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Feedback Insertion
Let’s say that you come up with a great product idea that is both wanted and needed by a large market (ka-ching!). Let’s also say that your product is non-trivial and it requires specialized expertise to produce it from raw inputs to its value-added end state. After mustering up enough courage and scrounging up enough money, you become an entrepreneur – whoo hoo! So, you design the system below, hire the expertise you need, and kick off the enterprise. Of course, you rightly put yourself in the controller position and serve as the system coordinator.
Uh, what’s missing from your design? Does the next picture below help? Still can figure it out?
Is feedback missing? Even though your customers need and want and buy your product, how do you know when/if your quality goes down hill and/or your customers want and need new features? Voila! You figure it out and design/install a feedback channel from your customers to you, and only you:
By responsively acting on customer inputs on your new feedback channel, you steer, guide, and direct your team back on track – until the complaints on the feedback channel start rising again. What’s wrong with your system now? Does the system augmentation below answer the question?
Because of increasing product complexity and your lack of in depth knowledge of it, (if you’re not an egomaniacal control freak,) you own up to the possibility that you could be misunderstanding and filtering out some customer feedback and you could be directing your team poorly. Accepting your humility, you set up a second feedback channel from your customers directly to your development team.
Now you’re back on track again – whoo hoo! But wait, something goes awry again and the customer complaint rate starts rising again. Since feedback solved your problems before, you set up additional feedback channels between yourself and your producer team and between your sub-teams:
Will this latest system enhancement work? Hell, I don’t know. Complexity begets complexity. Your increasingly complex system design might implode because of all the communication channels in the system and the fragmentation of contradictory messages that flow at high rates within the channels. If it doesn’t work, you could keep experimenting with changes to fine tune the system for stability and robustness.
The figure below shows yet another system enhancement possibility – the addition of another controller to ensure that the production sub teams receive coherent and filtered info from your customers. It may work, but it will fail if your second controller issues guidelines, advice, commands, and orders to your production team that contradict yours.
To solve your cross-management problem, you can setup a two way channel between yourself and your second controller to resolve contradictions and ambiguities:
So, what’s the point of this long and boring, multi-picture post? Geez, I don’t know. I wrote it on the fly, in a stream of consciousness with no pre-planned point in mind.
But wait, a possible answer to the question just popped into my head out of nowhere. The point of this post is to keep adapting and trying new things when your external environment keeps changing – which it always will. One thing is for sure: don’t design your operation like the very first picture in this post – open loop. Ensure that feedback channel(s) from your customers are in place and the information that flows on it (them) is acted upon to keep your product in synch with your customers.
Sheesh, I’m finally done!
Estimation Deflation
The best book I’ve read to date on the topic of software effort and schedule estimation is Steve McConnell‘s “Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art“. According to Mr. McConnell, two large influences on the amount of work required to develop a non-trivial piece of software are “size” and “kind“. Regardless of the units of measure (use cases, user stories, function points, Lines Of Code, etc), the greater the “size”, the greater the amount of work required to build the thang. Similarly, the harder “kinds” are associated with lower productivity than the simpler “kinds”.
In his book, McConnell provides the following handy, industry-data-backed, “kinds” vs “productivity” table that’s parameterized by “size” (in Lines Of Code (LOC)). Note that the “kinds” are sort of arbitrary and by no means an industry standard.
The Real-Time, 10K-100K LOC entry is circled because that’s the type and typical size of software that I specify/design/write. Note the huge 15-to-1 range of productivity for the type. Also note that the table contains large ranges of productivity for all the kind-size entries. Hint, hint: estimating is hard.
Ideally, for psuedo-accurate planning purposes, a software development org maintains its own table (see bogus example below) with real, measured numbers for the sizes of the CSCIs (Computer Software Configuration Items) that its DICs have created.
Of course, for a variety of cultural, competence, and social reasons, a lot of orgs don’t measure or maintain a custom productivity table. Thus, estimators are forced to pull numbers out of their arses and anyone’s productivity estimate is as bad anyone else’s. Everyone who wasn’t born yesterday knows that the pressure to use ridiculously high productivity numbers in work estimates pervades the ether in most orgs. Even when some FAI bucks the trend and withstands the looks and sound bites of disdain for conjuring up a work estimate that is perceived by the management chain as “too high”, the final estimates that show up on “approved” schedules are magically deflated to what is wanted by some clueless BM, SCOL, or CGH.
