What Is the Difference?
There is no doubt that there is a difference between “young people today” compared
to their older colleagues. “Young people seem to want everything right now! They
don’t seem to want to pay their dues or wait their turn.” “Why, when I was their
age I appreciated when I was given the opportunity to do something interesting.”
“Young people don’t seem to have any respect. They are on their computers or phones
texting in the middle of our staff meeting!!!”

You have heard all this before, right? You may have even said some of these same
words yourself. The interesting point is that when I entered the engineering workforce,
I remember the same words were said about me. I was impatient. I wanted more responsibility…now…not
later. I couldn’t understand these older people who just didn’t get it.

Has anything changed or have the previous generations merely forgotten what it was
like to be young and impatient? I think I got a glimpse into the answer to this
question. Some things have changed and some have not. But the question is, what
has changed and what has remained the same?

The AIAA / TMC Meeting
Several weeks ago I attended a weekend meeting of the AIAA / TCM (American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics / Technical Committee on Management) in the San
Francisco Bay Area. The topic of the meeting, besides conducting general committee
business, was to have a discussion and learning conversation with a group of Millennials.
The goal was too learn what Millennials want from their jobs. The event was called
“A Conversation with Millennials.”

In order to facilitate the learning and discovery process, the presenter, a TCM
member, structured a series of exercises. The first was to use a Pew Research Center
questionnaire to determine the correlation between a person’s age and their behaviors.
The purpose of the questionnaire is to determine if a person’s behaviors are closely
correlated to the behaviors of the general population of those of similar age. (The
questionnaire can be found online here if you would like to answer the questionnaire and learn your score.)

ASME Dinner

Last week I attended the annual awards dinner sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley Section of the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).   It was a great event and hats off to everyone who made it happen.

Dr. Robert J. Moffat Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University was the recipient of a special award and he said something during his acceptance speech that I thought was very interesting and highlighted, what for me, is the issue around engineers and their ability to contribute to their organizations long-term.

During his talk he told us about the process he used to decide what career path he would take.  He told us about his early career at General Motors and then his later education at Stanford University ultimately receiving his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.

Upon completion of his Ph.D. he began the process of packing up his office at Stanford in anticipation of returning to Michigan and General Motors when he was offered a teaching position at Stanford.  Now he had to make a decision; teach at Stanford or return to General Motors.

Deciding What To Do

He shared with us his initial difficulty in making this decision, even though the engineer in him thought the decision was a “no brainer”. The job at General Motors paid more, provided a professional personal secretary, pension, a plush office, and all the benefits expected for a high-level executive position at a large American corporation.

The other possibility was a teaching position at Stanford with significantly less pay, no personal professional secretary, smaller pension, no plush office, and the opportunity for Dr. Moffat to furnish his own office.

He then went on to share with us his “process” for making his decision.  He said (and I paraphrase as best I can from memory), “I thought; ‘This is an easy decision to make.  I’m an engineer.  I’ll just make a list of the pros and cons of each option and decide’”. Essentially, he was going to deal with the “data”.

Making A List and Checking It Twice

So he made his list. All markers pointed to Michigan. All data pointed to General Motors.

This is the perfect “engineers approach”, right? Data rules!  Data will tell you what you should do. But will data tell you what you “want” to do?  After making his lists and looking at them, anyone selecting a career based on “raw data” would have selected General Motors, and Professor Moffat said as much in his speech. But when he thought about what he “wanted” to do, he selected a teaching assignment at Stanford where he has been every since. He is now Professor Emeritus and said he has not regretted his decision for one moment. His heart, his emotions, told him that he wanted to stay at Stanford.  He made his decision not on “factual data” but on the “emotional non-data”. He made his decision on emotion. He made his decision not on the “left hemispheric processing” of his brain but on its “right hemispheric processing”.

Most engineers rely on data and often believe that decisions, especially decisions at work, should be driven by data. Decisions driven by data seem to be “no-brainers”. Yet few decisions are truly based on “data”. Many, if not most really important decisions, those with far reaching implications, require the application of judgment.  They require the application of emotion and subtle inter-personal evaluation. They require the understanding of the far-reaching implications of the consequences not just on “things” but on “people”, on “groups of people”, and on “group cultures”.   Many decisions in the world are often “colored”, “modified”, even wholly determined by factors other than data. Factors having to do with desires, emotions, and values.

This ability to move from the arena of “unambiguous and certain data” to the arena of “ambiguous and uncertain judgement” is a key step in the transition from engineer to leader.  The path from engineer to leader, from engineer to manager, even from engineer to team lead, requires the development of the non-data-driven component of our decision-making capabilities.  It requires the development of the right hemispheres of our brains, that portion which processes non-linearly and “feels” more than it “analyzes”. It requires our ability to be more than technical and for most of us the transition is like a new career.

Being More Than Technical

The engineers and engineering managers of the future, the engineers and engineering managers that will change the world, not just for the sake of change but change the world for the better, are and will be the engineers and managers that can, like Professor Moffat, access both their left and right brains. They are those who can deal with data AND the ambiguities and subtleties of the human condition. They can deal with data and with colleagues across the oceans and around the world.

Well done ASME.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Hello everyone,

I think that the “air-traffic-controllers-asleep” issue has some interesting lessons for us in the area of management. Here is what I mean.

One of the workshops I conduct includes a section devoted to the topic of “how to develop your team culture”. That is, what can a manager do to develop and propagate the culture that the manager wants to “install” into the organization?

Now for many managers the culture they think they have to support with their team is often the culture that is “given” to them by the larger organization they work in. So if the culture of the company is a “top-down” culture, many managers believe they have to buy into that environment, and to some extent they do.

On the other hand, if the culture of the organization is very entrepreneurial, then the managers may feel that an entrepreneurial culture is what they should propagate and support, and to some extent they do.

But there is room to maneuver and sometimes there is a lot of room. There is often room for a manager to put his or her personal “cultural and operational stamp” on the team, at least within certain limits given by the larger culture within which they exist.

As I teach in the workshop, it is extremely important for managers to understand all the subtle as well as overt “messages” they send to the team about what the manager expects and supports, as well as what he or she does not expect and will not support. The more a manager understands how to propagate organizational messages, the more freedom the manager will have to build the team he or she is comfortable with and proud of.

Lets return to the air traffic controllers. What was the culture, and more importantly, what were the subtle messages that were constantly sent to the controllers by management? Given that the culture is one in which the controllers have the lives of thousands of people in their hands, what were the unspoken messages sent by management that, I believe, pervaded the organization and led to the current fiasco?

Lets look at three facts as I’ve listed them here. These facts led to “operational messages” that, I believe, colored all other management messages.

Fact #1: At least 27 airports around the country were staffed during the swing shift with one person only.

Fact #2: Apparently, it is common practice that bathrooms for the controllers are located at least one flight of stairs below the control room where the controllers work.

Fact #3: Aircraft traffic during the swing shift is very low in many airports around the country.

Here are the Operational Messages. These are the subtle operational messages I believe these three facts “transmitted” to the controllers.

Subtle Operational Message #1: Unless you are supper human, you are expected to leave the control tower unattended when you go to the bathroom since you are the only controller there. We expect you to do this because management has not given you a colleague to cover for you when you take your break.

Subtle Operational Message #2: By the way, we have put the bathrooms, in the majority of cases, at least one flight of stairs below your control room. So we expect you to leave the monitors unattended not just for your stay at the bathroom, but we understand that you have to climb down and up a flight of stairs so don’t rush, it’s the swing shift and nobody is out there anyway. No big deal. If we really thought it was important for you to say at your monitor we would have, at the very least, placed the bathroom nearer the control room or, better yet, given you a colleague on your shift.

Subtle Operational Message #3: And this is the big message… it is easy to extrapolate that it is ok to leave your monitor unattended for a while whether you are in front of it or not!  The subtle, unspoken message is, “If I can leave my monitor unattended while I go to the bathroom since there are no airplanes to control, I can leave my monitor unattended while I take a nap since there are no airplanes to control.”

So while others are writing about how difficult it is to work swing shift, and I’m sure it is and I’m not volunteering, I think the responsibility for this whole mess rests with air-traffic-control management. More generally, as managers, we must understand that everything we do and don’t do sends a message, overt or subtle, regarding what we will and will not support and expect. More importantly, the ways our messages are “interpreted” are often not the ways we expect. They are “interpreted” by other people and those other people will interpret our messages and expectations in their own, unique ways. As managers, our job is not just to transmit our messages but ensure that they are received and interpreted the way we intend.

You have heard me say over and over, the responsibility for effective communication rests with the sender. Here is a real-world example of why that statement is so true. Air traffic control management sent the message in several powerful and subtle ways that it was ok to not be present.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Hello everyone,

I’m always amazed at how much people love the word “leader”. Everywhere I read (only a slight exaggeration) I find references to this person is a leader, that person is a leader, everyone is a leader. Leadership doesn’t even seem to be a function of experience. Someone right out of college can be a leader, but not many people seem to be willing to raise their hand and proclaim that they are a manager. They may be a manager by title, such as “middle manager” but its only because they are given that mantle not because they want to be called that.

I’ve had plenty of engineers and engineering managers who have told me that they want to be leaders not managers even though their title includes the word “manager” in it.

Well, I think I’ve finally cracked the code on this manager versus leader “thing”.

Both managers and leaders want to achieve the same thing… their common outcome is to “influence” other people to action; action that accomplishes what the manager or leader wants accomplished. So the real difference between them is in the “perceived method” by which they each accomplish this influence.

I believe that the general consensus (yet not clearly acknowledged) is that managers accomplish their influence through the exercise of “authority” and leaders accomplish their influence without the application of “authority”, or more positively through the inspirational motivation of those being influenced.

When I think about the people who have told me they did not want to be managers but rather wanted to be leaders I remember a tinge of… managers “tell people what to do” and leaders “get people to do something because the people want to do it themselves”.

Oh how complicated we make our lives.

In my workshop “Influencing Without Authority” I spend two days addressing just this issue and it all boils down to this; “once you understand how to influence people, once you understand how people are influenced, it becomes a sliding scale with influencing WITH authority at one end and influencing WITHOUT authority at the other end and an infinite number of points in between, regardless of your title or position. The truly effective manager and/or leader moves smoothly between these two extremes sometimes using authority to influence and sometimes not using authority at all. To me this is how to elegantly work with, manage, and lead others.

(I discuss this in more depth in eZine #43 which can be found in the eZine archive section under the FREE button of my website.

Be well,

Steven

“Just ride”

Hello everyone!

That’s right! Motorcycles should make you nervous.

I have always liked motorcycles although I’ve never owned one. I have ridden motorcycles belonging to my friends; mostly in college.

For me, riding a motorcycle has always been accompanied by a feeling of excitement and apprehension. I remember that first ride. I was a freshman in college and one of my fraternity brothers had a fairly new Harley Davidson. I swung my right leg over the seat, sat down as if the bike and me were one, grabbed the throttle and clutch, one in each hand, stepped on the gear shifter, and headed out of Dodge. Well not quite. But that is sure how it felt.

Riding through town I experienced a combination of excitement, apprehension, fear, and energy. All these emotions combined to produce a real high. A push-pull of excitement and subdued dread, with all that power under me, and we wore no helmets in those days.

Over the years I began to notice that there were many things I did that were without apprehension and nervousness but rather were filled with excitement. And, some things I did, like riding a motorcycle, were accompanied by apprehension, nervousness, as well as excitement. As time went on I began to focus on the things that were exciting and comfortable but without much, if any apprehension, fear, and nervousness. I began to focus on those activities that gave me more pleasure and excitement than apprehension. In fact, no apprehension was good. All excitement was better.

This did not just apply to my personal life but also to my professional life. And we all, or maybe most of us, tend to do this, right? We tend to do those things at work that bring us pleasure and are more comfortable to do. We do our best to avoid the things that bring us apprehension, nervousness, dislike, and even dread… like public speaking, for some.

Do you do these?

In fact, you probably have plenty of examples of this in your own professional life. Think about how you move through your work world. Whether you are an engineer or an engineering manager, my bet is that many of these apply to you. For example:

1. Do you opt for the conversations that are easy and comfortable and avoid the conversations that you think might develop into conflict?

2. Do you communicate easily with certain departments and avoid talking to the departments or people with whom you believe will make demands on you that you will not like?

3. Are you on time for meetings where you believe you will be heard and have a say and avoid meetings where you believe you will not be easily heard or you will not have much of a voice?

4. Do you quickly begin work on the challenging and interesting technical tasks and avoid the busy work that is part of your job but that you do not consider fun?

5. Do you eagerly produce graphs and charts of the data you have analyzed and avoid or procrastinate in delivering your weekly status reports to your manager or department heads?

6. Do you regularly contact those customers who you talk easily with and avoid contacting those customers you do not get along with well?

7. Do you easily contact customers or managers when you have “good” news and avoid the communication when you have to deliver “bad” news?

8. Do you easily give compliments to your colleagues or direct reports and avoid telling a direct report or a colleague that they need to “shape up”?

And the list goes on and on. You avoid those tasks and interactions that are not comfortable, not enjoyable, and yet are probably very important to your career advancement and/or your job.

Guilty as charged!

Whether you are an engineer/independent contributor or an engineering manager you are probably guilty of these actions. Guilty as charged! We all are. This is not just about you. It is about me, you, and every human on the planet. It seems to be part of our nature. We seem to be hard-wired this way. Almost everyone acts in these ways sometime in their professional life. The difference between the people who are successful and those who get stuck is something I am going to explain now.

When I first began my career as an engineer and scientist there were tasks I loved to do. These were the interesting tasks. These were the cool technical problems. I put off or avoided those tasks I did not like to do. I was a master at disappearing when I did not want to be involved in something that I did not find interesting. How many of you have that down to a science as well?

But soon I noticed that my behavior in this regard was not serving me. In fact, as time went on I began to notice that I was avoiding certain conversations, certain tasks, and/or processes and later these same situations would come back to bite me. The fact that I avoided them initially only prolonged the uncomfortable event. I was not “solving” the situation, I was only delaying it. Sound familiar?

I soon realized that like getting on the Harley, I was going to have to deal with a bunch of emotions, some comfortable and some uncomfortable and some down-right scary.

Was I normal?

But I had a question. Was that normal? Was that reasonable? Why couldn’t I do what I wanted to do and avoid the other stuff, the stuff I did not like to do? Back to the motorcycle for a moment; was it not possible, even expected, that after some time of riding I would no longer have the apprehension and fear of riding but just be left with the excitement?

It has been 30 years and it is still the same.

Then one day I was reading an article in a motorcycle magazine. The article was written by a long-time motorcycle enthusiast and well known rider. He had ridden motorcycles for over 30 years and in this article he told of how he felt the very first time he rode a motorcycle. He was a young boy. His father purchased a motorcycle for him and as he walked out to the garage for his first ride, his heart was pounding. He was nervous and excited at the same time and he had “butterflies” in his stomach. All reasonable for the first ride… right?

And he got on the bike and was thrilled.

Fast forward to this article and the author, 30 years later. He is describing walking out to his garage to take a ride on one of his current motorcycles. And he describes that as he is walking his heart is pounding; he is nervous and excited at the same time; and he has “butterflies” in his stomach. After all these years of riding, he still has the push-pull of excitement and nervousness and apprehension and butterflies!

After 30 years of riding, he still gets “butterflies” in his stomach as he approaches his bike. He still gets nervous and a little apprehensive as he puts on his helmet and sits straddling the bike.

Oh… that is how it works.

And then it hit me. “Wow, even after 30 years, he still gets nervous riding his motorcycle.” “After 30 years of riding, there is still some apprehension mixed with the excitement.”

So maybe the nervousness and apprehension do not have to go away. Maybe the difference between someone who rides for a while and someone who rides forever, is not that long-term riders figure out a way to get ride of the nervous apprehension… it is that the long-term riders figure out a way to feel it and ride anyway.

That is when I realized that in my work, real success does not come from doing those things that always make me feel good or comfortable; but rather, real success comes from feeling uncomfortable and doing what is necessary anyway.

That means that your long-term success as an engineer or engineering manager is not going to result from doing what you always like to do. It will come from doing what is necessary (legally, morally, and ethically) and dealing with whatever discomfort you might experience. Real long-term success will come from feeling that lack of interest; that lack of motivation; that apprehension; maybe that fear, and still doing what is needed to be effective. And in this economic and business environment, the successful engineer or engineering manager may not often be able to do what is comfortable or what they “like” to be doing. It is the difference between being “right” and doing what you want to do and being “effective” and doing what is most “useful” in the specific situation even if you are nervous or apprehensive about it.

Invariably, this is what I deal with many times when I do my coaching and mentoring of engineers or managers or executives. So often they reach a point where they have been successful doing what they like to do, what feels good, and all of sudden that is not enough. They are up against the anxiety and apprehension of doing something they have not done before or are not comfortable with and it is stopping them, It is the ability to get on the motorcycle and ride knowing that the “butterflies” will be there. It is knowing that, as a new engineering manager or an experienced engineering manager or as an engineer, this is part of what it means and part of what it takes to be successful.

Since this is such a common situation I have decided to make the solution much more available to many more people.

First week of September

The first week of September I am beginning a monthly on-line mentoring tele-program for engineers and engineering managers who want the solutions to successful, long-term careers. One of the topics I will discuss in the series is the solution to the situation I have defined above in this eZine. It is a program designed to provide you with what you need to advance your career. To continue to ride so you can be successful, long-term. That is, not just how to be successful in an environment where you can do what you like to do, but also in an environment that is asking you to learn how to move through the world in ways you were not taught before.

Why is this important to you?

Whether you have just entered the engineering workforce, or you have been an engineer for 10 years or more, or you are a manager who has been managing for a while, or you are an engineer who wants to become a manager, you can be guaranteed that sooner or later your organization will ask of you something that you have never done before. Something that makes you nervous, excited, apprehensive, maybe a little fearful, and gives you butterflies in your stomach. Long-term you will have to deal with the apprehension, the nervousness, the lack of comfort, the butterflies, and do what needs to be done.

In this monthly tele-mentoring call, I will be providing you with answers to how to get on that bike and keep riding! And yes, once in a while, I do get back on the bike, with the butterflies in my stomach and it is a great ride!

Keep a look out for more details in future eZines.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Emotions of Music versus Work

Hello everyone!

Recently I rented a DVD of Jethro Tull in concert live at Montreux, Switzerland in 2003.

For those of you who lived through the rock and roll era of the 1970s the name Jethro Tull probably brings back a flood of memories as it does for me.

While watching the DVD of Jethro Tull and hearing the music produced and performed by the band a whole flood of emotions came racing back.  Memories of what I was living through at the time I listened to the music the first time.  I still remember where I was the first time I heard Aqua Lung and Locomotive Breath.  I remember who I was at that time in my life.  I remember what I valued and what I thought was important.  I was a graduate student in geophysics at the University of Southern California, teaching, going to school, doing research; probably a typical graduate student in the mid 70s.

And as they say, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.  I am definitely not the same person, nor do I have the same values and beliefs.  Sure some remain but not all.  Yet, the emotions brought up by that music are strong and clear and pleasing as if I were back there on campus.

Jethro Tull or the Beatles

Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.  If it’s not Jethro Tull it may be the Beatles; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Credence Clearwater Revival; or Cream, just to name a few.  We acknowledge that these emotions are real, and in most cases, valued and even cherished.  We accept this flood of emotions because they do not seem to get in our way.  In fact, they seem to enhance our life, taking us back to a time we appreciate; even giving our current life some type of meaning and “juice”.  When we hear the music maybe we get a smile on our faces, maybe a spring in our step, maybe a racing of the heartbeat, a little more energy, a little more excitement for whatever we are doing just then.

The interesting thing is that most people accept these emotions and assume they are, in some fashion, exceptions in our everyday lives.  Actually, they are not.  We are generally influenced and even ruled by emotions of old just like those of our favorite songs.  Not just emotions tied to past music.  But most people are powerfully tied to emotions connected to their past experiences.  These old emotions often run us.  Most people don’t really choose how they behave.  They do not truly have choice in their lives.

Are You Really Logical?

Oh, I know.  As engineers, scientists, technical professionals, technical managers, and executives, you all think that your logical brain allows you to choose your behavior.  Those of us who traveled through the engineering curriculum … we are the logical ones on the planet.  We make our decisions through clear reason.  Well, I can guarantee you, you don’t.

I am constantly coaching engineers and technical managers and executives who are attempting to get to the next level of their careers and are stumbling over some block, some behavior that just isn’t working for them and they are not quite sure what is causing it.  The answer; in most cases, it is their old emotions; the old patterns that hold them back.  Old patterns that seem to be logically grounded.  But they are nothing but old patterns tied to the emotions of “old songs”.  Old ways of moving through the world.  Old ways of dealing with situations that worked at one time but don’t now.  Old bands, old concerts, old songs that no longer exist or no longer play well or sound so great in the present.

Old ideas, values, beliefs, and emotions that produce patterns of behavior that keep you from advancing your career in ways you would like.  Old emotions about leading and managing.  Old emotions about conflict avoidance.  Old emotions about whose ideas are more important, yours or the merging of the best ideas of the team.  Old ideas about how independently you want to work and old ideas about management oversight, whether you are a direct report or the manager.  And these old ideas may initiate behaviors in you that are more suited to your past than to your present.

The behaviors that keep your career from advancing may not be triggered by the music of Jethro Tull or the Beatles.  But they may indeed be triggered by present situations that resemble past circumstances.  They may be triggered by words spoken that remind you of words spoken years ago.  You may be aware of the triggers or you may not.  But the triggers are there none-the-less.

Waltz versus Rock-n-Roll

The first step in advancing your career as an engineer or manager, or moving into management for the first time, or influencing without having specific authority, is understanding what “old songs” are getting in your way and keeping you from making the adjustments that will make you successful going forward.  Just as the forms of music change over time, the idea that what got you where you are now will get you to where you want to go next is like believing that the waltz is the only music around.  The waltz is not rock-and-roll.  Music evolves. You must too.

Until you understand that you “run” most of the time on automatic, you’re stuck… in automatic.  Until you understand what “old songs” or “old programs” run you, you are stuck.  Only when you can go beyond those programs, only when you can start over with new programs of your choosing can you stop running on automatic and choose your actions.   Only then can you change your way of moving through the world so you can get unstuck and advance your career as you want to.

Advancing Your Engineering Career

It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the old music you liked in the past if you really want to… when you choose to.  It just means that you add new songs to your list and you are not always driven to choose Jethro Tull; The Beatles; Blood, Sweat, and Tears; or Cream as the only music to listen to.  Only at this point do you really have choice.  Only at this point and in this way do you really have the choice to “create the career you want”.  Even Santana evolves.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Hello everyone!

I know, everyone wants to be a leader. No one wants to be a manager… right? Management has no glory but leaders are the heroes.

I’ve heard it all before. Business magazines tout the virtues of leadership and praise the leaders and say little about the managers who toil at their craft.

I even coach clients who do not want to be managers but rather want to be leaders when there is no one to lead and nothing to lead them toward (if there were people to lead).

Leadership has a great connotation… and management… well management is for managers.

Those of you who have taken my classes and/or been mentored/coached by me know that I think most people have this leadership/management thing all backwards and upside down. Most people don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to management and leadership including that great leader AND manager Jack Welch. He mixes the words up when he ought to know better.

Much of the time in my classes and in my mentoring/coaching I give you clear examples of the differences between management and leadership by giving you my own experience and my own perception. I have looked for some time for a “worldly” example of the differences and alas I have found an example that you can all sink your teeth into and clearly get my drift. It has nothing to do with business, engineering, or technical management and leadership.

It’s a book about caves.

That’s right. It’s not a book on management and leadership exactly; remember they’ve got it all backwards. No, while this book is not specifically about leadership or management it is actually one of the best books out there on the subjects.

It’s a book about “supercave” exploring. The book is titled “Blind Descent” by James M. Tabor….. and it is a recently released.

Whether you are a spelunker or a supercave explorer (and they are very different), an engineer, a technical manager, a leader, a supervisor, a CIO, CTO, vice president, or CEO, this book is about leadership and management and is worth reading.

It is a true story. It is well documented, well written, interesting, factual, and recent. It’s about two major protagonists, Bill Stone, an American and Alexander Klimchouk, the Russian.

The Leader: Bill Stone

Bill Stone, by all accounts is a leader. Especially in the American “definition” of the word. By all that is praise-worthy in the US business world, Stone is a leader on a par with anyone in Silicon Valley and anyone in the best known American corporations. And he is a terrible manager.

And it shows in his processes and in his results. He and his team explore what just might be the deepest cave in the world, the vast Cheve Cave in southern Mexico, on a quest to be the first to find the deepest cave in the world. It is a race to find the officially documented deepest cave in the world… a race against other supercave explorers. And his leadership is unquestionably top notch but his management is not, and it leads to mutinies, desertions, and worse for his team. He doesn’t find the deepest cave in the world; but he doesn’t find the deepest cave in the world… his way.

The Executive: Alexander Klimchouk

On the other side of the globe, in Abkhazia in the south-eastern Republic of Georgia, north of the Black Sea is another cave, known as Krubera. Here the Russian Alexander Klimchouk and his team look for the deepest point in Krubera in the hope of claiming it as the deepest cave in the world… first. Klimchouk is both a good leader and a good manager, something I call an “executive”. Like clock work he shifts from leading to managing and back in a smooth process of finding the deepest point in the cave. His teams are energized, motivated, committed, safe, and successful.

The Executive versus the Leader versus the Manager

I believe that management and leadership are two sides of the same coin. A successful leader cannot be so without being a good manager and a good manager ultimately cannot prevail without being a leader.

The manager in you must be developed first, however. A manager can manage for a reasonably long time, in most situations, without being a leader, but a leader cannot successfully lead for very long without being a manager. That is, most situations in life that require management and leadership require more management than leadership. And many situations can do just fine with management and no leadership at all.

For example, in supercave exploration, much of what is required for success is logistics and planning and execution, all management functions. The leadership portion is necessary but minimal as in most projects, programs, or situations in life. To be sure, leadership is necessary, but it is not the sole parameter for success and it does not “live” by itself.

In my world, the term executive, whether the CEO or the manufacturing floor supervisor, means that regardless of your title, if you are accomplishing tasks through the application of people, then there are six functions that you must preform. They are called functions because all executives must perform them, but the tasks within each function vary depending upon your level in the organization; the functions apply to all regardless of your level in the organization.

The Six Functions of the Executive

The Six Functions of the Executive are as follows:

1. Create or Aim the Team at a Target

2. Create an Environment Where People Want to Participate

3. Secure Resources and Remove Obstacles

4. Manage the Interfaces

5. Get Results

6. Control Your Emotional State

As you read “Blind Decent” you will notice that Bill Stone and Alexander Klimchouk perform each of the functions of the executive to differing degrees of competence. In fact, I grade them as follows:

Bill Stone

1. Target……………………….Good

2. Environment……………….Poor

3. Resources/Obstacles……..Fair

4. Interfaces…………………..Poor

5. Results………………………Good

6. Emotional State……………Fair

Alexander Klimchouk

1. Target……………………….Good

2. Environment……………….Good

3. Resources/Obstacles……..Good

4. Interfaces…………………..Good

5. Results………………………Good

6. Emotional State……………Good

Whether you are a manager or a leader you must perform these six functions successfully. Whether you are the CEO or the floor supervisor determines which of these functions you emphasize and what tasks you perform in their achievement but they all must be “covered”.

Read this book and learn something you may not have known about supercave exploration, and notice the differences between Bill Stone and Alexander Klimchouk. The behaviors displayed by Klimchouk are what I teach regarding management and leadership. Management and leadership are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other and sometimes you want the coin to turn up “heads” and sometimes “tails”, but unlike a coin, successful executives do not leave it to chance.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Do you manage for the sprint, or the marathon?

Hello everyone!

Do you manage for the sprint?…or ….

Do you manage for the marathon?… or …

Do you manage for the race?

What is a sprint?

Imagine a Summer Olympics bicycle sprint race around a track. The racers are poised on their bikes. Their leg muscles are tense. Their hearts are pounding. Their muscles are ready to consume incredible amounts of energy and oxygen. Their heads are up and their eyes are looking forward. They are full of concentration, of tension. They are thinking about leading at the beginning, leading in the middle, and leading at the end.

The gun goes off and away they go.

They are full out until they cross the finish line. They have either won or lost and that’s the race.

Now consider the Tour de France.

The racers are poised at the starting line. Their legs are relaxed. Their heads are up and their eyes are looking forward. All their support personnel and vehicles are standing by. The racers are thinking about pacing themselves. They are thinking about the early part of the race as well as the middle and the end portions of the race.

The gun goes off. They begin the race. The support cars and motorcycles follow along. The support people communicate important information to the racers. The racers grab nourishing liquids along the route. They stop at various locations for rest and food.

This then is the “marathon” race. It goes on for days, even weeks.

How do most managers and leaders do their jobs?

Most managers and leaders do not know how to manage or lead for a race that is a combination of sprint and marathon. Who runs a race that is a combination of sprint and marathon, anyway?

Most managers and leaders I have met, worked with, or coached, tend to manage or lead… for the sprint. More rarely, I have found managers and leaders who manage and lead for the marathon. But seldom have I met managers and leaders who manage and lead “for the actual race”.

Most manage and lead as if their job is to put their direct report(s) on the bike, fire the starting gun, and sit back and watch the employee race, full out, around the track until they cross the finish line; until the task is done. They expect their job to be done after the starting gun goes off. If the direct report(s) fail it is “their fault”.

When you hear leaders talking about their job being to “inspire” you know they think their job is just to fire the starting gun. They think their job is to make the employee “excited” and “fired-up” to do the job and then they are supposed to get out of the way. Their goal is to let the race run it’s course. They sit back in order to let the employee feel “empowered”.

You should at least manage and lead for the marathon

The better managers and leaders manage and lead for the marathon. They not only inspire and excite their employees, they also work with, monitor, and help their employees succeed during the entire project. Like the pace cars in the Tour de France, like the people who provide nourishing drink to the racers, the marathon manager and leader is there to help and advise their direct reports along the way. Why is it that we assume that Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times still needs and deserves pace cars, nourishment, and advice along the route, while on the other hand, we think we should “empower” and “cut loose” our employees to do their work alone and on their own?

Ideally you should manage and lead for the sprint AND the marathon.

The best way to manage and lead is to manage and lead for the “race being run”. That is, it is important to understand that every task has both a sprint portion and a marathon portion and maybe several portions of each. The sprint portion can vary from an hour to a month and the marathon portion can vary from a month to several years.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

The difference that makes the difference

Hello everyone!

Last week I attended two very interesting and significant events.

In the morning I attended the commemoration of NASA Ames Research Center as an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Historical Site, honoring all the great work that has been accomplished at that world-renowned facility. Work in the areas of aeronautics, astronautics, computation, spacecraft and satellites, wind tunnel research, to name just a few of the technologies.

As the chair of the San Francisco Section of the AIAA, I was honored and pleased to have been invited to make a short presentation.

For those of you who don’t know much about the NASA Ames Research Center, it has been the pre-eminent NASA research facility on the west coast for many years.

NASA’s Ames Research Center has been in existence since the early 1940s and has been involved in wing deicing systems for early aircraft right through to modern-day spacecraft.

Ames was initially known for wind tunnel design and testing, flight testing, and supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics. The center conducted pioneering research in rotorcraft and vertical flight aircraft. Then expanded into spacecraft engineering, supercomputing and information technology, air traffic control, thermal protection for re-entry vehicles (the Apollo ablative shield was developed there), astrobiology and space life sciences, and Earth and planetary sciences. Ames led the development of simulators for human factors research, and has made major improvements to air traffic management.

Even with this great history, several years ago, there was some question as to whether NASA Ames would remain open or be closed. Budget cuts were placing in question the future of the facility.

It was clear that NASA Ames needed to adapt. To not only bring in more technology but to be more than technology. The world had changed. New relationships had to be developed. New ways of doing business. As I like to say it, “a new way of moving through the world”.

With a plan for keeping the best of technology and people, coupled with a plan for changing their relationship with the outside world, several years ago, NASA Ames was told that it would not be closed.

One of it first assignments was to build a new building.

The building plans began to develop along a typical path. The building envisioned was a 20th century building. It was just another building.

Enter new leadership and management in the latter part of 2008 regarding the building. One of the first orders of business was to scrap the “first” new building plan. Management then challenged the team to come up with a building that was a 21st century building, one that was completely sustainable. One that didn’t use more energy than it produced. One that used geothermal energy sources; recycled all it’s water; and used the environment to cool and heat the building. One that was a net-zero energy building. A building that was the most sustainable government building in the United States.

Apollo 11

When the astronauts of Apollo 11 landed on the moon Neil Armstrong named the landing area Tranquility Base. The new sustainable building has been named “Sustainability Base”. The ground-breaking event took place last week and when completed, this building will be the most energy efficient and most sustainable government building yet built. It will set the standard.

NASA Ames didn’t close; it didn’t lose it’s job. It kept it’s job.

NASA Ames not only didn’t have to close, but has become a reinvigorated organization that will set the standards for many sustainability technologies going forward.

A lot like people.

In a very significant way, NASA Ames is a lot like people. NASA Ames is a lot like engineers and technology managers and leaders.

We love our technology. When the world around us changes we think the best thing to do is to be “better” at our technology. But very often, the world wants something different from us. The world wanted something different from NASA Ames. The world didn’t want NASA Ames to abandon all of its technology. The world wanted it to add something it didn’t have to the technology it already had.

The same holds true for engineers and technical managers and leaders. Your organizations don’t want you to abandon your technology. They want you to add to it. And 99% of the time, what they want you to add is the ability to communicate effectively. They want you to be able to integrate yourself and your ideas into the ideas of the team.

They want you to be able to have a wide variety of conversations with a wide variety of constituents. Your communication skills, your management and leadership skills (which ultimately also boil down to communication) can be the determining factor as to whether you get laid off or keep your job.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

What is an Un-Conference and can it help?

Hello everyone!

The Un-Conference

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend an “un-conference” for freelancers. While I am not a freelancer, I thought it would be interesting to attend an un-conference and see how they work. For those of you who have not attended an “un-conference”, they work this way.

A group of people arrive at an event. (In this case we arrived between 8 AM and 9 AM.) The leader(s) introduced the day and the general, overarching topic for the day. In this case the un-conference topic was “Ideas to help people who freelance”. The event was titled “Freelance Bootcamp”.

The event leaders then passed around blank tablets of paper and people wrote a topic they were either interested in learning more about or a topic they believed they were qualified to teach others about, and they signed their name on the paper.

All these papers/topical ideas were gathered and the leader then read each topic out loud. Participants, by a show of hands, indicated their interest in that topic. If a topic had 10 or more interested people (out of 200+ participants), then it was selected as a topic. The originator of the topic indicated whether they wanted to teach the topic, moderate a discussion, or have someone else lead the session.

Each selected topic was scheduled for a duration of 1 hour. In a day lasting from approximately 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM with an a short lunch, about 5 hours can be devoted to sessions. If 8 separate locations/break-out rooms are allocated at the venue, then 40 different topical sessions can be presented. People can move around during a presentation period if they choose, but generally speaking, people will select a topic of interest and stay for the hour. We had 40 different session topics spread over 8 different locations. Therefore, a participant was able to attend and/or present 5 different sessions.

