Client Requirements

Liked this quote:

"People are not interested what cannot be done so let them know what can and by when"

Agile Reality over Rhetoric

I recently read Scott Ambler's post on Agile Reality over Rhetoric and found the following three statements/techniques interesting and think it is fair to say I probably subscribe to them:

1. Simple designs are best BUT the architecture should be thought out early in the lifecycle
2. Delivery teams don’t need prescriptive process definitions BUT they do need some high-level guidance to help organize their work
3. IT professionals know what to do BUT they’re still not process experts

Storytelling as a Leadership Tool

"Analysis might excite the mind, but it hardly offers a route to the heart. And that's where we must go if we are to motivate people not only to take action but to do so with energy and enthusiasm."

Points need to be made in seconds not minutes to allow listeners the mental space to relate the story to their own situtations, to ask themselves questions and to provide answers.

Positive stories are often used to motivate people into action whereas negative stories help to share knowledge as people learn from mistakes. Stories which present solutions to technical problems are driven by a detailed explanation of the cause-and-effect relationship between an action and its consequence to relate why things happened as they did.

Stories help leaders to define their personality for their followers, boosting others' confidence in the leaders' integrity and providing some idea of how they might act in a given situation. The ability to tell the right story at the right time id emerging as an essential leadership skill.

A variety of narrative patterns are available for different aims:

• Sparking Action - a 'springboard' story enables listeners to visualise the transformation needed in their circumstances and then to act on that realisation
• Communicating Who You Are - to trust you, people have to know you: who you are, where you've come from, and why you hold the views you do
• Transmitting Values - a story to clearly establish limits on destructive behaviour ensures that the audience understands 'how things are done around here'
• Fostering Collaboration - 'Encourage Conversations' by generating a common narative around a group's concerns and goals, beginning with a story told by one member of the group
• Taming the Grapevine - harness the energy of the grapevine to defuse rumours by using a story to convince listeners that the gossip is either untrue or unreasonable
• Sharing Knowledge - communicating intellectual capital across an organisation and beyond typically occurs informally through the sharing of stories
• Leading People into the Future - a credible narrative can help take listeners from where they are now to where they need to be by making them comfortable with an image of the future

Source: Telling Tales by Steve Denning

How to Run a Meeting

As always an interesting post from Rands on How to Run a Meeting:

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/08/19/how_to_run_a_meeting.html

Some thoughts on refereeing, meeting culture and improvisation I hope to try out.

Peopleware - Part 2 - The Office Environment

"There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back."

Chapter 7: The Furniture Police

• "The people who control space and services...don't strive to understand complex issues like productivity...the reason for this is that they are not themselves doing the kind of work likely to suffer from a poor environment."
• "Almost without exception, the workspaces given to intellect workers are noisy, interruptible, unprivate and sterile."

Chapter 8: You never get anything done round here between 9 and 5

• "To be productive, people may come in early or stay late or even try to escape entirely, by staying at home for a day to get a critical piece of work done."
• "The amazing thing is not that it's so often impossible to work in the workplace, the amazing thing is that everyone knows it and nobody ever does anything about it."
• "Top performers space is quieter, more private, better protected from interruption, and there is more of it."

Chapter 9: Saving money on space

• "The environmental trend is toward less privacy, less dedicated space, and more noise. The obvious reason for this is cost."
• "Without warning open plan seating was upon us like a plague upon the land. The advocates of the new format produced not one shred of evidence that effectiveness would not be impaired."

Peopleware - Part 1 - Managing the Human Resource

Chapter 1: Somewhere today, a project is failing

• "The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature."
• "Most managers are willing to concede the idea that they've got more people worries than technical worries, but they seldom manage that way."

Chapter 2: Make a cheeseburger, sell a cheeseburger

• "Development is inherently different from production, but managers of development often allow their thinking to be shaped by a management philosophy derived entirely from a production environment."
• "The 'make a cheeseburger, sell a cheeseburger' mentality can be fatal in your development area. It can only server to damp your people's spirits and focus their attention away from the real problems at hand."
• "Encourage people to make some errors. Ask folks on occasion what dead-end roads they've been down recently."
• "You may be able to kick people to make them active, but not to make them creative, inventive and thoughtful."
• "The uniqueness of every worker is a continued annoyance to the manager who has blindly adopted a management style from the production world."
• "Catalysts - someone who can help a project to jell is worth two people who just do work."
• "If an excuse is needed for the lack of think time, the excuse is always time pressure as though there were ever work to be done without time pressure."

Chapter 3: Vienna waits for you

• "Productivity ought to mean achieving more in an hour, but too often it has come to mean extracting more for an hour of pay."
• "Although staff may be exposed to the message 'work longer and harder' while they're at the office, they're getting a very different message at home such as 'life is passing you by'."
• "Overtime for salaried workers is almost always followed by an equal period of compensatory 'undertime' while the workers catch up with their lives."
• "Workaholics will put in uncompensated overtime, working extravagant hours, though perhaps with declining effectiveness."

