Tag: Management

Why Management is so “stupid”….

September 30, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I have seen this in every company I have been, though some of the senior manager were technically the brightest people I know, at some point they seem to be clueless.  Everyone underneath is always saying “why can’t they see X or Y” when its horribly going wrong.  And at the end of the day it turns out more to be ignorance versus brains.

Let start with most of the places I worked for them fathom themselves as a Meritocracy.  And managers try to promote and pay “key players.”  One thing about this is that anyone who is smart is only going to inform management of good things, and successes.  Anything going wrong they will try to hide and fix themselves in a vacuum.  Once fixed, they don’t let managers know as it is not that important.   Sometimes these hidden “gems” or issues are not fixed, and people move off or leave the projects, leave this technical debt for someone else.  Telling managers they made a mistake or there is an issue (whether it is their fault or not) managers often to shoot the messenger,

So this leads to often lower level people not telling their direct manager there is an issue.  Often until its “too late.”   Of course this goes for each level of management.  As each manager in a hierarchy going up gets less and less information.  Thus the senior management often is least in the know of what is wrong.   Hopefully there aren’t people telling management that “Every thing is perfect” who are outside the project, adding to the confusion.

Good senior management can not only see through the bull they is being thrown, but has gained the trust of his employees that he wont shoot the messenger.  In fact they reward people for digging in and finding issues before it causes a widespread problem.  Good management goes back to the phrase sunlight is the best disinfectant.  Its not easy to do, as often when someone gives you bad news, you don’t want to believe you are there, how you got there, and how much there is to fix, but in the end of the day, fixing the problems are key, and rewarding employees for success whether it is adding a new feature, or resolving a large problem creates a great working environment.

My world famous disclaimer…  so, this blog has nothing to do about my current employer.  I provide the information without warranty blah blah blah. I make no money from this blog, there is no advertising, or charges to anyone.  I do this as a brain dump, to leave something behind.  If you want to support me, instead of doing that support one of the charities i care about, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Hockey in Newark.  Thanks for reading.

Does your dog bite…

September 23, 2016 / / 0 Comments

One of the funniest scenes ever was from the Pink Panther where Peter Sellers asks an innkeeper if his dog bites.   If you have not seen it, please watch and then come back, it will only take a minute.

Now that you laughed, you should have learned an important lesson.   When problem solving, are you asking the right questions? And are you solving the right problem?  Often I find developers never ask the right questions (good reason to have business analysts) they ask questions like “What do you want to see?” or “What do you do?” or “How do you do it?”   It is amazing how many times I am asked “why” and even I forgot to ask the user.   In fact there is a saying called “5 whys” which was developed  by Sakichi Toyoda for the Toyota Motor Corp.  It is also used by Six Sigma.

Asking why someone does something often gets to the root cause.  I am reminded of this a lot when taking my kids to the doctors when they have a cough.  They are usually given two medicines, one for the cough (the what) and often an antibiotic for the infection (the why.)   If you only solve the what, the root cause will persist, and the problem may never go away. In developing software, not solving the why gives the user not much better experience than he/she already has.

Why is not the only question to ask  But observe with your own eyes.  Sometimes you see what other have missed, and other times people are so “involved” with the symptoms they are missing the root cause.   Or in Peter Sellers case, he was making an assumption that the dog was the innkeepers, which apparently was wrong.  Don’t be afraid to ask anything you don’t know, and some things you do know to make sure.  Plenty of problems are solved simply by asking a question that may sound like every should know, but just haven’t asked.  Peter Sellers should have asked does this dog bite?   Anyway it gives me a great laugh to watch, and a reminder to make sure I ask the right questions, ask why over and over, and make sure I am solving the right problems.

My world famous disclaimer…  so, this blog has nothing to do about my current employer.  I provide the information without warranty blah blah blah. I make no money from this blog, there is no advertising, or charges to anyone.  I do this as a brain dump, to leave something behind.  If you want to support me, instead of doing that support one of the charities i care about, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Hockey in Newark.  Thanks for reading.

LrAu

 

 

Having two stamps, Yes and Hobby.

July 20, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I was reminded a bit ago of a story from my college years. I wanted to be a musician, not just a musician it a professional. A star, famous, everything that came with it.   Of course I was not the most talented person, nor did I always have the best work ethic, as I wanted to do 100 other things also.  But I was out there trying.  To make it in the music business it is partly due to “persistence” more than anything.  You keep writing, making demos, and knocking on doors.   When I was a kid there was no real way to publish yourself on YouTube, soundcloud or ITunes.