So there you have it. That is the structure of our un-conference.

The Un-Conference and the Internet

There was something about the un-conference that brought me back to the birth of the internet. Here is what I mean.

When the internet was gearing up to hit the big time, the general consensus was that the internet would allow people to share “expertise”. We would have access to “people who were experts” in specific disciplines and we would have more access to them than we had in the past because the internet would make that access easier.

Expertise would be much more available.

The Promise Not Realized

As most people have learned by now, the internet allows us to have more access to experts and also more access to mediocrity. And it is not always easy to tell the difference.

When searching the internet for expertise, it is up to the seeker to validate and verify the validity of the expert. People who really do not know what they are talking about can come across as an expert.

However, there are certain situations in which a person may not want expertise but the opinion of someone who is an average person with average competence on a subject.

For example in the case of restaurant reviews. We may not want the opinion of a professional food critic but rather that of an average patron.

The Un-Conference

Un-conferences function pretty much the same way.

Un-conferences allow us to have access to experts, if they are there, and also access to people who are not experts, and they will definitely be there.

Now I want to be clear. This was my first un-conference, so this is a sample of one. I want to compliment all the people who put it together. They worked very hard and they did a great job. By any account the un-conference was an overwhelming success.

However, and here is the caveat. It depends upon what one expects to get from an un-conference.

I could have taught many of the sessions that ultimately got selected. (Sorry if that sounds not-so-humble, but that is the way I see it.) Remember, I’ve been in this business for many years.

I decided not to facilitate any sessions except one. And I chose not to teach it but rather to facilitate it in order to bring out the level of expertise of the group members. My goal was to learn about un-conferences and the people in them.

The Expertise

The bottom line is that in this un-conference, the expertise rose to only a certain level. And there it stopped. And the expertise was at a relatively low level in comparison to what I was looking for.

So why am I bringing this out in my blog. Because there were two important take-aways from this event. I think they are generally self-evident, but they were definitely reinforced by attending this un-conference.

The first is that “expertise is really expertise”. You know it when you see it, hear it, and get it. You cannot expect people who are not experts in an area or are not experts in transmitting their knowledge to be able to teach others expert information.

For some people who were just starting out in the “freelance world”, probably much of the information they received was useful. It gave them a sense that they were not alone. It gave them an indication of some of the early hurdles that free-lancers face.

But those who had been in the business for a while, were not going to learn too much. They were more likely to run a session. But that did not necessarily guarantee that they were experts who could give “expert information” in an “expert way”.

Second, it is very difficult, bordering on impossible, to get anything really useful in 1 hour. People, especially the younger generations think that the world can be placed in bite-sized segments. “Just give me the nugget”. “The top 10 things….” And yet I met many people there who, it was clear, had been told the nuggets but had not implemented them.

The Conclusion

Un-conferences are good for networking and hearing what others are doing and not doing. This is important, especially if you are just starting out in a certain business, industry, or technology.

An un-conference will expose you to the first-level of information.

But “un-conferences” are not places for training, facilitation, and coaching. They are rarely places to find expertise that can be translated to others. They may not be places to find experts to tap later, either (remember this is a sample of one only).

They are great places where people can learn and hear what others are doing and find “contacts” that they can access, usually for a fee, at a later date to help them be more successful. These “contacts” may be experts or merely people who have been in the business longer which does not necessarily mean “expert”.

They are also places to find people who are just starting out in whatever endeavor they are undertaking.

My Next Step

I will definitely seek out another un-conference just to validate or refute my sample of one. And the next time I will facilitate more sessions. And I would urge anyone who wants to know what others are doing in a specific field to attend an un-conference. They can be fun. You probably will not find a high level of expertise there. But if it is, you will probably only get a taste of it and then you can exchange business cards and access it later.

The bottom line is, if you want high-level expertise seek out known experts.

Apologies to anyone at the un-conference I attended who might think I am dissing the un-conference. I am not. It was a good event, as far as it went. I believe it did the job it was intended to do. Not everything in life fulfills its purpose well. I am convinced that this Freelance Boot Camp un-conference did indeed fulfill its purpose well.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Hello everyone!

This week I was interviewed by Dice (the IT job portal) for an upcoming on-line resource they are preparing to assist young IT professionals in advancing their careers. I was asked what my three top suggestions were for IT professionals who wanted to advance their IT career. We ended the interview on the topic of what makes a good coach or mentor.

The interview got me thinking about how to select a really good mentor and/or coach, whether inside your organization or outside.

I know my own coaches and mentors were extremely instrumental in helping me with my career. So I thought I would share with you some of my thoughts on what are the important qualities to look for when selecting a mentor or coach.

“Mentoring and Coaching IS What You Think!!”

There is a lot of discussion about the importance of mentoring and of coaching for engineers regarding their careers. Many want mentors and coaches to tell them “what to do”. It seems our world is filled with people who want to know “what to do” in order to be successful.

As engineers and technical managers, we often believe that if we just know what to do, we can do it and we will therefore be successful. Knowing what to do seems to be the key.

And yet… the world is filled with people who know a great deal about what to do and yet things don’t change.

Here are some examples.

How many people want to change something in their lives? How many want to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, save money… the list is almost endless.

And for those who want to know what to do in order to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, or save money, there are more books and more courses than one can read or attend in a life-time (primarily because there are more and more coming onto the market every day.)

But gaining knowledge about “what to do” does not seem to change behavior in many situations. People read books and attend workshops and nothing seems to change. They diet endlessly. They exercise for a while then keep paying their gym memberships but never attend. They stop smoking and then start again. They save, paying themselves first, while running up their credit cards.

In the final analysis, it seems that changing behavior is not just about “knowing what to do”. There seems to be more than one variable to this equation.

How do we change behavior?

The question then is how do we change behavior and how do we move our behavior toward that of a successful long-term engineering career or toward successful engineering management?

What are the important characteristics in a mentor or coach? And how does this relate to your career?

The answer to these questions is embedded in the “way you think”, or more precisely, the way you and your coach or mentor think.

Another way to say it is that it is in your way of “being”. And let me be clear, the way you think and the way of being are not the same as attitude. Attitude is the by-product of the way you think and your way of being. So someone telling you to change your attitude is putting the cart before the horse.

Think of it this way

Your way of being … leads to and produces …

what you do … which leads to and produces …

what you have.

Summarized it becomes: Being –> Doing –> Having

Most people focus on having. They think they want to have, have, have.

Some, especially we engineers and technical managers, think that knowing what to do is the key. But alas, doing is not the key either.

So what’s up?

The first step in the process is the most important step. And that step is accessing a state of Being that will produce the doing. It is the state of being that drives what we will do and the doing, in turn, leads us to what we will have.

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 10, 2009 Ezine. And once you are there look for the heading: So What’s Up? to pick up where you left off.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“You are worth gold!”

Hello everyone!

Two or three weeks ago I received this comment to one of my blog postings that read, in part, as follows:

“My question is how do I get back to a position of manager vs IC? (Individual Contributor)

When new managers came into play – change happened and because I had the safety of a paycheck I became and now am an IC.

However I am unhappy and I would like a suggestion on how I can get back to a manager position (title not important) but leading people is. Because I let the paycheck manage my career I am now working for an organization that is all I and no WE.

Your assistance and coaching is appreciated.”

J

I truly understand everything J is asking and experiencing. So I’m going to answer his question(s).

“It’s Easy To Become A Technical Managers—Honest It Is!”

Over the last several weeks I’ve been writing in my Ezines and blogs that young people are restless and they often want the world much sooner than many would think they deserve.

Often when I coach young engineers I give them advice as well as some sense of how much patience they ought to exercise.

What I often don’t say quite this way, is: Becoming a technical manger is probably one of the easiest things to do.

Now notice I didn’t say becoming a successful technical manger is one of the easiest things to do. I said becoming one is.

You are rare indeed!

Finding an engineer who can successfully manage and lead people is very difficult. It’s a very difficult combination to find in one person. And therefore, most organizations are so eager to find someone who can, that they are constantly trying to entice engineers to make the transition.

Unfortunately, most organizations don’t understand what is needed for the successful transition, so they just grab someone who is a decent engineer and who “seems” to have some aptitude for management and presto, he or she is a manager, or sort of.

I recently was published in Mechanical Engineering, the flagship magazine of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The article was titled “The 5 Myths” and lists the five myths that many organizations use to justify the selection of engineers to be managers.

Often the selection and transition process fails because the myths are just that, myths and they are false.

Companies and organizations are constantly trying to fit engineers into the management role before they are ready, and this often leads to problems.

All of this leads to the situation in which we often find ourselves, and that is, good technical managers are difficult to find.

So what does this have to do with J?

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 2, 2009 Ezine

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Engineers Are Natural Leaders–Say What?”

Hello everyone!

I know this week’s blog may cause some controversy but I’ve got to put this out there because by being silent, I believe it’s only making the situation worse.

You see, recently I had dinner with a friend of mine. During the conversation he made a comment that nearly required that someone administer the Heimlich maneuver to me.

I was chewing on some delicious French bread when he said; “You know, a lot of people I work with think that engineers are natural leaders”. That’s when I nearly choked on my bread.

Fortunately I recovered quickly and asked, “You said what?”

He repeated his statement and this time, without food in my mouth, I laughed out loud.

Then I responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” He responded, “No, I’m not.”

“Engineers Are Natural Leaders…”

I’ll begin this discussion at the beginning. And as a beginning I will state that no one is a “natural leader”. No one is a “born leader”.

I listen, often with great frustration, to people who make proclamations about leadership. They might say that “so-and-so is just a born leader”. Or how someone “is a natural leader”. Or how “everyone can be a leader”.

Well, which is it? Are leaders born? Are they natural? Can everyone be a leader?

The bottom line is that most people who talk about leadership don’t understand the term or the concept and are merely repeating some old phrase that others have spoken. They often make statements like:

“Leaders inspire and managers perspire”… or…

“Leaders know what to do and managers know how to do it.”

Actually, these are generally useless phrases.

I wouldn’t mind in the least if someone wanted to tell me who was a born leader or a natural leader if they spent time up front defining leadership. But most don’t. They assume that everyone has the same definition and understanding of leadership.

And all I have to do is discuss leadership and leaders with these people for a while and I can quickly determine that we don’t all have the same definition of leadership.

My definition of leadership

Therefore, I’ll begin here with my definition of leadership… and it’s not a simple definition.

Leadership, in my book, is a multi-faceted term that has a complex definition. The definition of leadership has multiple parts (six to be exact) and if any part is missing it’s not leadership.

However, for this Ezine and this discussion, there are only two components of the definition that are necessary.

The first component is that leadership is about the relationship between the leader and the context. This may well be the most powerful component of leadership. The leader and the environment must be in a mutually supportive relationship. If the environment doesn’t “need” or “want” the leader, the leaders seems “out of touch with reality”. If the leader is exactly what the environment “needs”, the leaders seems to magically appear, as if out of thin air. They seem to be “born” for the job.

In reality, they’ve always had these traits and now the environment has shifted and their traits are perfectly matched to the occasion. (There are those situations where the leader can “morph” to match what the situation needs as well, and this kind of leader has become more common in the last 40 years or so.)

Therefore, what looks like “magic”, what looks like a leader born to the job of leadership, is actually an individual living their life, waiting in the wings, off stage, until the stage is set for them to step forth fully formed or nearly so.

As long as the environment is aligned with what the leader can provide, then the leader will flourish. However, when the environment shifts, the leader will often vanish or be significantly diminished in stature.

There are many examples of this “match-up”, and then a lack of it, throughout history. They include many military leaders, such as Napoleon, General George Patten, and many political leaders such as Boris Yeltsin, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush just after 9/11. We must wait to see how the leader-environment match-up plays out for President Barack Obama of the United States as well as President Nicolas Sarkosy of France. Both were elected in environments that were making a major transition.

This leader-environmental match-up is is exactly why successful “serial entrepreneurship” is so difficult to achieve.

How many times can a match-up occur between an entrepreneur and the environment? Apparently not very often. It is the rare entrepreneur, indeed, who can start-up several successful companies.

Only the leader who can morph to match the environment can be a leader in a variety of situations. General, and later president, Dwight Eisenhower is an example of a leader who was able to cross contextual boundaries. And Elon Musk is an example of a successful serial entrepreneur.

All one has to do is look out in the world and it becomes clear that there aren’t any born leaders or natural leaders. The phrase, “He (or she) is the leader of their time” is a truly accurate statement. Leadership is about the leader and their “time” being in alignment.

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s February 23, 2009 Ezine

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Young people and the manager”

Hello everyone!

Is it a bad rap?

Last week I wrote “The Young Are Restless” and I received a number of emails commenting on my evaluation of the situation. All were positive and in agreement with what I had written, and yet, there two sides to the story. In this blog I want to address the other side.

“Young People and The Manager”

Last week I told the young people, the young engineers, they had three choices.

They could either “suck it up” and deal with the fact that they are playing by the manager’s rules… or…

They could join a small company or start-up where the rules for advancement are not so structured…. or…

They could start their own company or be a contract employee and not be responsible (so much) to the organization.

But that’s only half the story.

The other half of the story concerns the role of the manager of the team in this equation.

No Pulled Punches

Management is about getting results with and through a variety of resources. Sometimes those resources include people.

Most managers tend to treat people like other resources… like money, or land, or equipment.

Most managers will modify the land to fit the need. Or they’ll get enough money or use the money to get what is desired. Or they’ll buy the right equipment to due a job or perhaps alter the equipment to do the job better or alter it to do a slightly different job.

Whatever the exact requirement, generally speaking, we often secure the right resource for the job and when we don’t need the resource any more we through it away. Or we get a resource that is close to what we need and then we modify it to fit the job.

Unfortunately, many managers treat people the same way. If the human equipment doesn’t do the job correctly, or doesn’t do the job the way the manager wants, many managers often blame the equipment and try to make the person fit the job.

“Oh, Bob is just not suited to this job. We’ll have to let him go and find someone who can do this job.”

or

“I was told to put Mary on my team and I gave her a job and she just can’t do it. I’m going to have to let her go; there’s nothing here she can do.”

Now I understand completely that sometimes people are not suited to the tasks we have available for them. And I also know that people can learn, which in a way, is like modifying a machine to do a different job than originally intended.

However, lets be clear, people learn and people are flexible.

“No, no you say. I’ve met people who were completely inflexible” and not willing to learn.

While I would agree that there are people who are inflexible, my experience tells me that people are much more desirous of being successful than of being stubborn. So the question I have for the manager who wants to blame his or her direct report for being stubborn is; “What have you, as the manager, done to amplify or diminish that stubbornness?”

Cut to the chase

9 times out of 10, the responsibility of the manger is to help the direct report be successful. IT IS NOT to make the direct report FIT the job, but rather to find a way to fit the job to the direct report so that the direct report can be successful.

Now I know… I can hear some managers complaining that my suggestion is unrealistic… and sometimes it is. Guess what? In those cases where my approach doesn’t fit, don’t use it. Do something different. Remember, I said 9 times out of 10.

So where am I going with this?

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s February 16, 2009 Ezine

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Young People Want Everything Now!”

Hello everyone!

Is it a bad rap?

I often hear managers and training departments in corporations complain about how young people don’t want to wait for their career advancement.

They want to get pay raises after 6 months. They want to be managers 1 year after graduating from college. They don’t want to work 5, 6, or 7 years in one position to earn the “right” to be promoted to the next career level.

This last weekend, in my class I heard it again. One young person said that after joining a company, they found that they were given more and more work, and working longer and longer hours. They were also doing the same work as others who were getting paid much more and who had been with the company many more years. When this person asked for a raise, the manager said “No”. The person subsequently left the company.

Another young person told me that even though they had not yet graduated from college (they would soon) and even though they had been an intern with a large company for several summers, they wanted to be a manager upon graduation. They didn’t want to wait the seemingly standard period before promotion to management…7 years as an engineer.

Equal pay for equal work.

For most of my career I have believed that equal pay should be given for equal work. Although, during my career, I was usually focused on equal pay for women who were doing work equivalent to that of men, my first response to young people who want equal pay for equal work has been to agree with the young people.

And yet, this weekend, when I heard my students talking about their perceptions, their expectations, and their experiences, while I initially responded that it was reasonable to expect equal pay for equal work, on the way home, what I had said just didn’t seem to sit well with me. Did I really believe that equal pay for equal work was always the correct yard-stick? My head said “yes”, but my gut said “no”. I felt that it was more complicated than that.

Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

You see, when the baby boomers began their careers, most of them began as “employees” of companies. They even expected to stay employees for most of their career. They expected to get health benefits, paid vacations, and even fixed benefit retirement plans. AND they expected to “work their way” up the organization.

You see, “in those days”, when an organization hired an employee there was an unwritten agreement that the company would do it’s best to keep the employee. That might mean that you might be moved around a little and that you’d do jobs you might not be perfect for, but in return, you’d do the work, you’d gain experience and that experience would actually come in handy over the long haul because you’d be even more flexible and capable of doing other jobs.

And then along came… technology.

The last generation to feel this way and to have this unspoken agreement with the company was the baby boomer generation.

With their children everything began to change. You see, technology began to put a lot of the “organization” into the hands of individuals. For baby boomers there were secretaries who wrote memos. For their children, they wrote their own memos. And so it went, on and on.

The upshot of this gigantic shift was that work became something that could be “packaged” into much smaller and smaller, quantifiable packets. With the emergence of the global economy this trend only accelerated.

At this point, equal pay for equal work took on a very new meaning. If I could pack my task into a tight, neat package, and define it well enough, I could send it to a variety of workers and now experience wouldn’t matter. The only question that mattered would be, “Can they do the job?”. Experience didn’t really matter. Knowing who was doing the work didn’t even matter.

It didn’t matter if the person doing the work was a 12-year-old kid working in her bedroom after her parents thought she was asleep. Experience just didn’t matter… only competence at doing the job at hand.

Thus emerged the profound and newly defined category of “contract worker”.

But not the contract worker of old. A contract worker who was told they could be “independent of the man” (i.e., the corporate boss).The flip side of course is that if you are not beholden to the corporation, then the corporation doesn’t owe the contract worker anything in return.

So where do we go from here?

Corporations and baby boomers and older employees (in general) still accept that companies hire “employees” and when you are an employee, experience matters.

The children of baby boomers and all those children right up to those born today, have been raised, without any of us or them realizing it, to believe that contract labor is the way all people are being judged.

Here comes the class!

So now we’ve got young people who have been raised on “only performance matters”. Experience doesn’t matter.

These young people are entering a “corporate” and business structure (in most, but not all, cases) where performance is only part of the equation of success.

Is it any wonder that we have a clash?

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine/Newsletter at: Steven’s February 9, 2009 Newsletter

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Buy-In, Once More With Feeling!”

Hello everyone!

Buy-in is everywhere… it’s everywhere!

Most of us involved in business, technical organizations, and teams think of buy-in as a common requirement for our success.

Buy-in isn’t just something that managers attempt to secure from their direct reports. Buy-in is a requirement for all human endeavors that require more than one person. Buy-in is the thread, the weave, that holds the fabric of human social structure together.

Every time you see an advertisement that seems to appeal to something inherent in your values, the advertiser is seeking your buy-in.

Every time a politician appeals to your values, beliefs, or needs, the politician is seeking your buy-in.

So how do we get buy-in?

My definition of buy-in is: Buy-in is the “overlap” of one person’s or group’s motivating beliefs and/or outcomes with those of another person or group.

That’s it. There must be an overlap between what the first person or group believes or wants to get with what another person or group believes or wants to get.

If there is sufficient overlap there is buy-in. Insufficient overlap… no buy-in.

And what about work?

Every day you go to work. What for?

If you’re an engineer, what’s your reason and how does it compare to what the company and/or your manager expresses.

Do you go to work for a paycheck?

Do you go to work to express your engineering creativity?

Do you go to work to creatively solve problems.

What do you do now?

Well you are certainly not at a loss of choices.

Choice #1: You could appeal to their desire to keep their job.

Choice #2: You could appeal to their desire to BE an engineer.

Choice #3: You could appeal to their desire to creatively solve problems, and this is certainly an opportunity to do that.

Choice #4: You could pay them extra for the extra effort needed to solve the issue and put the project back on schedule.

Choice #5: You could instill a competitive spirit by noting that if your product is delayed the competition will get to the market first.

Manager’s mistakes

Most managers make two major mistakes when it comes to getting buy-in at a time of crisis (it’s relatively easy to get buy-in when everything is going smoothly).

The first mistake is that they think that everyone is motivated by the same forces they are. That is, the manager thinks that what motivates the manager will motivate everyone else.

The second mistake is to think that one motivating force will motivate everyone equally.

The successful manager must be able to step into the team’s generalized map of the world. He or she must also be able to step into the individuated map of the world of many of the people on the team.

Ultimately everyone must be treated as an individual, because buy-in is from each individual, not from the group.

How to get buy-in one-on-one.

The easiest way to get buy-in is through what I call, “Conversational Management and Leadership”. It’s a process of seemingly casual conversation that elicits, from each individual, what their motivational drivers are.

The take-away!

The main message is that buy-in is not a mysterious process. There is no reason to consider it something that “others can do” but you can’t.

Buy-in is in our nature. The challenge is not getting buy-in, the challenge is understanding where the overlap exists between management and the direct reports. Once the overlap is found, buy-in is a natural outcome.

If you want to learn more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine/Newsletter at:

Steven’s February 2, 2009 Newsletter

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“When you know what to do”

Hello everyone!

The big question is…

I often get asked these questions: “Steven, how do you get buy-in from people?” or “In this difficult business environment, how do you get people to buy-in instead of worrying about other things that take them away from what they need to be accomplishing?” or “How do I get the team to give buy-in and have everyone pull in the same direction?”

It doesn’t much matter how you phrase the question… it usually boils down to “How to I get everyone to agree to contribute their best efforts to what I want them to be doing?”

The answer comes in 3 parts and Part 1 is…

If you read my Ezine/Newsletter of last week, you know that the first part of the answer to getting buy-in is to understand that no one does anything they don’t want to do.

So getting buy-in is not about getting people to buy-in because they feel that they have to do something they don’t want to do.

You get buy-in by getting people to do something they want to do. The goal is to get them to do what they want to do in such a way that it dovetails with what you want them to do as well.

Part 2 of the answer is…

If people are only going to do what they want to do, and if you want to align what they want to do with what you want them to do, it is important that you understand the motivation of your team members.

You can generalize to some extent but each person is motivated by something a little different and you have to understand this. And this is not rocket science, but it does take some special attention to detail. Here is and example of what I mean.

An example…

Several years ago I was working inside a printer company. Most manufacturers have a number they watch. The number is titled, “First Pass Yield”. When a product, in this case a printer, comes off the assembly line it’s tested to see if it will work “right out of the box”. The ratio of those that work to those that don’t is called the First Pass Yield.

Those printers that don’t work must to be repaired by hand with labor and maybe parts added to the original cost. If the first pass yield for a specific product falls to low, the product line will make no profit. If it falls even lower, the product line will actually lose money.

The particular printer company in this example had a certain printer line that had problems. The first pass yield was around 75%. This was definitely a loosing proposition. The cost of reworking 25% of the printers before they could be shipped guaranteed that this printer line was not profitable.

The CEO established a “Tiger Team” made up of a representative from each department. These included manufacturing, manufacturing engineering, procurement, quality assurance, receiving, test, and sustaining engineering.

This Tiger Team met every week and it had been doing so for 16 months. During that time, First Pass Yield remained stuck at 75%.

Finally the CEO asked me to join the Tiger Team and determine what if anything could be done.

I joined the team, and while I had authority because the CEO sent me into the meeting I didn’t use it.

At the first meeting I introduced myself and then I just listened as the meeting went on. I may have asked a question or two, but essentially I was a “fly on the wall” just observing and listening.

At the second meeting I told the team that I had some questions I’d like to ask, and I respectfully went around the table and asked each person what their responsibility was and what they thought the real issues were.

As I went around the room I listened for what answers were being given. Did they think it was someone else’s fault or responsibility? Did they think it was a poor design? Did they not have any idea? Did they think that the answer was right around the corner? Did they understand the fundamental problem(s), the fundamental forces involved with First Pass Yield?

By the time I went around the table, I had a relatively clear idea of who was “moving toward a higher first pass yield” and who as “moving away from a lower first pass yield”. I was also clear about who saw this as an opportunity and who saw this as a problem. And I saw who was “passing the buck” to someone else and who was willing to jump in and figure out a solution.

After I went around the table I then gave the meeting back to the quality assurance manager who had been leading the meetings and I went back into “observation” mode.

First Pass Yield is all about statistics…

Those of you in manufacturing know that First Pass Yield is all about the statistical reliability of individual components that make up the product. Since I used to teach statistics at the college level, I understood the implications of what was happening to the printer line.

By the third meeting is was clear to me that members of the team didn’t understand the issues around statistics and First Pass Yield. Therefore, in third meeting I took the lead and I told the team that the challenge was essentially one of statistical reliability of the printer components. I then gave them a mini-statistics course in 15 minutes.

This printer had only 5 independent components. Some coming from China. Some manufactured in the U.S. and all five of them assembled at the company’s manufacturing facility. All we had to do was increase the statistical reliability of each of those five components and we were home free.

Here comes the buy-in…

Now the challenge was to get buy-in from each of the Tiger Team members so they would focus on the component reliability that they were responsible for and stop pointing fingers and chasing ideas that didn’t matter.

Most of the team members were hungry for some sign of success after 16 months of 75% First Pass Yield. So when I gave direction, suggestions of what to do in order to adjust our test and reliability procedures, many of the team agreed.

There were certain people however, who really understood the relationship between statistical reliability and First Pass Yield. They got it intuitively. To these people I gave more work and more responsibility. I knew they could be trusted to understand the complexity of what we were doing and the inter-relationships between components. And they wanted the freedom to use their judgment. So I gave them more open-ended direction and suggestions.

To others, who didn’t get the subtleties of what we were doing so well, I gave very clear direction. They were not given such wide latitude to express their own judgment.

And with regard to the one person who was not going to give me buy-in, I removed him from the Tiger Team. It became clear this person was not going to move forward for the benefit of the team and the printer line and it was clear that his power and authority were more important to him than working as a team for the benefit of the product line. Therefore, within a matter of four weeks from the time I joined the team, I removed him from the team.

If you want to know how we did (we did very well) and you want to know what I did to get buy-in, you can get the rest of this story in my Ezine/Newsletter at:

Steven’s January 26, 2009 Newsletter

Be well,

Steven Cerri

The #1 leadership rule you need to know!”

Hello everyone!

If you were to pick one and only one leadership rule, I’ve put it in this blog. Everything else about leadership pales in comparison to this rule. I’ve devoted this blog and this week’s ezine/newsletter to just this topic.

We often hear the following definition of leadership:

“Leadership is the ability to get people to do what they don’t want to do”. Or some variation on that theme.

It’s wrong. Period.

That’s not the way human beings work.

Let’s get this really clear… it is impossible for a human being to do what they don’t want to do. We are not wired to do anything we don’t want to do. To act (or even to not act) requires “volition” which means it is impossible to do something that we don’t want to do.

Humans as coins.

Imagine that every human being is a coin. As we know, on one side of US coinage is a “head” or bust of a prominent historical figure and on the other side is something that is not a bust of someone and we call this a “tail”. If we use the analogy that human beings are like coins then each human being is motivated to move toward what they want (we can call this heads) or they are motivated to move away from what we don’t want (we can call this tails).

There is no in-between. We either move toward what we want or we move away from what we don’t want. Both are actions to do what we want to do. Neither one is a movement to do something we don’t want. Both are movements to do what we do want… either to gain or to avoid.

Leadership is NOT getting people to do something they don’t want to do.

Leadership is getting people to do something based on the possibility of an outcome or the fear of an outcome.

So which do you use?

Now here is the important point… there is a place for both motivations; moving towards and moving away from. In fact, there are certain people who prefer to be motivated by moving away from. They tend to be the people who believe their “glass is always half empty”.

So I’m not going to suggest that leaders ought never to motivate using a moving away from motivation. At times its useful. And there are people who will like it and respond to it.

However, I personally prefer to use a moving toward motivation strategy whenever possible. I have at times, used moving away from strategies in leadership, but rarely.

By far the most powerful, effective, inspiring, and successful forms of motivation are those that employ moving towards. This has been my experience.

So here is my final leadership rule now expanded into all its corollaries:

Leadership Rule. True great leadership is getting people to do something as a result of the excitement of achieving the possibility of an outcome or as a result of action prompted by avoiding the fear of an outcome.

Associated Corollaries

1. There is no such thing as “Leadership is getting people to do something they don’t want to do. It’s impossible for people to do what they don’t want to do.

2. People are in constant tug between moving toward and moving away from.

3. Great leaders know how to assess the best motivation strategy based on the individuals and the team psychology.

4. A combination of moving towards and moving away from can often be more effective than using any one mode.

5. Too much “moving away from” leadership tends to drain an individual or team of it’s energy and ultimately the team will disintegrate if too much moving away from strategy is employed.

6. The greatest creativity, possibility, and energy come from moving toward strategies.

If you have any comments please add them to the end of this blog. I’d be very interested in your ideas.

Have fun leading!

Be well,

Steven Cerri

P.S. If you want more information on this Rule visit this week’s newsletter where I go into much more detail about it. You can find it at: STCI January 19, 2009 Newsletter

“How do you recognize good management advice?”

Hello everyone!

“Who do you trust and what is the truth in management?”

This last week I was reading some of the blogs on the people skills necessary for successful management. One blog, in particular, caught my eye. It had to do with “behaviors” that are necessary for a good manager.

Some of the behaviors put forth by the author included things like these soft skills:

1. When you are managing, never show your emotions.

2. When you are managing, never raise your voice. Always have a calm voice. If you get frustrated you can scream into a pillow in your office.

3. Always have a smile on your face.

4. Walk around and talk to your direct reports. Ask them how they are doing and give them suggestions on how they can do their job better.

These were just a few of the “best practices” that this author put forward regarding how to behave if you want to be a good manager. The author had been a manager for five years and wanted to share what he had learned.

Fair enough.

What I find interesting is this; “How is a new manager who is reading this information, to use and apply these suggestions and to know which suggestions are true and which are false?”

But wait… the truth!

How do you know that the information put forth is accurate? Is there any way that you might know if 5 years as manager is enough to give authoritative knowledge? Is the equivalent of two years of engineering school enough to allow someone to sign off on the design of a bridge or analyze the orbital velocity requirements for rendezvous with the International Space Station?

Actually there is a way to know.

In our own personal experience we know what works for management and what doesn’t. In our own personal experience we have a sense of what good managers do and what bad managers do or don’t do.

And yet, many, many people choose to discount their own personal experience in order to follow the “leader”. They discount what they know in their gut to be true, because the “leader” says that something else is true, instead. And yet, we know it’s not.

So lets take some of those “gems” put forth on the blog post and see if they align with our personal experience.

When you are managing, never show your emotions.

My experience: Not true.

It’s not a question of showing emotions, its a question of what emotions you do show and the degree to which you do so. It’s not very useful to be a tyrant and yell at people and insult them in public. But it’s certainly useful to show compassion, and determination, and even sternness, and maybe levity, politeness, and at times frustration, disappointment, and even anger. It’s impossible to not show emotions. The key is to show the right ones and at the appropriate level. (I could write a book on this.)

When you are managing, never raise your voice. Always have a calm voice. If you get frustrated you can scream into a pillow in your office.

My experience: Half true, half not true.

Never raise your voice… well it depends. I have had direct reports with whom I would never raise my voice. And I’ve had direct reports with whom a good, hearty, give-and-take, with raised voices and even yelling was the only way to build the rapport and connection that the direct report (and I for that matter) wanted. To be always calm with this direct report would have actually adversely affected our professional relationship.

And the idea of always having a calm voice… come on. Have you ever been really upset and in need of help? So you called a customer service representative and the person at the other end of the line sounded as if they were as calm as could be. What was your response?

I know that my response has been to be annoyed with them. They were too calm. They didn’t understand that my situation was important.

Always being calm is nearly as bad as always yelling, almost.

And yes, if you are going to go off on someone… go scream into a pillow until you calm down.

Always have smile on your face.

My experience: Not true.

First, have you ever been around someone who always has a smile on their face? Have you ever thought to yourself, “What are they doing… always with a smile on their face. It can’t be real.” And often it’s not real.

No one wants to be around a doom and gloom person (except other doom and gloom people) but it’s important to be authentic and yet appropriate.

So rules like “always have a smile on your face” are just not useful. A better suggestion is to always be appropriate and effective in any given situation so that you and the team can achieve your/their desired outcome. (This is a topic for another book).

Now the important point about my comments is this; the suggestions put in the blog I read were a decent attempt to quantify behaviors that would make a manager a good manager.

However, management is not a simple process. It is not given to quick and simple rules. In engineering, F=ma. The laws of physics are clear, stable, repeatable. Unfortunately or fortunately, management doesn’t have similarly clear, stable, repeatable rules. The biggest rule in management is “it depends.” The best way to know if what someone is telling you is true, is to match it to your experience. And if you have no experience in a specific are, then take it “one-step-at-a-time”.

With respect to every suggested soft skill behavior I listed from the blog, we all have personal experiences that contradict what was suggested.

We all know of times when emotion displayed by our managers was just what we wanted to see, hear, and experience. Therefore, when to display what emotion is context dependent. It depends.

We all have experiences when we didn’t want our managers to display a smile. We want to be able to “read” our managers by hearing the tone of their voice. We don’t want them to be smiling when they are laying people off. Once again, it depends.

And, there are times when we certainly don’t want our managers to come around talking to us, looking over our shoulders and giving us suggestions about how we can do things better. There are times when we will welcome the advice and other times when we’ll probably consider it micromanagement. So once again it depends.

The bottom line is…

So the bottom line is this. Management, leadership, even contributing your maximum to your organization is not something you learn in five years of on-the-job training. (How long was the intense training your received for your engineering degree?)

It’s also not something you learn from a simple set of rules.

In basic terms…

Engineering is about knowledge; Management is about judgment.

Engineering is about rules; Management is about context.

Engineering is an application of knowledge in search of certainty; Management is the application of judgment in search of an outcome.

Very different worlds.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Do you really choose anything?”

Hello everyone!

As an engineer or engineering manager, how much of what you do is your choice?

As an engineer or engineering manager how much of what your colleagues do is their choice?

As an engineering manager, how much of the behavior of your direct reports is their choice?

Most people would answer that people are always choosing their behaviors. Right? How can it be any other way? We each choose our behaviors.

Well, as you are probably well aware, we have now entered the era of brain scanning and we can now answer these questions with data-supported statements; and it seems the answer to all three questions is an emphatic… NOT AS MUCH AS YOU MIGHT THINK!

In fact, not much at all.

Martin Lindstrom, a marketing expert, kept noticing contradictions between what people “said” they did and what they actually did when it came to making a buying choice. People told Martin they bought “Product X” for this or that reason but they also behaved in ways that seemed to refute their explanations. Martin wasn’t convinced.

So Martin embarked on a grand scientific study to determine, with real data, what was the truth.

Martin conducted a scientific research project to determine if our “buy decisions” have predictability and similarity to anything else we do, and if that predictability can be measured using the latest brain scan equipment. He wondered if our buy decisions really were structured as we explained or was there something else going on under our conscious awareness that was different from our explanations? The reason this question is so important in advertising is that much of advertising doesn’t work. So if it doesn’t work, why? And when it does work, why? (This research has important implications for management and leadership, as well.)

