Agile Learning Labs

A Different Kind of Tolerance in the Workplace

Dannyman pointed out this quote from William L. McKnight, past Chairman of the Board at 3M.

As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way. Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.

This idea applies to the manager leading a small team, not just to the CEO. While giving guidance is necessary, controlling all aspects of how your team members work is not. Nobody wants to be micro-managed.

The other bit in there is tolerating mistakes. There are two broad categories of ‘mistakes’ that your people will make. The first type isn’t really a mistake at all, though you will think it is. They will choose to do things differently than you would. Very often, our instinct is that different is wrong, or at the very least, not as good as the way we would do the thing. After all, you are the manager, the leader, and the expert. Right? Remember all the times your boss wanted you to do things some way that was clearly not as good as the way you wanted to? Now that you are a leader, work hard not to be that boss.

The second type of mistake that your people will make is a mistake. It can be hard to tell this type of mistake from the first kind until the results are in. When these mistakes happen, err on the side of tolerance. Help the person to examine the mistake and learn from it, in a way that is supportive. Good people don’t like to fail. The pain of the failure will be punishment enough for them.

Speaking of techdirt...

I was recently invited by techdirt’s Mike Masnick to be a part of the Techdirt Insight Community. The idea is really interesting:

The Techdirt Insight Community is a service that lets a company engage a dynamic and diverse group of experts who provide analysis and insight tailored to meet your specific needs quickly and cost effectively. Our qualified community of expert bloggers tackles your issues through an interactive online conversation and quickly provides you with the answers you need to drive your business forward.

I’m looking forward to it!

Plug and Play

I just met with Shobeir Shobeiri and Kayvan Baroumand at Plug and Plug and Play Tech Center. It has been almost a year since I was there for techdirt greenhouse (one and two). The place has really come along. I think that they were hosting about 20 companies back then. Shobeir told me that they now house over ninety!

MBA Panel Discussion

Last night I participated in a panel discussion about the career of consulting at Santa Clara University, put on by the newly formed consulting club of the MBA program. My fellow panelists were Ken Wirt and Megan Shields. Mike Levenhagen moderated the panel.

Megan was very familiar with the world of big consulting and explained the differences between strategy firms such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting, implementation firms such as Accenture, and boutique shops such as her own firm ARGOS Consulting Group.

Ken and I represented the smaller one-person operations. Ken advised the prospective consultants to plan to spend 1/3 of their time on billable activities, 1/3 on business overhead such as billing, and 1/3 of their time networking and selling. This led to a discussion of setting rates, where I pointed out a common model of tripling the typical hourly rate for the same activity when it is done as a fulltime job. For example, if you would make $100,000 as a fulltime employee, you could calculate the consulting rate as follows:
$100,000 / 2000 hours = $50 / hour * 3 = $150 / hour

Don’t forget to factor in the value of benefits!

Some in attendance thought that this seemed high, but Ken was quick to point out that a company will be willing to pay a premium for the flexibility they get by bringing a consultant on for a short-term assignment. The salaried employee is getting the security of a permanent position, while the consultant will have to find work again in a few months.

I want to thank Steve Hawker for inviting me to be a part of the panel. Steve is one of the founders of the club, and obviously a go-getter.

Mini MBA For Free - Thanks TVC!

I spent yesterday morning with about 30 other entrepreneurs, learning about some real-world legal, HR, and funding issues that startups typically face. The program was one of six that Technology Ventures Corporation (TVC) puts on in rotation. The program is free, and they even include a decent continental breakfast! Interestingly, TVC is funded by Lockheed Martin and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The event was hosted by SRI at their headquarters in Menlo Park, CA.

Ralph Kokka, a lawyer with Randick, O’Dea & Tooliatos, started us off with a presentation on the pros and cons of the various forms a business might take, such as LLC, S Corp, and C Corp. He hit the high and low points of each, with a focus on the concerns of startups looking for funding. There were many questions and he did an excellent job of answering them while keeping his presentation moving.

Sherry McVicar then walked us through the most important HR considerations for a startup. She pointed out common pitfalls such as mis-categorizing workers contractor vs. employee or exempt vs. non-exempt. She also explained what benefits are mandatory, and when these requirements kick in. For example:

• All companies must provide leave for jury duty.
• Companies with 5 or more employees must provide pregnancy leave.
• Companies with 50 or more employees must provide family and medical leave.

TVC's very own Ralph Patterson rounded out the day with a presentation entitled “13 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make.” The mistakes that he pointed out were all issues that would keep professional investors from funding a company. The mistakes included:

• Assuming too much debt
• Acquiring too many shareholders too early
• Pitching the product instead of the business
• Too many Powerpoint slides
• Not having a business plan

The event was interesting and informative, and I’ll be back to checkout the other 5 installments:

• Entering the Entrepreneurial World
• Market Research and the Marketing Plan
• Financial Management
• Preparing and Presenting the Business Plan
• Attracting Equity Investors and Lessons Learned

Big thanks to Juan Montermoso, who told me about this event.

My First Meeting at Geekaplex

It was a bad day at Geekaplex. A star developer’s computer had crashed hard, taking a week’s worth of new source code with it. The big boss was furious! How could it be that there was only one copy of the code? I spoke up, “We need source control, and a backup system.” The big boss looked at me and said: “OK, then get some people together and make it happen!”

I was fresh out of college and this was my first gig. I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge or clout to make this happen on my own, so I called a meeting. I sent out an invite to all of engineering: “Let’s get together and talk about source control and backup.”

