Agile Learning Labs

Retaining Key Contributors - Results

Last night a dozen technical leaders gathered for the Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group to answer the question:

"What are the most effective steps a manager can take to retain key employees?"

The following guidelines where provided:

• Consider this question from your own personal experience.
• What were the things that kept you?
• What effective measures did you take to retain people?
• What things could have been done to keep you: "If only my manager had...I would have stayed."

We used the Group Wisdom Without Groupthink technique to capture the experience and wisdom of the whole group. More than twenty ideas were generated and discussed. Each idea was given a short name, and posted on the wall. The group then ranked the ideas, based on their own real-world experience. The exercise took an hour.

Here are the results. Some of the names, such as "Giving Credit..." mean pretty much what you would think. Others, "Empowerment" for example, represent the groups best effort at summing up a much more in-depth and detailed idea. The ideas are presented as ranked by the group. I have left out a number of ideas that were considered but ultimately not selected by the group.

Tier One
Empowerment
Giving Credit, Recognition Both Public and Private
Create an Enjoyable Work Environment

Tier Two
Be a Buffer Between Senior Management
Willingness to Actually Lead
Proactive Problem Resolution
Tolerate Failure
Compensation

Tier Three
Clear Shared Vision
Mentoring for Professional Growth
Prioritize to Prevent Waste
Respect

Tier Four
Training
Match Interests to Roles
Be Accessible
Provide Tools for Success
Regular Performance Reviews

Looking at the results, I am struck by how similar they are to the results that have come from workshops that have sought to identify the qualities of a great manager. Results from some of those can be found here. This seems to support the idea that people stay or leave based primarily on their relationship with their manager.

Perhaps now is a good time to mention that I offer one-on-one coaching for engineering managers, as well as several workshops to help engineering managers succeed:
Managing Technical People
Coaching and Mentoring
Delivering Effective Feedback
Makings of a Great Technical Manager
and many more!

Pay for Performance Hard to Get Right

I found this interesting article on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge site. It examines 13 pay-for-performance programs that various groups in HP tried and dropped. There are lessons to be learned from these experiences.

What gets incented gets done, at the expense of the rest of the stuff. Think about the side effects of any incentive program. Giving extra pay for outstanding individual accomplishments is not going to encourage teamwork, for example.

Manage expectations; better to start with goals that are too high than too low. If management finds that fewer people than expected are able to perform up to the incented level, it is a simple matter to adjust the level down a bit next cycle. If, however, more people than expected make it the first cycle, they are likely to cry 'Foul!' when management adjusts the levels up next time.

Creativity and learning are tough to incent with a pay-for-performance program. Such programs tend to reward 'success' and results, not experimentation, trial and error.

I agree that these programs can be hard to get right, and are costly when they are done wrong. In management, as in engineering, it is often the hardest things that are most valuable. Pay-for-performance is a tool. It is management's job to decide if it is the right tool.

Engineering Managers Support Group - New and Improved!

The The Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group is celebrating our six month anniversary. Things have been good, and they are about to get even better...

New Sponsor!
I am proud to announce that Rearden Commerce has joined The Technical Management Institute in sponsoring The Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group. The Rearden Personal Assistant has been described as doing for services what Amazon did for products.

New Location!
This month we will meet at Rearden's world headquarters in Foster City. Some of the mapping sites, and meetup.com, want to call it San Mateo since 94404 covers both cities. Don't worry about it. The address is 1051 E. Hillsdale Blvd, Foster City, CA 94404. It's a shinny office tower between Foster City Blvd and Shell Blvd, across from the Foster City Fire Station, and just off of 92. Rearden's offices are on the sixth floor. Park in front of the building, on the Hillsdale Blvd. side. Seth will be in the lobby to ferry folks up. If he's not there when you arrive, you can hail him at: 415.515.2654.

New Food!
We will be enjoying some yummy Thai food. Make sure to arrive around 7:00 PM for best selection. There will be a variety for both vegetarians and meatetarians.

New Presenter!
Our opening topic will be: How to make performance reviews less painful and more effective. Joining me in creating and delivering this presentation is Richard Simone. Richard is an independent senior management consultant in the area of fabless semiconductor, and semiconductor design and development. He has held several VP and Director level positions over his career before founding his consultancy.

As Always
After the presentation, we will open up the meeting so that participants can bring their real-world issues to the group and get feedback and advice from the group.
Best of all, it's still free. :-)

RSVP Now!

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.

Feedback

I just read this article at cio.com. It had some excellent advice about how to give, and how not to give, feedback to others in the workplace. Feedback is one of the most powerful tools in a manager’s toolbox. Use it early; use it often. It is far better to give regular feedback than to save it up for performance review time.

The author, Esther Derby, recommends a multi-step approach to giving feedback that is similar to that recommended by the guys over at Manager Tools, though a bit more flexible.

The steps include:

The Opening – Basically letting the person know that you want to give them some feedback and finding out if this is a good time. Of course, you should pick a time that you think is good for them before making your approach; check their calendar!

Sharing What You Observed – This is all about reporting the facts of the behavior that you are giving feedback on. Doing this without coloring it with judgment can be tricky, but is very important. At this stage it is better to say “Tom, I noticed you surfing the web during Bob’s presentation today.” than something like “You were disrespectful toward Bob this morning.” It is much easier for Tom to dispute whether or not he was being respectful than his web surfing. You really want to get agreement that the behavior occurred.

Describing the Impact – Here you might describe how others where distracted by his surfing, and that it undermines Bob and the information that was being presented. This step may not even be needed, as many people will quickly grasp the problem with their behavior. Tom might say, “Gee, I didn’t realize that other people would notice. I guess I was a bit of a distraction.” This may be as far as you need to go.

Request a Change – Tom may volunteer to change his behavior, or at least acknowledge the problem in a way that implies he will change. If he does not, then request some specific change such as leaving the laptop behind at these types of meetings.

Finally, it is worth noting that feedback can be positive as well as negative. Human nature being what it is, people tend to be more receptive to positive feedback. Use it! Reinforcing the good behaviors is just as important as changing the bad.

Voted Off the Vegetable Island!

While walking this morning, I listened to the HBR Ideacast #35, What it Means to Work Here. In it they mention a hiring practice used by Whole Foods, that I really like. New hires are on probation for the first 4 weeks. At the end of that time, their coworkers vote to keep them or let them go.

Hire Fast and Die

There are two emergent schools of thought (at least) about technical team hiring:  hire fast, fire fast (a play on the "hire slow, fire fast" adage), and no false positives.  FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo has this to say:

I buy the hire fast, fire fast line of thinking for Sales Reps or VP Sales roles but I don't buy it for Engineering, Marketing, Finance, etc. The problem with hire fast, fire fast in the engineering department is quite simple: you don't end up executing on the fire fast part of it and the bad hire infects the organization for an extended period before you figure out how to remove them. Engineering goals are more generally team goals, there can be lots of reasons code can ship late, and performance criteria are more subjective than sales performance criteria. The mediocre hire ends up becoming part of the team and it just ends up taking longer to fire that person on the team, by which point they've added more subpar work to the mix. So, I am a subscriber, outside of sales, to the thesis that you have to interview rigorously and that it's better to leave an urgently needed role empty than to bring in a "false positive" who will infect the organization.