Martin got grants for millions of dollars, enlisted doctors and subjects, and employed two very sophisticated brain scanning systems, an fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and an SST (which is an advanced version of the electroencephalograph).

He was on a quest to determine the “honesty” of peoples’ buying explanations and the “real” mechanisms by which people decide to buy what they decide to buy.

What Martin found was that people haven’t a clue why they do things (and I’m not exaggerating his words). Whatever people “think” are their motivations, they’re usually wrong! They can’t explain their motives and therefore, they can’t explain their actions. The intellect doesn’t know, in most cases, a person’s true motives. To put it in the frame of art and literature, “The mind does not know the heart”.

It is for this reason that I don’t place much stock in books that purport to teach management by recounting the motives and actions of previously successful executives. When an executive or manager attempts to explain his or her motives for their actions, it’s always been my position, and now I even have Martin’s scientific data to back me up, that people don’t have a clue as to their true motivations. Books touting how certain managers or executives explain “why” they did something are therefore, often hollow at best and misleading at worst. Historically, people can tell us “what” they did. Seldom can they truly tell us “why” they did it.

Some people don’t need an fMRI or an SST to uncover why people do what they do. You’ve seen them. They’re the people who seem to lead naturally. They seem to have the ability to influence without trying.

What are they doing? How do they do it?

The key is that before there were fMRIs and SSTs, human beings had the ability to “read” other people so that significant and elegant influence was possible. It’s what I call “Effective Conversational Management and Leadership”. The fMRI and SST used by Martin are designed to access brain activities in real time. Similarly, Effective Conversational Management and Leadership is designed to manage and lead individuals and teams “in real time”.

The information necessary for effective management and leadership is in the moment, with the direct report, with the team. (This is also why I’m not a fan of personality tests and surveys.) There are ways to “read” and “understand” motives. It doesn’t take brain scans (although they can be very accurate and useful when scientific, reproducible data is desired); it takes an understanding of the human process. Great leaders know this. Great influences understand this.

If you’re interested in this topic you can check out the book. I highly recommend it. It’s titled: “buy-ology; Truth and Lies About Why We Buy”. And I would add, “Truth and Lies About Why We Do What We Do”. The book is written by Martin Lindstrom. Check it out. It’s a good read. (Click here to go to Amazon.com to purchase the book.)

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“What future pulls you to it?”

Happy New Year everyone!

In point of fact, we are pattern recognition machines. All we do is recognize for patterns. Here’s an example. The only reason you can read these words is because your eyes notice where the pattern of black (of each letter) begins and ends and where the pattern of white, your screen or paper begins and ends. It is at the boundaries of these patterns that experience exists. Were it not for our ability to notice for and recognize the beginning and ending of patterns, all of existence would be one field of white noise, (or black noise since there would be no distinction) and then actually there would be no awareness or more importantly, no knowing-ness of existence at all (and by that I mean self-reflection.)

So now that I’ve sufficiently convinced you that we are pattern recognition creatures, and we are very good at it, with all our senses, and our very survival and even existence depends on that ability, what patterns are you going to recognize as the new year unfolds?

Because patterns don’t just exist in what we see or hear, they also show up in the type of world view we construct in our minds and in our consciousness. And unless one is “in the moment” and therefore, takes the world as it “shows up” moment by moment, each of us creates and sustains a world view that allows us to navigate through life on a daily basis. By necessity we use our detected patterns to notice for what to include in our world view and what to not to include.

What patterns will you therefore notice in the world, going forward? What future will pull you into time going forward? What is it you expect the world to become the next moment, and the next?

Of course two major patterns that many people sort and filter for, and they go by various names, are: “good” versus “bad”; or “problem versus opportunity”; or “glass half empty versus glass half full”. Most people don’t realize that which pattern one takes into the brain, which pattern we actually go looking for… is a choice. And even the choices of what patterns we sort for and filter for, can themselves, be patterns that have developed over years. We can however, become aware of those “choice patterns”, and by being aware of our own patterns, choose something different.

Many people are very unaware that they consistently look for the things in the world to support their concept that their “glass is half empty”. It doesn’t matter to them that the person next to them may think that the “same glass” is half full. For them it’s half empty and they can identify all the things in the world to support that position. They look for and sort for the data and patterns that support the glass being half empty.

On the other hand, there are those who look at the world and sort for and locate patterns that support the position that the glass is half full. In most cases, it’s the “same world” that the “glass half empty” person lives in. The only difference is what each person notices.

You’ve heard the saying “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”. It’s the same thing. But being an engineer, I’m not willing to accept a flippant phrase. I want to understand how it “works”. (That’s one of my patterns.) My pattern is to look for supporting data. And the supporting data to the flippant phrase is this: The reason “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right” is a true statement is because we human beings perform certain functions as we take data through our senses and into our conscious and unconscious minds. We “distort”, “delete”, and “generalize” the incoming information. Therefore, if we have a tendency to look for evidence that the glass is half empty we will actually delete and distort and generalize the positive information we see, hear, and experience so that our ultimate experience supports a half-empty glass.

Conversely, if we have a tendency to look for evidence that the glass is half full we will actually delete and distort and generalize the negative information we see, hear, and experience so that our ultimate experience supports a half-full glass.

We always get what we want!… not necessarily what we ask for.

What will you be creating in 2009? More opportunity… around every corner? What opportunities will you take advantage of? What positive efforts will you make? Where will you look for help, a leg up, a supportive word? Who will you give a hand too? Will you walk so the wind is at your back? What future pulls you to it? What will you choose…. since we make it all up anyway….

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Context-Static questionnaires don’t work.”

Hello everyone!

I was teaching a management class at the University of California, Santa Barbara, this last Friday.

I was talking to the class about the way in which each of us is “programmed” to behave in certain ways.

I gave the students a questionnaire and one of the categories surveyed by the questionnaire had to do with being oriented toward “details” or toward “big picture”. Those people who prefer to focus on the “big picture” have a tendency to detest details and vice versa. Some people prefer a balance and some people prefer one extreme or the other.

In response to the questionnaire, some of the students displayed preferences for details or big picture, while others displayed a balance.

They got the very clear message that their preferences are real and strong. Students were acknowledging that they either had no real preference or they had strong preferences and they were able to give examples of how these preferences showed up in their lives.

As our discussion progressed, one of the students asked if the scores recorded by the questionnaire ever changed. Essentially, “Do they remain constant or do they change?”

Now here is the very interesting part. Once the students clearly understood that every human being has these “internal programs” that run, often outside of our conscious awareness, my answer to the question was that not only do the preferences change over time, they actually are different depending upon the situation; different depending upon the “context”.

I’ll take myself as an example. When I take my own questionnaire, the survey comes back indicating that I have a very high preference for “big picture” and I have a very low tolerance for details.

Don’t give me details! My eyes glaze over. I want to focus on the big picture. I’ll let someone else attend to the details…. That’s how I answered the questionnaire. And it’s TRUE….

Unless, I’m being creative. If I’m designing a rocket engine, or designing a new training, essentially doing something I consider to be very creative… then I’m all over the details.

So our internal programs actually shift depending upon the context.

Now not everyone has such a strong shift depending upon the context as I have. But most people will display some shift based on context.

This is why I don’t use Myers-Briggs, Disc, or Enneagram. They are context independent. They are great to convince people that people have programs, but then there are a lot of questionnaires that do that. The issue with most systems out there is that they set the internal programs in place assuming that the context is static.

We all know that the context shifts. We all know that situations change.

I’ve developed communication, influence, and leadership processes that allow for a real-time shift in the context, which is exactly what happens in real life. The communicator can actually determine what the context is that is “driving” the interaction and alter the messages so that they can take into account the internal programs of the people listening. It’s a real-time, context-sensitive, communication and leadership process that allows the communicator to adjust the communication process to match the context.

Now I know this sounds like a blatant marketing piece… sorry. But I don’t know how else to talk about what I consider to be a fundamental issue in human communication. And that is that people and the communication and leadership processes are dynamic. They are not static and if we are going to be highly effective in communication, management, and leadership we have to understand that we must engage with people in a real-time “dance”. A real-time give and take that takes attention and awareness and an understanding of all the levels of communication that are taking place simultaneously.

How else can effective communication, influence, and leadership be accomplished?

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“It takes more than exceptional work to get you there.”

Hello everyone!

I recently read another article in BusinessWeek. It was in their special issue called Business@Work, dated August 25-September 1, 2008.

I often use BusinessWeek as fodder for my blogs because it is filled with what I consider to be weak management information. It either presents articles that are naive regarding management or it contains research about management that is conducted by people who seem never to have managed a team.

So, as I was saying, I read an article titled “Good To Great Expectations”. It was a summary of the ideas put forth by Jim Collins in his books “Built to Last” and “Good to Great”.

Now, as indicated in the article, Jim has a good cadre of students doing the research for his books. I’m assuming they know what to look for in their executive interviews even though they haven’t managed anyone before. But that’s another matter.

That’s not what caught my eye. What caught my eye was a statement that is attributed to Jim.

The statement is, “If you produce exceptional work, your ability for influence is very high”.

Now that’s a pretty interesting statement. I guess the managers and executives who have sent me their direct reports to coach wouldn’t agree with Jim. Because, while I coach engineers as well as executives, much of the coaching work I do with engineers and technical professionals is because these people produce exceptional work and yet they can’t get along with their colleagues. They produce exceptional work and they are just about ready to be “shown the door”. In the worlds in which most of my technical clients live, both engineers and technical managers, exceptional work doesn’t automatically lead to increased influence.

It’s a mistake to believe that good work is all that is necessary to achieve influence.

Influence is made up of two components; content and context.

Content is the information. It’s what most people “believe” is necessary for success. Especially here in the United States. People think that content rules. Even Jim Collins seems to believe it.

But it doesn’t work that way. Influence also requires “context”. Context is the structure of the communication of that content, of that exceptional work, that allows influence to complete the process.

Just answer this question: Have you ever known or worked for a boss who didn’t know what he or she was doing and still they were the boss and had influence?

Probably everyone who is reading this blog has had someone like that they’ve known at some time. So that means that exceptional work is not what is necessary for influence. I know, sooner or later it catches up with them, but the point is that the statement equating exceptional work and influence just isn’t correct. Influence is not dependent only on “exceptional work”.

Influence is dependent on content, the exceptional work, and on context, the way in which the content and influence are structured. I am regularly called upon to coach really, really good engineers, scientists, and technical professionals who not only don’t have any influence, but they are slowly being moved out of the organization because they don’t know how to use their knowledge to influence the success of the organization. My job as their coach is to show them how to structure a context in which they can effectively deliver their content, their “exceptional work”, so they can influence and contribute to their organization.

In January of 2009, I’m going to present a workshop titled “Influencing Without Authority”. This will be a two-day workshop and it will answer the question, “How do you structure the context and the content so that you can influence others when you have no authority over them?” Stay tuned!

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Updating in real time.”

Hello everyone!

I received a comment from Dorothy McKinney regarding my last blog in which I didn’t say a lot of nice things about Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Enneagram, and other “systems” that purport to tell us who we are and how to manage others. (By the way, I really appreciate it when people make comments… I like the dialog and we all learn from each other.)

Dorothy’s comments centered on the usefulness of these systems to bring to our awareness the understanding that each of us does indeed have some programming that we can be aware of and that these systems can be useful in helping us to understand how others are different from ourselves.

She also indicated that when we are having some challenges with others we can refer back to these systems for guidance in what might work.

I agree completely with everything Dorothy posted in her comment. No disagreement there.

When I manage individuals or teams I always, or close to always, tell them never to bring me an issue, a question, or problem without having at least one, preferably two solutions that they think will work because if I don’t have a better solution, we’re going to use one of their solutions.

So what kind of facilitator would I be if I didn’t walk my talk? It is true that I complained about the short-comings of Myers-Briggs, DiSC, and Enneagram last week. But if I’m to walk my talk I had better have a better solution to present and that is what I’m doing this week. Dorothy’s comments are right on and she and I agree that while the systems I mentioned are useful they don’t provide prescriptive information. So here is the $64,000 question: “Is there a way to get prescriptive information?”

The answer is “yes”, and that is the solution I bring to the table. I want a system that allows me to adjust my management, leadership, influence, and communication processes in “real time”. For example, is there anyone reading this blog who would suspect that they might behave differently if they arrived at a company meeting having just had a flat tire on a freeway while it was pouring rain versus arriving at the meeting knowing they had just won a $20 million lottery? Of course. We all know from personal experience that context changes our processes. We all understand that context does make a difference.

Personality systems have a very difficult time taking into account context. And context changes in real time. One minute it’s this and the next minute it’s that.

These systems are also difficult to administer to your customers and to people who have no interest in taking a personality test.

Therefore, while these systems have benefits about which both Dorothy and I agree, they also have significant drawbacks. In response, I developed my own approach with the help of research that was conducted at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The system I use and teach allows a person to determine, in real time, the communication and influence processes preferred by the person or people receiving the communication or influence. It allows a person to determine the decision strategies of people being influenced. All this can be done in a conversational mode. No written tests or questionnaires are required and it’s done in real time. And by the way, all this in about 5 to 15 minutes; max!

This approach, this system has been proven out over 20 years. It works. It’s respectful. It’s accurate and effective.

The other approaches I’ve talked about are similar to taking a snapshot of a fast moving event, like a car race or a mountain bike run. The approach I use is like riding along in the race car or being right there on the handle bars as the mountain bike is running the course. Why have a snap shot when you can have the movie, while it’s being recorded.

People and situations are constantly shifting, constantly changing. Any system that forces people to be static will be accurate only part of the time.

An approach that can elegantly keep up with the twists and turns of human communication and influence processes is going to be much more accurate and effective.

On more point. Engineers are notorious for not wanting to hear the psychological jargon of personality tests and emotional processes. The approach I take is all about “processing information”, not personalities. I haven’t had one engineer ever feel uncomfortable learning about their communication processes or about understanding how to better communicate and influence colleagues and customers.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Forget generations X, Y, and Z.”

Hello everyone!

There is no doubt that we can put “groups” of people into certain “groups”.

The simplest group, of course, is Homo sapiens. We are all part of that group.

Then there are the groups of men and women. We can go further, such as male child, female child, female adult, male adult.

In business management these distinctions are less useful and even less acceptable than the Myers-Briggs categories, or the DiSC categories, or the Enneagram categories. Many people find Myers-Briggs, DiSC, and the Enneagram useful in providing a false sense of how people move through the world, how they want to be treated, and what management approach is best. They all work, to varying degrees, in varying situations. But then again, sometimes they don’t.

These “systems”, Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Enneagram, and others, are all attempts to allow the grouping categories to supersede thinking and to assist managers who don’t really know how to manage well, to feel they can manage. I’m not saying these systems are not useful for broad, general management decision-making. They are… just not for day-to-day management.

You see, if a manager knows that a direct report is a Myers-Briggs “INTJ” then the manager can treat the direct report in a certain way and abdicate their responsibility as a good manager.

For example, if the direct report is an INTJ and the manager treats him or her accordingly and the direct report doesn’t respond the way an INTJ is “supposed to”, or if the direct report responds in ways that are “in addition to” INTJ behaviors, it’s now the direct report’s fault. The manager is off the hook. “I thought you were a INTJ and you just didn’t respond like a good INTJ is supposed to”, is the managers position.

Of course the latest categories to hit the “management street” are represented by Gen-X, Gen-Y, and Gen-Z (I’ll stop there). These are all attempts by demographers and others to figure out “broad implications” of certain large populations. It makes perfect sense in the grand scheme of things. I’m all for it.

However, what do I do if I’ve got a team of ten people. Lets say five are baby boomers, two are of Gen-X and three are of Gen-Z. Now what do I do? How do I manage the team? Do I treat each “group” differently? Do I “expect” conflict between the groups?

If I use the current, generally accepted descriptive behavioral information provided for each group, I’m going to be in big trouble. Hence, why many managers have difficulty managing people in generations not their own. If you want to be successful managing teams across generations you must treat everyone as an individual, not tied to any specific generation. There is probably as much variation between people WITHIN generations as there is BETWEEN generations.

By treating each person based on his or her behavioral traits, the generational generalizations disappear. They vanish. And if you know how to manage people based on their behaviors, maps of the world, and focuses of attention, then cross-cultural, cross-generational, and cross-gender management becomes a much easier process.

My suggestion, if you are a manager, forget whether you have baby-boomers, Gen-X, Gen-Y, or Gen-Z on your team. Start treating them as individual people and your management process will be much easier and much more successful. I’ve done it. It works.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Working in today’s environment.”

Hello everyone!

I just read an article in the August 25-September 1, 2008 issue of BusinessWeek, that summarizes the next wave of work environments as follows:

1. People want more flexibility in their work processes.

2. People don’t want to come in to work as often to save gas.

3. People who think they are “leading edge” are saying that schedules and face-to-face work environments are no longer necessary. Work should be broken into “deliverable packages”. And work can be done anywhere.

I agree with numbers 1 and 2 above. But I’ll be laughing as people try to get number 3 into practice.

Here are my management tips.

Nearly every task a worker performs can and is broken down into a deliverable package. So breaking tasks into discreet units is nothing new. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve always managed my direct reports to deliverables. Nothing new there.

So what is new? What is the new paradigm for managers?

First: Whether the product is being delivered by an employee down the hall, or in a city down the road, or in a country half way around the world, the deliverable must be quantifiable; clearly, unambiguously quantifiable. That requires specifications and requirements defining the deliverable so that a Martian reviewing the delivered product against the requirements would be able to determine if it is indeed what was expected. This is a challenge for some managers, but not all. The mistake most managers make is that they don’t go far enough in defining expectations. My process is to define expectations so clearly, where possible, that, as I stated earlier, a Martian would be able to tell if the product is delivered.

Second, the process by which the deliverable will be developed ought to be discussed clearly. This is an assessment of the competence of the employee(s) doing the work. Most managers handle this pretty well because they often rely on the repeatable experience of the employee or employees who will be doing the work.

Finally, the monitoring of the process between the beginning of the task and the delivery of the product must be clearly understood by all parties. This is where much of the current management discussion is going on, and frankly, it seems to be conducted often, by people who haven’t managed many projects or many people. It all gets back to what I call “Contextual Definition©”, which means that different situations require different management approaches.

I have a client who is working with several contractors, most of whom are in the United States but a few are over seas. Current management theory would have us think that my client can just ask for what he wants, trust the contractors to deliver, and let them do the work and deliver the project.

He hired me precisely because this approach wasn’t working. It’s just ridiculous to think that because people can communicate from anywhere in the world, that management is just breaking the tasks into quantifiable pieces and waiting for their delivery.

What saved my client with his contractors was, are you ready for this, managing them! That’s right, he resorted to good old management. Regular meetings and contact, by phone, by email, by internet. Deadlines. Estimates. And requirements documents and rigid change processes. And real communication.

The real key to management in this day is not abandoning schedules and milestones. It’s knowing when to use which management approach in order to be effective. My process of Contextual Definition© leads to the use of eight different management styles. Each management style is best suited to a specific situation. How can it work any other way? One management style can’t fit every situation, especially in today’s environment.

So perhaps, if I’m dealing with a very creative task, one that doesn’t seem to bend to a schedule, I might suggest a very loose work process, such as; “Go to the beach for a week and come back with the answer. And the answer ought to look like ‘this’. Are you on board with that approach?” On the other hand, I’d hate to try to send a satellite into orbit without milestones and schedules.

To all the technical managers out there… my bet is that if you adopt the latest management theory 100%, you’ll adopt another within a short time, and none will prove to be the answer. The answer is that to be an effective manager in a wide variety of situations requires flexibility, across a broad spectrum. You want many tools in your tool box not just the latest.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“It’s not about morale.”

Hello everyone!

Are you ready for the next management fad?

One of my clients, for many years, has been a high technology company. One of the members of the training department (now retired) used to tell me that he was always on the look out for the latest management fad. His goal was to avoid them. He said he liked my work because it got results and it didn’t change with the wind like the latest fads did. I considered it a compliment but didn’t pay much attention to fads or to what anyone else was doing. My work got results and that was that. I didn’t follow the fads much and therefore, I didn’t think they were very common.

Well, I’ve now changed my mind. I’ve just run into the latest management fad. And it is truly a fad. Here it is.

I was reading BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine dated August/September 2008 when I came upon an article titled “That’s the Spirit! How to energize your team and why it matters”, by Eileen Gunn. (It’s not a very useful or enlightening magazine actually except it gives me ideas for my blog!)

In the article, Eileen writes about John Eldred, the co-founder of the Wharton School Family Business Program. John doesn’t think managers should worry about “employee morale”. He doesn’t even like the word, apparently. John says that “It’s arrogant to think that you can influence someone else’s morale.” He says that sort of mindset reflects misguided paternalism by employers, and outdated dependence on the part of employees.

Well, I’ve got news for John. He’s using semantics to market a new fad. Because anyone who has worked with and communicated with other people, or lead or been lead by other people, knows that, in a very real way, the people we interact with and work with have some level of impact on us. Call it influence, management, leadership, or heaven forbid, “morale” it’s what it is. To say that managers should not worry about employee morale is to say that managers should not believe they have any influence over their direct reports.

But John doesn’t want to make that statement. Instead he just wants to “package” employee morale under a new name so he can sell it as some new type of management approach.

So what does he suggest. Here is what he says; “Employers should be thinking about spirit, engagement, and energy. It’s appropriate and necessary for a company to want its employees to be inspired, engaged, and energized by their work. And it’s reasonable for employees to expect their work, their bosses, and their colleagues to help them reach that goal.”

“The question I like to ask,” says Eldred, “is: ‘How can you have a high-energy environment, so that when employees are down they can pull themselves up, instead of waiting for their employer to do it?”

Good question. But here are a few examples of John’s suggested processes actually applied to companies. The following examples are supposed to indicate an approach that is not about morale but rather about energy, engagement, and spirit.

Case One:

Sonoma Partners: A 35-person, $4 million consulting company in Chicago.

The challenge: Helping employees adapt to a lean, fast-paced, small-company culture.

John’s solution: A mentoring program.

My conclusion: Sounds like a morale booster to me.

Case Two:

Right90: A 30-person, $10 million software company in Foster City, CA

The challenge: Integrating new staff at a fast-growing company.

John’s solution: Small, routine social events suggested by employees and supported by Right90

My conclusion: Sounds like a morale booster to me.

Case Three:

Sprout Group: A ten-person, $2.5 million marketing company in Salt Lake City, UT

The challenge: Keeping employees motivated

John’s solution: Movie day

My conclusion: Sounds like a morale booster to me.

There are several other examples in the article but they all sound like morale boosters to me.

The point is that John’s approach is just semantics. Trainers and consultants are constantly trying to “re-package” their offerings because they are concerned they won’t look “cutting edge”.

If you are managing software or managing nano-technology or managing IT you must know something about software, or nano-technology, or IT. AND when you are managing people you must know something about people. While software, nano-technology, and IT change very rapidly, people don’t. Generation to generation they learn to cope with different environments, (think baby boomers versus gen-X). And yet generation to generation they still want to achieve, they still want to be unique, they still want to have an impact. There is no use substituting energy, engagement, and inspired for morale. It’s just a new gimmick.

Instead, let’s understand human motivational forces. Lets understand the people we lead and then they will be successful.

All you have to do to understand what I’m saying is look at the current presidential election process in the United States. If anyone is going to be at the cutting edge of understanding human motivation it’s the political organizations. What has changed in the political election processes of each party in the last 50 years? Nothing but the technology and the granularity of the information they gather regarding the electorate and the sophistication of the analysis of that data. The electorate is still motivated by their financial well-being; by their security, both at home an abroad; by a sense of independence; and by a sense of community. That’s it. Those four forces have been ruling the US political process for the last 50, maybe 100 years. All that’s changed is our ability to get information about those motivational forces.

So you managers or want to be managers, there’s no need to climb on to the latest management fad. Learn and keep learning the fundamentals of human interaction, the interpersonal people skills, and you’ll do just fine. In fact, you will excel.

John Wooden took the UCLA Bruins to 10 NCAA championships in 12 years. He focused on the fundamentals of basketball, over and over and over. You can focus on the fundamentals of human motivation over and over and over.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“If you do one thing… do this”

Hello everyone!

You’ve been hearing me say for some time that for the typical engineer, management is a new career. You’ve heard me say that the soft skills, the interpersonal people skills make all the difference in your success, long-term.

Well, last Wednesday I moderated a panel discussion at the monthly evening dinner meeting of the San Francisco chapter of the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics). We had three panelists. They were, Dorothy McKinney, a Chief Software Architect in Mission Success at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company; Jim Nobel, Global Communication Systems Chief Engineer also at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, and Paul Munninghoff, Executive Director for Export Compliance & Administration at Space Systems/Loral, Incorporated.

The title of the evening’s panel discussion was “What can you expect for your engineering career: engineering or management?”

We had a lively discussion and although we did our best to end the dinner meetings by 9:00 PM the audience kept the discussion going until past 9:30 PM.

The panel discussions covered a lot of topics relating to management and what is necessary to get from engineering to a long-term engineering career or from engineering to management.

Here are some of the most important highlights and conclusions from our three panelists. Some of the same concepts were stated in a variety of ways and so I’ve attempted to capture that flavor.

1. It is very difficult to remain an engineer throughout your career. While it may be possible in some circumstances, it is difficult. Your company and organization will ultimately request that you do more than your technical work. You may not necessarily be requested to be a full-time manager, but you will ultimately be requested to facilitate, integrate, and move beyond your technical work and acquire more people skills.

2. There is significant pressure to move into some form of task or people management as your career advances.

3. The critical successful factor, whether for engineers who want to manage or for engineers who want to stay engineers is the soft skills, the interpersonal people skills. Without the ability to communicate effectively and get along with people you will be at a significant disadvantage. Several times, all three panelists said something close to this: “Notice, that the thing that was missing in this situation that led to the engineer having difficulty was his or her inability to communicate and work effectively with others.” “Notice that the critical factor here was the ability to communicate and get along with others.”

4. Dorothy McKinney told of the decision to forgo completion of a Ph.D. in favor of completion of an MBA. The MBA provided her with some of the people skills that had a greater impact on her career advancement than she thought a Ph.D. would provide.

5. All the panelists believe it is important to pursue your passion whatever it is. Whatever it is that gets you up in the morning with a charge in your step must be pursued.

The bottom line is this. Do what you love to do. Whether it’s technology or management. It doesn’t matter as long as you are happy doing it. And make sure you add to it a good dose of interpersonal people skills.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

But what exactly will you learn?

Hello everyone!

For those of you who do not read my blogs regularly, this blog is a follow-on to last week’s blog. So if you haven’t read last week’s blog you might want to read last week’s and this week’s.

That said, here goes.

Last week I wrote about how we humans are very efficient learning machines. And I said that much of what we do in our adult life is a function of what we learned when we were children… the non-technical stuff I mean. Like how we treat others, what our concept and relationship is to authority, management, conflict, etc. These early learnings drive our movement through the world in our professional lives. These early concepts generate the structure that ultimately leads us to our professions.

So this week, I want to expand this concept a whole bunch! I want to talk about the implications of what I wrote last week on managers, how we train managers, and how we teach and train our engineers and scientists.

Let’s agree that we behave… toward each other in regards to conflict, creativity, change, uncertainty, authority, management oversight, people’s voices, being told what to do versus being asked what to do, and being appreciated, to name just a few categories, in ways that are greatly a reflection of what we learned during our “formative years”.

Then, some of us become engineers, scientists, technologists. Some of us look at the world and say, “I want to understand how it works and I want to create and predict how my creations will behave. I want to have some control over my world!” That’s great!

And, it is fair to say that, in the past, science and engineering produced advances that changed our world at a moderate pace.

However, scientists and engineers are now producing change through their discoveries and products at a break-neck pace. The world is getting smaller and smaller. And this process will only accelerate.

The implications of this rapid change are overwhelming for our societies. And the responsibilities for the impact of this change does not only rest on the shoulders of the politicians and social leaders, it should also rest on the shoulders of the men and women in technology.

In the past, most scientists and engineers could work free from political and social implications of their work until after they did the work. They produced the science and the engineering and it was the politicians and the social leaders and the military who decided to use it for ill or good. A scientist or engineer could do their work, release their work and then, when the world used it for whatever purposes, the engineer or scientists could effectively wash his or her hands of the applications. They only did the engineering and science. They only did the “pure” part of the work.

Those days are gone. Oh, to be sure, we’ve had our scientists and engineers who spoke up when their inventions or science were not used for wholly honorable purposes. But they were the exception.

We must now have engineers and scientists who can join in the discussion and debate with politicians, social leaders, and the general population regarding their work. They can’t just do the work, release the work and wash their hands. They must be citizens of the world they help to create. But not just typical citizens. The engineers and scientists of the world are much more listened to than average people and perhaps more so than politicians.

We must have engineers and scientists who are “techno-social” members. They must be able to think about the social and political implications of their work. And they must be able to articulate their work and the implications of their work to and on the greater social, political, and ecological arena. They must have a heightened interest in their fellow humans and in the social structures they help to create.

The days of working in the lab or in the dark or free from social-political-environmental considerations are gone.

I often hear young engineers and young managers tell me that they joined this company or that company because, “I wanted to change the world”. I would suggest they change their wording. Their phrase has no “value” in it. Change for better or worse? They apparently don’t care. They just want to create change.

The phrase ought to be, “I wanted to create a better world”. Now at least we can begin a discussion of what “better” means and how we would recognize it.

So how do we train our engineers, scientists, and engineering managers to move in this direction? What should be the fundamental underpinnings of their education, in addition to their engineering and science courses?

They must have courses in the following disciplines:

1. Communication. Not the typical theoretical communication courses that give a survey of different ways of communicating. But communication processes tied to neurological understanding of how all people communicate. Our future engineers and scientists and technical managers must be comfortable communicating across social, political, and religious divides. We must begin early to train our young engineers, scientists, and managers in successful ways to communicate with a wide variety of people in a wide variety of situations.

2. Management flexibility. The days of managing with one management style, or at most two styles are gone. With outsourcing, immigration, teams dispersed all over the globe, and teams made up of people of different cultures, educational backgrounds, and values and beliefs, managers must be able to manage and lead a wide variety of people in a wide variety of situations. We must train our young engineers, scientists and managers in successful ways to manage early in their educational process and early in their careers.

3. Implications of membership in the Human Community. Until recently, many engineers became engineers because they didn’t want to necessarily spend a lot of time with other humans, or at least time with humans who were not similar to them. Those days too are gone. We must begin to train our engineers and scientists what it means to be a member of the human community. Companies will demand more and more positive social interaction and we do a great disservice to our young people by not throwing them in the social river earlier rather than later. We must train our young engineers and scientists in successful ways to effect the social directions of their work and to be willing to enter a discussion/debate of the implications of their work.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

But what exactly have you learned?

Hello everyone!

This weekend gave me pause.

I once again realized how unique we human beings really are. We are just incredible learning machines. We absorb and learn like sponges. We live in this ocean of information, of patterns, of data, or chaos, and we absorb and work very diligently to deduce and hallucinate patterns. We find patterns everywhere.

And rest assured, learning requires patterns. No patterns equals white noise. White noise is no useful information. So our job, our nature is to cancel out the white noise in existence and find patterns. And once we find patterns we prioritize those patterns in terms of what is most useful to us.

We are “pattern identifiers extraordinare” and we should applaud ourselves. Our evolution, our genetic structure gives rise to an extraordinary pattern recognition machine, us!

It’s what led Newton to his three laws… patterns.

It’s what led Einstein to relativity… patterns.

It’s what led Heisenberg to his uncertainty principle… a pattern in the contradiction of patterns.

It’s what allowed us to evolve tools… patterns of successful hunting, building and social interaction, including war.

We are, bar none, the most efficient and effective, pattern recognition machine on this planet.

Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? Sounds like we ought to pat ourselves on our collective backs.

Well, not so fast.

In some respects it is our greatest strength. And in other ways it is our greatest weakness.

As the creator of the Matrix told Neo in the last film of the Matrix movie series… “It is at once your greatest strength and simultaneously your greatest weakness.”

This might be the perfect place for you to ask, “What the heck is Steven talking about?”

Well, let me explain.

We all know that pattern recognition is one of our strengths. Great. Applause please!

The weakness, if we can call it that, is that at a certain point in our life, that ability to learn and absorb is extremely critical, but we don’t have any “discernment”. In other words, we can’t distinguish what we learn as good or bad for us.

And what I’m talking about is your childhood. My childhood. The childhood of everyone.

Up until very, very recently, it was not a big deal. It was very important for children to learn, learn well, and learn quickly everything their parents could teach them. Because it meant survival. People didn’t get around much… think before airplanes. Parents had to raise their children to survive. To succeed. And to do so within the close proximity of where the parents, families, and the children lived.

Each son learned the profession of his father. Each daughter learned what to do as a woman from the mother. That was it. Nobody ventured much. If they did they were adventurers, conquers, etc. For the multitude of people, sticking close to home was it. Grow up like for father, grow up like your mother and you were successful and happy, whatever that meant in those times.

So learning everything you needed to know from your parents was good enough. The world changed slowly. Evolution only applied pressure on the fringes.

And then the world changed. The renaissance arrived. The industrial revolution came about. Flight became a reality. Medicine changed our world. Democracy changed how we saw ourselves in that world! Heaven forbid. People living together outside of marriage. Children being conceived just because one person wants to have a child. Goods and services being exchanged around the world. Traveling faster than the speed of sound. Living in outer space. Cell phones. Hip hop.

Soon it became clear that the following statement was true: “There is no way parents can prepare their children for the world the children will live in because the world the children will live in will be so different from the world in which the parents grew up that the teaching of the parents will no longer apply.” But old habits, old genetic codes, are hard to break.

So here’s the deal. Those of us living now were raised by parents who could not conceive of the world in which we now live. They attempted to teach us, since we are all such good sponges. But what they taught us, to a large extent, was good for them. Probably not so good for us. But we still learned it. And now the question is, is what they taught you still good for you?

Here is an example.

Think about your concept of authority. How do you respond to authority figures? Policemen? Your boss? The President of the United States? A government official? Are these your own responses or are they the responses you were taught by your parents? Or by others in your life who had a great influence on you when you were young? Can you even answer those questions? Can you even tell the difference between what you were given in your youth and how you could behave now?

Odds are, your responses are not your own… they are the responses of your parents. The best way to say it is that your responses to authority are those that were given to you when your were growing up, very young. And you are still using them now.

They influence how your respond at work. They influence how your respond to your boss. They influence how you manage other people. They influence how you deal with people across the oceans. It’s all driven by what you learned, as a great sponge, when you were a child. Are those patterns you learned way back then still serving you… or not.

Is it time to change? Is it time to be different? Is what your parents and others taught you long ago, still applicable now, or does it all need to be updated? Where you prepared to live and function in “their world” or the world in which you find yourself now.

We are very efficient learning machines. Perhaps too efficient. If you could learn just what you needed to make you successful now, what would that look like? What would you need to learn? And could you? Would you? How would it be different from what you leaned back then?

Look in the mirror. Ask yourself, “Am I behaving in a way that advances my career” or “Am I behaving in a way that is a reflection of what I learned as a child that might not be so useful today?”

