “product guy” at four networking-related start-ups, including iPass (NASDAQ: IPAS) and AirMagnet (acquired by Flunk Networks), where he was VP Marketing/Product Management. From 2007 to 2009, he was CMO of Enthiosys, an agile product management consultancy.
Rich’s 2008 book, “The Art of Product Management” captures the best of his Product Bytes blog (2001 to 2008), and represents the scrappy entrepreneur in all of us. Rich serves on the board of SVPMA, has taught in Haas’ executive education program, and produced (chaired) the product manager/product owner track for Agile Alliance’s 2009 and 2010 conferences.
Rich has a BS Physics from Yale with a thesis on dinosaur extinction theories, and an MBA from Stanford.
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
For more information, go here.
More...
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, Mar 17 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on March 17 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. Topic of the main presentation, The Human Dimension in Leadership to Fast, Effective and Scalable Product Development, by Corinne Rattay.
Time: March 17, 2011 | 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Place: SAP - Baltic/Caribbean rooms in Building 2 (NEW BUILDING THIS YEAR!)
3412 Hillview Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Topic: The Human Dimension in Leadership to Fast, Effective and Scalable Product Development
Most Engineering teams never get a chance to show their full potential. Leaders in fast-growing companies have learned to accept average team results, day-to-day stress and constant last-minute surprises in their deadline struggles. Why is this the way most high-tech companies approach software or product development? Why live with organizational tension and eventual team burnout when there are proven ways to get better products out faster and create a culture of happy teams? In this interactive and stimulating talk, engineering leaders at all levels will experience a paradigm shift in their level of thinking, which is the first step towards needed transformational change in R&D organizations so they can scale from successful start-ups to efficient, mature, market-leading companies. Corinne Rattay is an expert in R&D Transformation leveraging her engineering leadership experience at Juniper Networks. She will share exciting, personal insights and experiences she has gained in over a decade as engineering leader and director, explaining the crucial foundation of the human dimension in leadership combined with key product lifecycle processes that truly work.
About the Speaker
Corinne Rattay is an accomplished, passionate and thought-stimulating executive with 15 years of success in engineering leadership, product development, global team building & remote team management, off-shoring, business coaching and management consulting.
She has gained a well-rounded industry experience at Juniper Networks, Alcatel France and successful start-up companies holding positions such as Director of Engineering, Director of System Test & Product Validation, Product Manager, Program Management, Process Design, and reaching all the way to hands-on customer field trials, System Integration, real-time Software Development & radio frequency Microchip Design.
As a Breakthrough Leadership Consultant she helps high-tech executives achieve extraordinary results with:
- Product Development, overcoming barriers to innovation, better products, faster cycles
- Change Acceleration, shifting paradigms and beliefs to create new possibilities
- Leadership Transformation, elevating the client's thinking quality and leadership focus
Corinne Rattay has written for our blog.
She can be reached at crattay@crexecutiveconsulting.com or at www.CRexecutiveconsulting.com
Agenda
6:30 - 7:00 Registration, Free wine, beer, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Roundtable (New and Expanded!)
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and brief announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Other announcements (next month's topic & speaker, jobs, blogs ...)
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up and have a safe trip home!
COOL FEATURES OF OUR EVENTS AND SIG:
• BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
• JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
• PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
• BLOG: Write or read EL SIG blog posts here: http://sdforumelsig.blogspot.com/
Snack and Beverage Sponsor: Matt Perez of Nearsoft
ONGOING MANAGEMENT SPONSOR: Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
Location: SAP -Baltic/Caribbean rooms in Building 2
3412 Hillview Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Cost:
$20 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members
For more information, go here.
More...
Time: March 17, 2011 | 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Place: SAP - Baltic/Caribbean rooms in Building 2 (NEW BUILDING THIS YEAR!)