Meeting day came and about half the engineering department showed up. I was a bit disappointed at the turnout; didn’t they know how important this was? After waiting a while to see if more people would come, I started. “I think everyone heard about what happened last week. I think we need a source control system, and a backup system too. Who wants to start the discussion?” Surly Jim snorted. Several people chimed in to agree that we needed source control and backup. A few were worried that using source control would slow them down or get in the way. Billy told a story about the time his previous company’s source control system crashed and only then did they discover that the backups were all corrupt. Ken said that to be elite, we needed to run Submarine-Version on Linus.

The meeting rambled on for quite a while, and I started to feel like it wasn’t getting anywhere. Laptops started opening. Spalding started coding. Kathy and Chris were obviously IMing, and a few people seemed to be reading email. Eventually, some people just got up and left. Those who stayed seemed to be getting more and more impatient, Surly Jim in particular. Finally, he burst out “Why are we all here? What’s the point of this meeting?” The room got very quiet, and then Socrates spoke up: “I think we have done all we can today. Let’s wrap things up for now.” Everyone, including me, was relieved. As people shuffled out, Socrates stayed behind.

Socrates wasn’t his real name, of course, but that’s what everyone called him. According to talk around the office, he had worked at PARC, Apple, and Atari back in the day. He had been a founding engineer at All Your Base, and as the company grew, he went from writing their first games to running the development group. He left shortly after the company was sold to EvilEmpireSoft.

“What do you think of your first big meeting?” he asked. “I feel like I just wasted everyone’s time.” I bemoaned. “It’s good that you see that. They’ll forgive you, once.” He paused, and then asked, “So, what will you do differently next time?” I said that I wouldn’t invite surly Jim, that’s for sure. “Actually, he may have helped you the most, as he raised a key question. What was the point, or more precisely, the goal of that meeting?” I thought about it for a minute, and then said that it was to talk about source control and backup. “Well then, you should be happy with the meeting. We talked about those things for some time.” Now it was my turn to snort. “Sure we did, but we didn’t get anywhere!”

Socrates then asked me where I had hoped to get. I replied that I had hoped that we would walk out knowing what source control and backup systems to adopt. “So, you wanted the goal of the meeting to be choosing source control and backup systems?” “Yes, I suppose that is what I was hoping for.” I replied. After a thoughtful pause, he said, “That’s actually a great goal for a meeting, much better than your original one.” That made sense. He went on, “Your first goal wasn’t a total stinker. It had one of the important qualities of a good meeting goal: at the end of the meeting you can easily determine if the goal was met. You simply ask the question: Did we meet the goal of talking about source control and backup systems. The question lends itself to a clear yes or no answer. Some goals are too vague or general to be even that useful. For example, what if your goal had been to improve software development practices here at Geekaplex? How meaningfully could you answer the question: did this meeting improve our software development practices? You really couldn’t tell if the practices improved until some time after the meeting.”

OK, so according to my original goal the meeting was technically a success. Still, it wasn’t a good meeting. According to my revised goal the meeting had failed. This wasn’t surprising, given that I hadn’t really known that it was my goal.

The meeting may have crashed and burned, but at least I was learning something from the experience. If I was to avoid wasting people’s time, I need to have a clear goal for any meeting that I call. The goal needs to be something that I can measure the success of the meeting against. At the end of the meeting, I want to be able to ask: “Did this meeting meet the stated goal?” For that matter, before calling a meeting I could ask myself “Will a meeting be able to meet this goal?” Had I asked myself this question at the outset, I probably wouldn’t have called this meeting, and wasted so many peoples’ time.

If you want to stop wasting time in meetings consider our class Stop Wasting Time in Meetings!.

Office Supplies for the Analog Workplace

Hamster-powered paper shredder, via Curbly. 

Complaints!

Heads up! The Chief Happiness Officer is urging people to complain at work. His point is that complaining in a constructive way can make the workplace better. Fair enough, but what if you are a new manager and you are the one listening to all of these complaints?

I once had a direct report that was constantly finding things to complain about. He was well-intentioned, smart, and one of the most productive engineers on the team. The things that he was complaining about were all things that could, in fact, stand some improvement. He thought that by pointing out everything that could use fixing, he was doing his part.

Next time he came to me with a complaint, I asked him what he thought could be done to improve the situation, and specifically what could he do to help implement a fix. He happily went into problem solving mode and generated several potential solutions. We then discussed the merits of each and compared the costs to the benefits. We chose a course of action and each of us committed to taking some specific actions to improve the situation. After that session, he almost always came armed with potential fixes to go along with his complaints.

It’s OK to complain. It is often much more useful to propose a solution, especially one that you are willing to implement.

Too Many Meetings, Bad Ideas

msnbc has a short online survey about workplace meetings. There is no great love for meetings among the respondents. As of today, 81% responded that they have too many meetings and 59% indicated that good ideas rarely come from their meetings. Could it be that “none of us is as dumb as all of us”?

If you are hating your meetings and can make it to Foster City, CA on Tuesday May 29th, join us for a short class that will help you stop wasting time in meetings.

Stop Wasting Time in Meetings!

Super-Saver Sneak Peak Class, May 29th

Engineering managers: does your team think meetings are t3h suck?  Join us for a super-saver sneak peak class that will cut the time you and your staff waste in meetings.  This class will show how to decide which meetings are really necessary, and how to make them short and productive.

• Tuesday, May 29th 2007
• 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
• Foster City, CA
• Only $25!!!!!!!!