Chapter 4: Quality - If time persists

• "In the workplace, the major arouser of emotions is threatened self-esteem. Any steps you take to jeopardise the quality of the product is likely to set the emotions of staff against you."
• "The minimum that will satisfy them is more or less the best quality they have achieved in the past."
• "Allowing the standard of quality to be set by the buyer, rather than the builder, is what we call 'the flight from excellence'."

Chapter 5: Parkinson's Law revisited

• "Work expands to fill the time allocated to it. This almost certainly doesn't apply to your people."
• "The reasons that some people don't perform are lack of competence, lack of confidence, and lack of affiliation with others on the project and the project goals."
• "When leaning on someone is the only option, the manager is the last person to do the leaning, it works far better when the message comes from the team."
• "The systems analyst tends to be a better estimator than either the programmer or supervisor."
• "Projects on which the boss applies no schedule pressure whatsoever had the highest productivity of all."

Chapter 6: Laetrile

• "People who are desperate enough don't look very hard at the evidence."
• "Easy non-solutions are often more attractive than hard solutions."
• "Seven false hopes of software management."
• "Leaning on people is counter productive and installing the latest technological doodah won't help either, then what is the manager supposed to do? The managers function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to do work."

One Minute Manager

"People Who Feel Good About Themselves - Produce Good Results"

One Minute Goals

1. Agree on your goals.

2. See what good behavior looks like.

3. Write out each of your goals on a single sheet of paper using less than 250 words.

4. Read and re-read each goal, which requires only a minute or so each time you do it.

5. Take a minute every once in a while out of your day to look at your performance, and

6. See whether or not your behavior matches your goal.

"Help People Reach Their Full Potential - Catch Them Doing Something Right"

One Minute Praisings

1. Tell people up front that you are going to let them know how they are doing.

2. Praise people immediately.

3. Tell people what they did right—be specific.

4. Tell people how good you feel about what they did right, and how it helps the organization and the other people who work there.

5. Stop for a moment of silence to let them “feel” how good you feel.

6. Encourage them to do more of the same.

7. Shake hands or touch people in a way that makes it clear that you support their success in the organization.

"The Best Minute I Spend - Is The One I Invest In People"

One Minute Reprimands

1. Tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they are doing and in no uncertain terms.

the first half of the reprimand:

2. Reprimand people immediately.

3. Tell people what they did wrong—be specific.

4. Tell people how you feel about what they did wrong—and in no uncertain terms.

5. Stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them feel how you feel.

the second half of the reprimand:

6. Shake hands, or touch them in a way that lets them know you are honestly on their side.

7. Remind them how much you value them.

8. Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in this situation.

9. Realize that when the reprimand is over, it’s over.

"Everyone Is A Potential Winner - Some People Are Disguised As Losers - Don’t Let Their Appearances Fool You"

"Take A Minute: Look At Your Goals - Look At Your Performance - See If Your Behaviour Matches Your Goals"

"We Are Not Just Our Behaviour - We Are The Person Managing Our Behaviour"

"Goals Begin Behaviours - Consequences Maintain Behaviours"

Six Thinking Hats

The Six Thinking Hats is a thinking tool that provides a means for groups to think together more effectively, and a means to plan thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive way.

The premise of the method is that the brain thinks in distinct ways which can be identified, deliberately accessed and hence used for thinking about particular issues. These distinct states are identified as:

• Questions (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
• Emotions (Red) - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
• Bad points judgement (Black) - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
• Good points (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
• Creativity (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
• Thinking (Blue) - thinking about thinking

In ordinary, unstructured thinking this process is unfocussed; the thinker leaps from critical thinking to neutrality to optimism and so on without structure or strategy. The Six Thinking Hats process attempts to introduce parallel thinking.

Having identified the six states that can be accessed, distinct programs can be created, these are sequences of hats which encompass and structure the thinking process toward a distinct goal. For example:

• Initial Ideas - Blue, White, Green, Blue
• Choosing between alternatives - Blue, White, (Green), Yellow, Black, Red, Blue
• Identifying Solutions - Blue, White, Black, Green, Blue
• Quick Feedback - Blue, Black, Green, Blue
• Strategic Planning - Blue, Yellow, Black, White, Blue, Green, Blue
• Process Improvement - Blue, White, White (Other peoples views), Yellow, Black, Green, Red, Blue
• Solving Problems - Blue, White, Green, Red, Yellow, Black, Green, Blue
• Performance Review - Blue, Red, White, Yellow, Black, Green, Red, Blue

Micromanagement and the 5 Whys

Just enjoyed reading Joel Spolsky's latest Inc. column: When and How to Micromanage. He makes some interesting points at always:

"Micromanagement I was taught is a bad thing. Isn't today's modern leader supposed to hire brilliant people, give them a little direction, and just let them go to work?" ... "Yes, maybe. But here's my new theory: At the top of every company, there's at least one person who really cares and really wants the product and the customer experience to be great." ... "Below that person, there are layers of people, many of whom are equally dedicated and equally talented." ... "But at some point as you work your way through an organization, you find pockets of people who don't care that much. For them, it's a job. They just want to get through the day..."

Joel also references the 5 Whys question asking method for exploring the cause/effect relationships underlying a particular problem. This is something I hope to put into practice and try to get to the root cause of some of our business problems - all we need then is to solve those root causes!