3412 Hillview Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Topic: The Human Dimension in Leadership to Fast, Effective and Scalable Product Development
Most Engineering teams never get a chance to show their full potential. Leaders in fast-growing companies have learned to accept average team results, day-to-day stress and constant last-minute surprises in their deadline struggles. Why is this the way most high-tech companies approach software or product development? Why live with organizational tension and eventual team burnout when there are proven ways to get better products out faster and create a culture of happy teams? In this interactive and stimulating talk, engineering leaders at all levels will experience a paradigm shift in their level of thinking, which is the first step towards needed transformational change in R&D organizations so they can scale from successful start-ups to efficient, mature, market-leading companies. Corinne Rattay is an expert in R&D Transformation leveraging her engineering leadership experience at Juniper Networks. She will share exciting, personal insights and experiences she has gained in over a decade as engineering leader and director, explaining the crucial foundation of the human dimension in leadership combined with key product lifecycle processes that truly work.
About the Speaker
Corinne Rattay is an accomplished, passionate and thought-stimulating executive with 15 years of success in engineering leadership, product development, global team building & remote team management, off-shoring, business coaching and management consulting.
She has gained a well-rounded industry experience at Juniper Networks, Alcatel France and successful start-up companies holding positions such as Director of Engineering, Director of System Test & Product Validation, Product Manager, Program Management, Process Design, and reaching all the way to hands-on customer field trials, System Integration, real-time Software Development & radio frequency Microchip Design.
As a Breakthrough Leadership Consultant she helps high-tech executives achieve extraordinary results with:
- Product Development, overcoming barriers to innovation, better products, faster cycles
- Change Acceleration, shifting paradigms and beliefs to create new possibilities
- Leadership Transformation, elevating the client's thinking quality and leadership focus
Corinne Rattay has written for our blog.
She can be reached at crattay@crexecutiveconsulting.com or at www.CRexecutiveconsulting.com
Agenda
6:30 - 7:00 Registration, Free wine, beer, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Roundtable (New and Expanded!)
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and brief announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Other announcements (next month's topic & speaker, jobs, blogs ...)
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up and have a safe trip home!
COOL FEATURES OF OUR EVENTS AND SIG:
• BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
• JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
• PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
• BLOG: Write or read EL SIG blog posts here: http://sdforumelsig.blogspot.com/
Snack and Beverage Sponsor: Matt Perez of Nearsoft
ONGOING MANAGEMENT SPONSOR: Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
Location: SAP -Baltic/Caribbean rooms in Building 2
3412 Hillview Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Cost:
$20 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members
For more information, go here.
More...
Monday, February 28, 2011
February 17 Meeting Notes [Robert Lasater]
On February 17, 2011, the Engineering Leadership SIG of the SD Forum met at SAP headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Featured was a presentation, “Keys to Collaborative Leadership”, given by Mark Voorsanger and Liz Agnew. Both are Certified Coaches.
The presentation was organized as a meal in a fine restaurant, with three “courses”, an appetizer, a main dish and dessert. Each “course” came with a challenge and a goal. The first part, an introduction, was designed to whet the audience’s appetite. The overall goal of the presentation was to inspire new thinking.
Mark V acknowledged that “collaborative leadership” might seem to be an oxymoron, and responded with a quote from Albert Einstein: “if an idea is not absurd, it is not worth pursuing.”
Whetting Your Appetite
To demonstrate the need for collaborative leadership, Mark V quoted two sets of statistics from a recent survey of American employees. The first divided employees into three groups:
Engaged 29%
Not Engaged 54%
Actively disengaged 17%
They then asked the participants in the survey if their current job brings out my most creative ideas. The results were broken down among the three categories:
Engaged 59%
Not Engaged 17%
Actively disengaged 3%
Not surprisingly, most of those who were not engaged or actively disengaged felt their job did not bring out their most creative ideas.
Now the current paradigm for leadership is Hierarchy. Decisions are made at the top. The currencies are power and authority. Mark V characterized hierarchy as working well when:
· People at the top have all required information.
· People being managed are doing rote tasks.
· People being managed are easily replaced
This of course does not characterized modern engineering organizations. Mark V though did stress that hierarchy has its place, especially when decisions need to be made quickly.
At this point, Mark V asked the audience to participate in an exercise. Gather in small groups and discuss how ineffective collaboration is costing you and your organization. Afterwards, several members of the audience shared their responses. They included:
· If you don’t do it my way, you are not collaborating
· Decisions are made without adequate information.
· Software is not reusable.
· There is no safe environment for unusual ideas.
Appetizer: Defining Key Terms
Challenge: No common language
Goal: Define key terms for a collaborative process
Mark V spent several minutes defining some key terms.
