The 30 second culture quiz

I have seen a lot of effort, perhaps rightly so, being dedicated lately to either deciding “what kind of culture” an organization has, or trying to change it to something that is “better” usually with terms like collaboration, teamwork, transparency and other uplifting words in the middle of it all.  Perhaps there’s a consultant or cultural survey involved, with lots of interviews, tests and indicators to guide you toward a deeper understanding of your culture.

Or…       You could try this.

Randomly walk up to just about anyone in the organization, and after exchanging pleasantries, tell them you’re working on an important project that is failing.

They will likely respond in one of two ways:

1. Wow, that’s a shame, sorry to hear that.
2. Is there anything I can do to help?

If most people respond with #1, you have a seriously problem with your corporate culture.  If they respond with an offer to help, without even knowing what the project is, what organizational boundaries it crosses, and whether they have any of the skills that you need to fix things, your culture is rock solid.

Thirty seconds, I promise…

Taking the field

Not too long ago, a college football coach was struggling with his team.  They had lost 4 games in a row and he felt like no one was pulling their weight.  So he decided to mix things up a bit.  On game day, he waited until his players ran out from the locker room and the tunnel onto the field.  He decided that whatever order the players came out of the locker room would be the position they would play for that game.  First 11 guys :  offense.  Next 11 guys:  defense.  Everyone else:  kick coverage and special teams.  He further decided that, from the first 11 guys, the very first guy on the field would be the quarterback.  Then the next two would be running backs.  The next three would be wide receivers.  And the last 5 would form the offensive line.

Now I suppose you’re thinking that this is some “feel good” story where every player excelled at their new position and they played as a team like never before.  And you would be wrong.  They got slaughtered and the coach got fired by the Athletic Director of the university for being incompetent.

As a leader in an organization, if you assign employees to projects and roles, especially critical ones, based on who’s available and not who is most skilled to perform in that specific role, you’re that coach…

Boo-reaucracy

Here’s my definition of bureaucracy.  It’s a simple one.  It’s “deliberately choosing process over problem solving.”

Imagine you walk into an Emergency Room, clearly having a heart attack.  Imagine the triage nurse hands you a form to fill out.  THAT is choosing process over problem solving.  And it doesn’t mean the form is not important.  I am sure that name, insurance, next of kin, etc. could matter a lot in the next hour or two.  Just don’t start there!

Sadly, I see this a lot in larger organizations.  They work hard on process.  Good for them!  It’s the right thing to do!  Consistency.  Rules.  Repeatability.  All good things.

But then, something strange happens.  When you need help to solve a problem, even an urgent one, you are often escorted to the Process Dungeon, where you are mercilessly shackled until you bow and swear fealty forever to the Process King (and fill out a form, submit a spreadsheet, whatever the King demands) at which time you will often, but not always, receive the help you need.

Then, the recipients of the solution to the problem that started this mess in the first place will ask you why it took so long to fix.  That’s my favorite part.

So the questions are:  Who’s sitting on the throne in your organization?  And are you a problem solver or the jailer…?

Stone Tablets

I had never wondered, until recently, what Moses felt like when he came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments etched in stone on two large tablets.  I just assumed, like most of us, that the throng waiting for him at the bottom just said, “Wow, what a great idea.  These new guidelines are exactly how we should live our lives starting now.  Let’s get to it.  Great job, Mo!”

But I am starting to suspect that if you listened in to the crowd’s reaction, you’d hear comments a little more like this:

“We’re going to need some clarification on the first one.  That’s a little high level, don’t you think?”

“Stealing, huh?  I imagine he only means big stuff, right?”

“Why are there two for coveting?  Are those more important than the others?”

“I am a (fill in the blank – warrior, shepherd, servant, whatever) I don’t think those apply to me in my role in the camp.”

I’ve had some recent experiences with corporate strategic objectives.  Typically, they are developed at an executive retreat (the modern day equivalent of Mount Horeb…) and handed down to the waiting masses with the expectation that they will provide a new and immediate way for employees to conduct themselves at work.   But I think many employees, on their own, have a hard time ‘connecting the dots’ so they can contribute to the accomplishment of the objectives.

So the questions are:  As a leader, have you taken the time to discuss what “bearing false witness” means to your team?  And as an employee, do you know what coveting is?  If you don’t, are you too intimidated by Moses to even ask him…?

The Parent Trap

First of all, I would like to apologize to my dedicated reader for taking almost a month hiatus from my last post.  You know, end of year, holidays, snorkeling off Antarctica, annual festival of the lychees in Myanmar, it adds up.

