Chris Lorig's Blog

A story about how small decisions in managing people can lead to major consequences and about how can consistency and consideration might save not just the manager's face.

Management has a lot of pitfalls – small decisions that can have major, unexpected impact. It's a difficult responsibility to master, because you are serving two masters: The organization and the people in your charge.

There was one manager I used to work for that really tried to do good by the organization – to do what's in its best interest. Unfortunately in this effort, he forgot the people in his charge. Don't take this as blame, it's unfortunately absolutely normal for this to happen and managers need to be made aware of this and to battle it actively, if they want to live up to their full potential.

This manager, however, resisted input that tried to stop him; tried to make him aware of the situation he's putting himself into. Please mark this point in the story. This is where a crucial decision could have been taken differently and it would have changed the outcome drastically.

Said manager received some feedback about tensions and communication issues in the team, with a specific team member – let's call him Ed. Ed was very driven and blunt about his views and that didn't sit well with some of the team.

Manager decided to talk to Ed and inform him of the feedback he got, but he decided to stay very vague about it and give only the most general of instructions and to shift the whole burden on mitigating the situation to Ed.

To cut a long story short, Manager also chose not to spend any of the little time he had over the next three months, to work on these issue with Ed. Ed, on the other hand, actively sought to improve the situation, asked for feedback and didn't get any discouragement about his efforts from peers at all.

Three months later Manager decides to fire Ed, based on the fact that he didn't receive any positive feedback about Ed as yet. Of course this is his choice and his right. The ultimate hypocrisy however, happened in the moment when Manager relayed that decision to the team.

He asked them for their understanding and their supporting Ed in finding a new place to work. At face value, this request is very considerate and reasonable. It's a good-guy move to not abandon a person you just fired. The real and ultimate hypocrisy here is: Manager never ever even thought to ask the team to help Ed in the first place; to improve is odds of him staying with the team, becoming a valued and appreciated member; to simply work on their end of this communication issue – because those issues are never one sided.

Remember the point in the beginning where Manager could have made a different choice? This would have been that choice: To not put the burden of change on one single person, but involve the team and making it a group responsibility and work together with them on it.

It would have changed the outcome massively. It would not just have been good-guy pretense, it would actually have been the considerate, benevolent thing to do.

Don't fire people until you have convinced yourself and everyone around you, that you have tried all to make them a valued and appreciated member of the team. That is good management.

By @cmw@dysfunctional.technology

A story about a colleague, that approached me for coaching on how to create a roadmap. One, in which she actually remembered the details of the roadmap before it happend.

Session one

Initially, I wanted to figure out a couple of things:

• What is the goal of even having a roadmap? What's the purpose of the roadmap document? (To gain an overview and arguments to justify certain resources.)
• What dimensions will be fixed? The scope of the roadmap, the timeline or the resources? Where can you be flexible and adjust to changing realities? (Scope AND timeline would be fixed.)
• What contingencies do you have if one of the dimensions proves insufficient? Too little time, something in scope that's not feasible, sudden lack of resources – how can you compensate for that?
• If you fail to deliver the project as a whole, which parts would still be valuable?

Those last two questions I left her with. The former prompting her to reevaluate her assumptions about how fixed the scopes are. The latter to locate the highest priorities and plan accordingly.

Session two

A bit later, she had come to more clarity about what she wanted to achieve and asked for another round.

She lost herself in a very detailed explanation of the first of four factors that she wanted to achieve and how this would be accomplished and what steps needed to be taken and how to allocate those to the right people and...

Maximal detail mode. Depth first traversal of a work tree.

I had to re-focus her on the big picture so she wouldn't end up with a detailed task plan/gantt chart that would fall to pieces upon contact with reality.

By reflex, I decided to do a Remembering the future exercise with her.

“Imagine it's Christmas Eve. All the gift unwrapping and eating is done and you get to sit back, relax and think about the accomplishment of the past six months. Tell me what you're celebrating? What's the thing you achieved?”