Collaboration: All relevant stakeholders have ownership and alignment around what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.
Relevant Stakeholder:
· People with the power to make a decision.
· People with the power to block a decision.
· People affected by a decision
· People with relevant information and expertise.
Ownership: the extent to which people feel or believe that a process, decision or outcome is theirs.
Alignment: The extent to which people see and understand a problem or decision.
Here is a metaphor for ownership vs. alignment:
Ownership: get everyone on the boat.
Alignment: get everyone rowing in the same direction.
And he provided this insight regarding Content vs Process: Content gets attention; process, not so much. Content is What; process is How.
And finally: a Collaborative Leader is someone who leads according to the principle of ownership and alignment.
Regarding introducing the principles of Collaborative Leadership, Mark V pointed out that one needs to be careful with change. Organizations tend to reject change the way one’s immune system rejects a foreign microbe. A suggestion: think small.
Main Dish: Problem Solving Template
Challenge: No common process
Goal: find a common process
A Problem is any situation that you want to change.
There are three obstacles to solving problems:
1. Groups don’t know how to (or don’t even think to) align around the problem that they want to solve. No agreement on the problem = No agreement on the solution + infinite arguing about solutions
2. Groups use implicit processes to do their work. Collaborative problem solving relies on explicit win/win processes.
3. People solve problems iteratively – so that nothing is transparent.
Mark V presented a structured process with a 5-step problem solving template
1. Context (what effect is the problem having; what happens if it is not addressed?)
2. Problem statement – a one sentence statement
3. Intent
4. Desired outcomes
5. Action plan
Mark V cautioned against “baking a solution” into the statement or intent. And one should build ownership and alignment at each step.
Finally there is the question of time. One of the advantages of hierarchical decision making is it is faster; collaborative problem solving takes longer. So it is necessary to concede that hierarchical decision making sometimes is required. But beware of creating a false sense of crisis. This will only work a limited number of times.
At this point, Mark V opened the floor for questions.
Q: How do you deal with the fact that not all stakeholders are equal?
A: Those who are less important are gently and politely informed of this.
Q: How do you avoid “baking the solution” into the problem statement?
A: By actively blocking these attempts. By reminding everyone of the importance of ownership and alignment.
Dessert: The Number One Missing Ingredient in Meetings
Challenge: Unproductive meetings
Goal: More productive meetings
The number one missing ingredient in meetings is the Process – the How. Make it explicit.
One final question:
Q: How to decide on decisions without a hierarchy
A: Some suggestions:
· Vote
· Consensus
· Unanimous consent
Be explicit about the process.
Mark Voorsanger is the Founder of Skyward Coaching (www.SkywardCoaching.com), 415-606-2101. His emal address is Mark@SkywardCoaching.com
Liz Agnew is president of Integrative Leadership Strategies (www.Integrative-Leadership.com), 415.401.7822. Her email address is: liz@integrative-leadership.com
---------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Lasater maintains this blog for the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group of the SD Forum.
More...
The presentation was organized as a meal in a fine restaurant, with three “courses”, an appetizer, a main dish and dessert. Each “course” came with a challenge and a goal. The first part, an introduction, was designed to whet the audience’s appetite. The overall goal of the presentation was to inspire new thinking.
Mark V acknowledged that “collaborative leadership” might seem to be an oxymoron, and responded with a quote from Albert Einstein: “if an idea is not absurd, it is not worth pursuing.”
Whetting Your Appetite
To demonstrate the need for collaborative leadership, Mark V quoted two sets of statistics from a recent survey of American employees. The first divided employees into three groups:
Engaged 29%
Not Engaged 54%
Actively disengaged 17%
They then asked the participants in the survey if their current job brings out my most creative ideas. The results were broken down among the three categories:
Engaged 59%
Not Engaged 17%
Actively disengaged 3%
Not surprisingly, most of those who were not engaged or actively disengaged felt their job did not bring out their most creative ideas.
Now the current paradigm for leadership is Hierarchy. Decisions are made at the top. The currencies are power and authority. Mark V characterized hierarchy as working well when:
· People at the top have all required information.
· People being managed are doing rote tasks.
· People being managed are easily replaced
This of course does not characterized modern engineering organizations. Mark V though did stress that hierarchy has its place, especially when decisions need to be made quickly.