Nine times of out ten, for most people, the answer is the latter.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Should a technical manager be a technical expert?

Hello everyone!

There seems to be an on-going debate about how technical an engineering manager ought to be.

Some say that any manager worth his or her weight in salt has to understand the technology they’re managing well enough to actually have answers and be capable of doing some of the work themselves.

Others say that any manager worth his or her weight in salt doesn’t have to understand the technology. They just have to know how to “facilitate” the technologists who are the experts in the technology.

So who’s right? What’s the answer?

And the answer is: Neither is right? Or to put it another way: Both are wrong!

An example of the first answer is Bill Gates. It’s pretty clear that Bill Gates was up on most of the technology in Microsoft. By all accounts he was capable of doing a good deal of the technical work performed by the technologists in the company. Obviously he couldn’t because there was only one of him, but he was capable.

Because Microsoft was so successful, many come to the erroneous conclusion that Microsoft was successful because Bill Gates was at the helm. They conclude that because Microsoft was so successful and Bill was such a technologist, there must be a causal relationship here.

Not so. Bill only had this influence when Microsoft was small. The reason Microsoft became a powerhouse and was so successful was because it had a monopoly, not because Bill was a geek. The CEO of Microsoft would have had to have been a rock to drive Microsoft into the ground, at least up until recently when it finally got some competition. So Bill Gates is not a valid nor good example of how technical a manager has to be in order to be successful. The causal relationship in the success of Microsoft is not with Bill Gates but with it’s lack of competition.

If you want to read in interesting article that erroneously supports the idea that the technical Bill Gates made Microsoft successful, then read the article titled “How Hard Could It Be? Glory Days”, by Joel Spolsky. The article appears in Inc. Magazine, dated July 1, 2008.

In it, Joel talks about when he was a young Program Manager at Microsoft and had to give a presentation to Bill Gates. Joel wrote a specification and had to run the specification by Bill Gates. Joel talks glowingly about how Bill actually read his spec and how this was a testament to Bill’s technical prowess. Joel’s bottom line conclusion by the end of the article is that a good technical manager must be technically savvy. The more technically savvy the better. And as far as Joel is concerned, the Bill Gates he presented to was extremely technically savvy and therefore Bill represented the epitome of good management.

And of course, this myth persists still. People still believe that Microsoft was successful because Bill, the ultimate CEO-geek, was at the helm.

I don’t think so. This is not management. This is self-aggrandizement.

At the opposite extreme are those managers who don’t know anything about technology and therefore manage to drive their teams in the wrong direction. This usually happens when managers attempt to make decisions when they don’t have the minimal technical knowledge to make intelligent decisions.

I know plenty of managers who think that because they know management they can manage any technical team. Their position is that because they can manage, they think they can take any number of highly technical people, in any technology, and turn them into a successful, high performance team. They’re fond of saying, “I don’t need to be the technical expert. I know how to manage technology and therefore I can manage any technical team.” These are the managers who say that their role is to “facilitate” the team. They don’t need to know the technology because they are really only “facilitators”.

I don’t think so. This is not management. This is self-deception.

So what is the right answer? How technical should a manager of technical people be?

The answer, Einstein famously said, is, “Just enough but no more”.

Actually, when Einstein was asked how simple things should be made, he responded, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”

The same applies here. How technical should a technical manager be, “as technical as necessary, but not one bit more”.

So exactly how technical is “as technical as necessary?”

Technology is changing rapidly. In fact, so rapidly that few people can keep up with it for more than a decade. In fact, keeping up with technological advances for several decades is very difficult. The kids coming out of college have the latest knowledge and it’s only good for 5 to 10 years at the most, unless it basic technical and engineering knowledge they’ve been trained in.

So the technical managers’ job is not to have the latest technical knowledge. It’s not to know how to do the work that his or her direct reports are doing.

Here is the way I look at it. When I’m managing a team, my goal is to give my direct reports as much independent latitude as possible and no more. That means that each person is treated differently and each person gets a certain amount of independence, depending upon their expertise, and the situation. My goal it to keep them from failing. Put positively, my goal is to help them to be successful.

The metaphor I use is that my job is to keep them from “falling off the cliff” and yet, I want them to get close to the cliff. Getting close to the cliff means that they are pushing the boundaries of their own capabilities. It means that they are learning. But I don’t want them to fall off the cliff and fail.

Therefore, my job is to know “where the edge of the cliff is.” My job is to know when my direct reports are heading for disaster. That’s as technically savvy as I need to be. My job is to know when my direct reports are making technically sound decisions, but operationally poor ones. That means they and we are all close to falling off the edge of the cliff.

That doesn’t require that I have 100% technical knowledge. It requires that I have a combination of technical knowledge, interpersonal communication skills, and an ability to integrate facts as well as unrealized potentials. It means that I have to be able to integrate the known and the unknown in a model that can be projected into the future.

Instead of looking for managers that are technically savvy or for managers who can facilitate, we ought to be looking for managers who can integrate what they know about the technology and what they know about their team and what they know about the environment and be able to use their frontal lobes (where decisions are projected into the future) in a way that they can make sound decisions.

If you want to really understand how this is done just compare and contrast Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Bill Gates is smart but he doesn’t project unknowns into the future well. Just notice how Microsoft delayed entry into the Internet because Bill was so technically savvy he was sure he knew what was up. In fact, a great majority of the success Microsoft has experienced has been the result of its monopoly.

Now look at Steve Jobs. Apple, with it’s small market share, has been projecting far in advance of the current state. And all with a CEO who is not a geek. Go figure!

The primary requirement for managers is not to be able to “do”, but to be able to “see”.

The technical manager must constantly ask himself or herself, “what do I need to know and understand in order to point my technical experts into the future I see?”

Ask and answer that question consistently and often and you will be just technical enough.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Can you think your way through management?

Hello everyone!

How does science progress? On the shoulders of giants, so the saying goes.

Those of you who have taken my classes have heard me say that for the typical engineer, management is a new career. That’s my saying.

You’ve also heard that science progresses on the shoulders of the giants who have come before us. All knowledge builds on the foundations of the past. Algebra is the foundation for the calculus which is the foundation for differential equations. We must understand one level before we can understand the next. And so it goes… until things get stuck.

Yes, stuck. In fact, science doesn’t move in nice progressive steps up the ladder of knowledge. Nor does it move in chaotic fashion. Science advances in logical, incremental steps with each level using the previous level as foundation, until progress can no longer be made. And then, a completely new way of looking at the world must often emerge. If science continues to rest on the known knowledge as its foundation for the next step, it will ultimately fail to model the world.

Therefore, for progress to ultimately be made, science must embrace that which has never been seen before. It must embrace a totally new way of understanding the world and it must abandon, to varying degrees, that which came before.

This has happened and is happening with relativity, as one example. Einstein developed the general and special theories of relativity. That worked well enough until it didn’t. Then we got quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. Those theories worked well enough until they didn’t and now we are seemingly moving toward string theory as one possible alternative.

So what does this have to do with engineering, engineers, and management. Well, it’s exactly the same process. As an engineer you think you can “think” your way through management just as you “think” your way through technical challenges. But the process of management is as different from engineering as quantum mechanics is from relativity. And whatever theories, rules, processes, and strategies you use to solve the engineering issues, I can guarantee you they will not work in the arena of management.

In fact, engineering is as certain as relativity at predicting the future. Management is as uncertain as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle at predicting the future.

The question is, which way of being in the world can you live with?

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Can I make a contractor part of my team?

Hello everyone!

I have a coaching client who has a big challenge. He is attempting the development of a website by hiring contract website development from overseas independent contractors and companies. He is finding programmers who are technically competent. In some cases very technically competent.

He uses instant messaging (IM) and emails and in some cases phone calls to communicate with his contractors. In most cases these are one-person shops. In one case it’s a small contracting company that has perhaps 100 independent contractors available to it.

However, he is having a difficult time “managing” them. They don’t return his emails in a timely fashion. Sometimes they’ll disappear for a week without a trace. When they finally show up again on the email radar screen they’ve finished their task and it’s well done, but my client is frazzled because he was out of contact for a week and didn’t know if the project was being worked on, or if the contractor was dead, or drunk, or on vacation, or…..

So my client contacted me and said, “What do I do?” “How do I manage these people?” “They’re driving me nuts.”

I asked my client what he wanted… and it boiled down to the following items:

1. He wanted the contractors to return his phone calls, IMs, and emails in a timely fashion.

2. He wanted the contractors to behave as if they were part of his team. He wanted them to be invested int he success of the project not just behave as “hired guns”.

3. He wanted to feel comfortable by having the contractors keep him informed as to what was going on regarding their part of the project.

My gut response to these requests is the same as Matchbox 20′s Rob Thomas sings in Santana’s song, Smooth; “Forget about it.”

Well, not quite. There is a solution.

Let me pose the question succinctly: “What is the best way to manage contractors who are located overseas and are doing programming work for you or your company?”

There are several steps that must be taken simultaneously, as follows:

Expectations: Lets get really clear about expectations. My colleague wants his overseas contractors to be part of his American team. In 90% of the cases that isn’t going to happen. Separated by thousands of miles, oceans, continents, languages, cultures, values, and beliefs, the expectation that your contractor will be committed to your project as much as you are or as much as your American employees are just isn’t going to happen. So don’t expect it. Expect that it’s going to be a job for your contractors and nothing more and prepare accordingly.

Genius or Hard Worker: Here is the big one: Would you rather have a brilliant genius working for you overseas who you can’t control, does really brilliant work but causes you grief because you can’t track him or her down… or would you rather have someone who does work a little slower, is not quite so brilliant but gets the job done and is willing to keep you in the loop?

My coaching client has, up until now, opted for the genius who can get things done quickly but can’t be found to hand it over until my client has pulled out his hair. Unless I absolutely have to have the genius, I’ll always opt for the less brilliant but more cooperative team player. Remember, we hire people for their expertise and fire them for lack of fit.

Project Management: Next, make sure that your projects are very well “contained”. By that I mean don’t make the projects too big. Make them small enough that you can control the design and functionality.

Who Does What? Next, you, the hiring entity, must decide on the functional requirements of the software. You must decide on what you want. The contractor/programmer decides on the implementation but you decide on the requirements.

My client has been giving himself a huge amount of grief because he has not been defining the functional requirements of the software well enough before giving the project to his contractors. He has been leaving it up to the contract programmer to decide not only the implementation but also some of the requirements and the design. This has left my client out in the cold. The best approach is to clearly, with structure, forms, documents, and change processes, lay out the requirements of the software. One can even go so far as to develop dummy screen shots of how the website is supposed to look. Where are the buttons to be placed? What text should be included and where do you want it placed? How are the users to move around the pages? How are the pages to “respond” to the user’s requests.

It’s the job of the hiring firm to design to a very specific level of detail what the website is to look like and what it is to do. For sure there can be adjustments as the design gets implemented, but the hand-off from the hiring firm to the programmer should be very detailed, very clear, and very structured. The only thing the programmer should do is make the requirements “happen”. My client should design and decide, and the programmer should implement and provide feedback. Obviously there can be some “give and take” here but not nearly as much as if the programmer is located down the hall from the manager.

My client has been managing his overseas contractors too loosely. He has been managing them as if they are part of his team. They are not. They don’t want to be and he should not expect them to be.

That means that he must go through the following steps:

1. Establish a clear visual representation of what the web page(s) and system are to look like.

2. Establish a written document that explains how the various functions and operations in the web page(s) are to perform their functions.

3. Provide clear milestones with timetables, and feedback events (i.e., meetings, documents, emails, phone calls, etc.) Work this out in conjunction the the contractor BEFORE work begins.

4. Establish incentive payments along the way so that when deliverables AND communications take place as planned, payment is made; otherwise there is some appropriate penalty. Don’t make the penalty punitive of you may not get anything back.

5. Select programmers and contractors who will work with you the way you want. Find those who can do the work you want done and do it the way you want it done. Don’t sacrifice the process by assuming that it will all “come out in the wash”.

6. Finally, when you find contractors who you work well with, ask them if they know of other contractors who they would recommend. Remember the old adage, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

When people are separated by thousands of miles, different languages, different cultures, significantly different values and beliefs, it is imperative not to make assumptions that they will work the way you work. It’s challenging enough to find that in your own company office building, why would you expect it with someone halfway around the world from a completely different country.

Remember: “Keep your local direct reports close. Keep your overseas contractors even closer.”

Be well,

Steven Cerri

What to do when you don’t have the answer.

Hello everyone!

Just say No or is it I don’t know?

How often do you say, “I don’t know?”

How often do you say, “I forgot to do that?”

How often do you say, “Sorry, I didn’t do it?”

To most engineers, scientists, and technical professionals these are deadly statements. No self-respecting engineer wants to say, “Oh, I forgot to do that”. And no self-respecting engineer wants to say, “I don’t know the answer to that”.

I can tell you, after managing engineers, scientists, and technologists for many, many years, if you want to really tick me off, give me an answer when you really don’t have the answer. Give me an excuse when you just forgot. Give me an answer when you were just too busy to get to it.

Probably more than most people, we engineers, scientists, and technologists think we are always supposed to have an answer. And not only an answer, but the right answer. I’ve watched engineers “dance” around topics because they just can’t bring themselves to admit they don’t have the answer, or admit that they just made a mistake.

I learned my lessons and got my chops when I was in college. I was raised on a farm and rather than work on the farm every summer during college I worked for Del Monte Corporation. It was better pay than working on the farm and it gave me exposure to something other than the family farm.

I worked in a “weight and inspection station”. This is the station that receives produce, in this case, tomatoes, from farmers. The trucks that bring in the produce are weighed as they arrive at the station, the produce is inspected and graded, the produce is off-loaded at the station, the trucks are once again weighed empty.

The tomatoes are inspected by government inspectors and inspection tags are attached to the produce load. The farmer is paid for the full tonnage of the tomatoes minus the percentage of the tomatoes that have been found to be rejected during inspection. The process involves a lot of weighing, tagging, inspecting, and reweighing. Numbers and tags are flying everywhere and in those days these tasks were not done in as automated a fashion as they are today. At the end of each 8-hour shift the weights of all the loaded trucks, minus their empty weights, should add up to the total of the tomatoes delivered to the station.

I was called a weight master and, during my 8-shift, I was in charge of weighing the trucks loaded and empty and ensuring the inspection numbers were accurately recorded for each load delivered.

Once or twice a week, during any weight inspector’s 8-shift (there were three of us) we could expect that our numbers, at the end of our shift, wouldn’t add up. Even if we were very, very careful it seemed to happen anyway.

Now at the end of my shift, if the numbers didn’t add up, it meant that I had made a mistake, somewhere, somehow, sometime during my shift. And after looking at the numbers a couple of times, if I didn’t find the error, it meant that we were not going to find the error. It was a recording mistake and that was that.

At the end of my shift I had two choices. I could tell my colleagues on the next shift of the error so they could start fresh with an adjustment, or I could keep my mouth shut and let them wrestle with the error as if it might have occurred on their sift.

I’m not sure I understand why, or what I had been taught, but my approach was to be “straight up” with my colleagues. If my numbers were off, the next shift knew by how much and that it had happened on my watch. No one on the next shift nor my manager ever criticized me for making an error. They knew I was doing my best. I didn’t make many errors, but when I did I told them about it right away. They just acknowledged it and we all went on from there.

It wasn’t until many, many years later that I found out from my father that one of the things my co-workers at Del Monte really appreciated was that when they came in to begin their shift they knew exactly what the situation was. I always told them whenever I had made a mistake and they could take it from there. Apparently that was rather unique. Other weight masters weren’t so forth coming with errors they had made.

I kept that philosophy throughout my engineering career and beyond. I always taught my direct reports that “I don’t know” is a perfectly good answer. I also taught my direct reports that I’m not too concerned about a mistake that happens once in a while. I am concerned about mistakes that are repeated.

So I’m not suggesting that you always answer with “I don’t know”. I’m looking for patterns. If a direct report is “always” telling me “I don’t know” or always telling me “I forgot to do it”, then we are in big trouble. But I don’t expect my direct reports to be geniuses or to have every answer to every question I might ask right at their fingertips. But I sure as heck expect them to be able to find the answer, given time.

So to all of you who think that you can’t answer a question with “I don’t know,…. but I’ll find out” or who think you can’t once in a while answer “I just forgot to do that… but I’ll get on it right away and have it to you ….” think again. If you aren’t being honest with your manager then you either have the wrong manager (you are working for Attila the Hun) or you are underestimating your manager and you need to have a talk with him or her.

Honesty is always the best policy. Straight up information is always the best approach. No one should expect you to be perfect, not your manager, not your customer, not even you.

If your work environment can’t abide an honest “I don’t know” or “I forgot to do it” then it will grind you down in the long run any way.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Manage groups or individuals?

Hello everyone!

There was an article published recently in CIO magazine (http://www.cio.com), June 24, 2008, “Coaching Style Matters in Managing Millennials). It stated that those employees that are classified as the Millenial generation are best managed by using Coaching as a management style. It went on to list certain approaches the author thought best for this specific age group.

While there may well be behaviors that people of a similar age have in common, generalizations like that are for managers who don’t have the competence to be managers. (How’s that for a provocative statement?) Classification of people in an attempt to make management “manageable” is not the solution.

The reality is that no one is “managed” as a group. Each person is ultimately managed as an individual. Think about your own situation. When you are being managed by your manager do you feel there is a one-on-one connection to your manager and his or her direction? You aren’t managed as a group. You are managed as an individual.

Try this on. If you are thinking about voting in this years’ presidential election, how have you decided for whom to vote? Have you decided because your friends are voting for him? Have you decided because he represents your party? You may answer “yes” to one or both of these questions and yet here is the question that is most important. Are you casting your vote because the candidate most closely represents, in your mind, who you are?

I’m sure the answer is Yes to the last question. We all vote for the candidate that most closely represents us. Who we are. Voting for a candidate is a personal, one-on-one, individual process.

The same is true for management. All management is one-on-one. Even when we, as managers, are managing a large group, the only reason people decide to follow us is because they “see” something of themselves in us and it’s enough for them to say, “Ok, I’ll follow you.” If it were as easy as grouping people the issue would go away. We’d know how to do it. But the issue doesn’t go away. So the grouping of people must not be working. How about a different approach?

Therefore, as much as we’d like to group people into groups like Gen-X, or Gen-Y, or Millennials, it doesn’t help much. The best approach I’ve found is obviously my approach. I think I’ve developed the best approach and I call it “Contextual Leadership©”. It is composed of two major functions: Contextual Definition© and Hierarchy of Contextual Leadership Styles©. I take a fundamentally different approach.

Contextual Definition looks at seven parameters regarding the direct report, the manager, and the situation and determines the context to be managed. The Hierarchy of Contextual Leadership Styles is a set of eight leadership and management styles that are then selected based on the Contextual Definition. This process will lead to the best management approach for a given individual, manager, and situation.

This negates any concern for what group or generation we are working with, including gender. I keep harping on contextual leadership because I believe it makes management more successful and it makes management much more “manageable”.

Enough said.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Intellect versus emotions.  Which rules?

Hello everyone!

Human beings are quite the creatures aren’t they… or more accurately… aren’t we?

That’s a loaded question though… isn’t it?

Here’s what I mean.

The human being. Part primitive emotional throw-back to a creature without language, without the ability to project into the future, without the ability to build complicated tools through higher-order reasoning.

And part advanced intellectual, sentient being, able to project into time forward and backward, with complex written and spoken language, and capable of using higher-order reasoning to leave the planet and explore lands beyond this one.

What a complex, beautiful, disorderly, intricate, elaborate, contradictory, finely honed, mess. We are capable of such horrific deeds and such beautiful accomplishments. We need only look around the world to find evidence and examples of both the heroic and the beautiful and the despicable and the ugly.

And this drama of the duality of our souls is played out in grand vistas of nations and states as well as in the individual episodes of each of our lives. It has seemed to me for a long time that the thoughts, feelings, lives, and journeys of each human being is a microcosm of the macrocosms of our families, communities, states, nations, world, solar system, galaxy, and universe.

The world of duality is the one in which we live. Perhaps the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful are not just concepts in our minds, but actually functional laws of this universe.

So where am I going with this? What the heck am I talking about?

The easiest answer is that I’m talking about life. Work life will do. We would like to think that there is a better way to run companies. We would like people in organizations to “all get along.” We wonder why people get so emotional with a tone of voice, with a look, with a person asking a question a certain way. I’ll tell you why… “because you side with your feelings.” “That’s right Johnny. You know you side with your feelings.”

One of my favorite shows on HBO has been Deadwood. Once I got past the swearing I found it to be a fascinating and incredibly well-written and well-acted series.

In one episode, Al Swearengen’s ex-girlfriend, Tricksie, shoots and wounds an important and powerful character in the series. The important and powerful character wants revenge and so orders Al to kill Tricksie. Al can’t kill his ex-girlfriend and so he orders one of his employees, Johnny, to kill his girl friend who looks like Triksie. Johnny can’t do it. Al orders Johnny knocked unconscious and tied up and then Al murders Johnny’s girlfriend. When Johnny comes too, Dan explains what has happened and Johnny is obviously upset and can’t understand why Al wouldn’t kill his ex-girlfriend, who after all, was guilty of the crime. (Remember, it’s HBO!) Dan explains that Al still has feelings for Tricksie. And then, in a southern draw, Dan explains, “You know Johnny, you side with your feelings. Al has feelings for Tricksie. You know you always side with your feelings.”

When that line was said in that episode it resonated with me like few other statements about feelings had in the past. It’s true, we side with our feelings. We like to think, especially as engineers and technical professionals, that we are as close to Mr. Spock of Star Trek as we can get. And yet we are probably as far from Spock as we could possibly be.

As engineers and technical professionals, just like everyone else, we side with our feelings. It’s the way we are wired. Sure we engineers and technical professionals camouflage it better than most. We pretend that we don’t let our feelings run the show, that we are intellectual and we reason our way through things, and yet it’s just not true. As humans we are constantly in that tug between emotion and reason. Between the lower brain and the cerebral cortex. Between our ability to feel and our ability to reason.

This then, is our lot. It is what we have been given. It is our curse and our saving grace. It gives us compassion that Spock never had and it gives us reason to question what life there might be after this.

And when we work together in our organizations, which will rule? I’ll tell you which rules. I’ve worked and continue to work with companies made up of human beings (it seems they are the only companies in town). Mostly technical professionals or people closely tied to technology. And probably more than other professions we vacillate between “reasoning” our way through challenges, problems, and questions, and “feeling” our way through everything else. We feel our way through interactions with our colleagues. If you think you are “intellectually dispassionate” when you are in a meeting think again. I deal with companies and people who, every day, wrestle with the conflict that their emotions create, not their intellect.

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t have emotions. Nor am I saying that we should live our lives solely through our intellects. I don’t want to be Spock.

What I am saying is lets not fool ourselves. Lets be clear that unless we are in touch with our emotions, unless we understand that our emotional programs, what I call our Personal Behavioral Subroutines, can “run” our lives, we are at their mercy.

Knowing how your physiological and emotional states structure your reality and your actions within that reality is what a friend of mine, Joseph Riggio calls, “running your neurology”. He also calls the result of this, “Being Fully Human”. When you run your neurology instead of letting it run you, then you have choice. Then you can take action that is aligned with your core and with achieving your outcomes. When you learn to run your neurology, you learn how to access you “at your best”, anytime, anywhere.

I deal with people who constantly tell me that they are extremely logical and that they make their decisions through reason. And yet, when they talk to their colleagues, their words drip with condescension, with arrogance, and with attitude. All attributes that others pick up and all attributes that find their source in the emotions “running” in the person speaking.

I deal with other people who are conscious of their emotions and can do nothing about them. Their anger is palpable in their conversations with others.

And I deal with others who understand their emotions, understand their motives, and know how to access their best state. This allows them to move smoothly through a variety of situations achieving the results they want.

This is not a judgment on my part. It is an observation. It is an observation of humanity.

As engineers, if we want to become managers, leaders, and be capable of adding more than just our technical knowledge to our organizations, then we must become comfortable with both sides of our being. We must realize that we “side with our feelings” and then we can decide what to do next.

Far too many engineers, who want to be managers, think they are driven by their intellects when it’s their emotions running the ship.

There is a third choice. Not run by emotions. Not even run by intellect. But a choice to access a state where you are at your best. From this position your actions are aligned with what you want. Accessing what Joe calls your “ready state” allows you to transcend limiting emotions. It allows you to transcend limiting intellect. From this position your power, flexibility, and ability to achieve what you want are vastly increased.

There is no escaping our humanity. So we might as well make it an ally. We might as well constantly move from a position of us at our best. It can be done.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

How do we keep women engineers in their careers?

Hello everyone!

On June 16, 2008, Computerworld Careers published an article on the website linked here.

The title of the article was:

Why Women Quit Technology Careers

More than half of the women in science, engineering and IT leave the field at mid-­career. Here’s the reason.

By Kathleen Melymuka

The authors of the original research recently published their work in the Harvard Business Review. They conducted their research by interviewing women in science and technology from a variety of countries. I want to take some space to reiterate what they said and give a male perspective. And just for the record, my perspective comes from years as an engineering manager, one who had both male and female engineers, program managers, and directors working for me, and one who successfully mentored and developed successful female and male managers, executives, and leaders. So here we go….

The article begins with the provocative question in the following way:

“What if half the men in science, engineering and technology roles dropped out at mid-career? That would surely be perceived as a national crisis. Yet more than half the women in those fields leave—most of them during their mid- to late 30s. In this month’s Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Carolyn Buck Luce and Lisa J. Servon describe the Athena Factor, their research project examining the career trajectories of such women. Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York, told Kathleen Melymuka about what they learned.”

The research concludes that in the ages between 25 and 30, 41% of the young talent with credentials in science and technology are women. Pretty good numbers, I’d say.

The article goes on to quote that “a short way down the road, 52% of this talent drops out. We are finding that attrition rates among women spike between 35 and 40.”

When the article asks the question how many women we are talking about the answer is “maybe a million well-qualified women are dropping out in that age range.” Not a very good answer for a number of reasons. First, a million over what time period? Second, how many women does the initial 41% amount to? But this is just nit-picking on my part. Since I used to teach statistics I’m very sensitive about information that shifts the reference point for data in the middle of a comparison as this article does.

However, what is really important, is that women don’t stick with their engineering careers as tenaciously as men do. So now lets ask two really important questions, “Why do women leave the science and technology professions?” and “What can be done to keep them?”

Lets look at the first question: “Why do women leave the science and technology professions?”

Many men may think or like to think that women leave the technology professions to start families. The study did not find a desire to start a family as the main reason. And my own experience bears this out. I’ve worked with enough women engineers to know that they can juggle family and work just fine if that is what they choose to do.

So what are the major reasons women leave the sciences.

Apparently, from the study, the most important reason women leave is the machismo that continues to permeate the science and technology work environments. The study found 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment, rude and crude jokes, and a general attitude of male superiority.

While I never tolerated any of this kind of behavior in my groups, I’ve worked in enough companies as a consultant and trainer to see it still taking place. It can be subtle or overt, but its common. We might hope that we are beyond this now but we are not. It takes good management to stamp it out.

In my groups I did two things to make sure everyone understood that men and women were equal. The first was I walked my talk. In meetings, in decision processes, wherever I could, I made it clear that “I was the same person” regardless if I was dealing with a male or female. Everybody saw my behavior as the model that I expected everyone else to emulate. Men and women were equal in my organizations. I only evaluated my direct reports based on their performance.

The second thing I did was I talked about how I wanted each of us to treat each other. I actually discussed that I didn’t want anything other than complete respect and equality regardless of gender, race, educational level, or position in the organization.

These two behaviors displayed by me made it clear to everyone very quickly how we were to behave toward each other. So my message to my male direct reports was the same as my message is to engineers today; “Guys, knock it off. This is 2008. The world is filled with prejudice and look at what it’s producing. As engineers and scientists we all know that we respect the knowledge and the intellect that people possess, whatever the gender.”

The second reason women leave is the sheer isolation they cope with daily. In many male-dominated organizations, women are not welcomed into the organization. They are isolated and left outside of the “circle”. Some men can experience this as well, but it’s most often something women have to deal with. It is real and I can tell you it is devastating. I have coached women engineers in this topic and there are ways to counter it, but the best solution is for the males not to behave this way. It’s childish. It’s the behavior that the little boys displayed when they were on the playground and they kept other boys out of their group or they teased the girls and wouldn’t let them play in the boy games. It’s passive-aggressive bullying. It’s over guys. This is the adult world. Welcome the women engineers into your organization as equals. Move on past the “playground mentality and behavior”.

The third factor is that women don’t have a mentor. If they are not welcomed into the organization, it stands to reason that they also don’t have a mentor. They don’t know what a career ladder looks like. They don’t know how to move through the organization. I’m always suggesting to people to find a mentor. I often function as a mentor through my coaching processes. Men are often encouraged to find mentors and women should be too. In my classes I’m always harping on my students to find a mentor and/or a coach regardless of their level in the organization… and I never mention gender, because I’m talking to men and women equally. And mentors for women don’t have to be other successful women. Mentors for female engineers can be successful males.

The fourth factor is what the study calls, “the risky behavior patterns that are rewarded.” This one is close to my heart because it was a hallmark of my behavior that opened doors for me early in my career. The article goes on to say, “We found, particularly in the tech firms, that the way to get promoted is to do a diving catch: Some system is crashing in Bulgaria, so you get on the plane in the middle of the night and dash off and spend the weekend wrestling with routers and come back a hero, and there’s a ticker-tape parade, and you get two promotions—you can actually leap a whole grade if you rescue a big enough system.” Something similar to this worked for me when I was a young engineer. It worked for a lot of us…. all of us guys, by the way.

The article went on, “But what does that have to do with gender? Women have a hard time taking on those assignments because you can dive and fail to catch. If a man fails, his buddies dust him off and say, “It’s not your fault; try again next time.” A women fails and is never seen again. A woman cannot survive a failure. So they become risk-averse in a culture where risk is rewarded. Women would rather build a system that didn’t crash in the first place, but men enjoy that diving catch and have a system of support that allows them to go out on a limb.”

The article is “right-on” regarding risk-taking. I’ve seen it over and over again and I know it helped in my career. In fact, I quickly cultivated a reputation of taking on the broken or difficult or risky projects. It may be true that women tend not to go after the “diving catch”. However, I am certain that women are not given as much leeway if they fail as men are. This has to change.

The article is “almost” correct. A women CAN survive a failure if she has a mentor to protect her. My female direct reports were encouraged by me to risk a “diving catch”. The “deal” was, “you go after the diving catch and I’ll protect you if you fail and put you in the spot light if you succeed. Sooner or later they would learn enough to be extremely valuable to the organization because of what they learned either from success or from failure. The stipulation… I did the same for promising men AND women.

The article goes on to list work-life balance and long hours as two other factors down the list that cause technical women to leave the engineering and technology fields.

Finally, the article suggests a solution, one that I am wholeheartedly in agreement with. “Find mentors to pair up with the female engineers.” There is one modification I would make however. The article implies that the mentors should be other female engineers. I don’t agree. I think that young female engineers should be paired with male and female mentors. Female mentors who have been and are successful as engineers, scientists, and technologists. And male mentors who have succeeded as well and who have an understanding of what has to happen in order to deal with the general male attitude. The more knowledge the better.

I know that my male and female direct reports understood that doing the job was not in any way connected to gender. It was only tied to competence. Also, in my coaching practice, I find that once women engineers and women engineering managers get that I understand both the male and the female perspective (after 25 years of managing engineers of both genders) we can often work out processes such that their career track becomes relatively smooth and straight forward.

It’s unfortunate that I’m writing about this, because it means that the issue still persists. But all we need do is look around the world and at our own technical environments and it’s clear we have a ways to go. Gentlemen, get over it. The world has changed, it’s time for the male technical population to catch up.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Are they as important as hard skills?

Hello everyone!

Here’s a question for you; “How important are “soft skills” in your long-term success as an engineer or as an engineering manager?”

I guess first I should define “soft skills”. My answer is that “soft skills” are all those skills that have to do with everything OTHER than your engineering topics.

Soft skills are all those skills that have to do with “being human”. They are those skills that are NOT focused on engineering, physics, dynamics, geology, biology, electronics, etc. Soft skills are those skills having specifically to do with being human and with being “in relationship” with other human beings. Specifically, communicating with them, working with them, influencing them, getting along with them, fighting with them, arguing with them, being angry with them, agreeing with them, laughing with them, and the list goes on. It’s called “life”.

We define “hard skills” as those skills having to do with quantifiable physical scientific and engineering disciplines, and “soft skills” as those “squishy”, “nebulous”, “difficult to quantify” factors that pertain to being a human being.

So, now having gotten the definition out of the way, lets get back to the question: “How important are “soft skills” in your long-term success as an engineer or as an engineering manager?”

If you answered anything but “VERY!” you flunk.

Oh, believe me, I know what we’d like the answer to be… “NOT MUCH”. In fact I know engineers who think that soft skills are useless and it shows in their communication skills and in their interpersonal skills. No one likes to work with them. And they continue to be engineers for one reason and one reason only; they have developed a niche that no one else can satisfy and so they are tolerated. But if the company ever finds another person who can do the work they are doing and do it with a better attitude and a greater capability to work with other people, they are going to be out on their ear.

I not only work with a lot of companies who seek me out, but I also attend a lot of meetings and engineering events. Everywhere companies are complaining about two things most of the time. The shortage of qualified people and the shortage of people who can work with others smoothly. One is a complaint regarding hard skills, engineering skills, and the other is a complaint about soft skills, interpersonal people skills.

And companies ideally want both qualities in their people. They’ll take a person with good hard skills and poor soft skills and put them in a technical position. They’ll take a person with minimum hard skills but good people skills and put them in a management position. But they’ll always take a person with good hard skills and good soft skills and put that person wherever they want to be.

You learn your hard skills in college, and then you’re expected to learn your soft skills…. in….

Be well,

Steven Cerri

It seems that bad managers go on and on and on.

Hello everyone!

Last week I published my May ezine/newsletter. It was focused on a specific management question, namely;

“Why is it that bad managers are successful?”

In the ezine/newsletter is referred to bad managers as managers who were mediocre and incompetent. Now I know those are relatively harsh words; “mediocre and incompetent”.

In fact, one of the email responses to my ezine was a very thoughtful and interesting response suggesting that a more appropriate label might be “naive”.

Naive may certainly be a reasonable label for some managers. However, naive implies a positive and good intention toward management. My experience is that there are also plenty of mediocre managers, those who just haven’t the training or the experience and are beyond their level of competence.

I’ve also worked for and with those managers who are absolutely certain that, through a gesture of power and authority, they are right in their actions toward management, no matter what. These, I label as the incompetent managers. (For more detail on this check out my ezine/newsletter that was sent to you last week if you were on my mailing list or you can subscribe at the right on this page.)

I have met plenty of managers in all three categories; naive, mediocre, and incompetent.

The next question one might ask is, what are the motivates for the actions of managers in these three categories? How do they view their direct reports? Is there a difference in the way they consider their relationship with their employees?

Lets look at how employees, the direct reports, are thought of.

Most of us are taught one of two philosophies regarding the motivations of most people in the workplace (even though our experience tells us that there are many different philosophies that ought to apply). The idea that there are two or at most three “groups” of employees seems to begin early in our education and continues on into college and beyond. It’s in our classrooms, in our media, in or textbooks.

