Archive
A Loss Of Heart
With team scaling, comes a loss of heart – but not always?
Inter And Intra
My previous post highlighted inter-company culture clashes. This followup highlights the most insidious intra-company culture clash:
Robo Jargon
How To Run A Company With (Almost) No Rules
- Set your own salary
- Vote your leaders in/out
- Come and go when you please
- Take vacation whenever you want
- If you finish your work by Wednesday, go to the beach and come back on Monday
- If you have to give back, you’ve taken too much
- Ask “why” three times and then stop
- Design for wisdom
A brilliant and emotionally moving talk from my favorite CEO of all time, Mr. Ricardo Semler.
Please, please, watch it. I guarantee that some, if not all, parts of the talk will fill your heart with joy! Well, maybe it will. If you’re an average, run-of-the-mill, anointed, business leader, it will either piss you off or strike fear into your bones.
If you want some more seminal Semler to whet your appetite, check out these two MIT-sponsored videos:
Make no mistake about it, Mr. Semler’s radical ideas are not a mess of pie-in-the-sky, Utopian psychobabblings. They’re the real deal, and they’ve been in play… in the real world… for over 20+ years at Semco.
“The Team”
It seems that several coaches/gurus/consultants/experts use the term “the team” frequently in discussing their work. AS IF there was one, and only one, team: “let the team decide“, “meet the team’s needs“, etc. In complex orgs, there is NOT solely one team. There are many diverse teams and team types. Thus, as expected, their needs can, and do, clash.
To simplify the ensuing, one-way, BD00-to-you discussion, assume the existence of only three different team types:
Just like an individual must sometimes relinquish/suppress a personal need(s) for the greater good of the team, a particular team type must sometimes eschew one or more of its needs for the greater good of a different team type. In darker times, sometimes ALL teams must sacrifice some of their needs for the greater good of the “whole“. After all, if the “whole” goes bust, then all the teams being sustained by it go bust too. In a robust org, the converse is not true: if one team fails, the org will live on.
Is it possible to simultaneously satisfy every single need of each individual, each team, each team type, and the meta-physical “whole“? Since some idealistic people seem to think so, I suppose so – but I’m highly skeptical. The universe has always been, and always will be, gloriously messy. Because of the unavoidable human diversity residing within and across team types, a delicate give-and-take balancing act is necessary to keep the whole intact. Sometimes I gotta give to you and sometimes I gotta take from you. Sometimes you gotta give to me and sometimes you gotta take from me.
Products, Not Projects
In “The Politics Of Projects“, Robert Block rightly states: “People want products, not projects“. The ideal project takes zero time, no labor, and no financial investment. The holy grail is to transition from abstract desire to concrete outcome in no time flat :). Nevertheless, for any non-trivial product development effort requiring a diverse team of people to get the job done, some sort of project (or, “coordinated effort” for you #noprojects advocates) is indeed required. Whether self-organized or dictator-directed, there has to be some way of steering, focusing the effort of a team of smart people to achieve the outcomes that a project is expected to produce.
At the simplistic BD00 level of comprehension, a project is one of two binary types: a potential revenue generator or a potential cost reducer.
Startups concentrate solely on projects that raise revenue. At this stage of the game, not a second thought is given to cost-reduction projects – the excitement of creating value reigns. As a startup grows and adds layers of “professional” management to control the complexity that comes with that growth, an insidious shift takes place. The mindset at the top flips from raising revenue to reducing costs and increasing efficiency. In large organizations, every employee has experienced multiple, ubiquitous, top-down “cost reduction initiatives“, the worst of which is the dreaded reduction-in-force initiative. On the other hand, org-wide initiatives to increase revenues are rare.
Performance Meters
The figure below shows two types of performance evaluation systems; one that measures individual performance and the other which measures team performance.
Even though the figure implies a causal connection between type of measurement system and quality of team output, as usual, I have no idea if a causal relationship exists. I suspect they are statistically correlated though, and the correlation is indeed as shown. I think the system on the left encourages intra-team competition whereas the system on the right catalyzes intra-team cooperation. What do you think?
Durable, Resilient, Adaptable
I really love this elegantly written paragraph by Stewart Brand:
The combination of fast and slow components makes the system resilient, along with the way the differently paced parts affect each other. Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power. All durable dynamic systems have this sort of structure; it is what makes them adaptable and robust. – Clock Of The Long Now – Stewart Brand
If you think about organizations, the people at the bottom of the hierarchy should be the fast components that instruct and inform the slow controlling components at the top, no? However, if those at the top allow, or turn a blind eye to bureaucratic processes and procedures that impede quickness at the bottom, they’re screwing up big time, no? Requiring the builders dwelling in the cellar to jump through multiple, multi-layer review/approval cycles to purchase a 5 dollar part, or go to a conference, or get a custom, but simple, cable built, or add some useful code to a widely used library, can be considered an impediment, no?
Ninety percent of what we call ‘management’ consists of making it difficult for people to get get things done – Peter Drucker
If those at the top of a borg solely concern themselves with “the numbers“, bonuses for themselves, and rubbing elbows with other fellow biggies while the borg’s so-called support groups and middle managers stifle the builders with ever more red tape, then fuggedaboud having any fast components in the house. And if Mr. Brand is right in that resilient, durable, adaptable, learning systems require a mix of fast and slow components, then those at the top deserve the results they get from the unresilient, undurable, unadaptable, and unlearning borg they preside over.
No More JAMB On My Toast
Amazon just sent me a recommendation for this book on the management of complexity:
Since four out of five reviewers gave it 5 stars, I scrolled down to peruse the reviews. As soon as I read the following JAMB review, I knew exactly what the reviewer was talking about. I can’t even begin to count how many boring, disappointing management books I’ve read over the years that fit the description. What I do know is that I don’t want to spend any more money or time on gobbledygook like this.
The Ridiculously Obvious
Over the years, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard smug, self-important consultants and coaches spout things like: “If your org doesn’t do what I say and/or you don’t get what you want, you should just leave“. Of course, like much of what they say is, it is literally true – you can indeed leave. However, here’s an interesting counterpoint:
“To say people have choice when they are in no position to make one is disingenuous.” – John Seddon
Consultants and coaches love to spout platitudes and self-evident truths couched in the fancy “new” language of the latest fad. Amazingly, stating the ridiculously obvious is what they get paid the big bux to do. To these high-horse riders, life for others is always much simpler than it really is. As outsiders looking in, they have what Nassim Taleb calls: “no skin in the game“. The only thing they have to concern themselves about is sucking up enough to the executives who run the show so that they can get hired back after their $2k/day gig is done. And saying the right things, no matter how impractical they are to implement, is the way they do it.
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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