When you’re a kid, you have a secret weapon that you use from time to time, typically in dire situations where your very way of life or physical well being is at stake.  That’s right:  tattling.

I still remember hearing those fateful words every once in a while on the streets of Brooklyn years ago.  “I’m tellin…’”  Uh oh!

And sometimes it worked out.  Often, the perpetrator was punished by the parental unit who was the recipient of the ‘tell’ and you got to gloat or watch them suffer.  But sometimes…  you BOTH got punished.  The perpetrator for what he or she did; and you for tattling.  Risky business!

Fast forward.  In some respects, not much has changed.  As a team member at your organization, sooner or later you will observe behaviors that are detrimental to your team as a whole.  Could just be someone who goofs off a bit too much, has a bad attitude, whatever.  And you have to decide if “tattling” is your best option.  And as a leader, when you are made aware of these behaviors, who do you “punish?”

Side note:  I fully acknowledge that with recent legislation to protect whistleblowers, it is important that an organization encourage and protect employees who have the courage to bring egregious, or sometimes even criminal, behavior to the attention of management.  That’s not what I am talking about.

But I would remind you that the worst thing you can do as an employee is look the other way and justify to yourself that ‘it’s not your job’ to hold anyone else accountable for their actions and behaviors.  Quite the opposite!   I also think that running straight to your “up-lines” with every minor transgression is not smart either.

Check out some good tips for conflict resolution before calling in the big guns.  As you now know, as parents yourselves, they have enough to deal with…

Walking against the wind

My wife hates mimes.  I am not sure why.  First off, I don’t think she finds them clever or entertaining.  Perhaps when she was a kid, someone forced her to watch hours of Marcel Marceau.   Who knows?  In any case, one of the most famous things mimes do is “walk against the wind.”  They lean forward and give the appearance, in a still room, of walking into a very stiff breeze, fighting for every step forward.  Pretty clever, I think!

Several times this month, that’s what I felt like at work.  It seems that in some organizations, there are people or sometimes entire departments who believe they are the wind.   Their job is to make it seem like every step forward that you want to take is met with some mostly invisible resistance, so that a simple stroll turns into a Herculean effort. 

Here’s an example.  I saw an email today.   It was a reminder that everyone should make sure they have their invoices for 2012 approved and processed before the end of the year.  Fair enough!  But then, almost as some bizarre incentive to buckle down and get this done, it went on to instruct everyone that next year, the process for getting invoices processed was going to take LONGER!  They actually said that!

Managing projects, by definition, means implementing something new, changing a process, and generally disrupting the normal flow of things, hopefully with an improved outcome.   That’s hard enough.  For me, just once, I’d like to have a tailwind…

How about you all?  Pretty breezy in your company these days??

May the Air Force be with you

I realize this is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I can’t help but to call your attention to the latest mega-project gone bad story, this time involving the US Air Force and our friends from CSC, who apparently believe that WBS stands for “We Butcher Software…”

Here’s the ComputerWorld synopsis of how this one went.

Allow me to summarize some of the key reasons why the project has been cancelled, per the Air Force spokesperson:

• they’ve been working on it since 2005
• they have spent just over $1 billion dollars on it (yup, your money if you’re planning to pay taxes this year)
• the new system was intended to replace over 200 existing “legacy” applications
• they NOW estimate that to finish the project, it will cost an additional $1.1 billion dollars
• and the best part, the extra $1.1 billion would get the Air Force 25% of the original planned features and be ready for field testing in 2020.

Rather than just piling on (fun as that might be) I really want to find something meaningful to say.  As unlikely as that is, here goes:

1. if you’re working on a project that is going to take multiple years to deliver, develop a formal process INTENDED to cancel the project every six months, and force the vendors and project managers to justify continuing instead of the other way around.
2. if you’re not in shape, don’t try to do 200 pushups the first day you decide to get back in shape.  Try for 10.  Maybe the system didn’t have to replace ALL 200 “legacy” applications in one fell swoop?  The article doesn’t exactly mention how many systems did get replaced, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s zero.
3. And by the way, next time you develop a spec to replace a ‘legacy system’ and you fail and the ‘legacy system’ is still running, maybe you should find a less pejorative term for it.  Like “functioning and inexpensive system that doesn’t do everything but also doesn’t land us on the front page of the NY Times.”