At this point, Mark V asked the audience to participate in an exercise. Gather in small groups and discuss how ineffective collaboration is costing you and your organization. Afterwards, several members of the audience shared their responses. They included:
· If you don’t do it my way, you are not collaborating
· Decisions are made without adequate information.
· Software is not reusable.
· There is no safe environment for unusual ideas.
Appetizer: Defining Key Terms
Challenge: No common language
Goal: Define key terms for a collaborative process
Mark V spent several minutes defining some key terms.
Collaboration: All relevant stakeholders have ownership and alignment around what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.
Relevant Stakeholder:
· People with the power to make a decision.
· People with the power to block a decision.
· People affected by a decision
· People with relevant information and expertise.
Ownership: the extent to which people feel or believe that a process, decision or outcome is theirs.
Alignment: The extent to which people see and understand a problem or decision.
Here is a metaphor for ownership vs. alignment:
Ownership: get everyone on the boat.
Alignment: get everyone rowing in the same direction.
And he provided this insight regarding Content vs Process: Content gets attention; process, not so much. Content is What; process is How.
And finally: a Collaborative Leader is someone who leads according to the principle of ownership and alignment.
Regarding introducing the principles of Collaborative Leadership, Mark V pointed out that one needs to be careful with change. Organizations tend to reject change the way one’s immune system rejects a foreign microbe. A suggestion: think small.
Main Dish: Problem Solving Template
Challenge: No common process
Goal: find a common process
A Problem is any situation that you want to change.
There are three obstacles to solving problems:
1. Groups don’t know how to (or don’t even think to) align around the problem that they want to solve. No agreement on the problem = No agreement on the solution + infinite arguing about solutions
2. Groups use implicit processes to do their work. Collaborative problem solving relies on explicit win/win processes.
3. People solve problems iteratively – so that nothing is transparent.
Mark V presented a structured process with a 5-step problem solving template
1. Context (what effect is the problem having; what happens if it is not addressed?)
2. Problem statement – a one sentence statement
3. Intent
4. Desired outcomes
5. Action plan
Mark V cautioned against “baking a solution” into the statement or intent. And one should build ownership and alignment at each step.
Finally there is the question of time. One of the advantages of hierarchical decision making is it is faster; collaborative problem solving takes longer. So it is necessary to concede that hierarchical decision making sometimes is required. But beware of creating a false sense of crisis. This will only work a limited number of times.
At this point, Mark V opened the floor for questions.
Q: How do you deal with the fact that not all stakeholders are equal?
A: Those who are less important are gently and politely informed of this.
Q: How do you avoid “baking the solution” into the problem statement?
A: By actively blocking these attempts. By reminding everyone of the importance of ownership and alignment.
Dessert: The Number One Missing Ingredient in Meetings
Challenge: Unproductive meetings
Goal: More productive meetings
The number one missing ingredient in meetings is the Process – the How. Make it explicit.
One final question:
Q: How to decide on decisions without a hierarchy
A: Some suggestions:
· Vote
· Consensus
· Unanimous consent
Be explicit about the process.
Mark Voorsanger is the Founder of Skyward Coaching (www.SkywardCoaching.com), 415-606-2101. His emal address is Mark@SkywardCoaching.com
Liz Agnew is president of Integrative Leadership Strategies (www.Integrative-Leadership.com), 415.401.7822. Her email address is: liz@integrative-leadership.com
---------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Lasater maintains this blog for the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group of the SD Forum.
More...
Monday, February 21, 2011
One’s Feminine Side Can Still Hurt One’s Career [Robert Lasater]
A few months ago, Kimberly Wiefling wrote about the advantages a woman’s feminine side can bring to the workplace. Unfortunately a recent study shows those same characteristics can hurt a woman starting her career.
Before proceeding, some background is helpful. When someone receives a PhD in the sciences or mathematics, a typical next step is to take a post-doctorate, a one or two year assignment, a chance to continue research and get work published. Often one takes two or three of these temporary positions before starting a (presumably) more permanent position in the academy or industry. And key to this process are the letters of recommendation, from one’s PhD advisor or post-doctorate supervisor, or other professional mentors.