That is, employees are placed into one of three categories when it comes to their workplace motivations…

The first group of employees is considered lazy and unwilling to take any initiative and therefore, must be managed closely and forcefully. This is often the way “less educated or less trained employees” are thought to be best managed.

The second group consists of those who take initiative and pride in their work, are usually better educated, and need little management and supervision.

And finally the third group consists of the entrepreneurs who take “ownership” of their work and don’t want any supervision and are best left alone to “create”.

These three “groupings” of employees often lead us to specific types of management behavior.

The first group, those who are lazy and don’t take initiative must be managed closely, forcefully, and constantly.

The second group, those who take initiative and pride in their work must be managed only a little, with some distance.

And the third group, those entrepreneurs, shouldn’t be managed at all … OK.. maybe a little, once in a while.

Schools teach this approach either overtly or covertly. Books present this approach. Other managers tell their management trainees this same message. Consultants and trainers teach this approach.

Except me. You won’t hear this refrain from me.

I don’t believe it.

Early in my management career I began to notice that there were times when, with the same employee, I was most effective if I left them alone and at other times more effective if I managed them closely. The same employee! Sometimes close management was best. Other times distant management was best. What was the difference that made the difference?

Slowly through my experience in the real world, starting in college, I began to develop a very different philosophy about management. Unlike most systems that attempt to reduce everything down to a simple rule or maybe two, I allowed my imagination to wander…. and…. I came up with seven parameters! Imagine, seven factors that determine the success of a management situation. Many people would cringe at the idea of a manager having to take into account seven different parameters in order to decide how to deal with a specific situation. It’s too complex! Well, not everything can be defined as a simple two-variable equation. (You should be interpreting significant sarcasm by now.)

You engineers, technologists, and scientists out there.. answer this question for me? Why is it that we can easily buy into the idea that spacecraft, buildings, biological systems, and quantum physics can be defined with complex, multi-variable representations, but “systems of people” are supposed to adhere to “a couple of simple rules”? The answer of course is that they don’t.

In my world, seven “contextual parameters” must be evaluated in order to define the best management style for a given situation. I call this process Contextual Definition©.

And once those seven parameters are accessed there are eight management styles to select from, one or two of which will be optimum for that given situation. This I call The Hierarchy of Contextual Leadership Styles©.

Together they define the best management style for a given set of employees in a given situation and I call that Contextual Leadership©.

The best management approach is only incidentally dependent upon the employee being managed.

So I don’t subscribe to the idea that the best management approach is to group people into two basic categories; people who are lazy and people who work hard. Although I certainly agree with the email that there are people who fall into those two categories and they generally trigger one of two management approaches.

But not everyone falls into one of these two categories. And there’s the rub. What to do about them? My seven parameters of Contextual Definition cover, at least as far as I can tell right now, the range of important parameters that a manager need consider when deciding how to manage a given situation.

Whatever category we can lump our employees into represents only one of seven parameters that must be taken into account to achieve management success.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Do all engineers either become managers or get pushed aside?

Hello everyone!

Over the years, I’ve been asked by many clients, the following question:

“As engineers, what is it that drives us to become either less successful over time in our engineering organizations or pushes us into management as we age? It seems we are doomed to not be able to be successful just doing our engineering. What’s going on?”

I’ve been asked this flavor of question by senior engineers; by engineers who felt compelled and pressured to become managers; by young engineers who were surrounded by much older engineers doing the same work as they were doing; and on and on. It seems that companies want something different, over time, from their engineers. And I keep getting asked what it is and why it is so.

* Is it that we get older?

* Is it that the company wants something different from us as we age and gain experience?

* Is it that our salary gets too high?

* Is it that technology leaves us behind?

* Is it that things are changing so rapidly that we can’t keep up?

* Is it that there is no where else to be promoted to?

Do any or all of these factors “force us” into the management ranks or make us stumble as we get older as engineers?

What does it take for us to be successful throughout our careers as engineers and what is it that seems to relentlessly push us toward engineering management?

The answers to these questions all fall into the same bucket and yet seem quite different and somewhat complicated.

It’s not just a one-line answer. It’s a complicated process and it’s a combination of several factors.

The situation I’m describing probably develops for 80% to 90% of engineers to some degree. It’s starts early in your careers by the small steps taken but doesn’t often show up until 10+ years in the business.

Lets look at some of the more important factors one by one.

Factor #1: First, as time goes by and you get older and get more experience, if you remain a technical professional, an engineer, your salary increases in comparison to those who are graduating from school. The new graduates can do the technical work you are doing just as well as you, or nearly so, and at a much lower salary. Not withstanding the “experience” you have gained in your years as an engineer, unless you have “important” experience, the young people coming out of school can do what you do. And, as I’ve stated, at a much lower salary.

When I joined Rockwell International in 1969, right out of college something hit me like a ton of bricks the first day on the job. There were people there twice my age (and more) who were doing the exact same work I was. No doubt they had more experience than me, but in most cases and on most tasks, we were doing the same work, and their salaries were twice mine. At some point, this doesn’t make good business sense. And as the Apollo program began to ramp down, most of the expensive people who were doing the same work I was doing were laid off. I was kept because I could do the work and I wasn’t as expensive as others. It wasn’t a pleasant time in our aerospace history, but it was driven by business considerations. It is also what drove me to get two more advanced degrees in broader areas of discipline. I didn’t want to end up like my older colleagues competing with the college graduates for tasks.

So, from the company’s point of view, the goal is to make that increased salary pay for something that is not obtainable from someone just out of school.

And what is it? It’s Judgment! Experience doesn’t always equal judgment, but judgment requires experience.

Companies are willing to pay for judgment; that intangible element that comes from experience and yet is difficult to quantify. Turn your experience into an ability to see what others do not see, into an ability to predict outcomes that can’t be calculated and you become valuable.

Factor #2: Technology is changing very rapidly and the speed of technical change is increasing. If an engineer is to keep up with technology, he or she must constantly be learning the latest in technological knowhow.

The bottom line is that if you want to stay an engineer, if you want to stay out of management, then you must stay abreast of technological knowhow.

This is difficult to do. Because even if you stay abreast of technology, your salary creeps higher and higher. Without developing judgment, the young people just out of school will still have an edge.

Factor #3: Most organizations believe that as an engineer ages, they are acquiring something that is not taught in college. Most companies believe that the work environment will teach you how to communicate effectively with others, how to work on teams, how to work with and lead teams, and how to work with people all round the world.

Unfortunately, that is not what is taught to employees. Many of the best engineers don’t learn how to communicate while at work. They don’t learn how to work on teams either and most engineers don’t realize this is missing from their resume until they reach a certain age. And then they hit the “wall”. Their careers slow down. Their manager complains to them about their inability to communicate effectively with others. Their manager tells them that they ought to be promoted but they just don’t have the people skills necessary to make the next transition.

Managers and company organizations actually believe that the appropriate people skills, the effective communication skills, the team building skills can be taught “on the job”. It just doesn’t happen that way. Actually, the WRONG behaviors are taught “on the job”. And often, these people skills are the most important of the three factors I’ve discussed so far. Master the people skills, and the other two factors often come along.

These are the three top factors driving the typical engineer into a career corner. There are other factors, certainly, that depend on specific situations. But generally speaking, these three factors are driving engineers either into management, or into frustration, or out the door… in the long term. And if you are going to adjust any of these parameters in order to strengthen your career, you must adjust all three of them, in the following priority. Number 1, master communication and people skills. Number 2, translate your experience into “judgment”. And Number 3, keep up with technology as best you can.

Even if you don’t want to become a manager, adjusting these three factors, will go a long way in securing a long-lived, engineering career.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

The case for “close-in” management.

Hello everyone!

What would you do if you were managing a direct report who complained much of the time? A direct report who “spewed venom” in conversations with other employees, complaining about the company, or about management, or about work conditions, or about work in general? What would you do if this employee went into the offices or cubicles of colleagues and consumed 30 minutes or more at a time, bending the ears of colleagues with rants about how “this isn’t working” or “that’s not working”, or “did you hear about….”?

How would you handle this direct report?

… Would you just ignore him or her?

… Would you talk to them?

… Would you talk to his or her colleagues?

… When this employee’s colleagues complained to you, (some are also your direct reports and some are not) would you tell them to just ignore the tirades?

I’ve had this situation in my management career enough times to loose count. Here is the approach that has worked for me.

I like to use the analogy of a thumbtack, a nail, my thumb, and a hammer. Lets say I’m putting up a picture and I don’t know if I should use a thumbtack or a nail. At the start, I usually assume that a thumbtack will be sufficient. I assume the least “intrusive” approach until and unless I’m shown that a more intense approach is warranted. So I’ll begin with thumbtack and use my thumb to push it into the wall. If that works, fine. I’f not, only then will I get out the nail and the hammer and pound that nail into the wall.

The same holds true for my approach to this management situation. My first approach is to talk to the employee and if that works, great! If not, then we are going to have an intense process indeed. Here are the details.

The Thumbtack and the Thumb Approach

I tell the direct report that I’ve been getting feedback that he/she has been complaining quite a bit about “xyz” and colleagues are not happy about it.

Next I’d ask what is causing the “ranting”. In this way I can find out more about the “map of the world” of the direct report. My goal here, at a minimum, is to understand the motivation of the employee’s complaints as much as possible. Unless I agree there is something legitimate about the complaints, in which case I’d attempt to remedy the situation, I’d tell the direct report that the complaints have to stop. They are distracting, unappreciated by other employees, and they don’t do anything positive for the image of the direct report either in my eyes or in the eyes of fellow employees.

I would get a commitment from the employee to end the complaining and that wold be the end of our discussion.

Then I’d watch and listen.

If the situation improves or corrects, great!

If it doesn’t, then we go to the next level.

This next level gets everyone involved. Here is what I mean.

The Nail and the Hammer Approach

First I would talk to all the colleagues and other employees who have complained to me about this direct report as well as those I believe the direct report has contact with but who have not complained to me. I would tell them that the direct report’s behavior is not acceptable and that I want their help in dealing with this. I would tell them that I would like them to stop the employee “in his/her tracks”, immediately when he/she begins to complain. Just don’t listen to it. Turn your back. Kick them out of your office or cubicle. Don’t do anything to support the ranting. And I would get a commitment from these employees to support my plan. Also, I would ask them to notify me whenever and as soon as he/she attempts to rant or complain.

I would then have another meeting with the complaining employee to express my disappointment with their previous behavior and their lack of adjustment. I would make it clear that their ranting is not acceptable and that I’ve decided to raise the “temperature” around this behavior. I would tell him/her that I’ve talked to all the other employees and they are not longer going to support this behavior and that if I hear of this behavior again I’m going to come down on them like a ton of bricks. I’d make it clear that this has now become very serious and if it continues it will adversely affect this person’s performance review and perhaps their future at the company.

End of discussion!

Then I’d watch and listen. However, this time things would be different. If the direct report complained and I got feedback from anyone that the behavior was continuing, I go right to the complaining employee and tell them that I heard they were ranting again and to stop it. Every time I got word that the employee was behaving in an unacceptable manner (i.e., complaining) from anyone, I’d go right to the employee and tell them that I knew of their unacceptable behavior and they were to stop it. The only way I’d give the employee any “breathing room” was if they stopped the undesirable behavior.

This approach has worked for me over and over again.

Is it micromanagement?….. Some would call it that. I call it “Contextual Management©” which is my idea of picking the best management approach for a given situation.

Does it work?….. You bet! It’s worked for me over and over again.

Is it necessary?….. It seems to be. No other approach has worked as well.

The Real World

I’ve been coaching several managers who have just the situation I’ve described above. The direct reports range all over the map regarding their age, background, discipline, gender, etc. And in most cases my clients (i.e., the managers) have been successful. Sometimes the “thumbtack and thumb” approach works alone and sometimes the “thumbtack and thumb to nail and hammer” approach works. The only managers who have not been successful raining in their complaining employees have been those managers who began their intervention with the “nail and hammer” approach. It seems that the approach that begins “lighter” and then brings in the heavy hammer (the approach that I’ve always used) works better than just beginning with the hammer.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

A direct report wants to manage her manager

Hello everyone!

Today I was conducting some business. The young woman who was assisting me was very competent with her company’s products, services, and she was great with customers, me. It was clear she was not in a “selling mode”. Her interest was in providing me with service and products that suited my needs.

During our conversation she asked me what I did for a living. I told her that I trained and coached engineers and technical managers to be more successful. I told her I trained in the soft skills, the interpersonal people skills, so that engineers could become managers and leaders and so that managers and leaders could be more successful leading their engineers.

I then told her that I had just completed a 15-CD set on transitioning from engineer to leader and a 3-CD set on the topic of micromanagement, and I was about to send my first book to my editor.

When I mentioned the word, “micromanagement” her eyes lit up. I said, “Oh, do you have micromanagement here?” Her response was “Oh yah!”

I asked her my famous question… those of you who have been following my blogs know this is THE question to ask. I asked her, “How do you know when you are being micromanaged?” I also asked her what she thinks her manager’s reason is for calling her three times a day.

She said, “I am 200% over my sales and revenue numbers. I’m the number one person here. And yet my boss calls me three times a day to get a status of my accounts even though he will see all the information I’m giving him in a daily report that he has available at the end of the day….. I send it to him at the close of business and he can see it …. actually at 3am.

“And he says the reason he calls me is to see if I need any help hitting my numbers.” (This is, in my opinion, an appropriate reason… three times a day, however, may be just a little much.)

So this is really micromanagement, isn’t it? Here is a top performer who it doesn’t seem will falter any time soon. She is doing very well and can be expected to continue. And yet, her boss is calling her three times a day to find out how she is doing. She feels micromanaged.

So, what to do? This is a perfect example of a situation in which an employee ought to be able to manage the manager. How would an employee in this situation actually manage her manager so that he would back off this intense management scrutiny?

Here’s how.

First, we have to determine his motivation. We could assume that her manager is a jerk or a control freak. But I seldom think that people are that simple. I think people are usually attempting to achieve something positive from their point of view with the behavior they are displaying. So my first assumption is that he has a legitimate motivation and we must determine what that is.

So I suggested that she ask him his motivation. She could say something like… “Bob (not his name), I’ve been doing really well here. I’m number one in sales and revenue and I’m 200% over my target. And I know you want to get my status three times a day, which is probably time consuming for you as it is for me. I know you get my report for the day when you’d rather be sleeping, so I imagine you don’t see my reports until the next day at the opening of business. Help me understand what you’d like to know when, so that I might be able to provide it to you in a more streamlined fashion, rather than you and I talking three times a day.”

If I understood what this woman was telling me, I think he’s probably suffering through something like this (just a guess of course):

1. Getting her daily sales and revenue results at 3am the following morning means he doesn’t really see the numbers until the opening of business the day after.

2. That is probably too late for him to prepare his status report to his boss.

3. Instead, he is probably calling three times a day, so that at the end of that day, he will be able to put together a draft status report for his boss and prepare himself for that meeting.

4. Or his boss actually wants a status at the close of the business day even though the hard numbers won’t be available until the next morning.

5. Or someone is asking him for a status during the day and he needs to contact her by phone to get a status.

In order to keep from being micromanaged, she must find out what is the motivation behind these three call a day from her manager. When she determines his motivation, all she need do is provide him with the information he wants in a way that is agreeable to him AND agreeable to her.

For example she might negotiate with him the following possibilities:

1. She could call him at the end of the day with her numbers. As long as she is hitting her daily numbers she need only call him at the end of the day. At 1pm, if she is having a difficult day meeting her numbers, then she can call him at 1pm and give him a status. Then she can call him again at 4pm or 5pm, but as long as she is hitting her numbers, the agreement is, one phone call at the end of the day.

2. Another possibility is she can send an email to him at 10am, 2pm, and 5pm. They can settle on a format that is concise and provides the detail he is looking for. If she is not hitting her numbers the email is replaced with a phone call initiated by her. The only time he would call her is if there is something urgent and critical that he must discuss with her.

With this approach, she can begin the process of managing her manager. Her goal is to find a way to provide the information he needs, when he needs it, “for the reasons he needs it.” The negotiation process is to provide him with the information in a way that helps her not feel micromanaged.

This approach has worked over and over and over again. In fact, I have another example. I spoke to a direct report who was having difficulty with his manager. After using this approach the whole manager-direct report relationship changed from micromanagement and conflict to team work and trust. But only one blog at a time. I’ll talk about this case in the future.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Presidential management and you.

Hello everyone!

I was listening to National Public Radio (NPR) a couple of days ago to a segment regarding the anticipated management styles of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The commentators were saying that Hillary has a tendency to be a very “hands-on” manager and Barack tends to be more of a delegator. The commentators continued to wonder how the candidates’ management styles would differ if one of them became president.

Now somewhere along the early portion of this news segment one of the commentators said something that really surprised me. He said and I’m paraphrasing to the best of my recollection, “Barack would probably have a management style that would rely on delegation and Hillary would be very hands-on. In fact, this question, if it’s better to be a hands-on manager or a delegator, is a topic still being debated in business schools. There are plenty of examples where hands-on management works and yet there are plenty of examples where delegation works. It’s still uncertain which is the best approach.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. The idea that someone is still debating which management style is best, hands-on or delegation, is absolutely ridiculous. It shows they don’t understand management.

Let me give you an example that will clarify how I see this whole discussion. Lets assume you are doing research regarding the national spelling bee. Lets say you want to decide what the best age is for children to be in order to win the spelling bee. And lets also say that you’ve got 10 kids who were 10 years old when they won their spelling bees and you also have 10 kids who were 11 years old when they won their spelling bees. And then you say, “It’s not clear which is a better age for winning the spelling bee, 10 years old or 11 years old. The universities are still debating this issue. ”

The answer of course is that if you’ve got kids of both ages winning spelling bees, winning is probably not a function of being 10 or 11 years old.

The same holds true regarding hands-on or delegation management styles. If we have cases of both styles being successful (and of course both styles being unsuccessful as well) then the management style is probably not the determinant of success. DAH! Something else is going on.

So what is the determining factor in the success or failure of hands-on or delegating management styles? What should we be looking at?

Those of you who have been following my blogs for a while know I’ve been talking, at various times, about something called “Contextual Definition©”. Contextual Definition says that the best management style is a function of seven parameters which include the expertise of the direct report, the expertise of the manager, and other parameters derived from the management situation itself.

So depending on the situation, Barack’s delegating style might work or it might not and depending upon the situation, Hillary’s hands-on management style might work and it might not.

Let’s take this one step further. Let’s hypothetically assume that they both got to be president. This means that they both have the same “tasks” to perform, governing the country. Lets assume that regarding the things that need to get done they have the same mandates. How would their respective management styles work given that they both have the same “things to accomplish”?

Barack’s hands off, delegating style would work well only if he selects people to delegate to who are very competent in the areas he has assigned them to. He can only successfully step back if the people he selects to delegate to have a great deal of expertise in their respective areas and if they share Barack’s philosophy, mission, vision, and will communicate back to Barack in a way that provides Barack the visibility he wants. If he selects people who are not extremely well qualified he will end up with what George Bush’s administration has encountered. George Bush has placed in positions of authority people who were not very well qualified and then he has managed them with a generally hands-off management style. If we need examples we need only look to Katrina as the first of many examples.

On the other hand, Hillary should select people to manage her departments who are competent but not too competent. If she is going to use a close, hands-on style with her direct reports, then her staff ought to be just competent enough to implement her wishes and her vision, but not so competent as to have their own vision of what should be done. Or at the very least, they must be willing to forego their own vision of their departments’ direction for hers. If she hires extremely competent people and then manages them too closely, they might feel micromanaged. (More about this in a minute.)

So there you have it. It’s actually very simple. I can’t believe the debate about hands-on or delegation is still going on. The fact that both styles can be found to work means that there are circumstances in which each is best suited.

In my career I always did well with delegation because I always attempted to hire people who were extremely competent for the positions I wanted them to fill. In fact, I often hired direct reports who were more qualified than me in many ways. However, if I ever had a direct report that was in over their head and they were having difficulty I didn’t hesitate moving in and managing them very closely (i.e., more hands-on).

And it was the process of Contextual Definition that allowed me to manage closely, to be a hands-on manager without appearing to be a micromanager. And that is the constant balancing act that good managers must deal with. As a manager your job is to manage a the people who perform the tasks. You hire people with certain qualifications. Those people may be well qualified or they may not. You must manage them so that they can be successful. If Barack has a default management style of delegation that’s a mistake if he hires less than “stellar” people. He won’t always be able to find the perfect person to fill the slot. Therefore, his best management style is one that fits the context. He must be flexible at times managing hands-on and at times delegating.

The same holds true for Hillary. If her default management style is to be hands-on that can also be a mistake. She will undoubtedly at some time hire a person or persons who are extremely well qualified and if she manages them closely they will feel micromanaged. Her best approach is to be flexible enough to adjust her management style to the context as well.

And if you want to know what to do in order to avoid micromanaging your direct reports and if you want to know how to avoid being micromanaged by your manager, check out my new 3-CD set.

I just completed a 3-CD set in which I lay out the complete model of Contextual Definition and Contextual Leadership. It explains and puts to rest this debate about which management style is best. In the final analysis, they all work best, but only in their optimum context.

(I have no information on John McCain’s preferred management style).

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Helplessness can look like power.

Hello everyone!

Last week I was sitting around talking to a group of my family members. Someone brought up a newspaper article they had read about a women who was accusing the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) of harassment. Apparently, as my family member explained, the women had a variety of body piercings. She wore nipple rings that the TSA representative required she remove. As it turned out she ultimately had to use of pliers to remove them. The woman was upset and is now suing the TSA for an apology and money.

My family member who was recounting the newspaper article ended the story with the statement, “See, this is what happens when you give people too much power. Too much power in the hands of these airport people, and this is what you get!”

Now I thought that was an interesting statement. Most people would indeed come to the conclusion that the TSA representative had too much power and that in this case the representative exercised an abuse of power.

I see it exactly the opposite. Now I don’t know what the policy is. News accounts indicate that the TSA usually uses a pat-down in such circumstances. Having said that, the TSA spokesperson indicated that the TSA representative in this situation “acted appropriately”.

I can’t speak to what the TSA policy is in such cases. I just don’t know. However, generalizing, I would say that the TSA representative didn’t exercise power, in fact, I don’t think they have much power.

If we agree that power is the exercise of independent judgment, then the TSA representatives have very little power. Do you really want the safety of an airliner to be left up to the individual judgment of a TSA employee? Do you want one TSA rep at Denver using their judgment and the TSA rep at Los Angeles using their independent judgment?

I don’t think so.

When it comes to airline safety we don’t want individualized judgment. We want uniform, standardized, predictable, robotic responses. We want every representative doing the same thing and we want all of them erring on the side of conservative safety.

Therefore, the TSA representatives are driven by policies, not by judgment. They are operating at the extreme end of micromanagement. They can’t think. They’re not supposed to think. They are supposed to implement the policies. They x-ray all the luggage. They are to confiscate all liquids in excess of x ounces. On and on and on.

I would say that the TSA representatives have absolutely no power. No power at all. They cannot deviate. They cannot use judgment. They cannot make their own decisions. I can imagine that when it comes to body jewelry, they have a policy that states something like, “All metal ornaments must be removed an inspected by passing them through the x-ray machine.”

To really have power, one has to have the ability to exercise judgment. To have no power is to be required to follow strict policies and not deviate from them. Generally speaking, TSA employees have no power. They exercise the policies.

And this gets me back to micromanagement. Most people believe they are micromanaged when they don’t have the ability to exercise judgement. The more freedom to exercise judgement, the less the sense of micromanagement.

And yet, there are certain jobs where the exercise of judgment is not what we want to allow. This is why the military has a very structured command structure. For sure, there are times and opportunities for soldiers to exercise individual initiative, but most of the time it is “by the numbers.”

The same applies to NASA and space operations. No astronaut steps out of the shuttle or the space station without check after check after check of redundant check lists. No one gets to exercise a great deal of individual decision-making flying 250 miles above the earth.

The same applies to decisions to send the Martian rovers down a slope. It’s not a individual decision where to go and when. It’s something everybody who’s anybody gets involved in.

So, it should be clear that there are certain tasks, certain operations where individual judgment must be suspended because of the specific circumstances. That means there are certain situations which will looks like micromanagement and they are micromanagement because that is what is needed. The only thing that keeps it from feeling micromanagement is that everyone understands the context and that the context “requires” a close management style.

Therefore, once again, micromanagement is a perception. It is not an absolute management style. It is a clash of perceptions between the managers perception of acceptable management oversight and that expected by the direct report.

If you want more detail on this subject, the concept that micromanagement doesn’t ever have to occur, check out my new 3-CD set at http://stevencerri.com/index.php/products/index/

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Management is a one-on-one affair

Hello everyone!

Have you ever had a performance review where some people say you “walk on water”, or “you can do no wrong” and others say that “you can’t manage effectively” and “I don’t understand how you got to be a manger”?

Or even more confusing, some people say that you give them “plenty of responsibility and authority” while others say you “watch them like a hawk or smother them”.

How do you reconcile these two extremes? If you are a manager, how can your direct reports see you in such a different light? It’s as if you are two different people to them.

And if you are a direct report and you have a different perception of your manager compared to that of your office mates, you might ask yourself, “How can they get it so wrong?”

The key is that management and being managed is always one-on-one. It doesn’t matter if you are managing one person or a hundred. It doesn’t matter if you are the only direct report or one of the hundred. All management is one-on-one.

What that means is that all management ultimately comes down to one and only one relationship. All management comes down to the relationship between the manager and the direct report.

Now lets’ unpack this idea a little more. If it is true that all management is ultimately one-on-one, and if it is true that management is about the relationship between the manager and the direct report, then the differences in perception between one direct report and another must be based on the perception of the direct report regarding the relationship with the manager.

That means that the manager must establish a relationship with the direct report that fosters the kind of interaction that the manager wants. It also means that it can work the other way around as well. It means that the direct report can influence the type of interaction with the manager that produces the relationship the direct report wants.

The way the manager is perceived and the way the direct report is perceived by the manager is a function of who takes the lead in establishing the relationship they want.

Ultimately, this gets us back to micromanagement. Micromanagement doesn’t have to occur…. ever. Micromanagement is not a function of the level of oversight provided by the manager over the direct report. It is a function of the perception of the relationship between the manager and the direct report as it relates to the level of oversight provided by the manager.

It is a function of the perception of the relationship.

I just completed a 3-CD set in which I explain all this and how it woks. The title of the 3-CD set is, “Succeeding Without Micromanagement”. Interested?

If you’re a manager or soon to be, check out this link.

If you’re an engineer or direct report check out this link.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Where does trust fit into management?

Hello everyone!

I gave a presentation at the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) last week on the 10 Pitfalls that can keep engineers and technical professionals from advancing up the technology management ladder. During the presentation I mentioned the word “trust” and I tend to down play the importance of trust in management, much to the surprise of many. I’d rather play up the need and use of open and frequent communication as a management tool instead of trust.

The reason for this is that many engineers equate trust with “leave me alone to do my work”. Well, as much as managers might like to leave some direct reports alone to succeed, there are plenty of direct reports, who if left alone, will do the opposite. So I resist the idea of, “If my manager trusts me, he or she will leave me alone to do my work and not hound me, or ask for status reports every week, or ask for a project review once a month. Just let me do my work and I’ll come back with the finished product.”

In my presentation I made the statement that I don’t put much attention on “trust”. In fact, I focus on communication and I think trust is overrated.

A few minutes after this statement an audience member asked me a question. The question essentially was, “Do you really think that trust is not very important? Don’t you think that people want to feel trusted? I know people want to feel trusted in their work environment.”

My response was essentially something like this: “I sometimes make statements that are a little provocative to make a point, and my statement about trust was such a statement. However, my point is that people often equate trust with “blind trust”. If you trust me you’ll leave me alone. I know we all want to be trusted. I want to be trusted. But what does being trusted mean? If it means leave me alone, it won’t work.”

I then went on to indicate that there were seven parameters that I have developed through my career that I use to determine what management style I will use in a given situation. They include:

1. Where the expertise resides, with the direct report or with the manager or somewhere else

2. The risk of the task or project

3. The timeframe of the task or project.

etc. to the 7th parameter.

I then went on to show that depending on the parameter and depending on the answer to the question regarding the parameter, I might be driven to select a different management style than might be expected. For example, if the project was a high risk project, that would lead me to manage more tightly than if the project were very low risk. And in this way, I evaluate the seven parameters and emerge with a management style for success in that “context”.

That was essentially my answer. And yet I thought more about it on the drive home. The next day I realized that there was another piece to this explanation that I had not included that I’d now like to include and here it is.

If we look at the seven parameters I call “Contextual Definition” which comprise the assessment of the management situation, we find that of the seven parameters only one, I repeat, only one pertains to the direct report. That parameter is the “location” of the expertise. Does the expertise lie with the direct report or with the manager? Once again, this is the only parameter that relates to the the direct report and therefore, it is the only parameter that relates to “trust”.

What I’m saying is that when I assess a situation in order to determine what the best management style is for success, only one of seven variables I’m taking into account has anything to do with trusting the direct report. The other six parameters have more to do with the cold, hard facts of the project or task. From this perspective, it becomes obvious that trust and therefore, the management style based on trust, i.e., “leave me alone to do my work” can end up far down the list of priorities in determining the optimum management style. And in fact, when the direct report understands this, micromanagement and any concern for “trust” actually disappears.

Here is a perfect example. The night I gave my presentation, I had an opportunity to talk to one of my colleagues who was at the event. I knew was preparing to move from full-time employment to part-time employment. He was moving into semi-retirement. I asked him if his move to semi-retirement was on schedule and he said that it was a little behind, but it was indeed moving forward. Now this man is what I would call a technical manager. He is a manager but is also up on the technology enough to be able to add value not only from the management perspective but also from the technical perspective.

I asked him if he had found his replacement yet and he indicated that he had and he was in fact, presently training him. I incorrectly assumed that the new manager would be a younger person and so I asked, “How old is your replacement?” My friend responded that his replacement was in his “early to mid-fifties”. He then went on to say that this new manager that he was training was a seasoned manager but didn’t know the department and the technology that well, and so the departing manager, my colleague, was training the new manager in these areas.

Now how do we interpret this situation and the explanation? I think there are several possible interpretations as follows:

1. The new manager could feel micromanaged because, come on, this is a seasoned manager. He can certainly be left alone to figure out the department and come up to speed on the technology. Why does he need to be “trained” by the outgoing manager?

2. The new manager could feel grateful because he doesn’t understand the department and the technology all that well yet, and any help would be appreciated.

3. Or, my colleague could be applying absolutely the best management approach because the situation calls for it as follows:

a. Were is the expertise? It is with my colleague. The new manager is not the expert in the department nor the technology. Therefore, close management supervision is absolutely what is called for. (By the way, this is the only parameter of the seven that anything to do with trust.)

b. What is the risk? The risk is relatively high. Putting a new person in this position could jeopardize current projects. Therefore, close management supervision initially is absolutely what is called for.

c. What is the timeframe? Well, my colleague is already behind his schedule to move to part-time. The sooner this new manager comes up to speed, the better. Therefore, close management supervision is absolutely what is called for.

The other four parameters likewise call for close supervision or are at the least, neutral. Therefore, the most effective management approach is the one my colleague is currently using. Now I don’t know if he explained his thought processes to the new manager, or if he even went through this thought process. He may just have a gut sense of what to do. And in fact, the two managers may both be good enough to understand with a few words that this is the best approach. Whatever the situation, when a manager lays out this thought process to a direct report, and explains the management style selection process, and emphasizes that trust is not the driver, but the situation, the “context” is, the concern for “trust me by leaving me alone” just disappears. I’ve used this approach over and over and it always, and I mean always, works. I’ve coached people in the specific use of this approach in their situations and it has always worked, so far….

This then is why I say, “I just don’t focus much on the trust issue”.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Do engineers really care about power?

Hello everyone!

I wanted to spend one more blog (maybe two) on the topic of micromanagement,

I listened to a teleseminar a few weeks back. The teleseminar was marketed as a presentation on how to manage engineers, how to manage “geeks” (the presenters’ term). The purpose of the teleseminar was to convey the idea that managing engineers was a unique enterprise and one that was different from managing other types of direct reports.

Right off the bat, the ideas being presented in the teleseminar didn’t ring true with me. The presenters’ first important message was completely off the mark as far as I was concerned. He said (I paraphrase only a little)…

“Technical people aren’t interested in power.” One of the important considerations he stated, was that “…since engineers aren’t interested in power, they can’t be influenced by the typical forms of power”.

Well, not only do I consider this statement incorrect, but I believe the issue of power is at the core of why engineers are so sensitive to being micromanaged. Micromanagement is all about power. The manager who is micromanaging (using management oversight that is excessive) and the direct report who is resisting being micromanaged (feeling over-controlled) are both dealing with their issues of power. Power is at the core of micromanagement, either the exercise of power or the resistance of that power.

As a manager, the key to avoiding being a micromanager is to diffuse the power play between you and your direct report.

If you are a direct report, and you want to avoid being micromanaged, the key is to diffuse the power play between you and your manager.

The only way to diffuse power is to communicate in a way that builds a relationship of trust between the manager and the direct report. There just isn’t any other way.

I’ve never been accused of micromanaging any of my direct reports. That’s because I never got into a power play with them. I just didn’t let the power issues take hold, and as I said, the way to avoid being a micromanager or being micromanaged is through communication.

So what is the best way to think about avoiding being a micromanager or being micromanaged. Most people, managers, trainers, consultants, coaches will use the words I’ve used in this blog. They’ll tell you that you must build trust and diffuse any power plays. But what exactly does that mean? How do you know you’ve diffused any power issues? How do you build trust exactly?

One answer you’ll hear is that you should build trust by delivering what you say you will deliver when you say you are going to deliver it. So let me get this straight… you can avoid being micromanaged by building trust, but you have to be micromanaged until you’ve built that trust. So every time you change managers you have to go through the same period of micromanagement as you are building the trust needed to avoid being micromanaged. Sounds like a chicken-and-egg kind of thing to me.

There is a better way. I don’t even focus on trust. I don’t even focus on power issues. It’s all in the structuring of the relationship between the manager and the direct report. There is a very clear, concise, and effective conversation and management structure that will completely eliminate any concerns about micromanagement. Micromanagement just doesn’t come up.

More on this in the next blog. (Yes I will devote one more.)

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Team building isn’t a cookie-cutter process.

As many authors, pundits, consultants, and academics have stated over the years and as many of us who have worked inside organizations known from experience, team-building and being on a team is very important and when you are part of a team that works, you know it. As a result, a major question that managers must answer is this, “Do all good functioning teams operate the same way?” To review the literature, the answer would be “yes”. Most would say there is a set series of behaviors that are necessary in order to be a productive team.

Many of the people who write about teams are people who haven’t managed organizations themselves. They have instead “interviewed teams” or “observed teams” and they are quick to provide a list of qualities that define a “good team”, as a result of their observations. They might have four or even ten qualities that all good teams display and they are just as quick to tell us that the job of a manager is to get the team to display these qualities. And this is indeed useful, except that the behaviors that good teams exhibit are both varied and the end result of a motivational process. It is this motivational process that managers must be most concerned with.