Jut remember, in both eating and systems development, if you bite off more than you can chew and swallow at once, you’re likely to choke…

In Words We Trust

It has become quite popular these days, it seems, to execute a pre-nuptial agreement (pre-nup) before you get married.  Especially if you have “stuff” that you are worried you might have to share someday in a nasty divorce.  Fair enough.  I understand that protecting your assets and doing some form of relationship risk management could be considered prudent.

But imagine two buddies who decide to buy some lottery tickets.  They are only investing a few bucks each.  And they start to talk about what might happen if they win.   Turns out they disagree about a few issues, the biggest one being whether they should take a lump sum when they win versus taking installments over 20 years.  They argue about it more and more, and end up becoming so entrenched in their positions that they stop speaking to each other.   And as they fight over something that hasn’t even happened yet, and has a 1 in 150 million chance of occurring, they ruin a perfectly good friendship.

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time over the last few weeks negotiating software contracts.  There are always clauses in them about liability and indemnification.  Basically, the words that describe who is accountable for really bad things that have a remote chance of happening.  I see the value of having that language in contracts since they are legally binding documents and the only things that would hold up in court, not unlike pre-nups.

But here’s my point.  Words don’t replace trust.    When you reach a point in a relationship where arguing about remote eventualities completely overshadows why you:

• started a relationship in the first place
• fell in love
• or became good friends

then you have replaced trust, a frail but very human construct, with “legally binding clauses.”  As a leader, make sure you can tell the difference between the two…

The three C’s

I am confident we are all tired of delightfully persuasive phrases like “win win” to describe a situation, usually in business, where everyone allegedly comes out ahead.  I have had a few of those lately, and here’s what I have concluded.

1. The most popular new term to describe everyone getting what they want is “consensus.”
2. In organizations, consensus is a myth.

OK, that’s not entirely true.  But it’s rare.  The dictionary defines consensus as “widespread agreement or harmony.”  Hmmm…  Is that how most people feel after a decision has been made in your organization??

I think that there really are three things that typically happen when you’re asked to participate in a decision-making process.  As a leader in your organization, just being able to recognize these and adjust appropriately is a big advantage. 

1. Consensus (yes, it does happen sometimes)
2. Compromise
3. Chits

Sometimes, consensus really does happen.  A recent example was an interview process I helped with.  After 4-5 different folks across the organization finished interviewing four candidates for a permanent position, we all agreed on who the best candidate was.  Ah, consensus!  But what if we didn’t agree and still had to hire someone??

That gets us to compromise.  That happens far more often.   One of the most famous compromises is, of course, the Missouri Compromise, which happened way back in 1820.  The key here is that neither side really gets what they want, but both sides feel like they get enough to where they aren’t just getting out and out screwed.  In organizations today, this is often the best approach to decision making, when there are opportunities to let go of some things to get others.  Productive contract negotiations between two parties are typically a good example of this.

So what if you have to “cave” and go along with the crowd, even though you essentially don’t get what you want?   That’s where “chits” come in.  Chits are “vouchers representing something you are owed.”   If you have to give in on a decision even though you disagree with it, often there is an unspoken “you owe me” among the decision makers.  With some timing and skill, you can make use of that in the future.

So next time you are asked to a meeting where the outcome is planned to be ‘consensus,’ remember there are some other “C’s” that may pop up instead…

The Waiting Game

I think it was Seinfeld who said, “when you go to the doctor, and they put you in the waiting room, you KNOW you’re gonna wait.  It’s called the WAITING room…”

That got me thinking about how tragic it is that FEMA continues to struggle with their responsiveness to folks who need help from Hurricane Sandy, especially with respect to housing.  (minor aside – I refuse to call it “Superstorm” Sandy.  Enough already with that…)   And while I recognize, after a good solid 20 minutes of research, that FEMA is doing a better job overall than they did during Katrina, that’s not really my point.

FEMA is the Federal EMERGENCY Management Agency.  They have the word EMERGENCY right in their name!  You would think that would give them a clue as to not only what their purpose is, but more importantly, how they should structure themselves to fulfill their mission!  It’d be like the “lightning round” on Password taking 20 minutes. 

So my question to you leaders out there is: what is the purpose of your team or department?  Are you supposed to be nimble and quick to respond to unplanned situations, like an outage in a power plant, a server crash,  or a virus on your network?  Or are you supposed to be capable of maintaining a steady pace and executing work over the long haul?  Ensuring that processes are followed, risks are being managed, and prizing accuracy over speed?  (by the way, an accounting department responsible for publishing a monthly balance sheet might be a good example of the latter)

Does your team make-up, culture and reward system mirror that purpose?

You should check.  What are you waiting for…?