Category: Personal Growth (Page 6 of 7)

At the beginning of the year Teams set goals. Sport analogies make the most sense so I will use them again. In hockey, it is to win the Stanley Cup and in American Football it is to win the Lombardi Trophy. For some teams who the previous year the goal may not be as high, it could be simply to make the playoffs. Working in Technology it is often to do ‘project x’ or complete ‘project y,’ in sales (which I did as part of Tech consulting) it was sell X amount or bring in Y number of clients.  

The above fit ‘SMART’ (as we spoke about in Part 3) and I should just stop here, and presto we have magically created goals for the new year, and our team will successfully get them done. Well not so fast. Digging deeper and understanding a lofty goal like winning a championship has massive downside. In sports, only one team brings home the trophy each year, and thus the other 30 or so teams ‘failed.’ So, if your team does not reach goals, complete projects on time, bring in revenue etc., is it a failure? 

The first thing companies do wrong is do reviews only with individuals. In many cases the ‘manager’ or a team gets the team goal, and on his review when they do not get there, he is asked the reason etc. Now I have been on the ‘why didn’t you reach your goal’ (or the why I did,) I will use analogy not from sports, but for people who invest, when they have good year and their portfolio rises, it’s always ‘I am a great stock picker’ and when their portfolio crashes, it was ‘There are some outside forces’ like the SP500 is down, we are in a recessions. To me, when reviews are done like this, we put our managers in that same situation. Let him gloat how great he is when he succeeds and find all the outside issues when they do not. 

Team goals are just that, we should savor victory as a team, and share the disappointment in the loss. No company I have worked for, not any other I have read about has this notion of end of year team reviews. Companies do reward teams with lucites, cash etc. when hitting some ‘completion’ mark, or hit sales goals etc. But the review is missing, and more important digging into the why is lost. 

The second thing is that reviews are done and really managed ‘Annually.’ As bonus cycles, raises, promotions etc. Management needs some way to judge and compare so the process is set up this way. And as stated the process is done mostly one on one with people, not teams. Can you really review once a year and summarize twelve months of work for anyone or any team? And does not this scale well, how many individuals can you review, understand their impact for their year and give honest assessments.  

Software development teams who follow agile practices often do retrospectives. These are regularly scheduled (every two weeks or so) meetings to chat not about status, but about the process of development. Many create lists of what we should be doing more of what to stop doing, and other ideas to improve how the project is built. These even fall short, as they are momentary, and trying to look at a brief period, and once a quarter a 10,000-foot view should be done. A review on the retrospectives, looking at things like ‘why doesn’t anyone address the big issues.’ or is the retrospective helping us hit the goal. This goes back to the fact, it is hard to admit that there is something wrong, it is outside our control. 

And lastly, we look at failure completely wrong. Failure is not something we know how to deal with. I have told the story about the difference between college and the real world, using the example that if you made a three-legged table in college, the professor what give you an ‘A’ for proving you cannot build a three-legged table. In the real world you would get fired for not producing a product that could sell. But failures have some root cause behind it, and for teams to get better they need not look at a failure as a problem, but one of an experience.  

Failures should be something we look at as we understand what we did does not work, and have built the necessary tools, training, reminders to improve the team. Everyone talks about ‘getting’ better, and no great person made zero mistakes. Why are we not celebrating the failures, and using them to make the team better? Why in management meetings do we demo/talk only about projects that succeeded, the successful architecture etc. Each of those projects had mini-failures, things they did wrong and corrected. And instead of teaching the rest of the organization and other teams how to get past those failures, we show the ‘success’ and the chance to repeat those failures persists. We need to present failures, and the lessons learned, and reinforcement so they are not made again.  

Though I make this sound easy, at the start of 2023 I am planning to redo how I run my team and try to fix some of the above. Funny, I knew these problems existed and I complained about them in the 90s. But writing this blog has made me rethink how to address them. I will let you know how they work out.  So on my to do list is to create a structure where I have recurring team meetings where we address goal changes (to be pushed down to individual goals) and create a culture where failures are brought forward as a learning experience.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.

Often the likeliness of someone having an enjoyable experience is the notion of what they expected from it. “We find that there is some truth to this: lower expectations make it more likely that an outcome will exceed those expectations and have a positive impact on happiness.” Dr. Robb Rutledge (2014.) My parents understood that, as they would say, you cannot be disappointed if you do not expect much. 