Therefore, as wonderful as all the behavioral characteristics may sound, the truly interesting point is that it just doesn’t seem to be borne out by the facts we encounter in everyday business situations. All one has to do is look around the business world and we find many, many, many different types of teams that are very successful. Some display a certain set of qualities while others display very different qualities, and yet they are all successful. Other teams, those who are unsuccessful in their endeavors, can sometimes display the same qualities displayed by the successful teams.

In fact, I recently worked with an organization in which there existed two teams. One team liked to fight, argue, and debate at every opportunity. They liked the passion that came from presenting an idea and fighting to defend it.

The second team liked to talk intellectually, respectfully, and with heavy use of data. They didn’t like the passion brought about by arguing. Both teams were “successful” by the standards of team dynamics, and yet each team used completely different dynamics. In fact, members of one team could not participate in the meetings of the other team.

So what are we to conclude? In the above example we have two teams with different styles and if you ask the members of each team they would have told you that their team was great and their team was successful. How can we reconcile these differences between the two successful teams who seemingly display different characteristics? It’s these observed differences in the midst of pundits telling us that there is a clear way in which teams must work that causes so much confusion in our new managers and leaders. When pundits, consultants, and authors make statements regarding teams that are contradicted by what is evidenced in everyday circumstances, they run the risk of being seen as irrelevant because their statements look like hollow platitudes.

The Importance of Team Building and Teams

So let’s set this whole team-building concept straight right now. I’ll begin by making an unequivocal statement: There are plenty of ways to build teams and to be successful with those teams. There isn’t any one “right” way to build teams if you want to be successful. In fact, the best way you build a team is more a function of the circumstances and people to be managed (what I call the context) than by anything else. And since the best team process is a function of the context (people and circumstances) you can now understand why I believe there are thousands of ways to build teams to be successful.

In fact, people will often do what we call “self-select” to be in a team. This means that people will often join a team or a company or an organization because it “fits”, at some level, who they want to associate with and who they believe themselves to be and how they want to move through the world.

Therefore, when people are in your organization, unless they have been forced to be there, there is “something” they want to associate with in that group. Your job as a manager is to find that aspect that brought them to your team in the first place and to amplify it, for each person, so that each person wants to belong to the team even more powerfully than before. This is what builds loyalty.

Now not everyone on the team will want to participate openly. Some will dominate the team. Some will provide just the right amount of input for the team’s effectiveness. The job of the manager is to “orchestrate” this group of people and circumstances to maximize the effectiveness and participation of the team.

Often the most difficult aspect for the engineering manager to grasp is that there is not a right way to do this and there is no clear sense of when the process is complete. This is a “dance” between the manager and the direct reports and this dance is on-going.

Engineering is not management!

It’s different in engineering. Most engineers know when their problem is solved, when they have an acceptable solution. Most software engineers know when their software is working, although they may never be satisfied with the output format. The electrical engineer knows when the circuitry is working as intended although they may not be satisfied with the number of components used to make the circuit work.

Engineering managers, on the other hand, never quite know when their team is working at optimum capacity. They may know when it’s working “well enough”, when it’s getting the job done. But “optimum”, never. Your job, the job of the engineering manager, is to build an environment in which everyone wants to belong and wants to give their best efforts. That may mean that you’ll use a top down, authoritative management style as is often necessary in the military or in high-risk, short time-frame projects. Or it may mean that you will use a participative or coaching management style as is often necessary in situations where you are managing software engineers or marketing personnel.

What a team “means”, what “team-work” means, and what a team “looks like” can be very different depending on the circumstances. Believing that a team always has the same qualities is what makes “cookie-cutter” managers.

I use six parameters to determine what team-building approach I’m going to use. These six parameters determine the optimum management style and therefore, the team-building processes I’m going to use. The six parameters are respectively more or less important depending upon the circumstances, depending upon the “context”.

What you will always notice about teams, however, is that they comprise a group of people who want to work together and are willing to “play by the same rules”. If they don’t want to play by the same rules they will leave the team, either literally or figuratively. It’s the managers’ job to help them fit in or to literally leave.

But fitting in can look very different in different situations and for different teams. Team members may argue for hours or they may be very respectful. They may never have formal meetings or they may regularly meet like “clock-work”. They may yell and scream at each other or they may speak in quiet voices. Whatever the dynamics, you will know it is a team because they all agree that this is how they want to work together. It is the managers job to “hold this space” so these people can continue to do so. Remember, it’s not the managers’ job to mold the team members into the “space” the manager wants them to fit into. It’s the managers’ job to determine what the situation demands the team look like and then hold the space so the team can deliver what the circumstances demand.

Therefore, the manager who wants to be successful at team-building, will not do so by generating a specific list of behaviors. Behaviors can vary. The key is to establish a set of values and then manage the team according to the context.

Just answer this question: Would you manage any or all of the following situations with the same team-building processes?

• A high-risk military operation

• A manned space flight

• A software development project for credit card services

• A software development project for a game

• An oil refinery

• A nuclear power plant

• A cattle ranch

• A farm

The biggest challenge for engineers who want to become managers is this:

Engineers deal with laws of physics that don’t change with blood sugar levels or emotional state. F=ma and E=IR don’t change with the weather. The laws of physics are predictable over the short term AND the long term. The syntax of software is as stable as a language.

Managers, on the other hand, deal with people who do change with blood sugar levels or emotional state or with the weather. Their behavior is not stable nor is it predictable over the long term. It is predictable over the very short term however.

To become managers, engineers must trade in the certainty and predictability of engineering and science for the uncertainty and unpredictability of management. They must trade in the “hard skills” of engineering for the “soft skills” for interpersonal people skills. This is the biggest hurdle in this transition… and it can be done!

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Wisdom.

What is it?

What’s your definition of wisdom?

I’ll tell you mine. Here it is….

“Wisdom is having lived long-enough so that you begin to understand those events, situations, life experiences, and conditions that are rare or only once-in-a-lifetime, and those that repeat themselves, either within the typical time span of a life or in the time span of hundreds or thousands of years.”

For example these are events that happen only once..

1. Your first child is born.

2. The first human lands on the moon.

3. The first atomic bomb is exploded.

4. The first human genome is decoded.

Here are some examples of things that repeat like revolutions of a giant, cosmic wheel..

1. Thousand of children are born every day.

2. Civilizations rise to world dominance and then dwindle to seeming insignificance except in historical terms.

3. Tyrants gain control and loose control.

4. Friends become enemies and then friends again.

5. People have wealth and then loose it and then…

6. Adolescents look for a way to distinguish themselves from their parents.

I believe it is impossible to acquire wisdom if all a person experiences are those events that happen only once. In order to see those events that happen over and over and over, a person must live long enough to “experience it” and then, hopefully, recognize what the heck is going on.

Therefore, my definition of wisdom requires a life in which the “repeatability of life” can be seen.

Implicit in this definition is the presumption that wisdom comes with age and therefore the converse is true… that youth cannot have wisdom. It’s difficult for young people to be wise unless they are voracious students of history. The flip side of that coin is that believing history may be a detriment to wisdom. Therefore, even with the best of intentions, history cannot be the sole source of wisdom.

All this leads me to this blog. Today I was reading an article in December 2007/January 2008 issue of Fast Company. The article, titled, “Get Back In The Box, How constraints can free your team’s thinking” was written by the two young authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath of the best selling book: “Made to Stick”. Now these are definitely smart guys, but in their article they were bemoaning the emphasis many business leaders place on attempting to motivate their teams by telling them to “think outside the box.” The authors’ premise is that “thinking outside the box” is not nearly as useful as actually thinking “inside a specific box”. Their position is that leaders should pick a “box” that is useful in moving the team where the leader want the team to go.

DAH!

This brings me to two points which have the effect of raising my blood pressure.

The first is this idea that there are new ways to do EVERYTHING every five or so years. New fads in management and communication emerge on a regular basis, and frankly, there aren’t many new ways to manage and communicate every five years. The reason for this “management stability” is that we are dealing with the same major variable when we consider management, leadership, and communication; i.e., people.

I don’t think people have changed drastically over the past 100 years, let alone the last 20. I’m not talking about technology and cell phones, the internet etc. Certainly the environment changes. However, whether it’s a radio, television, cell phone, computer screen, or internet, it’s still the same human being at one or both ends of the communication process. And they haven’t changed; I guarantee you.

Just look around the world and you can see that from home to far off lands, we still often function with our primitive brains in full control. So lets not go looking for a new management and communication process every few years. We don’t need outside the box any more than we need inside the box. It seems that we just change the wrapping ON the box. In fact, my management and communication approaches worked when I was a middle manager, when I was a general manager, and they still work today as an entrepreneur, coach, and consultant. Better than most, I might add.

This fits right in with “thinking outside the box” versus our young friends telling us to “think inside a good box”. What a mind-trip this whole thing is. Forget the box. Forget outside and inside.

This brings me to the second blood-pressure-raising item; if these gentlemen were older my guess is that they would have written a very different article.

Inside or outside the box, it all has to do with framing, which has been around for decades, long before they were born. Setting the frame for “outside the box” is, according to the authors of this Fast Company article, starting with a “clean slate”. Well not really. For some people, thinking outside the box, is indeed starting with a clean slate. But for others, “thinking outside the box” means stretching the boundaries of what is acceptable but not starting with a clean slate. For others it is bringing in other disciplines, often known as “cross-disciplinary teams”. This means starting with a not-so-clean slate and adding even more dirt. Those who have been around a while understand all this as “framing”.

The approach the authors suggest in this article is to reject thinking outside the box as being too “unstructured”, too “indefinite”. They propose instead thinking “inside a specific box”, one that is defined as a model for where the team is to be headed. They go further to define the desired “box” as some “example” that the leader wants that is known to work and that confines the team to a arena that is not too large or ill-defined. Once again it’s basic framing. It’s no big deal and frankly it’s not worthy of a lot of attention. However…

Now you might be saying; “Well, come on Steven, you’re just trading one label for another. You use ‘framing’ and they use the ‘box.” “What’s the difference?” “You’re not really being fair to these guys.”

The bold quotes in the paragraph above are absolutely true. I am trading one label for another.

And that’s the question, isn’t it? What does it matter? Here is the reason I think this topic warrants a posting on my blog. Here is why it matters. Managers, leaders, and teams who understand and use the concept of framing know that this process has been around for 50 plus years. There is a great deal of literature on it. It’s been used, proven, used, and proven again and again. John Wooden, the fantastically successful coach of the UCLA Bruin basketball team used to focus his team obsessively on the basics of basketball. Dribble, shoot, practice, practice, and practice some more. Success was not to be found in famously elaborate moves. Success starts with doing the fundamentals well. And in management and communication, framing is a fundamental that, when done well, moves a team along.

And when it comes to managers, new managers as well as long-time managers, it seems they are constantly looking for that “silver bullet”, that little gold nugget, such that when it’s applied, will turn the team around and make the manager a leader. Just do this and all will be well!

Forget about it. Management, leadership, and communication success are the result of applying the basics of human behavior not in applying the latest fad. Not in being outside the box one year and inside the box the next and straddling it the next.

But that’s not quite it either. The real issue has to do with wisdom. We’re back to that. People follow for the same reasons now that they did a hundred years ago. They may follow different “things” now but they follow for the same reasons, and those reasons are deep within the psychological structure of human beings.

Leaders get people to follow for the same reasons now as they did a hundred years ago. The polls used in current political electioneering are not used to find what new processes people use when making their decisions regarding for whom to vote. The new poll processes are just using current techniques to discover more about how the deep, ancient drives embedded in human beings are manifesting in the current environment. But the drives are ancient. What framing provides is the wisdom of how to communicate, manage, and lead people in the present based on old programs. What the article provides is information that is not wisdom but is the latest way of looking at an old phenomenon. And the new view doesn’t bring success, only confusion, in my opinion.

In this article, the two authors lead managers, leaders, and team members to believe that there is a quick fix; in fact that there is a new fix.

“Let me have that one pill that will make everything all right.” “Lets adopt that new management technique and we’ll be able to be a successful team”. “If I can just master this ‘in the box thing’ I’ll be a great leader and manager.”

Forget about it! Just look at how fast the newest approach fades. Success doesn’t exist in the latest fad, it exists in finding what works and doing that, and finding what doesn’t work and not doing that. And it requires experience. The best combination is learning, experience, and flexibility, in or out of any box.

The truly successful communicators, managers, and leaders base their success on understanding the fundamentals of how people communicate, follow, and lead. In this Fast Company article, the authors of the book, “Made to Stick” base their suggestions on a small insignificant twist of a topic that has out-lived its fad-period. In or out of the box, that’s not management, leadership, or effective communication. (That was a rant, wasn’t it?)

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Risking life and death for the team!”

Imagine you’ve volunteered and you’ve been selected to crew on a California-to-Hawaii Pacific Cup race. You’ve done this before a couple of times. It’s an annual event and you take a couple weeks vacation to crew this race. You’ve trained with this crew for some time but you are still true unknowns to each other. It’s your hobby. You all volunteer for this.

You set sail heading for Hawaii on a 44-foot yacht. All is going well for the first few days. Then your boat is hit by a storm. It’s midnight and the storm is raging. The wind is blowing so hard that the rain is no longer falling vertically. You have to tilt your head sideways to experience the rain as “falling”. The wind is howling. The boat is pitching and yawing. Once in a while you’d swear it’s going to capsize. The mainsail is down. It’s too windy. The jib (the small sail at the bow of the boat) is still up to offer some control.

Everything is latched down, and you and the rest of the crew are below deck trying to ride out the storm without getting sick. The captain is at the wheel trying to maintain some semblance of control of the boat.

All of a sudden the jib sheet comes loose (the sheet is the rope that holds the jib sale at its correct attitude to the boat. The sheet ties down the sail.) It’s come loose and is flapping like a high-pressure hose without anybody to hold it. You can hear the rustle of the jib and the jib sheet even as the storm rages.

No one in their right mind would venture out on the bow of the boat to retrieve and tie down the sheet and the captain is sure not going to order or even ask anyone to take that risk. Being lost at sea in this storm at this time of the night in this location in the Pacific Ocean is not just being lost; it’s being PERMANENTLY lost. No one is going to go looking for a man overboard.

That sheet is going to be whipping around for while which means that the jib is going to be useless for that time, which means the captain will have little if any control during the storm. (The mainsail was brought down as soon as the storm began building.)

Below deck you and the rest of the crew are trying to stay calm. All of a sudden one of the crew jumps up, puts on his rain gear and steps up on deck. He ties himself in as best he can and walks to the bow. He leans forward as far as he can and as the sheet whips past his hand he grabs it, ties it down and the jib is useful again. He makes his way below deck, soaked, but energized like a man who has just been through a 300-foot bungee jump.

You and the rest of the crew are looking at this guy with two simultaneous expressions on your faces; total admiration mixed with “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR @&y$* MIND?”

While you’re reading this blog and imagining this event, Al, one of the students in my MBA program didn’t imagine it. He was on the crew where this happened.

We were taking our MBA program together; 22 students for 18 months. The module we were in at the time Al told this story was the “Organizational Development” module. We were discussing motivation. Al told this story as an example of motivation. We all acknowledged Al’s story with “wow, that’s incredible”. Then I asked the question, “So I understand the story, but why did this guy risk his life for the crew and the race? What was the motivational force?” Interestingly enough no one had an answer, not even the professors.

This to me was completely unsatisfactory. Here was a perfectly clear human behavior. No matter how you cut it, this man risked his life for the crew and for the race. The captain gave no order. The crew didn’t draw straws. Everyone was perfectly prepared to ride out the storm even if it meant they would have to pull out of the race.

And yet, someone took the risk for the team.

Imagine if you understood how to motivate people without being the captain. Imagine if you understood how to motivate people without pressuring people to take action. That’s exactly what happened here. The captain didn’t give an order. The crew didn’t feel compelled to take action. Yet someone did.

I embarked on a quest of sorts to answer my question since no one else seemed to be able to answer it. Over the years I figured it out. The piece that was missing I’ve labeled “criteria”. Everyone has criteria for their actions, for their motivations. And everyone’s criteria for work are different from their criteria for family, which are different from their criteria for play. If you can determine what a person’s criteria are for a specific context you will know exactly how to position whatever your request is so that you can motivate them to achieve it. Leadership and influence are ultimately about understanding your team’s criteria on an individual and group level. For most managers and leaders influence is usually achieved by accident, by hit-and-miss.

I’ve determined that criteria can be simply derived through a series of conversational questions. Questions my professors in the MBA program didn’t know about. The questions will uncover the powerful motivational forces that drive people to achieve.

Imagine if you can dovetail your requests with the criteria of the people who’s help you depend upon. This is what it takes to influence when you don’t have authority. And as you progress from technologist to manager or if you want to stay technical for most or all of your career, you will have to learn how to successfully influence when you don’t have authority. That in turn, will depend on your ability to understand the criteria by which other people are motivated to either cooperate or not…… ever wonder what your criteria are?

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“How much time is the right time to train an employee?”

Today I was talking to a VP at a client company. We were discussing the difficulty in hiring and training people to fit into a job. The time it takes for them to fit the culture, to fit the job requirements, to fit with the customers… all that fitting that has to take place can take 9 months to a year. And then if you’ve hired the wrong person some companies don’t decide to let the person go until another 6 months or more have gone by. The VP was bemoaning the fact that it seems so difficult to hire the right person for the job these days.

This line of the conversation got me thinking about something that I have seen over and over in my career and in some cases I’ve experienced first hand from both the giving and the receiving side of the fence. And that is, “How ruthless should a manager be when it becomes increasingly clear that an employee may not work out?”

We’ve all heard the quote attributed to Jack Welch and other famous managers and that is, when asked the biggest mistakes they’ve made in their management career, they have answered, “Not firing someone soon enough.”

Now the idea here is that it’s important and useful to be “ruthless”. Ruthless in a way that says, “I can make the tough decisions when I have to.”

Now I’ve known and do know executives who are not ruthless at all. In fact they have a very difficult time firing anybody. They wait and prolong the firing far beyond the point where everyone in the company knows it should happen. The very interesting thing is that these companies did not suffer from that behavior. Everyone knew that the company had a big heart and a long fuse and just accepted it as the way the organization worked.

On the other hand, I’ve known and know executives who have a very short fuse and fire very quickly when it is clear the employee may not work out. While their company’s bottom line doesn’t seem to move up or down, the moral does seem to dip a little and never quite recover. But then again, that executive is not so interested in moral. If he or she was, they wouldn’t be so quick to be ruthless.

Now my point is not to pass judgment on the kind nor the ruthless executive. Right now I’m just commenting on what is out there. What I want to talk about is the continuum and the implications. Here is what I mean.

Imagine at one end of a continuum is the executive who is slow to fire. Patient, trusting, and prone to give the benefit of the doubt is this executive’s mantra. We’ll call this the Patient side of the continuum.

At the other end of the continuum is the executive who is quick to fire if the person is not working out. They are impatient and quick to react to less than adequate performance. We’ll call this the Ruthless side of the continuum.

And then there is that range in between those two extremes of the continuum where most of the executives and managers of the world live.

I now want to connect the dots… I want to connect this continuum to management, leadership, and entrepreneurship.

Most managers live on the Patient side of the continuum. They attempt to hire the right people and then they tend to train and coach the employees in the hopes that they will become good solid performers.

Many leaders live on either side of this continuum as do many entrepreneurs.

However, there is a breed of entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders that live on the end of the continuum…. at the ruthless end. And their behaviors are very distinct and evident. They treat employees like gears in a watch. If they find a gear and it doesn’t fit they don’t send the gear to be re-machined so it can function in the watch. They simply throw away the gear and get another gear and try it. If it doesn’t work they throw that gear out and get another one. They keep doing this until they find a gear that works.

Notice that this approach really makes the entrepreneur responsible for only one thing… picking the gear. They are not responsible for managing the employee. The employee is supposed to come fully competent and capable of doing the required job. If not, well we must have picked the wrong person… NEXT candidate!

This then is the dilemma, especially of small businesses, because small businesses would like to behave like the ruthless entrepreneur. Small businesses don’t have the time or money to carry people who are not producing. And yet, small business are not prone to behaving in a ruthless manner to their employees.

This then is the tug that goes on in small businesses. You’ve seen them. The manager who, on the one hand, would like to be ruthless and shows it with the blustering “bark” of someone who would fire an employee at the drop of a hat and, on the other hand, won’t actually “bite” and take action to fire the under-performing employee. As a small business owner, manager, executive, or leader, the following steps will help.

The first step is to analyze how you and your company treat this issue… the issue of employees not turning out the way you’d hoped.

The second step is to become clear about the company’s and your tolerance for being ruthless. You may want to be ruthless from a financial point of view, but won’t go there because of your values.

The third step is to be very clear regarding the expectations you have about employee performance and convey that information to employees in clear and certain terms.

The fourth step is to put in place a time line for the company, the specific employee under consideration, and their manager so that everyone knows when the decision point is being approached.

The fifth step is to “future pace” your decision so you will clearly understand the implications of a ruthless decision if it has to be made.

The sixth step is to make the decision, if necessary, and follow through.

The final seventh step is to assess the consequences of the decision and adjust going forward if necessary.

I’m not saying that I favor being ruthless. It’s not my style. But for any of you working at the higher levels in an organization it’s a part of life. When an employee is young and lacks experience, they are given a great deal of leeway, training, and coaching in order to become competent. However, as the employee’s career progresses certain assumptions are made about their abilities. At the level of the senior manager or executive, it is assumed that they are competent and they can “drop into a position” and be left alone to succeed. If they perform, wonderful. If they don’t, it can be “asta la vista, baby”.

In my career, I’ve used several of the steps I listed above many, many, many times. I’ve only used ALL of them twice, meaning I didn’t often have to be ruthless. I was lucky I guess…. I had a knack for turning people who didn’t seem to work out when they reported to others… into star performers when they reported to me… the steps and the process really do work.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Should we take Colin Powell’s advice?”

I’ll bet I’ve got your attention now, haven’t I? Actually, I’m very serious when I ask “Is Colin Powell a leader?” and “Should we take his advice on leadership matters?”

There are plenty of people who think that merely asking these questions is a sign of lack of patriotism or a lack of understanding of what leadership really is. I think it’s the exact opposite.

Let me tell what started me down this path in the first place.

I was listening to NPR one day and they had a news story on leadership. Apparently one of the NPR news people had gone around the country and interviewed people who were considered “leaders”. One of the questions posed to these so-called leaders what a request for a definition of leadership. This news person quoted Colin Powell’s definition of leadership from his book. I’m paraphrasing only slightly here when I say that Colin Powell wrote: “When a leader’s men stop coming to him with their problems, the leader has stopped leading.”

The NPR news person continued for a minute to elaborate on Colin Powell’s book quote. There was the expected deference to the idea that on the battle field the leader must have the confidence and trust of his men and if those men don’t come to the leader with their problems the leader is no longer trusted and therefore, cannot lead and is no longer leading.

Whose going to argue with that? A person would have to be nuts to disagree with Colin Powell let alone disagree that trust is important in leadership. Right?

Well not quite. I’ve lead a lot of very good, very powerful, very accomplished teams, and bringing me their problems was not what my role was about. In fact it was the exact opposite. I wanted to ween then AWAY from bringing me their problems. If they continued to be incapable of making their own decisions, I would continue to be the leader of a group people who could not think on their feet and who could only get things done when they were told what to do next. If I didn’t make them capable of making their own decisions I would end up with a group of “children” who had to come to “father” to know what to do next. That, I didn’t think, was truly my role as a leader.

So this put me on another track. Actually it put me “back on track”. It put me back on the track I’ve been on for some time, and that is leadership looks different depending on the situation. Here is what I mean.

When you are a military leader, you actually can’t have direct reports thinking for themselves. You can’t have people deciding in the field that they are going to go against direct orders. (Now I know that the US military prides itself in allowing more decision-making authority to the field personnel compared to the Russian soldiers, but the bottom line is that the military can’t tolerate a high level of independent decision-making in the field… chaos would be the result.)

However, I come from the environments of the commercial and government business areas. In these environments, especially the commercial business arena, leaders expect their direct reports to think for themselves. Leaders expect their direct reports to bring their problems and their SOLUTIONS, and after some time we expect our direct reports to bring fewer and fewer problems to us and just give us the outcomes of their solutions.

So as I worked through this thought process, I went back to my previous statements made in my seminars and my university courses and that is “leadership is a function of the context”. Leadership looks different depending upon the situation, the risk, the expertise required, the time horizon, etc. Colin Powell is a military commander. As such, leadership in that environment requires that the direct reports “bring” the problems to the commander. There is little need for the entrepreneurial spirit on the battlefield.

However, in the business environment of the commercial world, a direct report who is constantly bringing problems to the boss and waiting for the boss to give “marching” orders is doomed to a short career.

In the business world, the real world of business, the true leadership answer is even more complicated than I’ve explained it so far. Because in reality, there are times when it’s important to behave like a military commander and there are times when it’s important to behave like Mr. Rogers. There are times to have your direct reports bring their problems to you and there are times when you want them to think for themselves. True and effective leadership is the ability to do both and to teach your direct reports when to do which.

All this translates into this important message: “The bottom line is that it’s important to be careful when listening to people talk about leadership. Most people don’t understand that leadership is a function of the context… except the very best leaders do! When you read a book, listen to a speaker, or get some advice regarding leadership, remember the context and the relationship between the context and the person giving the advice. Whether they know it or not, the context is driving their experience of leadership. If the context they are coming from is not the same as the context you are in, don’t trust the advice. Let me repeat that statement: “If the context from which they are deriving their advice is not the same as the context you are in, don’t trust the advise.”

So Colin Powell is a great teacher of leadership if you are a military commander. He is not a good leadership teacher if you are a product manager in a commercial printer company or an aerospace corporation program manager building a satellite. I guarantee it!

Be well,

Steven Cerri

How bad can we be and still be good?

So here’s the question… can a jerk still be a successful manager?

The answer of course, is Yes!

I know it all depends on how we define “successful” but there is no doubt that within our culture and actually within the business world as a whole, success is usually defined as financial success. There are many people who are financially successful from a business, management, or leadership perspective even though no one would classify them as “not being jerks”. All you have to do is read through the business magazines and journals and you can quickly pick up who is well respected for their “all round” good approach to people as well as business issues and those who are just respected for their “business acumen”. The literature is filled with names like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Robert Nardelli, Bill Gates, Michael Eisner, and Leona Helmsley. Some of them have changed over time and some have not. (I’ll let you fit them into the appropriate category, past and present.)

So if we define success as financial success (including the financial success that comes from achieving what you set out to accomplish which in turn provides you with financial rewards) you can be a jerk or you can be a nice person and anywhere in between.

So why even care? If you can be successful financially, why should you even care about how you treat people?

The answer is “time”. The answer is “longevity”. You can’t be a jerk and be successful in the long run. You can make your millions of dollars quickly but you can’t sustain success in the long run by abusing people. There are some people who will join the jerk and work for him or her for a while… but sooner or later the rudeness grows thin.

People self select who they want to work for. And there are some people who will work for the jerk… for a while. But in fact, it’s becoming more and more difficult to be a jerk and be successful. The reason for this is workplace diversity and by that I mean that today’s workforce is make up of people of all ages, from teens to 70 year-olds. Today’s workforce is made up of men and women from all over the world, with various cultural and educational backgrounds. Today’s successful managers and leaders are not those who are jerks but those who are flexible enough to be able to integrate that diverse workforce and mold them into a team.

It finally gets down to this one question… “How do you want to live your life?” There are plenty of people who don’t want to live a life of consideration for others. There are those that do. Financial success can be achieved by both. So in the end, the question is “How do you want to move through the world?” “How do you want to treat people?”

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you have to be like someone else in order to be successful. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you have to be nice and compassionate or that you have to be ruthless and heartless. First be yourself and then be flexible enough to be successful.

Personally, I’m of the belief that we can have it all. I want to move through the world being involved with people in a supportive and positive way, AND be flexible enough to be effective.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“There’s nothing worse than a promotion!”

Years ago, when people were asked what was the most stressful event in their lives, invariably, death of a loved one and moving were ranked up there at one and two, almost interchangeably. No more. The world has changed and so apparently has our perception of the most stressful event in our lives.

I came upon an article in the May 14th issue of BusinessWeek magazine. You’ll find it on the bottom of page 13 of the hardcopy edition. The article is titled, “Stress Factor: Please Don’t Promote Me”. The article begins with the following lead:

“For some, climbing the corporate ladder brings on vertigo. In a recent survey, nearly one in five managers ranked getting a promotion as their most challenging life event. One big reason, say researchers…who conducted a poll of 785 business leaders … is that 40% of managers get little or no support as they enter the new jobs, according to the survey. It’s sink or swim, says one researcher.” The business leaders ranged from line supervisory staff to those in executive suites, including many managers outside the U.S. Promotion was ranked as most challenging followed by bereavement, then divorce, moving, and then by managing teenage children.

There are two conclusions that can be drawn from this research.

The first is that mangers do not have a good means of selecting the next generation of managers and therefore, the wrong people are selected. This probably contributes to part of the the statistical result. If there were a better management-candidate-selection-process, current managers would be able to select those people who were indeed ready for their promotion to management.

The second conclusion to be drawn is that once a candidate selection process is used (faulty or otherwise) to select the next manager, adequate training, coaching, and preparation are usually not provided.

If you’re a technical professional who wants to be a manger or you’re a manager who wants to promote a technologist to manager and you’ve ever thought that management and communication training and coaching are not necessary… well it appears that many of your colleagues, those who have been promoted, would not agree.

From my experience coaching and training many technical professionals who have been promoted to management or who want to be promoted to manager, there is definitely truth in this BusinessWeek article. In our western culture we have an underlying belief that says that some important aspects of management and leadership are innate. In fact, it’s this belief in the innate aspects of management and leadership that leads us to talk about “empowerment”, “trial by fire”, “the leader of the team will rise to the challenge just like cream rises to the top of stirred milk”. These are all phrases that represent the underlying belief system that management and leadership don’t need to be taught but rather are forged in “trial by fire”.

Frankly, it’s nonsense. In today’s world, it just isn’t true. In days of old, leaders did indeed seem to just “show up”. Because these people had a specific behavior pattern, when the environment around them shifted to support their behavior, they were seen as leaders. Then when the situation shifted again, they were no longer leaders because their behavior no longer fit the environment.

Examples are Napoleon, General George Patton, and Boris Yeltsin.

People who are not examples of the old style of leadership but rather are examples of the 21st century type of leadership are General Dwight Eisenhower and President Jimmy Carter. (I’ve listed only a few examples of each category, but obviously you can see my point.)

Leaders can no longer afford to “just show up”. They must be prepared. You must be prepared. Management candidates must be trained and coached and they must be flexible in order to deal with a wide variety of situations and people.

The days of being promoted and “winging it” are gone, as clearly evidenced by the survey and by your own experience or that of someone you know.

It is time to get trained and coached to be as successful, competent, and fruitful as you can be… if management is where you’re headed.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“How to be worth your weight in Gold!”

As a technical professional, do you want to be worth your weight in GOLD to your employer? Do you want to be so valuable that your boss thinks he or she can’t let you go?

If your answer is “YES” then there is only one answer regarding your behavior. Your behavior as a technical professional has to be as a “bridge between the technical and the non-technical worlds”.

This is so fundamentally important that those who can perform this task for the general public actually become famous. They become the “rock stars” of the technical world.

Remember Carl Sagan? He was the first of this generation to make technology understandable to the public. And now you may know Neil deGrasse Tyson of the American Museum of Natural History.

He is following in the footsteps of Carl Sagan. And why is this so important, you might ask?

This is so important because technology is become more and more important and intertwined in our everyday lives. What you do, as a technologist, is more and more influential in the world and the public either understands it and the implications or they make it up. And when the public makes up the impact of technology they can many times be wrong.

It is therefore, important for technologists to be able to explain what they do, why they do it, and what it all means.

Granted, most of you will not become Carl Sagans or Neil deGrasse Tysons. Most of you will not become the “rock stars” of the technological world.

However, inside your companies you have the capability to do just that. inside your companies you have the capability to become the spokesperson for technology, to be the bridge between the technical world and the non-technical world. And we all know it’s necessary. Your non-technical colleagues often don’t understand what you are talking about, not because they are incapable of understanding but because you are not helping them to understand. If you want people to understand you and your world, it’s incumbent upon you, yes it’s your responsibility to help them understand. Don’t blame it on them. Don’t think that they should be capable of understanding your technical explanations. If you want others to understand your world, explain it to them so they can understand.

Just listen to the tapes of Carl Sagan or listen to the CDs of Neil deGrasse Tyson. You’ll hear technical explanations presented in a way that most non-technical people will understand.

If you want to break out of the technical mold, if you want to break out of the technical egg shell, if you want to be as valuable as Gold to your company, then be that bridge between the technical world and the non-technical world. Make your technical world accessible to everyone and watch your contribution expand exponentially.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“It’s my comfort that’s most important!”

I have the belief that most managers either manage based on how they would like to be managed or they manage based on how they were managed early in their lives. And examples of this are everywhere. Here’s one.

I know a relatively high level manager who uses predominately, as a management style, the style he likes used on him. He manages using a relatively “hands-off” management style. He gives his direct reports a great deal of freedom. Sounds great doesn’t it. Who wouldn’t want to be managed this way?

Not so fast.

Some of his direct reports love this hands-off management style. Some don’t. Instead of getting support, guidance, critiques, input, advice, and direction, they get autonomy, freedom, and “empowerment”. Some of his direct reports feel that, in this way, they can show their true leadership capabilities. However, some of his direct reports complain that they feel as if he doesn’t care about their success, they feel abandoned.

So which is it? What should a manager do, cater to each whim of his or her direct reports?

The bottom line is that some of this manager’s direct reports are pleased that he is not heavily involved in their work. Some of his direct reports are not pleased with his hands-off approach. He, like most managers, uses the same management style regardless of the direct report and regardless of the situation.

This of course is no surprise. This is a natural tendency. Plenty, if not most of the managers use this “one size fits all” approach. Only in management we might call it,

“one management style fits every direct report and every situation”.

Now some young managers with little experience might think this is a great way to be managed. They might think, “Leave me alone and I’ll prove myself to you and the organization. Isn’t this the way managers become leaders… trial by fire.” Young managers may also believe this is the best way for them to manage their direct reports, as well.

I can guarantee you that with some experience, these young managers will change their minds.

When we think about the management style I’ve discussed above and the preferences of the direct reports, there are questions that quickly come to mind:

1. “Has the direct report asked the manager for closer supervision and more interaction?”

2. “Why is this manager so distant?”

3. “If the direct report wants more guidance, why isn’t the manager providing it?”

One of his direct reports asked why he was so hands-off in his management style. The direct report indicated that they would like more interaction with the manager.

He told this direct report that when he was a young employee and even a young manager, he didn’t want to be “micro-managed”. He didn’t like being managed too closely, and in fact, he felt most comfortable when his manager left him alone a lot. He still prefers to be managed that way by his current boss. The less interaction the better. Because he likes to have a lot of autonomy he thought that his direct reports would like that autonomy as well. In fact, he selected direct reports who would like being left alone. His management approach was to select people, place them in a position, leave them alone to do their best work, and if their best work wasn’t good enough, he’d replace them. This is the way he was treated, and and the way he wanted to be treated, and so it’s the way he decided to treat his current direct reports.