Crisis Management

Another excellent thought from Rands...this time an interesting approach to Crisis Management:

See: A deliberate moment of consideration: A Deep Breath

What Makes a Manager?

• Poor Managers - create an illusion of productivity through busy-ness
• Average Managers - finish work, but not always the right work
• Great Managers - accomplish goals and develop people

A great manager should also make contact with people, learn what work people are doing, prioritise the work and develop people through feedback and coaching.

Source: Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management

Ladder of Inference

Initially developed by Chris Argyris, the Ladder of Inference, begins with Real Data & Experience. We then choose Selected Data & Experience that we Affix Meaning, develop Assumptions, come to Conclusions, and finally develop Beliefs from. Beliefs then form the basis of our Actions which create additional Real Data & Experience. People often have difficulty with this circle and our Beliefs influence the Selected Data & Experience to establish an internal reinforcing loop which short circuits reality.

Cybernetics

The interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems, predominantly when the system is involved in a closed signal loop with a circular causal relationship. In other words Cybernetics studies the flow of information round a system and the way in which that information is used by the system as a mean of controlling itself.

Management cybernetics is the field of cybernetics concerned with management and organisations first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s. It addresses the issues that every individual who wants to influence an organisation in any way must learn to resolve. This theory is not restricted to the actions of top managers. Every member of an organization and every person who to a greater or lesser extent communicates or interacts with it is involved in the considerations.

Total Quality Management

The organization wide management of quality. Management consists of planning, organizing, directing, control, and assurance. Total quality is called total because it consists of two qualities: quality of return to satisfy the needs of the shareholders, and quality of products.

Strategic Management

• The art, science and craft of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives. 
• The process of specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and programs.
• Seeks to coordinate and integrate the activities of the various functional areas of a business in order to achieve long-term organizational objectives. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives.
• The highest level of managerial activity. Strategies are typically planned, crafted or guided by the Chief Executive Officer, approved or authorized by the Board of directors, and then implemented under the supervision of the organization's top management team or senior executives. 
• Provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about "strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency".

Defensive Reasoning

As we grow up we develop a routine for dealing with different situations which we are able to retrieve when diagnosing a problem. This mental model includes our own actions and interpretation of the actions of others. When we face stressful situations the actions we think that we should use are rarely the ones that we do use.

Defensive Reasoning

Manager vs. Leader

I liked these succint comparative definitions of the two roles:

“Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done.”

“Leadership is about creating change that you believe in.”

See: Manager or Leader?

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory (Two Factor Theory)

Two Factor Theory distinguishes between:

• Motivators (e.g. challenging work, recognition, responsibility) which give positive satisfaction, arising from intrinsic conditions of the job itself, such as recognition, achievement, or personal growth
• Hygiene factors (e.g. status, job security, salary and fringe benefits) which do not give positive satisfaction, although dissatisfaction results from their absence. These are extrinsic to the work itself, and include aspects such as company policies, supervisory practices, or wages/salary
  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_factor_theory

Neuro-Linguistic Programming in Brief

What is NLP?

• learning how to think and communicate more effectively

The Pillars of NLP

• Rapport - building a relationship with others and yourself
• Sensory Awareness - paying attention with all the senses you have
• Outcome Thinking - thinking about the outcome to make decisions and choices
  
• Behavioural Flexibility - doing things differently when it is not working

NLP Presuppositions

• People respond according to their map of the world (which may not make sense to you)
  
• There is no failure, only feedback (learn the lessons that have presented themselves)
  
• The meaning of the communication is the response it elicits (it depends upon how the message is received not how it was intended)
  
• If what you are doing is not working, do something different (its better to change tactics)
  
• You cannot not communicate (tonality and physiology does it for you)
• Individuals have all the resources they need to achieve their desired outcomes (we can all develop and grow)
• Every behaviour has a positive intent (even if it is non-productive behaviour for a secondary gain)
• People are much more than their behaviour (identity, values & beliefs, capabilities & skills, behaviour and environment)
• The mind and body are interlinked and affect each other (simple thoughts can affect the pressure your muscles can exert)
• Modelling successful performance leads to excellence (model someone taking what they do well and replicate it)
  

Conscious and Unconscious Mind

• The unconscious mind has power over the running of your body
• Need to learn your values e.g. what motivates you then you can take charge of your emotions and memories
• Fears can drive you in the wrong direction - you may consciously decide to achieve a goal but your unconscious lets you down - you need to understand how your unconscious mind works to bring it into sync with you conscious mind
• The unconscious mind cannot process negatives so it interprets 'I don't want to be tired' as 'I want to be tired', therefore goals should always be stated as positives
• The unconscious mind needs direction which can be found through relaxation, meditation and examining memories

Beliefs and Values

• Beliefs can empower you or limit the way you think which may hold you back
• Beliefs have certain qualities which consist of modalities (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic)
• Modalities can be fine tuned by changing their sub modalities (brightness, volume) which can help to change your belief system
• Values are why you do something, beliefs direct your behaviour to fulfill a value