From Concrete & Objective To Abstract & Subjective
Most companies, because of a UCB-anchored perception of a lack of viable alternatives, institute a digitized, leveled job description policy. Typically, as the level of importance increases up the corpo chain of command, the skills and behaviors and performance required of a candidate transition from concrete and semi-measurably objective, to abstract and unmeasurably-subjective. Even in those rare cases where performance expectations of managers/directors/executives are specified as measurable, it either isn’t measured, or poor performance is well camouflaged in order to keep the high level dudes in their ka-ching penthouse. Thus, at some mysterious and unknown threshold on the curve below, behavior starts trumping merit as one moves upward.
From Consumer To Participant
As I’ve stated before, I love Clay Shirky. The guy is phenomenally perceptive and insightful in detecting subtle changes in global trends and patterns of behavior. In “Cognitive Surplus”, Mr. Shirky recounts the rut of one-way consumerism that most of us were in, and many of us are still in, until relatively recently. The figure below shows the “old days” model, which is still “these days” for a boatload of people – especially institutional SCOLs.
In the “old days” model, content was concocted by “professional” content concocters and spoon fed to us through the (yawn) standard one-way media outlets of TV, radio and newspaper. The media creators and the media communication infrastructure owners had full say over what we heard and saw through the limited, one way-media outlets. We were (and most still are) passive consumers sitting in our lazy boys and scarfing up the input provided to us.
With the advent of social networks, the situation has changed drastically. As the figure below illustrates, the “old days”, one- way system of forced feeding has been supplemented by a parallel, “new days”, two-way system in which you and I have the opportunity to participate and create. The meteoric rise of social networks has allowed previously shackled DORKs like you and me to actively create and share content while simultaneously allowing a much greater variety of choice over what we consume. Ain’t life grand?
Of course, the emergence of this brave new world has triggered great angst and fear in those old school power mongers who can’t or won’t morph with the times. As far as most corpricracies go, they’re still stuck in the mindset of “we’ll control the crap and we’ll control the distribution of the crap of what you see and hear. As you know, we’re better and smarter than you and your fellow amateurs, so it’s in your best interest if you forgo the opportunity to participate.”
Real-Time, Face-To-Face
Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. – Aristotle
Ain’t that the truth? You can’t relate to it because you keep your trap shut out of fear of reprisal, no? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Gracefully giving and (especially) receiving criticism in real-time, face-to-face is an art that I haven’t mastered. In those rare cases where I’m giving or receiving, either I’m meekly submissive or I blow a gasket; mostly the latter. Unlike when I’m blogging or e-mailing (a.k.a hiding behind the keyboard like a lot of engineers do), I’m too spontaneous to ponder, agonize over, and cunningly strategize over every word.
In corpricracies, criticism (real-time and face-to-face, or electronically) directed upward from the boys and girls down in the boiler room is verboten via one of the many rules written in invisible corpo ink, no? If not, then what purpose does the invention of anointed titles and structured CCH caste systems serve? What’s the purpose of the term “individual contributor” other than to divide and conquer? What’s the purpose of statements that start with “Effective immediately, management has decided…” other than to subtlely imply who’s allowed to criticize whom? How often do conquerees criticize conquerers, and when they miraculously do decide to profer some criticism, what’s the typical outcome? A subtle, unseen, but intensely felt top down psychological whuppin’?
On the bright side, at least civilization has “matured” from the time when the messenger who served up a pu pu platter was literally beheaded, no?
“The problem with any unwritten law is that you don’t know where to go to erase it.” – Glaser and Way
Priority List
In his brilliant and elegant essay, “Capitalism is Dead. Long Live Capitalism“, Gary Hamel laments about the deterioration of capitalism into those other bad, highly inequitable, anti-American “isms”. He says:
So why do fewer than four out of ten consumers in the developed world believe that large corporations make a “somewhat” or “generally” positive contribution to society? Why is it that only 19% of Americans tell pollsters they have “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of confidence in big business?
In Gary’s opinion, the reason is……
… the unwillingness of executives to confront the changing expectations of their stakeholders. In recent years, consumers and citizens have become increasingly disgruntled with the implicit contract that governs the rights and obligations of society’s most powerful economic actors—large corporations. To many, the bargain seems one-sided—it’s worked well for CEOs and shareholders, but not so well for everyone else.