Maybe it is why many people do not like their birthdays, or at least there are more holidays (in the US) they prefer better. We expect so much, presents, accolades etc. but it never lives up to expectations. 

Sorry for the ADHD side bit. But what about teams? If we look at athletic teams, without a doubt if they fail to meet the fans expectations, they had a bad season. In most cases that is winning a title, but of course only one team can win a title. Many fans end the season disappointed, but as I have written in the past, you need to look down when climbing a mountain, as well as hearing from athletes whose teams finished second, and the notion they thought it was a failure vs. celebrating how far they got (Joe Burrow quoting Kurt Warner). 

What about your teams in the ‘real world.’ After years of doing ‘SMART’ goals (Doran et al in 1981) but more mainstream in the late 90s, that goal setting is not really that successful (What percentage of New Years Resolutions stick?) What really drives successful outcomes is creating systems to achieve goals (blog post coming as part of this series.) 

Back to the topic, setting expectations and doing it the right way. Now if I told you the expectation for you was the following what would you think: 

• Show up on Time 
• Get you Work Done on Time 
• Do not bring me problems, Bring me Solutions 
• You are responsible for your own career 

Honestly, this was a lot of the places I worked. Punch in on time, and even the ‘need to stay late’ (it was implied but never written down) To the point managers walked the floor to see when people left. But that does not drive engagement, nor does it get the most out of a team. 

But what if the list was more like this: 

• You should Enjoy Working here (Work should be fun) 
• Let your teammates know your schedule 
• Ask for help when needed, and help others when they ask 
• If there is an issue, raise it up as soon as possible so the team can triage and resolve it. 

Now does that sound more like the correct expectations for your team? That is my list (shortened its a bit longer but you get the idea) in fact ‘delivering’ is at the bottom. In most cases if you do the top, the projects get done. If you think I work in an exciting place writing cool stuff like VR or AI. No, my team builds data gathering and managing systems to help the business file corporate taxes. Ask anyone though, everyone enjoys working on the team, it’s not about the work, it’s about the team. 

Look, just think back to kindergarten when your teacher asked you what you want to be when you grow up (ok, yeah we went over this it is a bad question.) But no one grows up saying ‘I want to write data extraction and transformation code so the business can load tax software.’ So, how do you attract people to the team, find quality developers and grow them? Simple, create an environment where the expectations are not about SMART goals, adding revenue, creating miracle solutions, lying etc. It is expectations of working on a team that thinks enjoying work is first, and trust and cooperative environment. 

Setting the expectations this way is achievable, unlike unrealistic business goals. Building the system so that we follow those pillars allows us to build any software. Think about the best places you have worked, and often you remember the people, the good times and occasionally the product (if it was unique that is different.) The stories you tell of the crazy times are what you recall. Set the expectations so the goal is to get the best out of the employees, and they will deliver the best products for you. Richard Branson is quoted as saying “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free. I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book. With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path. I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content. I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip. I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.

This is going to be the first in I am not sure how many parts about team building. Originally a discussion with a person who worked for me about 5–6 years ago (now not even at my company) and we talked about creating a podcast. But it is just something that will be a limited set and if I get the energy it will turn into a series of videos. But I go back to something I was told when I was younger, that I have the face for radio…. Now on with part 1. (Please note they will not be an any particular order, but based on what I was thinking at that time…) 

Recently I was asked what I do… and without much thought I stated, ‘I build teams and my teams create software.” Yes, I know that goes against the I make a living being myself, but I needed to respond with something that was a bit more substantial. But what makes a good team? Why do I have someone who worked with me 5+ years ago discussing how to build a team (and he is not the first.) 

I often relate teams to sports and raising children for the simple fact that we are dealing with human beings, and humans act in the same way whether it is work, home or at group type events (sports.) During my time as a parent, coach, and manager I always wanted to seem “approachable.” I remember when I first started at a financial firm, the senior manager said they had an ‘open door’ policy. One that anyone could walk in and talk to them. I took them up on it, and not only had some good conversations but created a friendship. Looking back, not many people took advantage of this, and I did. 

Why didn’t these people take advantage of this? Were they afraid of it? Could it be that many of the people who said “I have an open-door policy” actually mean it? Could it be they were never around for people to walk in? Or that anything brought up was shot down? That if they were challenged, they rejected that challenge? Does that manager push work down and over manage his/her employees that a challenge seems futile? I am sure you can think of another. 