Recently Professors Randi Martin and Michelle Hebl of my alma mater, Rice University, reviewed several hundred of these letters of recommendation, written for both men and women candidates. They found the ones for men typically described the candidate using terms such as “confident”, “aggressive” and “daring”, while the letters for women uses terms such as “affectionate”, “nurturing” and “tactful” – the kinds of qualities Kimberly point out add value in the engineering workplace.
And when they took their collection of letters, took out names and personal pronouns (“he”, “she”, etc.), and then asked other faculty members to evaluate the (now anonymous) candidates, those written for men got significantly better rankings than the ones written for women. The candidates described as “confident”, “aggressive” and “daring” were more likely to be hired than those described as “affectionate”, “nurturing” and “tactful”. This despite the fact they had taken out all references to gender, and had insured the candidates described with feminine qualities had as much professional success - papers published, lead author, recognition and awards – as those described with masculine qualities.
It is unfortunate that the quick lesson from this work is likely to be to suppress terms like affectionate, nurturing and tactful, even though such people – men and women both – help make the workplace a less contentious and more productive place. But women too can be confident, aggressive and daring, and mentors do need to look for these qualities in the women they are guiding and advising.
I just want to add that in the sciences and mathematics, the most important qualities one looks for are originality and – yes it is masculine – daring. They describe Richard Feynman – and Barbara McClintock, who eventually won the Nobel Prize for her work in genetics. Oh, and persistence. It took 30 years for the scientific community to recognize the importance of McClintock’s work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Lasater maintains this blog for the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group of the SD Forum.
More...
Before proceeding, some background is helpful. When someone receives a PhD in the sciences or mathematics, a typical next step is to take a post-doctorate, a one or two year assignment, a chance to continue research and get work published. Often one takes two or three of these temporary positions before starting a (presumably) more permanent position in the academy or industry. And key to this process are the letters of recommendation, from one’s PhD advisor or post-doctorate supervisor, or other professional mentors.
Recently Professors Randi Martin and Michelle Hebl of my alma mater, Rice University, reviewed several hundred of these letters of recommendation, written for both men and women candidates. They found the ones for men typically described the candidate using terms such as “confident”, “aggressive” and “daring”, while the letters for women uses terms such as “affectionate”, “nurturing” and “tactful” – the kinds of qualities Kimberly point out add value in the engineering workplace.
And when they took their collection of letters, took out names and personal pronouns (“he”, “she”, etc.), and then asked other faculty members to evaluate the (now anonymous) candidates, those written for men got significantly better rankings than the ones written for women. The candidates described as “confident”, “aggressive” and “daring” were more likely to be hired than those described as “affectionate”, “nurturing” and “tactful”. This despite the fact they had taken out all references to gender, and had insured the candidates described with feminine qualities had as much professional success - papers published, lead author, recognition and awards – as those described with masculine qualities.
It is unfortunate that the quick lesson from this work is likely to be to suppress terms like affectionate, nurturing and tactful, even though such people – men and women both – help make the workplace a less contentious and more productive place. But women too can be confident, aggressive and daring, and mentors do need to look for these qualities in the women they are guiding and advising.
I just want to add that in the sciences and mathematics, the most important qualities one looks for are originality and – yes it is masculine – daring. They describe Richard Feynman – and Barbara McClintock, who eventually won the Nobel Prize for her work in genetics. Oh, and persistence. It took 30 years for the scientific community to recognize the importance of McClintock’s work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Lasater maintains this blog for the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group of the SD Forum.
More...
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, Feb 17 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on February 17 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM.
TITLE: The Keys to Collaborative Leadership
SPEAKERS: Mark Voorsanger and Elizabeth Agnew
About the Speakers:
Mark Voorsanger is an executive coach and consultant with over 25 years working with and managing high technology teams. His experience as a business entrepreneur, senior corporate manager overseeing globally distributed production units, and executive coach and consultant focusing on leadership development and collaboration make him uniquely qualified to work with leaders in high tech.
As the founder of Skyward Coaching, Mark brings the COS and his collaborative facilitation skills to literally every client engagement, from individual coaching to the facilitation of corporate strategic planning. Mark's client list includes Electronic Arts, Sega, DreamWorks, CompuShare and Kaiser Permanente.