This lead-in dovetails into the idea of a “CEO stakeholder priority list“. The UML class diagram below shows six types of corpo stakeholders. Of course, the six types were arbitrarily picked by me and there may be others on the same level of abstraction that you think are missing. Notice that the “earth” is a passive stakeholder that can’t directly and instantaneously exert pressure on the way corpricracies behave; unlike the other people-type stakeholders.
Now, check out some sample CEO stakeholder priority lists below. With 6 stakeholders types, the number of unique lists is quite a lot: 6! = 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 = 720. I just semi-randomly concocted these three specific sample lists so that I can continue babbling on while hoping that you’re still reading my drivel.
My own unscholarly opinion is that the vast majority of CEOs, their appointed-yes-men VP teams, and their hand picked boards of directors either consciously or unconsciously operate according to the blue list (or any other instance that prioritizes the “executives” stakeholder first). My opinion aligns with Mr. Hamel’s assertion that too many corpo captains are making decisions that materially favor themselves (first) and their shareholders while disproportionately harming the other stakeholder types.
But wait, hasn’t this always been the case with capitalism? If so, why has it suddenly become fashionable for dweebs like me to vilify corpricracies that operate in accordance with the blue list?
In closing, I feel the need to repeat the best quote in Hamel’s blarticle:
There are CEOs who still cling to the belief that a company is first and foremost an economic entity rather than a social one. – Gary Hamel
To those CEOs who still think that the word “social” equates to communism, get over it and move into this century.
The DORK Is Born
Unlike upstanding citizens, I’m both internally and externally verbally weird. For example, I think that when a proven, in-the-trenches, problem-solving, core worker jumps ship to another org it often hurts a corpricracy more than when a BM, CCRAT, BUTT, CGH or other non-DORK leaves. Because of anointed (not necessarily earned) positional power, non-DORK managerial workers are given the opportunity to positively influence an org’s social and economic performance. However, as all of us know, not all managers exert any positive influence at all. Au contraire, the really “bad ones” just flit from meeting to meeting conjuring up innovative procedural and financial obstacles to getting work done while simultaneously collecting super-sized paychecks. Who says managers aren’t innovative?
Because of this so-called distorted (and “bad”?) attitude, it makes me laugh when I hear of frantic counter offers being made when non-DORK managers leave, while nary a whisper is uttered when a highly productive, problem solving DORK rides off into the sunset. I laugh even more heartily when a non-DORK SCOL is presented with a going away cake or even better; an org-financed buh-bye party. Why laugh? Because the alternatives are much less palatable.
Breaking News: One of the byproducts of writing this stupidly RUU blarticle was the emergence of the “DORK” acronym from the bad-person corner of my psyche. I’m giddy with excitement cuz now I can interchange usage of the venerable “DIC” acronym with “DORK” in my future ramblings. Whoo Hoo, a landmark event!
Assimilated And Digested
This is another one of my dorky pictures that doesn’t contain any accompanying words of explanation. “I’m a little verklempt, so talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: Acquisition” – Linda Richman.
Thanx for the link dB!
Tribal Leadership
In “Tribal Leadership” (the audio version of the book is downloadable for free here), the authors summarize the results of their ten-year, 24,000 person research. Their tag line is: “Birds flock, fish school, and people tribe“. As a result of their experience, they’ve categorized organizational cultures into five “staged” types based on the general attitude of tribe participants.
The figure below and its accompanying annotations show my understanding of the TL authors’ message.
Notice that as one moves up the scale, the focus shifts from “me” to “we” and “all“. That’s why the authors assert that an epiphany is required to make the leap from stage 3 to stage 4. Successful people who are tired and frustrated at playing the dog-eat-dog game against other individuals at stage 3 shed their “it’s all about me” mindset and transform into sharers and effective catalysts for group advancement. Books and articles of techniques and tips for getting ahead, a multi-billion dollar industry targeted at the Donald Trump wannabes of the world, instantaneously become useless and irrelevant to stage 4 leaders. Those books and articles that concentrate on platitudes, community, and inspiration, formerly considered to be useless new age drivel, take on new meaning and serve as guidance for stage 4 leaders.
Reflecting on my behaviors and modus operandi over the years, I’m seemingly stuck in the isolationist world of stage 3 and impatiently waiting for the epiphany. How about you? Where are you, and are you at peace with your position?
Union Deterioration
It took me forever to concoct this dorky picture, so I’m not gonna try to ‘splain it with any accompanying words. Hopefully, you’ll understand my message. If you need clarification on my interpretation, please ask.
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