Now to relate this to my personal life: My daughter is gay, and my wife and I guessed this long before she told us. And knowing others who have come out and told friends and family, I can see how difficult of a challenge it can be. I do know she did not openly tell us to a period of time after she figured it out, and why did she not do that. If a manager has an open-door policy, obviously parents should have one with their kids. Why wait so long, why wait so long to tell anyone. Well, the answer is simply fear. Children are afraid of the reaction and the possibility of being rejected. So, the person who manages children (the parents) has to make the child feel safe and confident that bringing this up to them without this fear. 

What does this have to do with team building? The first thing all teams need is to have this notion that all ideas, all thoughts can be brought up within the team without the fear of rejection. From the most Junior developer to the CTO there needs the ability to challenge, to question, to bring up ideas or just ask a question must exist. Not only must the door be open, but the team members must feel comfortable having these conversations. This is training both the people asking the questions as well as those who are listening, and more importantly how to respond. Responding often can be just “let us dig into it.” The use of “us” is key (yeah, the no I in team thing). Remember the key is not having to do what they ask, but to at least allow the discussion to happen and to reinforce to the person who brought it up, that is was great they did. 

This may go against some key ideas of management structure, that the boss demands things, and that passes down. There is that classic story of ‘hiring someone smarter than you’ — Well if you do that, you better listen to them, and ensure they are comfortable in challenging you. Or the theory, hire people in your blind spot, thus again they need to challenge you. 

Look at your team (which is company, family, activity) and ask the question do you have the culture of being open enough to listen? Have we removed the fear so that anyone who can improve us is willing to talk? Have we trained people to speak up? Do we reinforce even if ideas are rejected to continue to bring things up? 

These things are hard to do in a bubble, but it can be done. And although I try my best to do this, I sometimes make mistakes. I will always try to improve it. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free. I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book. With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path. I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content. I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip. I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.

I remember when GPS for cars became popular, and you heard stories of people driving over a cliff, or into a river following the GPS blindly. I laughed at some of the stories, and when you hear the responses that they were following what the GPS said. Immediately I wondered if these people had common sense, any my parents telling me “If the GPS said jump off a bridge would you?” I guess some people do?

But, what if it is not their fault? What is they were trained to believe the GPS is smarter than him, and thus should trust it more than their own brain. I may divert from the GPS example here, but I want it to be a bit more relevant to the technology we are facing today.

In the early days of the internet, it was a plethora of information out there, and really no good way to find anything. Along came search engines, they were ok, and users could find information. Skip a few years, and someone decided on catalog and organizing the information was a better way for people to search. Yahoo, amllowed you to traverse the internet (well a limited set of the internet human curated) with ease. Then came google. Google came up with an algorithm that just worked better, and did it without human intervention, thus making Yahoo not a scalable business model.

Google continued to evolve, as they realized they could help people ‘answer questions’ vs just search. This started in 2012 when they added calculator to their results and continued in 2014 when google added the answer box. Now, answers were instantly on the first page, and the users could get answers faster. I liken this to when you were a kid and you thought your parents knew everything, and in many cases they had the answer. I don’t really think anyone growing up once they asked their dad a question, they spent the time looking up if they were correct in the Encyclopedia Britannica. In some cases, we asked a teacher other person we held in authority.

So a quick recap, even before the internet people liked asking a question and getting an answer without having to do further work. Now there is the phenomenon that kids start being curious once they start school, but I am not talking about that. At all ages we look at authority and believe they are telling the truth, we trust ‘authority.’ So now we have a search engine that started in 1998 that quickly grew to being the ‘authoritative source’ of information on the internet, and now answers questions. From 2014 on we trust typing in a question to something faceless and believe the answer.

Along comes ChatGPT and other AI tools, which now don’t give alternatives or a list of sites to answer the question but a great sounding answer. Amazingly we type an answer and assume it is ‘correct.’ Like asking our parents when we were 4, ChatGPT answers in a way that sounds correct and is written well enough it appears to be written by another human. But, AI well has nothing to do with “intelligence” right now. They are just trained on lots of data, have a filter so they may or may not go awry (though people have figured out how to get it too) and the ability to respond in an impressive sounding answer.