Now we were talking about high-level outcomes, about the things to be proud of at the end of the project. And in the process, one of the initial four factors even turned out to not be important at all! The roadmap already got easier to complete.

“Ok, now think back. It's still Christmas Eve and you remember that just in the last few weeks the final steps were completed to actually deliver on time. Tell me about those last two, three things that happened.”

Results from work streams, adoption numbers, clear & tangible outcomes. I jotted those down on stickies to put at the right end of the roadmap, the 6-months mark.

“Now, go all the way back, to six months before. Remember, at the start of this very successful project, those first, crucial steps. The ones that got you going and gave you the energy to keep going. The moment when you knew this was off to a great start. What were those first tasks you completed?”

Now it's about individual tasks, first small milestones. Those that are already clearly visible now. I noted those down and put them all the way to the left, into month 1.

I then encouraged her to fill in the space between the two bordering colums of stickies. Before I left her, we quickly discussed the different nature of the existing stickes, actions in the short term, outcomes in the long term. Somewhere in between there needs to be a switch from one to the other and the close you get to that turning point the more abstract, fuzzy the roadmap items need to become.

Just like when planning a road trip: You probably know the first few turns to get to the highway. You're probably also clear about the address you want to end up going to. The steps between become more and more unclear, to the point where they are just a general direction, then become more tangible as you get to the highway exit closest to your target.

She happily filled in the rest of the roadmap and already ran it by her manager.

By @cmw@dysfunctional.technology

Let me tell you a story about one of my teams that fell apart. And all it would have required was some amount of planning and focus to give people perspective and purpose.

A while ago I took over a team, that had gone through a rough phase of uncertainty. At this point, the single biggest thing the team was lacking, was a sense of value that their work created.

They didn't even see the value in having sprints anymore, so to simplify and focus, we dropped sprints altogether in favor of adopting a flexible Kanban process.

This freedom caused more harm, however, because the product owner team took this freedom to mean, there was no need for planning anymore. That they could just throw stories over the fence, when resources were available. I use the word resources here intentionally, because that what people feel like in these situations: resources to be tapped when a 'resource manager' – the PO – feels, it needs utilizing. No outlook on what's to come, no clarity, certainty or vision.

As the product team continued to work off their high-level roadmaps and visual mock-ups, engineers grew more and more frustrated and the team started to fall apart. That management pushed competing projects onto the team didn't help either.

With no vision, no clarity of where things are going, people left, changed teams or fell into a stupor.

And all it would have required was some amount of planning and focus. Giving people perspective and purpose.

Of course nobody expects plans to be set in stone – we're working agile after all. But to keep flexible and to change a plan, the first, absolutely essential thing you need, is a plan.

By @cmw@dysfunctional.technology

Daily stand-ups. Most of you have seen and participated in the usual 3-question stand-ups. Super simple, classic, outdated, missing the point.

• What have I done since the last stand-up?
• What am I planning to do until the next stand-up?
• What's blocking or impeding me?

This type of stand-up is perfect for a controlling PO (or PM), a line manager or – if the company is small enough – a CEO that's participating in the meeting. Anyone who wants to make sure, people are planning the work and working the plan. And barely anyone actually adjusts their personal plans for whatever their team mates are planning, except to avoid overlap or to address an impediment. They don't care about each other's status or the status of the stories in the other swim lanes.

The one thing this is not, is value- or output-focussed. I would not even really call this agile, apart from escalating impediments to be addressed immediately.

The daily stand-up should be a starting point to plan the day. To plan the smallest iteration we have. Instead of going in a circle with three questions, just answer two. And do so as a team.

• What can we get done – or as close as possible to done – today?
• What's stopping us from getting it – or more of it – done?

Turn every day into a small, laser-focussed step towards the sprint goal, which in turn should be a small, focussed step towards the quarterly goal, and so forth.

Make stand-ups about creation of value and not about controlling.

By @cmw@dysfunctional.technology