This answer is so common as to be applicable in probably 90% of management situations.

This manager also told a story that is very common among managers, it’s happened to me as well. This manager said that he once had a direct report who came to him with ideas every now and then. The manager would listen to the ideas and then give the direct report his ideas in return. He also often gave the direct report direction. This went on for some time, until one day the direct report told the manager that he didn’t like the manager giving him direction “all the time”. He didn’t like being “micro-managed”. (How many of us have heard that line?)

This was just the type of feedback necessary to reinforce the manager’s position that people should be given autonomy and not be managed too closely. And so, he was further convinced that giving people a good deal of autonomy was the best management style. He had evidence from his own direct report. There it was. He had just been told by his direct report that he was managing too closely. This sealed the manager’s choice of management style for years to come.

This is the process by which most managers develop their management styles. They have a preference; they use it; they sort for and look for those pieces of evidence that support our selection; their choice gets reinforced; and on and on it goes.

This situation is not uncommon. Most managers are faced with this situation and most managers handle it exactly the same way this manager has. They pick the management style that is most suitable and comfortable to them, to how they want to managed… and they do not take into account the preferred management style of the direct reports or the best management style for the situation.

I propose a very different solution, as follows…

“I don’t care about the preferred management style of the manager; pick the management style that is most suitable to the direct report AND the task being performed.

A manager need not cater to the whims of his or her direct reports. Neither should a manager stick with one management style regardless of the circumstances. A manager should be flexible enough to select the best management style based on the situation, the context.

I call this adjustment to the situation or the context, “Contextual Definition©”. Contextual Definition allows the manager to select the best and most effective management style based on the situation and the employee not on the manager’s comfort. It is a much more effective and efficient approach. More on Contextual Definition© in future blogs.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

Hired for technology & fired for lack of fit

“Technology or Fit; which is it?”

Here is another case study of the adage… people are hired for their abilities and fired for their lack of fit. This applies to technical people and non-technical people as well.

I have a client and friend who manages a group of people. He has had two assistants over the past two plus years. The responsibilities of the assistants is to support him and the department and to interact with personnel from other departments. This is a pretty typical situation found in most corporations and organizations. An executive has an executive assistant who takes care of a lot of the departmental and interdepartmental details for the executive.

His first assistant was very smart, very efficient, and very knowledgeable… and very difficult. This assistant seemed cold, rude, and difficult to deal with. This assistant’s people skills were, to a very large degree, what we might call, missing. Things got done very quickly, but the conflict that was ultimately involved by having to deal with this person actually made the task take longer, with lingering issues. Most of the people who had to work with this assistant complained that this person is difficult.

His new assistant is perhaps not as efficient, perhaps not as experienced in the department’s functions… and very pleasant. This assistant seems warm, helpful, and easy to deal with. This assistant’s people skills are, to a very large degree, what we might call, excellent. The actual tasks take a little longer to get done when compared to the first assistant, but when they are done they are done, and the process is smooth, and there are no lingering issues, except those of “it was easy working with that person, I look forward to it again”. Most of the people who work with this person smile and say that the assistant is a pleasure to work with.

The bottom line is that the first assistant got very low marks even though that person was efficient. Ultimately the first assistant got pushed out because no one wanted to work with that person. The second assistant was hired as a replacement and everyone wants the new assistant to stay.

Once again it comes down to: “People are hired for their abilities and are fired for their lack of fit.”

This is how it went for the assistant to a department head. It is how it goes for a technologist. It is how it goes for a technical manager. Your technical abilities are no guarantee of success, they are merely necessary but not sufficient for success.

But was is “fit”? How do you know whether you fit?

Fit is a broad term for how human beings interact. If they interact in a way that meets with everyone’s usually unspoken consensus, (or at least most of the people in the group) then the fit is high. If the interaction is not “comfortable” for most of the group then the fit is low.

Notice that this definition means that there is no “absolute” measure of fit. We can say, “This is how you should fit into your organization”? Although there are people, managers, consultants, and trainers who will tell you different, they are wrong. Just look at the business news, or read some of my past blogs. You’ll find plenty of evidence that organizations have different ways of defining “fit”.

Lets look at some examples. Oracle has a different definition of fit than say Intuit … or…

Home Depot under Robert Nardelli had a different definition of fit than say Boeing under MnNerney … or …

Chrysler has a different definition of fit than say Wal-Mart … as evidenced by Julie Rohm.

So fit isn’t an absolute parameter, it’s a relative parameter.

Now having said that, there are certainly fit-definitions that many people generally aspire to. For example, we could say that most people want to be respected, feel heard, and generally be treated in a positive way. (Remember my assistant story at the beginning of this blog?)

However, when you join a company, remember that you are joining a culture that already exists. Will you be able to “fit” there? It’s generally impossible to know when you join a company exactly how fit will be defined for certain and what you’ll have to do to make a fit. It’s very much like the beginning of a new romantic relationship. Everyone is on their best behavior.

In an attempt to know how fit you will be in the company and how fit the company will be with you, many companies have a 90-day probationary period for new employees. This period is an attempt to determine if the “fit” is right. You are on your best behavior and so it often seems that everything is working just fine.

But then the after the 90-day probationary period, the “bloom is off the rose” so to speak. People get comfortable. Their real personalities begin to show. Times get stressful. The company is having some challenges or you are having some personal or professional challenges. Whatever it is, the situation shifts and the organization is different and it expects something different from you. Now your question is, “are you going to adjust” or stay as you have up until now? This is the question.

Those who don’t adjust… ultimately get fired or moved aside. Those who do adjust, stay, usually.

There is no right or wrong here. There is only what is comfortable for you and what works. If you don’t want to adjust, then don’t. Start looking for another job. If you can and want to adjust, then do.

And when you are hiring people, just keep in mind that you will probably hire them because they have the abilities you want and they “seem” to be a fit for your organization. Downstream, if you lay them off or fire them, it will probably be because they really didn’t fit. That’s one the big lessons of management and leadership.

In my coaching practice I have coached many people who were very close to being fired, let go, or laid off. In every case, I was brought in by the manager of the person at risk of termination. In every case, the manager valued the employees technical abilities and they wanted to keep the person. But the lack of fit, the lack of people skills, had placed the manager in a position where they were forced to lay the employee off. Other people didn’t want to work with this employee. Program managers didn’t want them on their teams. For their manager, it was their last resort. “Can you help this person work better with his or her colleagues, because if not, I’m going to have to lay them off”, were the words from their managers.

In every case, these people became either the next generation of managers in their companies or the star technical people in their organizations.

Fit can be adjusted. The fist step is to understand what it is and then how to adjust it.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Influence is…”

I recently read a question in April 23, 2007 BusinessWeek magazine (the Analyze This article of the UpFront section.) Part of the question was the following: “We have an employee who turns every interaction —work-related or not—into a conversation about her. She’s otherwise good at her job, but folks are beginning to avoid meetings with her or task forces on which she serves. “She sucks the air out of the room,” a co-worker complained. Is there a polite way to stifle this behavior?”

There you have it. A situation we have all been in at one time or another. Maybe it’s even us who are constantly turning the conversation into one about us. We are after all the most interesting people we know.

The official person responding to this question answered as follows:

“Since the current strategy, avoidance, doesn’t seem to be helping, you’re going to have to confront her about this. That doesn’t mean merely hinting…. someone, preferably her supervisor or a colleague who has enough of a relationship with her so that constructive observations aren’t rejected out of hand— should talk to her privately. Politely but firmly, tell her that her work is valued but that she may not realize how much she turns the subject to herself. …. You’ll need to keep her contempt in check. Otherwise, she may make that the subject of your talk, once again hijacking the discussion to meet her needs.”

There you have it. The official answer from BusinessWeek. My response is that the recommendation… won’t work.

BusinessWeek’s response contains a seed of truth in it… in the sentence “…someone, preferably her supervisor or a colleague who has enough of a relationship with her…” All purposeful influence requires that a positive relationship exist first. You can have accidental influence without it, but if you want to intentionally move someone in a direction, you must first have a relationship. And I do mean “first”. If you don’t have a positive relationship first, you can count on your message getting either ignored, rejected, or misinterpreted. That’s pretty much the only part of the BusinessWeek response I agree with.

So let’s start at the beginning. We all know someone who takes the whole conversation over making it about them. It may be us sometimes. It may be others. It may be our boss. It could be technical colleagues or non-technical colleagues. It could be customers. It may occur some of the time, it may occur only when relating to certain subjects, or it may occur all the time. If you are a technical manager or even a member of a technical team, how do you either control this situation or at the very least help influence it in the right direction… the direction of full participation by everyone?

You see, I don’t see this situation much different than the person who never talks and never contributes their ideas. The person who constantly turns the conversation into one about them is just the opposite end of the spectrum compared to the person who never says anything. So as a technical manager or a technologist who wants to influence this situation, what should you do?

We’ve got to take one more step back for a moment before answering that important question. And the step back is this. I believe that people behave in ways that they have found useful. People do not knowingly behave in ways that hurt them. They behave in ways that they believe will help them to succeed. So the person who is constantly turning the conversation into one that is about them has found that very useful in the past, just as the person who says nothing has found that behavior to be useful in their past. Perhaps it has to do with safety or with success or with visibility. Frankly, I don’t care about the “why” reason. I only am concerned to notice behavior and to understand that that behavior has been useful for that person in the past and they continue to think that it will be useful; that’s why it is still showing up.

Now notice, that as soon as I take the position that the behavior is useful in some situation, my attitude toward what to do begins to change. It’s not so much a problem. It’s more a situation where I, as the person who wants to influence this behavior in another person, must provide an alternative so that the person will find a new behavior more acceptable to their outcome than the current one. One of the best ways to do this is to determine if the person is “moving towards” something or is “moving away from” something. If they are moving toward something, then I must give them a better way to achieve it. If they are moving away from something then I have to give them a better way to avoid it. (The article didn’t even mention this. The article’s answer was essentially to threaten the employee….”shape up or else!”)

So the first step is to determine if the employee is either moving toward or moving away from and this can be done with some casual conversation. Once you know which it is the next step is to build non-verbal rapport with the person. This can be achieved over the phone or in person. In either case, the goal is to build a comfortable relationship that allows the employee to feel comfortable with the conversation. Contrary to many impressions, building rapport can take a couple of minutes, no more.

Once rapport is built the influential conversation can go something like this for both cases:

Moving Towards (For this example, I’ll assume the person wants to be heard..)

“Sue, I understand that you want to be heard because you have many good ideas. And I also know you want to be influential as a team member and have your ideas integrated into those of the whole team. Most of what we accomplish now days can’t be accomplished by one person, nor by one person’s ideas. Our accomplishments are really due to all of us contributing our ideas. You would be more effective and more completely heard if you would question and pull ideas from your colleagues and once all the ideas are on the table, you can help us integrate all the ideas, including yours into a coherent whole.”

This is the first conversation to have with Sue and it is the conversation that must be on-going. It must be said in various ways and when it seems appropriate. In this way, Sue will find other and better ways to achieve her outcome while helping the team and you, the manager, achieve the team outcome.

Moving Away From (For this example, I’ll assume the person is attempting to avoid criticism or avoid embarrassment.)

“Sue, I know sometimes our meetings can get pretty intense and sometimes even contentious. I know that sometimes technologists want to avoid all that conflict and tension. Sometimes I do to. And yet, some people who avoid speaking can have the best ideas. We need those ideas. We need all the ideas in order to do the best job we can. There are some good ideas and there are some not-so-good ideas. If we put all the ideas on the table, regardless of who put them there, we can all look at them and I’m convinced that the best ideas will be obvious to everyone. It’s like cream rising to the top of the milk. Everyone is part of the team.”

This is what I would say to Sue if she didn’t speak up often. However, in this case, I can’t leave it with this. I have to couple what I’ve said to Sue with something I have to say to the whole team at the next meeting. Whenever possible I have to start saying the following at every meeting that Sue attends; “I want you all to understand that everyone’s ideas are important. My approach is to put all ideas on the table and as we look at all those ideas, the best ideas will become evident to all of us. We’ll see it, modify it if necessary and move on from there. So everyone’s ideas are necessary for this process to work and I expect all of you to participate.”

This sends a message to the team that all ideas are to be heard and respected and it sends another message to Sue that you expect her to contribute and that the team knows all ideas are welcome.

The process I’ve outlined obviously needs some practice, but it works. It has worked for me and it works for those who have taken my classes and those whom I’ve coached. It’s not simple, but people often aren’t. Situations like this don’t lend themselves to 100 word responses, but I can guarantee you that the approach I’ve outlined here works, and that guarantee is based on experience.

Steven Cerri

“Is it lonely at the top?”

I’ve been doing some reading about leadership by other authors lately. And I’ve been thinking about leadership in all it’s different forms. I’m struck by how difficult people seem to make this “leadership thing”. Leadership seems to be held in some kind of mystical state. There are certain ways in which a leader is supposed to behave. There are certain things a leader is supposed to do. There are little quips that are supposed to tell us the difference between leaderships and management. Such as:

“Leaders know what to do and managers know how to do it”.

or…

“Managers perspire and leaders inspire”.

I find these little sayings useless. They tell me nothing about real leadership and leadership behaviors.

I’ve also been reading things like:

1. Leaders are supposed to know the answer(s).

2. Leaders are supposed to know what to do even when they don’t.

3. Leaders are supposed to have a great deal of confidence to lead their team.

4. Leaders are supposed to know where to lead the team even when they don’t.

Any of you who have been a leader or have been a second to a leader or have read truthful autobiographies of leaders, know that none of the four items above is true of a leader.

As far as I’m concerned, here’s the real truth about leadership:

1. Leaders don’t always have the answer(s) and sometimes they admit it and sometimes they don’t. The mark of a real leader is knowing when to do which in order to be effective.

2. Leaders don’t always know what to do. The mark of a real leader is knowing when to admit it and when not to in order to be effective.

3. Leaders don’t always have confidence. The mark of a real leader is how much confidence to show when in order to be effective.

4. Leaders don’t always know where they are headed. The mark of a real leader is knowing when to admit it and when not to in order to be effective.

In reading the above four statements you should be getting an interesting perspective by now about leadership. Leadership doesn’t mean being inhuman. Leadership doesn’t mean you have to give up your humanity. Leadership doesn’t mean to have to be “alone at the top”. Leadership by definition, is always about the RELATIONSHIP between the leader and those being lead. And the outcome of the leader is always TO BE EFFECTIVE in moving the team toward the goal. That is, the effective leader has the ability to BEHAVE in ways that allow his or her HUMANITY to be USEFUL in BEING EFFECTIVE.

Therefore,

1. The leader can have the answers when that’s effective and can ask questions when that’s effective.

2. The leader can give direction when that’s effective and can give people their own choices when that’s effective.

3. The leader can have confidence of iron when that’s effective and can be flexible when that’s effective.

4. The leader can know where to go when that’s effective and can ask for input when that’s effective.

Now you understand why leadership isn’t black and white. Why leadership seems at times to be one thing and at other times something else. Why leadership is sometimes contradictory, and why I call it the discipline with shades of gray.

This is why leadership is so difficult. It’s about judgment. It’s all about judgment. And it’s about understanding people, the people the leader is leading. Without an incredible level of understanding of people the leader doesn’t know when to be “this way” and when to be “that way”. This is the key to leadership. The ability to understand people and your own role in relationship to those people as leader is what allows you to know what to do when you need to do it in order to be effective.

The next question is “How do I get this “knowledge” about how to do what when?

The answer is you have five choices.

1. The first choice is to get the experience first hand… by trial and error in the work world. This takes too long and if you make a major mistake, your career can suffer significantly.

2. The second choice is to read about it. Not a good choice. Reading is not the same as doing.

3. The third choice is to combine choice one and choice two… read about it and then try it. Also not a great choice but better than one or two alone. But even with choice three you can make significant mistakes.

4. The fourth choice is to find a mentor in your company to guide you. Better than any of the others so far, but you will only get suggested leadership tools based on the company mentor. The breadth of input may be limited.

5. The fifth choice is to get a coach while you are in a position where you can apply what you are being coached on. This will allow you to have guidance from “outside your organization” where the view will be more impartial and, at the same time, you will be able to apply what you are learning from the coach in your work situation. The feedback loop can be very useful and flexible.

Obviously, I prefer the fifth choice. I know, it’s my job, my product, my offering. I am a coach. But I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think it made all the difference. I wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t provide the client with the fastest way through the unknowns of leadership.

I didn’t have the fifth choice in my career. I had the fourth choice. The process was slower than I would have liked and the mentors I had made up a very “mixed bag”. Some were good, most were not. And two were exceptional. I was lucky.

How many internal mentors and company managers in your company would you want to be trained by? For me, it wasn’t long before I realized that the people inside my companies were, in most cases, not people I really wanted to work for nor people I could learn a lot about management from. So as my career advanced, I began to develop my own management choices and I began to train and coach my own direct reports, my way, with incredible results. They went on to become vice presidents, directors, and CEOs as did I.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“And the answer is…….”

Once again it’s happened. Another high level executive has been fired from a corporation for lack of fit. Not lack of performance, but lack of fit.

But let me start at the beginning. There has been a lot of discussion over the years about whether leaders are born or made. Some swear that people are either born leaders or they’re not. There are others who would alternately swear that leaders are made. And both groups can provide ample examples of people who either are born leaders or are made leaders.

So what’s the truth? Do I even dare to tell you that I believe I know the answer?

The answer is “both”. Some leaders are born and some are made. Whether a leader is born or made is not so much a function of the person, instead it is more a function of the “relationship” between the person and the situation. How’s that?

Let me explain!

Leadership, the kind that is recognized as leadership by others, is a specific behavior in relation to a specific situation such that the leader is seen as moving others into the future in a way that seems unknown to those being lead and perhaps even to the one leading. There you have it. A beautiful, concise, real definition of leadership!

Now let’s take the next step. If leadership is a behavior in relation to a situation, how might leadership show up? It can first show up as it has in historical terms for the most part. A person has a specific way of moving through the world, (i.e., behavior) and that behavior doesn’t fit the situation very well. Under these conditions the person who would be leader looks for all intents and purposes as a miss-fit. Not a leader. Not very much of anything.

And then the situation shifts. The circumstances are different. The would-be leader continues to behave as before, but now the situation has changed so that it perfectly matches the would-be leaders behaviors. Now all those around look at the person and exclaim “Here is our leader! He/she has been with us all the time!” Under these conditions it looks like the leader was a born leader. They were a leader all along. There is nothing for them to “become”. Under these conditions leadership looks like it is a natural gift. Winston Churchill falls into this category. And there are many others. People who look at this situation conclude that leadership is a born trait.

Now lets look at the other side of the coin. The alternative to the “born leader” is the leader that emerges into a situation that doesn’t necessarily change to fit them, but they change to fit the situation. Under these circumstances the leader will mold and adjust to fit the leadership requirements of the specific circumstances. An example of this kind of leader was Dwight Eisenhower. People who look at this situation conclude that leadership is a learned trait.

Lets bring all this talk up to the present time. I’ll give you two examples of present-day business people who fit each of these categories. This is important….

Leaders who learn to be leaders:

1. CEO of Boeing, James W. McNerney did a great job at General Electric. He has moved smoothly into Boeing’s top position by adjusting his style to most effectively lead that organization.

2. CEO of ??????, actually I haven’t heard about another person like McNerney in the current business world. They exist, it’s just that I haven’t read about them. If you know of anyone who is similar to McNerney in style drop me an email.

Now lets look at the born leaders!

1. Bob Nadelli, did a good job at GE where his way of moving through the world matched the leadership culture at his GE division. Then he was passed over by Jack Welch for the top slot and ended up at Home Depot. Then was fired as CEO of Home Depot. He took over Home Depot as if the company had to adjust to his way of moving through the world. They finally realized that he didn’t fit and so threw him out. (For more information on Nardelli and McNerney see my blog of January 15, 2007.)

2. Julie Roehm did a great job at Chrysler. She joined Wal-Mart and continued to think she was at Chrysler. In less than a year as Wal-Mart marketing executive she was fired for lack of fit. As I stated, she thought she was still at Chrysler.

3. Michael Eisner is another one who fits into the “born leader” category. His style is his style and nothing is going to change it. So as Disney began to change it’s culture to match the changing environment around it, Eisner decided not to change… and out he went.

So here is the point. You can be a leader in a variety of ways and in a variety of situations. If we measure success by the money made, a leader can be born or a leader can be made. There are plenty of ways to be successful. If you want to keep a constant way of moving through the world, then make sure you find company cultures and environments where your style fits and then have at it. You will be limited in the environments in which you are successful and if there is a match people will say you are a born leader. If you miss-calculate, people will through you out and they’ll think your a jerk

If you want to be a leader in a variety of company environments and over a very long time, then you can adjust your leadership style to fit the situation and you’ll be successful as a sensitive and adroit leader. You’ll leave when you want to leave and you’ll be labeled “a flexible leader who can adjust to the environment”.

So there you have it. The world is filled with people who are flexible and those who are not. Those who are not flexible and just happen to fit their situation we call born leaders. Those who are flexible and lead in a variety of situations we call people who learned to be leaders. There is probably no “right” or “wrong” way. However, I do believe that in the world we live in today, leaders who can learn to lead in a variety of situations will be most successful in the long run. Who are you?

Be well,

Steven Cerri

“Procrastination is easy enough to change!”

Good evening!

Hello everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog… but I’m back.

Well, here I go. I guess we’d call what I’m about to do a “rant”. BusinessWeek has a weekly column in its magazine titled “UPFront”. The heading under the UPFront title is “ANALYZE THIS”. The column is basically a business question that is assumed to be addressable by a psychoanalyst. The author of the column is a psychoanalyst and advises executives on psychological aspects of business.

In the March 12, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek a person wrote in complaining that they are a constant procrastinator. M.L of New York indicates; “When I had a corporate job, I would put off work that was challenging, then cram to make the deadline as my stress level soared. Now I own a small business, and the pattern remains… [for client presentations] I prepare only at the last minute, my anxiety mounting as the day approaches and I do nothing. How can I change?”

Now you might ask, “Why am I addressing procrastination in my blog?” Procrastination shows up in many different forms and basically it’s the characteristic behavior of avoiding doing what needs to be done. If we didn’t avoid it, it wouldn’t be procrastination. If it didn’t need to be done, it wouldn’t be procrastination. Therefore, most of us are guilty of procrastinating. The issue comes about when we procrastinate about something that really, really has to get done. Like company expense reports. Or annual performance reviews for our direct reports. Or agendas for meetings. Or weekly or monthly status reports to our boss. Get it?

So now lets get back to the BusinessWeek article.

The psychoanalyst responded to the writer’s questions with a series of questions and possible answers that went something like this:

1. “It could be a kind of ‘behavioral retention’ – action being withheld to the point of extreme discomfort…or…

2. For some it represents a way to provoke an authority figure from whom disappointment or punishment is expected if there’s a failure to deliver…or…

3. Procrastination can even be a way of flirting with self-destructiveness…or…

4. People can receive an addictive thrill from completing tasks just under the wire…or…

5. …Now that you’re the boss, preparing presentations at the last minute ensures that you never feel relaxed and may even signal an underlying conflict about being successful or felling like an adult”

The psychoanalyst suggested that the “first step to making a change: Ask yourself what you might be getting out of this high-risk behavior. As an experiment, just once muster the will necessary to prepare earlier. … What emotions come up?”

I’m sorry, and with all due respect to the psychoanalyst… this is just psycho-babble. And BusinessWeek is doing a disservice to its readers.

Solving procrastination is not about “understanding motivation” on an intellectual level. It is not about understanding what happened to you as a child that made you this way or that way. I can guarantee you that whatever “explanation” our mind comes up with to “explain” why we do a thing, it is not the reason. It is just the “story” our intellect cooks up to explain our actions.

So rather than asking a question about motivation lets make it very, very simple. No therapy. No long weekly sessions that last two years. Just a simple observational question; “Exactly what happens to our neurology when we go into our “procrastination process?” Because it is a process; nothing more, nothing less. Our neurology begins a cascade of somatic processes that we give a name to, “procrastination”.

Let me give you an example of how this works. This is not a psychologist talking. This is not psycho-babble. This is an engineer explaining how easy it is to change an unwanted behavior.

There was a period in my life where I was consistently late for appointments. It didn’t matter what it was. More than 90% of my appointments saw me walk in from 5 minutes to 20 minutes late.

I’d make the usual apologies, get the usual “Oh, that’s OK” and then move on. Even with the arrival of cell phones, I was still late. I just called the party to inform them that I’d be late.

Finally, I decided I wanted to see if I could change this pattern. However, I didn’t go back into my family history, or look at my motivation or fear of or desire for authority. I just decided to “watch” and “notice” what happened to me as an appointment began to approach.

And here is what I noticed when I procrastinated. Whether I was preparing a presentation or getting ready to drive across town for a meeting, I made a mental estimate of how much time if would take me to do whatever I needed to do. If it was to prepare a presentation, I estimated how much time that would take. If I was driving across town, I thought about the freeways and estimated how long it would take me to drive there.

With the time estimate in mind, I didn’t think about what I had to do until I began to approach the completion time, minus the time I had estimated for preparation. So far so good.

For example, if I was to drive across town for a meeting, I would estimate the time to make the trip, lets say 30 minutes. If the meeting was scheduled for 3pm, that meant I would have to leave my house at 2:30pm. And if I had to get dressed and that took 30 minutes, that meant I would have to start dressing at 2pm.

At noon, I wasn’t even thinking about the drive. At 1:45pm I still wasn’t thinking about the drive. At 2:00pm I knew I would have to start getting ready, but I was often involved in other things that I would finish in “just a few minutes”. And so I continued doing the things I was involved in… not in getting ready. I could feel in my body that the anxiety level of being behind was fairly low at 2:00pm and so I did nothing about getting ready.

By 2:15 pm the anxiety level in my nervous system was beginning to rise and now I was moving fairly rapidly to get ready to leave by 2:30pm. But I was already behind. Now the anxiety was raging and I was moving as fast as I could and the stress was mounting. By now I had dropped all other tasks I had been involved in and was focusing 100% on getting ready. I was still behind and ran out the door at 2:40pm guaranteeing that I’d be late.

Once I understood that this was the neurological process that was going on in my nervous system it was relatively easy to adjust it. What I noticed was that when I procrastinated, I would unconsciously “wait” until I reached a certain level of “adrenalin rush” before I focused on getting ready to go to my meeting. There was a “threshold” below which I wouldn’t move in a focused way. This threshold was a very important “line” in this whole dynamic called procrastination. Above the threshold I became one-focused guy. Below that threshold I was preoccupied with other stuff. The threshold was set too high. I had to get really behind and really anxious before I got focused on getting ready.

The solution was to notice where this threshold was and either lower the threshold by conscious choice or anticipate it and override it. But I didn’t really know how to lower the threshold. The threshold seemed to be a conditioned response that I had been using for years and I just didn’t see any easy way to move it. In fact, I didn’t really know what moving it meant or how I’d go about doing that.

So I decided to logically override the threshold. The next time I had an appointment that I had to drive to, I backed up the times and added 15 minutes to the time required to get there. I then made a determined and conscious decision to drop everything at the beginning of the time sequence. I forced myself to begin getting prepared with the total time I thought necessary PLUS 15 minutes. I got to the meeting 10 minutes early, felt relaxed, and determined that it was a good way to function. I now had a second choice and it produced better results than procrastination. Guess which approach I decided to use?

From that point to this day I use this approach to make my decisions about when to start tasks. I’m now 95% of the time on time and I no longer get stressed out by being late. Which, of course, was never the issue in the first place. Being late, having a power trip, etc. was never the issue.

The issue was that somewhere in my life, I had developed a habit of waiting until a certain level of pressure or anxiety had developed in me before I would move to take on a task that was less desirable than the one I was presently doing. Somewhere in my life it had worked. However, it wasn’t working any longer. No therapy was needed. No psychoanalysis was needed. Just some good old self-reflection and decision-making.

For some of us as technical professionals, the process of procrastination at work might actually be even more subtle. For example, we might avoid an uncomfortable conversation because we don’t like conflict. And so we avoid confronting the situation until it is so big that we have no choice… and by the time we address it, it’s a big deal.

Or we might avoid delegating because we don’t trust people to do their job well. And so we make excuses for not delegating.

Or we avoid having the interface conversations with other departments to smooth out the processes that our team must go through in order to complete a project.

In most cases of procrastination we are avoiding something… but I don’t believe we have to look at it as if we are avoiding something that needs psychoanalysis. I believe it’s much more mechanical than that… at least it certainly has been my experience and in the experience of the people I’ve coached and trained. For engineers, scientists, and technologists, it may well be that just a little physiological analysis just might do the trick.

Of course, I must tell you that I’m not a doctor, nor a therapist, not a psychologist, nor a psychiatrist. The information I have put forth here is not to be substituted for sound medical and psycho-analytical advice. I am not a doctor and therefore I am not qualified to be, nor am I, dispensing medical or therapeutic advice of any kind. The information in this blog is anecdotal only.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#27-1-30-07:  Bush & Leadership & Management

Bush & Leadership & Technology

“What can we learn from President Bush about Leadership and Management?”

Good morning!

Everywhere around us there are good and bad examples of management and leadership. In fact, a perfect example of the distinction between management and leadership is currently being represented by our government, that is, the government of the United States.

Now without getting into whether I’m for or against the Iraqi war, for or against the “surge” of troops, for or against pulling out, or for or against the resolutions currently working their way through congress, I will talk about the leadership and management of the Iraqi “situation”.

So as we look at the Iraqi “situation” what does it tell us about management and leadership?

First and foremost, lets talk about what the general consensus is about George Bush’s leadership. Most people would say that Bush is displaying “leadership” (whether they agree with his policies or not) because he is picking a direction and he is pointing the nation in that direction. That direction may not be a consensus direction, but as the leader of the United State, as the Commander In Chief, his responsibility, his duty, is to select a direction and point the county in that direction. By most accounts that’s leadership and I would agree (not necessarily with the direction, but with the concept of leadership).

As the old song line goes, “Is that all there is”? Is the leadership being displayed by Bush and the resulting situation in Iraq the way it is because Bush is just a terrible leader, or is it because he is a good leader in a terrible situation, or is he a terrible leader in a terrible situation.

My answer is that it’s not so simple, even though for some it might seem a simple answer. For some people, leadership and management are simple concepts. The leader sets direction and says what is to be done, and the manager implements, and does what the leader wants done. To some, the perfect example is George Bush and his administration. Bush set the direction as the leader; invade Iraq. He then turned it over to his “managers”, Rumsfeld and others on his staff, to implement. That’s how it goes for some. The leader decides on the direction and hands off the implementation to managers. Bush hands the goal of Iraq to his managers, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush team. In general, this is the accepted definition of leadership and management.

I don’t think so! That my friends is not the way it works and I’ve seen it not work over and over and over. So let me tell you how the world really works. Let me tell you a better definition of leadership and management.

Think of it this way. Management and Leadership are like two sides of a coin. You can’t have one without the other (another song line). Management and Leadership go hand-in-hand. I have seen so many leaders who have failed because they did not manage. I have seen fantastic leaders and they were fantastic because they were also managers. You can’t be a successful leader without being a good manager. You can, however, be a great manager, without being a leader.

The leader who doesn’t manage is doomed to failure as a leader! However, often people think that the leader “out-grows” the need to be a manager and somehow the manger must grow into being a leader. The fact of the matter is that to be a successful leader, the leader must manage as well.

There you have it. Management is the implementation of goals and the achievement of desired outcomes. Leadership is the pointing toward the desired outcome. The manager can just be a manager with the desired outcome handed off to him or her by the leader. However, the leader must create the desired outcome. But, the successful leader must also be a manager or they will end up with the mess, like the mess that was produced by Rumsfeld who is a terrible manager.

You see this is President Bush’s downfall. He considers himself too much a leader and not enough a manager. In Bush’s case, a better approach would have been to set the direction (leadership), whatever that direction, and then manage the managers who have been selected to implement the tasks. It’s quite clear this is why Bush had such a dismal career as a businessman. He thinks that his role is that of the “decider”. But in reality, to be successful, a decider needs also to be a manager. A better approach would have been to manage Rumsfeld, Rice, and Cheny, and others throughout the implementation process so that the outcome could and would be achieved; the unified outcome that Bush wanted, not the disjointed outcomes that each of his managers wanted.

If he had understood that in order to be a successful leader one must be a manager as well, he would have managed his Secretary of Defense much more closely. It is absolutely critical for the successful leader to know how to manage and to be willing to manage. Leadership and Management go together and for the leader to separate them is to court disaster. As is evident in the Bush handling of the Iraqi “situation”.

One more point. I’m writing all this based on what I read and see in the various news sources that I use. What comes across from those new sources is that Bush has kept a very hands-off approach to his staff and therefore, has not managed them closely. If this perception is incorrect, if President Bush actually manages closely his staff and he doesn’t let the news media know it, then his staff is indeed implementing his direction… and… once again, need I say more.

Be well

Steven Cerri

“What to do when you are good at everything”

Good evening!

This weekend I went to the birthday party of a colleague. At the party I met an engineer, we’ll call him Pete. Now Pete was in his mid-forties, a post-doc at a major university and, working at a small software startup. We struck up a conversation and after he found out what I do he invariably made the statement, “Wow, maybe I should attend some of your classes.” As we talked about his career, or lack thereof, it became clear that Pete was in a fix and it was not going to be easy for him to advance his career. After thinking about Pete’s situation I thought you might be interested in how this whole situation is structured and how Pete might help his career along, and so I’m writing about it in this blog.

So here is the lay of the land. Pete is (if my memory serves me) a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He is working at a software company with about 30 employees. The CEO and owner of this company has several other companies, some which are very large. The company Pete works for develops software and the way they do this is they design the software in the U.S. and then ship the requirements to India for coding. (We’ve all heard this before, right?)

Now Pete’s real job is to work with product development to define the requirements, develop a rapid proto-type, architect the software system, and then ship all these requirements to India. Since Pete is Indian, he does a great job of bridging the gap between the team in the U.S. and the team in India. And since he’s been with this company for a number of years, he really understands their products and their processes. Pete is the guy who truly understands all the inner workings of the company and it’s product development process. That’s the situation.

Oh… one more thing. Pete just got a new boss who knows next to nothing about software. But Pete’s new boss has a lot of marketing connections. (We’ve all heard this before, as well.) So Pete is constantly helping his boss understand what Pete is doing and when the opportunity comes about to include Pete in his boss’s high level meetings, Pete’s boss excludes Pete. So you are probably getting the picture that Pete is loosing respect for his boss.

However, Pete is a decent guy. He’s not about to go off ranting and raving; but he’s not happy either. Pete wants to get into management but he just seems to be stuck in this “product development – requirements definition – architecture – rapid proto-typing – software development interface” role and he doesn’t see a way out of it.

So Pete asked me what I thought.

He probably hoped for a different answer than the one I gave him because the answer I gave him was this:

“Pete, if I were the CEO or if I were your boss, I say you are in the perfect position. I wouldn’t want you to move anywhere else. I wouldn’t want to give you a management position.”

Why you ask? Why wouldn’t I be more supportive of Pete’s desire to move into management? Because Pete understands the process from product development to the handoff to the coders in India. The better job Pete does on the U.S. side of the process the fewer mistakes will be made by the coders in India and mistakes in coding can cost a bundle. So Pete is most knowledgeable and most valuable right where he is.