Often I was hit with a lot of No’s.  It was often disappointing, and in fact sometimes it was downright depressing.  I needed to pick myself up and try again.  But someone did motivate me, but in a very different way than you would think.   Some people are motivated a lot by no’s and push through to finally succeed or crash.  Some people get a few no’s and that is the end of their desire.  Many of those quit playing altogether.  They were not going to become musicians, so they would now focus their energy on something else.  This was a travesty.  But sometimes there is something better than a no.

Upon one of my many attempts to succeed I ran across a record executive who had a different approach than most.   He didn’t reject anyone.  He had two stamps.  One that said “Contract” which meant he was going to sign you, and you were on your way to coming a star.   But he had a second stamp, that was a bit unusual compared to many of his competitors.   This stamp was “Hobby.”   In a quick conversation with him, he never wanted anyone to quit playing.  He thought everyone should be playing an instrument.  Not as a professional, but for fun.   So he came up with another stamp other than no.  The Hobby stamp was used a lot, and he let people know that only a few people can get contracts.

This was the first time I saw something like this, and I don’t think I ever saw anything like it in any other endeavor whether it be sports, arts or business.  People often hate rejecting, in fact many times they hide behind keyboard and texting on phones.  If the lesson to be learned is if you need to reject, figure out the right way to do it so that it directs the person forward not backwards.

My world famous disclaimer…  so, this blog has nothing to do about my current employer.  I provide the information without warranty blah blah blah. I make no money from this blog, there is no advertising, or charges to anyone.  I do this as a brain dump, to leave something behind.  If you want to support me, instead of doing that support one of the charities i care about, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Hockey in Newark.  Thanks for reading.

The power of saying no….

June 7, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Simply put, when you have less on your plate, you have more time to dedicate to the items that are there, and to do them with 100% attention.  If you say yes to everything, you are continuously having to split your attention to multiple things, and there is no way you can get it all done at your best.  Delegate, get things off your plate.

No can also be not now, like I can’t do this until the other things are done.  I have a hard time teaching this to people, about blocking out time on their calendar to get something done.  If you have multiple tasks, you need to block out more time, and get one done at a time.  Turn off Outlook alters, put the phone on silent, remove distractions.  If you want to succeed and giving something 100%, your need to give it your 100% attention.  Of course while I am writing this I have the Stanley Cup playoff game on.  The issue, I cannot tell you what’s happening in the game, it is background noise.   But as soon as this is done, going to rewind and catch up on the game.

So I can’t find a graph that I used for years, but it is a graph showing how productive software developers against the number of tasks (systems) they are coding.  When a developer has a single application he or she is working on, they are 100% efficient.  Now you think giving them a second application, they would be 50% efficient in each, but it actually drops down to about 33%, give them a 3rd and they are 10% efficient, and after that they are so inefficient.  The proof is when we hire a new developer.  To bring them on slowly we give them one application to work on.  Once we see how competent they are, we give them more.  After the third application we start wondering if we hired the right person, they were so productive a while ago.  This plays out everywhere I worked until I figured it out.  Now I keep my team somewhat productive, by teaching them to say no to doing more, and if they have to, but blocking out time.

The goal is how do you say no, how do you tell someone that you can’t do something for them.  Or as my teenage daughter does, is say yes to one activity, then a 2nd one that comes along and is better.  What to do?  Its really simple, be open and honest.  I have xyz to do, you would be the nth Priority on my list.   Most managers understand, some will say “this is the highest priority” which you say, then you are giving me the OK to go to the others and say they will be delayed.   To me this is basic as a rope with three ends tug of war.  On one end is quality, the other is time, and the last is number of tasks.   If you increase any one, it will affect the others.  If you want to keep in balance, you must be assured you have enough time, or be willing to sacrifice quality.  Often the best way to keep the balance, say no.

My world famous disclaimer…  so, this blog has nothing to do about my current employer.  I provide the information without warranty blah blah blah. I make no money from this blog, there is no advertising, or charges to anyone.  I do this as a brain dump, to leave something behind.  If you want to support me, instead of doing that support one of the charities i care about, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Hockey in Newark.  Thanks for reading.

© 2025 LrAu

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