So, our brain takes the shortcut and ass, then gets a response, and as we did when we were 4, when we were in school, following a GPS off a cliff, googling a question we take the shortcut and assume it is the truth. As humans, maybe we need to learn to challenge answers, use common sense and find trusted sources for the question we are asking. It unfortunately is a lot of work, it means not looking always at the first answer, not looking at only the sources you always go to, and digging and learning more than you might want to. Being a human is actually hard work, and why do our brains take the shortcut, and I do know I have the privilege of being able to think and challenge what I know (due to my upbringing etc. we have discussed this in the past.) I even asked ChatGPT why humans trust them…

Now there are other things that are happening (and will happen) that I won’t get into here but might soon. Sources can be biased by what data they leverage, the algorithm they put in, their desire to have an agenda etc. What is true today, may change tomorrow (answers are different) the words people use can affect your opinion (we discussed this one already.). So yes, being a human is tough, so I expect someone will watch while their AI self-driving car drives off a cliff and will say “The GPS and the AI of the car knows what it is doing…” Hopefully after reading this, you don’t always take the short cut.

Disclaimer 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog. 

Above the normal disclaimer, this does not mean all search engine are bad, or all AI returns bad results, just think about it. And questions it.

In World War II – The US Military examined planes that were coming back for battle and looking at where they were shot. The proposed that they should add additional armor where the plane were hit… But that is incredibly flawed logic. Abraham Wald contradicted the conclusion the US Military came to, stating “you are looking at planes that survived battle… ” The correct thing is to look at planes that were shot down, and figure out why they didn’t make it back. It is adding armor to weak spots should be the correct conclusion.

This is a well documented theory now called “Survivorship Bias”. And the examples of this are used often. I had posted in 2016 about an artist I knew did a lot of work, drafts, versions etc. before the perfect painting was completed. I didn’t really relate this to survivorship bias in the core sense, but it is. So any time you hear a song from a band that hits the charts, see a great painting from an artist what you are seeing is just that. The hundreds of other failures are missing.

This leads me something that I didn’t realize I was doing, and in some cases we see at much larger scale. I have posted for years pictures of my commute by ferry (sunrises and sunsets) – and I often get ‘wow’ that is amazing. Of course I only post the ones that truly are stunning. What most people don’t see, is the 1,000’s of pictures I have taken, sometimes 10-20 in a single commute to get the one picture I post. I have also been taking pictures for years, starting photography when I was a teen (had dark room in my basement) and continuing to explore the hobby all of my life.

Recently, I have seen the growth of people making money on social media (Youtube, FB, Instagram, TikTok) and this notion that there is a “creator economy…” And got me thinking about connecting the dots. Based on what TikTok pays, for a million views you get a whopping $20. I do think Youtube pays more, Twitter doesn’t pay anything yet. But how many people actually are “posting” to these platforms, and how many people are getting enough views to make a living?

What starts popping up now are classes on how to make money making videos on platform x. If you were making enough money doing it, why sell a class? But I also start putting this in perspective, how many high school athletes play college than pro? How many top students get full rides to Ivy schools then make millions? How many garage startups become the next Apple or Google? The odds may be against you, but obviously if you do not take the risk there is no possibility of reward.

There are also people posting about crypto, options trading, beat the stock market memes etc. And showing their ‘accounts’ as proof. They are also ‘selling their formula.’ Not many showing how many times they lose, or there is no one posting on social media a class how they failed at ‘investing’. Now of course there are people who complain, and freak out on their personal posts, but no one offering a class on how to fail. But the success stories (other than the fraud) is more of survivorship bias vs. failures.

When I was growing up, the general statement was “Go to college, get a degree, get a job for life with a pension.” But also note, the same economist that stated that also promoted “Globalization, and moving of low wage manufacturing jobs would raise the level of economic growth of all countries” (This was mostly the excuse for the US to move away from manufacturing to Third World countries and we all would grow, but I guess that should be another conversation) The notion of going to college was based on a chart that people with a ‘Degree’ were higher earners vs those with just a High School Diploma. Is that again a symptom of Survivorship bias?

And lastly, there are a lot of great books written about “how to be successful” by people who were successful. But, looking at many of them, maybe there was more luck than anything (genetics lottery, right place right time etc.) I go back to my simple thought, of being the best Larry Gold I can be, and try to succeed at that. And not chase other people’s success, or think wow just cause so-so is making money on social media that if I just followed those simple steps I will. That a podcast, Youtube, TikTok etc. will suddenly bring me in tons of passive income. I follow my passions in my job, my family, my friends and things I do, and find success in that (and that is my survivorship bias..) Oh and I will post my occasional commute pictures….

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.