Liz Agnew is a certified coach specializing in leadership development and collaboration. Liz earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Cornell University and a master's degree from Stanford. As president of Integrative Leadership Strategies, LLC, Liz's mission is to bring the world together by making the workplace a sanctuary for learning and truth. She transforms one team at a time, teaching them to work transparently and heal the pain of poor work relationships. Liz's previous clients include Genentech, Hewlett Packard, The City of Atlanta, Sun Microsystems, Lockheed Martin, and Jet Propulsion Laboratories.
Liz Agnew has written previously for our blog.
Details of talk:
Nearly every organization we know operates according to some version of the hierarchical system, which uses power and authority to accomplish things.
Although many have attempted to democratize their workplace by getting “flatter” and working in teams, power and authority remain the primary “currency” being traded. If you can accumulate enough power and authority in a hierarchical system, you can “win.” But as we know, a hierarchy concentrates power and authority in a few people at the very top. This prevents the rest of the organization from having the currency required to solve problems and accomplish goals. It makes working across the silos nearly impossible. And it makes the “leader” with the most power and authority essential.
Moreover, the degree of complexity in today’s fast-moving, global marketplace is simply beyond the capacity of the hierarchical approach. The interdependent, multi-faceted problems and opportunities facing leaders and organizations require a new system: one that engages workers by connecting the people with the information to those who make the decisions, and the people who make the decisions to those who implement them. The leader who can help their organizations make the journey to this new paradigm will predominate.
In this talk, Mark Voorsanger & Liz Agnew will introduce and explore the fundamental principles that drive Collaborative Leadership in organizations, principles that have the capacity to transform how we get work done. Join Mark & Liz for this fun and interactive session on The Keys to Collaborative Leadership.
For more information, including a detailed schedule, go here.
More...
TITLE: The Keys to Collaborative Leadership
SPEAKERS: Mark Voorsanger and Elizabeth Agnew
About the Speakers:
Mark Voorsanger is an executive coach and consultant with over 25 years working with and managing high technology teams. His experience as a business entrepreneur, senior corporate manager overseeing globally distributed production units, and executive coach and consultant focusing on leadership development and collaboration make him uniquely qualified to work with leaders in high tech.
As the founder of Skyward Coaching, Mark brings the COS and his collaborative facilitation skills to literally every client engagement, from individual coaching to the facilitation of corporate strategic planning. Mark's client list includes Electronic Arts, Sega, DreamWorks, CompuShare and Kaiser Permanente.
Liz Agnew is a certified coach specializing in leadership development and collaboration. Liz earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Cornell University and a master's degree from Stanford. As president of Integrative Leadership Strategies, LLC, Liz's mission is to bring the world together by making the workplace a sanctuary for learning and truth. She transforms one team at a time, teaching them to work transparently and heal the pain of poor work relationships. Liz's previous clients include Genentech, Hewlett Packard, The City of Atlanta, Sun Microsystems, Lockheed Martin, and Jet Propulsion Laboratories.
Liz Agnew has written previously for our blog.
Details of talk:
Nearly every organization we know operates according to some version of the hierarchical system, which uses power and authority to accomplish things.
Although many have attempted to democratize their workplace by getting “flatter” and working in teams, power and authority remain the primary “currency” being traded. If you can accumulate enough power and authority in a hierarchical system, you can “win.” But as we know, a hierarchy concentrates power and authority in a few people at the very top. This prevents the rest of the organization from having the currency required to solve problems and accomplish goals. It makes working across the silos nearly impossible. And it makes the “leader” with the most power and authority essential.
Moreover, the degree of complexity in today’s fast-moving, global marketplace is simply beyond the capacity of the hierarchical approach. The interdependent, multi-faceted problems and opportunities facing leaders and organizations require a new system: one that engages workers by connecting the people with the information to those who make the decisions, and the people who make the decisions to those who implement them. The leader who can help their organizations make the journey to this new paradigm will predominate.
In this talk, Mark Voorsanger & Liz Agnew will introduce and explore the fundamental principles that drive Collaborative Leadership in organizations, principles that have the capacity to transform how we get work done. Join Mark & Liz for this fun and interactive session on The Keys to Collaborative Leadership.
For more information, including a detailed schedule, go here.
More...
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