So if Pete is in the perfect position, how does he get out of that spot and move into management without quitting? That’s the $64,000 question isn’t it?

The answer is actually very simple to state and difficult to implement. The simple statement is that Pete can move into management if he can structure his move (and any increase in staff necessary with the move) so that there is either an increase in profit due to an increase in margin or an increase in revenue. It’s that simple. If I’m Pete’s boss and Pete can’t satisfy the profit motive, and he is not going to threaten to quit, then I’m not moving Pete. Now I might consider it if Pete’s move keeps revenue and profit flat, but I said I’d consider it.

You see, short of Pete quitting, there is absolutely no motive to change Pete’s position. After talking to Pete for 30 minutes it was clear to me that he was exactly where the company needed him. Therefore, if Pete wants to move into management the only way it’s going to happen is if Pete takes the following steps. He must:

1. Decide on a position Pete can move to, either one that already exists or one he will create.

2. Determine how many people will have to be hired or change positions because of his move.

3. Determine how the revenue will increase, or the margins will increase so that revenue and profit stay in synch.

4. Determine the impact of these moves on the whole organization (think systemically).

5. Develop a schedule for the changes to be implemented and develop a plan to minimize the impact to other departments.

6. Present the plan to Pete’s boss and perhaps the CEO and to other departments that might be affected.

7. Keep pushing it, because the odds of Pete’s boss accepting the plan on the first go around are slim.

8. Make it clear, but not in an antagonistic way, that if some movement into management is not on the horizon, Pete will quit sooner or later.

This is what is necessary if Pete is to advance into management. Now the only question is… how badly does Pete want a management role?

Until next Monday.

Be well

Steven Cerri

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Nardelli Is Fired

“Nardelli is fired from Home Depot”

Good evening!

Well, it’s finally happened. Bob Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot has been fired.

I knew it was going to happen, I just didn’t know when. When I saw his picture on the cover of BusinessWeek a year ago, with the magazine bragging about his “tough” management style, I knew it was only a matter of time. Then I predicted he had a year or two left. Well he had a year, apparently.

Why was I so sure Nardelli would fail or at the very least have a very difficult time of it? Because he wasn’t practicing something I call “Contextual Management and Leadership”©, CML for short. Now it’s true, I’ve developed this program myself, but it’s based on what I believe leads to a better way to manage in any given situation.

My approach to this whole management/leadership choice thing is based on the idea that the best management or leadership style is tied to the situation at hand. Therefore, the manager or leader is most effective if he or she selects a management or leadership style based on the parameters of the given situation.

(Now I know that everyone “thinks” they do this. I know that most managers and leaders think they are modifying their style based on the situattion as they see it, but I don’t think so. When you read further, you’ll see that my idea of adjusting your management style to the situation is very different. By the way, the given management or leadership situation is what I call the “context”.)

Now Nardelli came from GE in large scale manufacturing and went to Home Depot, a retailer. He attempted to use the things that worked in manufacturing in a retail business. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Lets look at two ex-GE guys and look a little deeper into STCI/CML© to see exactly what I mean.

STCI/CML© is based on the idea that there is a best way to manage or lead in any given situation and that best way is based on six parameters. The parameters are the following:

1. Who has the expertise, the manager or the employees?

2. What is the project’s risk?

3. What is the project schedule?

4. What is the manner in which the employees want to be managed?

5. What and how does the manager want the employees to learn?

6. What are the complexities and interfaces of the task or project?

The current state of the project, task, or organization with respect to these six parameters will lead the manager using STCI/CML© to the best management style for the given situation.

So now lets look at two different approaches used by two different ex-GE managers who went to new companies they knew very little about. The two ex-GE employees are Robert J. Nardelli and James W. McNerney. Both were past over by Jack Welch when he selected Jeffrey R. Immelt to succeed him. Nardelli left GE and ended up as CEO of Home Depot. McNerney left GE and ended up as CEO of Boeing Co. Now lets look at how both of these men measured up with respect to the six parameters I’ve listed and how they handled their respective jobs and what the results have been so far.

With respect to Parameter #1: Who has the expertise, the manager or the employees?

In both cases the expertise lies with the employees. Nardelli had never been in a retail business and McNerney had never headed up an airplane manufacturer. Both men were on the short end of the straw when it came to understanding what they had taken over. McNerney understood this fact and spent the first six months talking to employees, building consensus, and attempting to understand the business.

Nardelli was certain he had the answer and everyone else didn’t. By his own statements, the people of Home Depot didn’t know what was going on and he was there to fix it. He was there to fix a business he had no experience in.

With respect to Parameter #2: What is the project’s risk?

In both cases the risk was relatively low. Home Depot was not in any serious trouble even though the stock price had been flat for a while. It’s probably fair to say that Nardelli had no where to go but up.

McNerney was also in a relatively stable environment. Even though, when he took over Boeing it was reeling from some ethics problems and the European airplane manufacturer was beating Boeing in sales, McNerney was also taking over a company that could probably be said to have a potentially bright future. So this parameter is not a significant one with respect to the selection of a management style in either case.

With respect to Parameter #3: What is the project schedule?

In both cases the schedule is not a serious consideration. Therefore, this parameter is not a significant one with respect to the selection of a management style in either case.

With respect to Parameter #4: What is the manner in which the employees want to be managed?

In both cases this is a big deal. Both companies, Home Depot and Boeing had a history of a unique, entrenched, and important culture. To ignore this culture or to make war with it is a huge risk. McNerney embraced the Boeing culture, giving respect to the engineers, manufactures, and to all employees for their ability to contribute.

Nardelli seems to have had contempt for the Home Depot culture he inherited and didn’t hide his feelings. Big mistake!

With respect to Parameter #5: What and how does the manager want the employees to learn?

Nardelli wanted the Home Depot employees to learn discipline, a reasonable goal. McNerney seems to have wanted the Boeing employees to learn to focus. Another reasonable goal.

However, the learning goals here are not important drivers in the selection of an optimum management and leadership style.

Finally, with respect to Parameter #6: What are the complexities and interfaces of the task or project?

In both cases this is a big deal. While Boeing had many complexities and interfaces with their products and vendors, Home Depot had many complexities and interfaces with respect to their stores and suppliers, as well. In both cases, the complexities of the interfaces coupled with the lack of knowledge of these businesses by the CEOs, leads to the conclusion that the expertise, once again, rests with the employees.

In summary of these six parameters, both men took over very similar situations. They both had very similar environments they stepped in to, at least as they relate to the six STCI/CML parameters. In looking at the six parameters, there are only two parameters that stand out as drivers for the selection of the best management style and they are:

Parameter #1: Who has the expertise, the employees or the manager?

Parameter #4: The manner in which the employees want to be managed?

These two parameters drive the preferred management processes toward a participative management style. When the knowledge rests with the employees it is foolish for a manager to pretend he or she can dictate what the “right answer” is. And with an entrenched, long standing culture, it is equally foolish for a manager to assume that he or she can turn the culture over quickly without a great deal of “blood-letting”. In both cases, Home Depot and Boeing, the STCI/CML contextual evaluation would lead to the selection of a participative, collaborative management style.

The participative, collaborative style is what McNerney picked at Boeing and we can certainly see the results of that. Boeing is doing very well indeed.

The directive, authoritative style is what Nardelli picked at Home Depot and we can certainly see the results of that. Home Depot got rid of him.

You don’t have to be tough to be successful, unless it’s called for, and in some cases it is. But in all cases you have to be smart.

It only remains now to see what Nardelli’s successor does. Stay tuned, (and drop me a comment).

Be well

Steven Cerri

“The Necessary Art of Persuasion”

Good evening!

I just finished reviewing an article in the Harvard Business Review magazine called OnPoint, dated Winter 2006. These are selected articles from the Harvard Business Review, and the title on the cover is “The Art of Middle Management.” It’s an interesting magazine with a variety of articles and as the weeks go by, I’ll be reviewing some of the articles in my blogs.

One of the major articles is titled, “The Middle Manager as Innovator” and while I’ll probably talk about the full article in future blogs, in this blog I want to zero in on the additional reading that was listed under the “Further Reading” heading at the end of the article.

One of the articles recommended as further reading was and article printed in the Harvard Business Review, dated May-June 1998 and listed as Product no. 4258. The title of this essay was “The Necessary Art of Persuasion”. I’ll quote a few sentences from the summary of that article:

“In driving innovation, middle managers must know how to persuade key constituencies to support their ideas. This skill is particularly crucial as managers “sell” project ideas, garner needed resources and top-level support, and mobilize key players to carry out the project as a unified team.”

No doubt this is necessary at any level in an organization from the technologist to the technical manager. However, it is a skill that in most cases must be learned by the technologist who wants to become a manager because …

we are not taught how to “sell” our ideas during our college education. While in school, we are taught that the facts “sell” our ideas. The “truth” sells our ideas. No persuasion is necessary; our answers are either right or they are wrong, and no wrong answer can be “sold” and no right answer needs “selling”.

I’ll continue to quote the article summary;

This article outlines four powerful steps to persuasion: 1) establish credibility through pertinent expertise and positive relationships, 2) clarify the shared benefits of a potential innovation project, 3) vividly reinforce one’s position through compelling examples, stories, and metaphors, and 4) connect emotionally with one’s listeners.

Now notice the four items listed in this article summary:

1) establish credibility through pertinent expertise and positive relationships

2) clarify the shared benefits of a potential innovation project

3) vividly reinforce one’s position through compelling examples, stories, and metaphors

4) connect emotionally with one’s listeners

I find the order of these four items interesting. I’d put number 4 at the top of the list because it seems impossible to me that anyone can accomplish items 1, 2, and 3 without performing item #4 first. Who do you listen to? Whose advise do you take? Who do you take seriously? Who do you consider wise? The person you listen to, whose advice you take, whom you take seriously and consider wise, is the person you give something to that is very important and very emotional… it’s the person you TRUST.

Trust is an emotion. It is not based on logic, although we’d like to think it is. Trust allows us to listen with open attitude so that someone can indeed establish credibility, can clarify shared benefits and vividly provide examples, stories, and metaphors. It is trust that must be there first.

And who do we trust? Just look around the world. Without much effort we can see that people have a tendency to trust people who are more similar to them than those who are dissimilar to them. Said another way, we feel more comfortable with people who are more like us than with people who are less like us.

So, notice, we are building a hierarchy here.

A) Our ability to persuade is based on accomplishing the four items listed above.

B) Those four items are dependent on our ability to connect emotionally with our listener.

C) Our ability to connect emotionally is another word for trust.

D) We more easily trust people who are more like us than those who are not like us.

The next question is, how do we convey to people that we are more like them than less like them?

To answer that question, lets look at scientific research. Research over the last 40 years has given us the same conclusion, over and over again. We have three ways to communicate our ideas and our messages. We can use the words, that is the content of our message, either spoken or written. We can use our voices, the tone, speed, loudness of communication along with other vocal parameters. Or we can use our physical orientation, often referred to as body language.

The data consistently come back the same. The ability of the words (i.e., content) to make the emotional connection is estimated to be around 7% (+/- 2%). The ability of our voice tone, speed, loudness etc., to make the emotional connection is estimated to be around 35% (+/-2%). And the ability of our body orientation, posture, (i.e., body language) to make the emotional connection is around58% (+/-2%).

It doesn’t take long to look at these data and determine what the message is. The connection that builds trust, that allows our messages to be heard is not based on the words we use, it’s based on our voice and our body language. And in fact, we all have plenty of examples of this in our real life work experience. How often have you been in a meeting or been in a discussion and everyone has seemingly agreed to an action, a decision, or a conclusion only to discover three days later it is as if no one apparently attended the same meeting. Each person had a different interpretation primarily because the emotional connection of trust had not been established allowing people to understand the same thing, agree to that understanding, and commit to that agreement.

The ability to communicate at these much subtler levels, to build trust based on similarity and an emotional connection, will allow you to be listened to and to be accepted. It will allow you to be heard. It is only then that your stories and metaphors will be heard. It is only then that your credibility can be built. It is only then that you can secure the necessary resources and build the team that can get the project done.

The subtleties of human non-verbal communication are the foundation of all human communication. Master them and you master the Necessary Art of Persuasion. Master the Necessary Art of Persuasion and you master the foundation, the first step to management and … leadership.

Be well

Steven Cerri

“Being real doesn’t get it”

Good evening!

I was listening to a radio show just before the new year to an interview with the lead member of band Radio Head. Now Radio Head has been called one of the best bands around and at times the best band playing anywhere. I don’t much listen to them, but I found the interview interesting and there is a connection between what I heard and technology management.

At one point, the lead member of Radio Head was asked what it’s like to continually play the same songs over and over while on tour. He responded that by the time his band had played the same songs over and over on their last tour and then they thought about the fact that they were going to record some of those same songs and then they would have to play them again on their subsequent tour, he indicated that it was a bit much.

In fact, he said that on his last tour there were times when he would just stare at the audience for a long while mumbling something about having to play these songs again. The interviewer said that she had heard that at one point he was “unravelling” on stage and he admitted that he indeed had been “unravelling”, mumbling and complaining to the audience. Having to play the same songs over and over was getting to him he said. When she asked about his rationale for doing that in front of the audience that had paid money to see him and his band, he said that,

“Well, I can either be real or not. I think people want me to be real.”

REALLY?!

The people in the audience didn’t pay to see him be real. They paid to be entertained. The band members can be self-indulgent before or after the show, but not during the show.

Do you go to concerts hoping to see the band members work out their personal crises on stage or do you go to hear them play the songs that excite you and make you want to hear more? In the environment of a concert, the band members are expected to transcend their personal issues and do what they came to do… play their music, and play it well. The situation, the context, requires that they behave in a way that is appropriate for that context. (Bruce Springsteen gets sick before many of his concerts but you wouldn’t know it when he steps on stage.)

So, “What does this have to do with management, and technical management in particular?”, you might ask. The same is expected of a manager as is expected of the band. As a technology manager, you’re not expected to work out your issues of management, leadership, self-esteem, authority figures, shyness, etc. while you are managing or leading your direct reports. Just like the band members, you’re expected to be human, you’re expected to lead your team, but you are not expected to be “real” in the sense that you don’t deliver. And as a manager or leader your job is to deliver the management or deliver the leadership. That means your job is to be effective.

You’ll often hear me say that I’m not concerned about the comfort of the manager. Some people say that the manager needs to be comfortable in order to do a good job of managing. Not so. I don’t care if the manager is comfortable. It’s important that the employees be motivated and if that means that the manager is uncomfortable, so be it. As a technical manager your job is not to be “real” in the sense that it interferes with your effectiveness. Just like the audience that paid to attend a concert to be entertained, your company is paying your to be an effective manager and an effective leader. And, your direct reports are expecting the same thing.

Let me be clear. In order to be effective you don’t have to give up your humanity. However, if being effective means stretching your behavior so that you are a little uncomfortable, then stretch. In the final analysis your being paid for the results of your team, not for being “real”.

Just some food for thought.

Until next Monday.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Being Understood #2

“Imagine Being Understood – Again”

Good evening!

I want to spend one more blog entry on the topic of “context.” In the last blog I introduced you to the phrase “I didn’t steal your wallet.” and I showed you how if you repeated the phrase several times with emphasis on different words each time, you could convey different meanings.

For example, below I’ve written the same phrase over and over again. I’ve made one of the words “bold” and blue. As you read each phrase out loud, speak the bold word with emphasis and notice what happens to the meaning of the whole phrase.

1. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”

2. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”

3. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”

4. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”

5. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”

Notice how the meaning of each phrase changes as you change the word emphasized. This changing or transmission of the “meaning” of a communication based on non-verbal cues instead of the meaning conveyed by the content is called “context”.

Therefore, we can say that a human communication is made up of “content and context.” And as we can see in the five phrases above, the meaning structured by the context can and usually does “override” the meaning conveyed by the content.

This is a huge conclusion. Let me repeat it:

The meaning conveyed by the context usually overrides the meaning conveyed by the context.

So…

IN FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION….

Context is conveyed by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue.

Context is conveyed by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound.

Context is conveyed by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process.

IN PHONE COMMUNICATION…

Context is NOT CONVEYED by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.

Context is conveyed by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound.

Context is NOT CONVEYED by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.

IN EMAIL COMMUNICATION…

Context is NOT CONVEYED by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.

Context is NOT CONVEYED by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound, because you can’t hear the person you are communicating with.

Context is NOT CONVEYED by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process, because you are not in the presence of the person you are communicating with.

Therefore, the whole meaning of the communication must be conveyed by the “content” and we have seen that content is a poor way to communicate meaning, unless you are conveying completely unambiguous information.

It should be clear now why emails are so dangerous as a communication tool. They are very short on context. Therefore, if you want to use email as a form of communication that is more than just raw data, it is important to spend the time in the beginning of the email necessary to establish the context. The introduction portion of the email should establish the way in which the email is to understood.

My rule of thumb is, if I want to communicate with someone, my first choice is to meet with them face-to-face. If that’s not possible, then I’ll call them on the phone. Only if I can’t meet in person or call them on the phone will I use email as my communication vehicle. And then, I’ll spend a good deal of the first part of the email establishing the context so that the person reading my email will know exactly what I want the meaning of my communication to be.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Being Understood

”Imagine Being Understood”

Good day!

Imagine… imagine what it would be like if whenever you communicated with anyone, you were… completely understood. Imagine what it would be like to say something to someone face-to-face, and… be completely understood. Imagine writing a memo or speaking on the phone and always being clearly and… totally understood. In fact, imagine the unthinkable… imagine sending an email and always, always have the recipient understand exactly what you meant in the email. No more misunderstandings. No more weird responses.

Alas, imaging all that is indeed a fantasy. It’s hard enough being understood when you are in front of someone talking to them, let alone have an email accepted and understood, as you want. It just doesn’t seem to be in the cards, does it? It seems to be… part of life.

I had this fact driven home to me last week, and so I’m writing about that experience in this blog. Even though I teach and coach communication excellence to technical professionals and managers, the issues that I coach and train on are so ingrained in our neurological makeup as human beings, that I still succumb to the mistakes we are all prone to.

Here is what happened. I’m completing a book on transitioning from technologist to technical manager and I’m currently talking to several possible editors for my book. I had been intermittently communicating to one potential editor, via email, for several weeks and then, due to other commitments, I hadn’t communicated with her for a couple of weeks. When we finally reconnected via email, we still did not know each other very well and so I hadn’t yet decided whom to engage as my editor.

The editor I’m speaking about here had sent me previous emails without a lot of “context”. In most communications, context is mostly made up of body language, voice tone, and other “non-verbal” cues that we pick up, often subconsciously, from the other person. It’s easy to pick up context in face-to-face communication and a little more challenging to do so in phone conversation, but very difficult in emails.

For example, below I’ve written the same phrase over and over again. I’ve made one of the words “bold and maroon”. As you read each phrase out loud, speak the bold word with emphasis and notice what happens to the meaning of the whole phrase. Here we go.

“I didn’t steal your wallet.”

“I didn’t steal your wallet.”

“I didn’t steal your wallet.”

“I didn’t steal your wallet.”

“I didn’t steal your wallet.”

Now notice how the meaning of each phrase changes as you change the emphasized word. This is what I mean by “context”. The words, that is, the content, stayed the same, but because the “context” changed the meaning of the phrase changed.

Back to the email from my potential editor. So, after not communicating with her for several weeks, I sent her an email to reconnect and to tell her that I would not be making a decision regarding my editor selection until after the first of the year.

I then received an email from her in response to my email. In it, she made a reference to something that she had mentioned in a very early email, and that reference took me back to that early email. In the current email there was very little “contextual information”, it was mainly content.

Since there was very little context, and by that I mean, there were not a lot of messages about how I was supposed to interpret current her email, I was left to interpret her email on my own. Since she referenced a topic from a long-ago email, I decided (subconsciously) to establish the same context as the older email. And that context was a little confrontational. So because there were no new contextual cues I interpreted her current email based on the old context which was aggressive.

I decided to respond to her by referencing the aggressive “tone” of her email and indicated that I was surprised by her aggressive response. Within 15 minutes I received an email back from her indicating that she in no way intended to be aggressive and was merely telling me about some things that were going on in her life.

I had completely miss-read her email. I had looked for contextual cues, found none that I recognized and therefore made my own interpretation of the meaning of her email based on past contextual cues. (Fortunately, we were open enough in our communication that we could adjust our communication in near real time.)

Unfortunately however, this miscommunication is exactly what happens all too often in your world too. Doesn’t it? We send a message, and without spending sufficient time to establish the context so the person knows how to interpret our message, we leave it up to the receiver to decide how to interpret our message. And, as often as not, they interpret it incorrectly. This can be avoided if we will just spend the time to establish the context up front. In fact, those of you who have worked with me will remember this phrase;

“Send the content only when you’ve established the context within which it is to be interpreted.”

…………….or another way to say it is……..

“Don’t send the content until you’ve established the context”

The key is to understand that this will never go away. It happens to all of us. The key is to understand that it will happen and to keep the communication channels open. This is also why;

“The responsibility for effective communication rests with the sender of the message, because it is only the sender who knows what the message was intended to mean.”

The receiver doesn’t have a clue as to what was intended, only the sender does.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Why be a Technologist? 

”What made you choose to be a technical professional?”

Good evening!

Do you believe in accidents? Do you believe in choice? When you go to an ice cream store, (assuming you like a particular ice cream) do you always select the same flavor? Do you really select that “favorite ice cream (or food) or does it select you? Does your physiology begin the cascade of chemicals as soon as you see that favorite flavor and does your body begin preparing you to select it? Is this really choice or just the allusion of choice?

Did you select your career or did your career select you? For some of you reading this right now you are probably wondering what part of what planet I must be from. How can a career select us?

Look at it this way. Let’s break this career topic into two major groups; the world of apparent and seemingly provable order and the world of apparent disorder. And in the world of apparent order lets put all engineering, scientific, and technical disciplines. In the world of apparent disorder lets put all marketing, inter-personal human interaction and communication, social, and psychological disciplines.

I don’t have to work very hard to convince most of you that the disciplines of marketing, inter-personal human interaction and communication, social, and physiological are areas that we don’t understand well enough to even come close to having a cause-and-effect relationship between the various known parameters. In fact, to most of us, these “human” disciplines are completely “unknowable”. They depend on “people”. They seem to be independent of rational thought or analysis. They seem to be more dependent on blood sugar levels and moon cycles than on identifiable and predictable laws of the universe. Interacting with other people can be as unpredictable as tossing a coin.

On the other hand, F=ma, E=IR, Bernoulli’s equation, computer coding, and the first, second, and third laws of thermodynamics, are trustworthy laws and processes that allow us to build bridges, put humans on the moon, develop electric motors and do the million and one things that allow us to create an ever advancing world. That’s the key isn’t it? These predictable laws allow us to create. Predictable laws of the universe allow us to create something new in that universe.

Now, I can guarantee you that those people who have selected inter-personal human interaction and communication, marketing, and psychology believe they are creating their worlds as well. Only they don’t have to create that world from a predictable set of laws and cause-and-effect relationships. They are willing to live with the seeming uncertainty that comes from working without “concrete” laws.

Therefore, to choose a career in technology instead of a career in marketing or human development is not so much to choose a career, it is rather to choose a way of moving through the world. It is a choice about how much “certainty” you want in the world and how you want to deal with the uncertainty in it. In one career we attempt to diminish the uncertainty in order to create something. In the other, we are willing to live with the uncertainty in order to create something, as well. Both careers create, one with laws that attempt to reduce variability, the other within the dynamics of the variability.

To become an engineer or a scientist is to make a statement to the world something like: “I don’t particularly like uncertainty, and I’m going to do two things; first, I’m going to create what I can using those things I know to be certain in the world; and second, I’m going to do what I can to illuminate what looks like uncertainty and attempt to show that there is actually something certain about what appears to be uncertain. (This, of course, is what Chaos Theory is all about, isn’t it?)

Therefore, for those of us who have chosen the career of technology, (I’m included) we have done so because we want to understand and create order out of the seeming disorder all around us. And the biggest arena of disorder that we see is associated with people (just look at the current international world stage!).

Therefore, as a technologist, when you are tapped to move into technology management, and when you begin down the technology management path, you are making not only a career change, but also a fundamental shift in the way you are choosing to move through the world.

The reason most technical professionals fail to become good technical managers, or the reason they fail to even make the transition, is that they are being asked to completely shift their concept of world. They are being asked to shift form an appreciation of certainty and an understanding of a seemingly predictable world to an acceptance of the unpredictability and seeming chaos of the human world. They are ultimately being asked to leave the world of technology were cause-and-effect rule for the dynamic and variable world of human interaction of human inter-personal communication, motivation, management and leadership.

Is it any wonder this is such a difficult shift to make? Most technical professionals don’t even know they are being asked to take on a new career! Think of it that way, and you begin to understand why I think preparation for this shift is so important. From technologist to technical manager is, for most, a new career.

The transition can be made. It is actually a very enjoyable transition. But it is best made with your eyes wide open and with an understanding of what you are really being asked to do.

Be well

Steven Cerri

What’s A Coach To Do? (Part 2)

”Getting down to business”

Good evening!

Last week I wrote about coaching and what some coaches provide and how and why it doesn’t work. Now lets clear the air, and start by asking the question, “What should a coach provide and how should they provide it?” Let’s ask, “What’s a really good coach to do?”

I’ll begin by talking about the different types of coaching as follows:

There is what I call tactical coaching. Tactical coaching provides the person being coached with information and processes about how to perform a specific task or a specific project.

Tactical coaching is about “SHOW ME HOW TO…”. For example, tactical coaching may take the form of: “Show me how to develop a budget”, or “Show me how to develop a project schedule”, or “Show me how to make a major presentation and influence my audience.” It is coaching that demonstrates and coaches a person to “do” a specific task or project. It can last for one coaching session or it can go on for the duration of the project or task.

There is what I call strategic coaching. Strategic coaching provides the person being coached not so much with information and processes about how to perform a specific task or a specific project, but rather “How To Think”. This coaching process doesn’t focus on how to do something specifically, but rather on how have the capability to think about, analyze and be capable of performing a task or project as it might come up in the future.

Strategic coaching teaches a person “HOW TO THINK ABOUT…”. This is also the type of coaching that is performed when coaching high level executives. It is the type of coaching that prepares the client for future life questions and actions. This type of coaching tends to last longer and to continue for some period of time. This is the coaching that prepares the client to handle whatever life throws at him or her.

If you’re a manager and you want to coach one of your direct reports or if you’re a direct report and you want your manager to coach you, the first step is to decide what type of coaching is to be done. Is it tactical or strategic coaching? The answer to this question will dictate the structure of the interaction.

The reason the answer to this question is so important is because tactical coaching will require a type of communication that will be relatively directive, precise, and specific. In tactical coaching the coach will emphasize unambiguous behavior. It’s all about outcome and actions. The behaviors, the activities, the actions, the outcomes, will be clear, precise, and it won’t matter who is looking at the behaviors, we will all be able to agree, “They are either there or not”.

On the other hand, with strategic coaching the communication is less about action and behavior, and much more about thinking, decision-making, judgment, and foresight. In strategic thinking there is a lot of self-reflection that must be performed by the coach. The coach must literally allow the person being coached to “see inside the mind” of the coach.

It is also important for the coach to be able to assess when the coach must be silent and to decide that enough information has been presented, and it’s now time for the person being coached to move forward on their own … for a while. Then the coach once again communicates with the person being coached to take them to the next level of thinking, decision-making, and judgment. In this way the coach is preparing the person to think on their own when the need arises.

These two forms of coaching actually are at the foundation of all good coaching. It doesn’t matter if the coach is providing coaching on a project, a crisis, a interpersonal interaction, life-decisions, or general management processes, one of these two coaching processes will be the necessary path to successful coaching.

Finally, in both cases, going back into past issues is of no real benefit. Digging into childhood memories, or past business ventures offers no real clues about what to do in the future. In all good coaching, point to what you want. Point to the desired outcome. Point to the future.

What about the person to be coached?

In order for there to be good and successful coaching, what must the person being coached bring to the table?

The answer is that for good coaching to take place, the person who wants coaching must bring two things to the coaching experience:

First is a real desire to have something different.

If the person isn’t in pain or doesn’t really, really want the positive change they’ll get in their life or their career, then forget it. The person being coached has to want it for whatever reason is important to them.

Second is that there has to be a strong consequence for being successful (or not being successful) in the coaching process.

These two items may seem closely linked and they are. But I like to separate them because they are separated by time. If the person being coached has no significant consequence from successful coaching, either positive or negative, then the results will be in question.

These then are some of the important issues to consider if you are a manager and you want to coach your direct reports, or if you are a direct report and you want to be coached.

And the final word is this:

Managers, not every direct report will benefit from coaching. So pick carefully the direct reports you want to coach.

And

Direct reports and managers, not every one who is above you, or can do something you can’t yet, is qualified to be your coach. So pick carefully the people you want to coach you.

Be well

Steven Cerri

What’s A Coach To Do?

”Getting down to business”

Good evening!

I had some thoughts this weekend around this topic:

“What is it that a really good coach should do for you if you want to become a technical manager?”

Approach #1:

The first coaching approach requires that the coach think of their role as that of psychologist, and indeed some coaches are psychologists. They want to dig into your childhood, into your pains, and they believe somehow that having this reflection will assist you in being a manager. They believe that something in your childhood is “making” you do the things that are keeping your from being a good manager. The reality is, who knows? Digging into past positive or negative memories and experiences only brings them into the present. And if they are negative memories, then they become current negative memories. That whole approach seems ill-suited to management training to me. I don’t find it very useful and it often turns into psycho-babble that just makes a person “relive the stuff” that is no longer useful. Transitioning from technical professional to manager is not about psycho-analysis. It’s the present and the future that are most important. I know some people think that the “past informs the present and the future”. But it doesn’t have to. That’s the key. So leave the past in the past.

Approach #1 = Strike One!

Approach #2:

A second approach requires that coaches think of their job as one of imparting project management and human resources information so that you can develop a schedule, generate a budget, and perform performance reviews without offending anyone and getting the company sued. This they think is the fundamental role of technical management.

I think it’s true enough that, as a technical manager, you will have to know how to develop schedules and budgets, and perform performance reviews without offending people. However, these capabilities rely on other abilities that must come first. There are plenty of managers who can develop schedules and budgets, avoid performance reviews because they don’t like them, and still aren’t considered good managers. You may have worked for some of them. So being trained in these abilities won’t make you a good manager.

Approach #2 = Strike Two!

Approach #3:

The third approach requires that coaches think of their job as “holding a space” for you so that you can come up with your own answers. The belief here is that, left to your own devices, you have all the information and knowledge you need to succeed on your own. You only need someone “beside you” telling you “you can do it”.

The theory here is that you know what you need to know in order to succeed. You just “don’t have access to it…yet”. This one just amazes me. If you haven’t been trained as a brain surgeon, how can you be expected to be a brain surgeon? You can’t. If you haven’t been trained as a commercial pilot, should we all feel comfortable with you at the controls of your commercial jet on your first commercial flight? Of course not. This is the reason you want a coach who has been in your industry, your career, you shoes.

Sometimes you’ll even get coaches who will give you little quips and phrases that don’t have anything to do with reality or the reality of your business. Sometimes you’ll be told that in order to be relaxed in front of a group, or in order to be relaxed in an important and tense meeting, or in order to feel less intimated around certain people, you should imagine them without any clothes on. This is supposed to remove any sense of intimidation or inferiority. Sorry, I don’t think that solves anything about your ability to conduct business with powerful people or in intimidating situations. It only gets you good at imagining your colleagues naked. You see transitioning from technical professional to manager requires a fundamental shift in one’s behaviors. It won’t happen with a few little tricks here or there. If you need evidence for what I’m saying just look around. How many really good managers have you worked for? How long has it taken good managers to get good? The answers to these questions are all around us. This is work. This is a new career.

Approach #3 = Strike Three!

So now that you know what I don’t think good coaching is, next Monday I’ll discuss what I think good coaching is and how it can powerfully provide you with tools to be successful as a technical manager. Until then…

Be well

Steven Cerri

“What Should I Do In this Case?”

Good evening!

If we look at these six parameters we can quickly discount many of them as not being important in this situation and therefore, not influential in our selection of the best management style. Evaluation of these parameters leads to the following conclusions:

1. The expertise lies with the manager, not with the employee.

2. There is no big risk.

3. The timeframe is not of concern.

4. The task complexity is not significant, at least not now.

5. The management style the direct report wants the manager to use is worth considering, but not nearly as much as item #6.

6. The manager wants the employee to feel empowered and what that means is that the manager wants the employee to learn how to think and make decisions on his own.

Therefore, an analysis of these six parameters leads us to conclude that the most important parameter is #6. It forces us to conclude that we must allow the employee to exercise judgment and responsibility, even if the employee is to make some mistakes. From my perspective the only choice is for the manager to coach the employee and coaching takes the form of the following five steps, (in this case):

The Plan

1. The manager calls the employee into his office.

2. The manager asks the employee how the employee thinks he should proceed?

3. The manager continues to ask questions in an effort to guide the employee to think about topics that are important without the manager “telling” the employee what to do, what to think, or how to act.

4. The goal is for the manager to guide, coach, and question the employee and in this way point and guide the employee to the safe, effective, and successful actions.

5. By the time the tasks are completed, the employee will have successfully acted in furthering the technology, and the employee will have thought through the process as if it were all their own thinking. This is how you coach an employee to learn how to think “into” more powerful decision-making processes.

Be well

Steven Cerri

”What Should I Do In this Case?”

Good evening!

I want to take a moment and describe a specific case of how management style depends on the situation. I have a coaching client who asked me recently to comment on how he handled a specific situation.

Here is the set-up for the situation:

The manager had recently promoted an engineer to a management position. The engineer clearly had good thought processes. The manager trusted the engineer from years of working together. The manager felt the engineer could step up to the new position as manager of several departmental tasks and two people.

The specific case:

The engineer/new manager got an idea for a new process and sent his manager and excited email outlining the possibilities of this new approach.

The goal:

So now the question is, how should the manager handle this? What should the manager’s response be? The manager’s goal was to “empower” the employee. What exactly does that mean? What would be your goal for this employee and for this interaction?

Now many who discuss leadership would say that the leader should empower the employee. That’s fine but what does that mean? What does empowerment look like in this situation? Some would say that the manager should let the engineer/manager figure it out for themselves. Some would say that the engineer/manager should be shown how to move forward so as to not make any mistakes. There is no shortage of opinions.

What did the manager do?

As I indicated, the manager’s goal was to empower the new engineer/manager. The manager responded to the email with a list of things that they should do next. It was a nice enough email and it listed the next five things that needed to be done in order to prepare this new technology for presentation to upper management for approval.

What happened?

The result was nothing. That was the end of the technology and the end of the discussion. The engineer/manager didn’t do anything else with the topic. It died.

The manager’s perception later was that he killed the motivation of the engineer/manager by making his email too directive, too filled with “you ought to do this.” The manager’s question to me was, “What could I have done differently to keep the engineer/manager motivated?”

My answer:

I look at six parameters to decide on the most appropriate management style to select. The six parameters are:

1. Who has more expertise, the manager or the direct report?

2. What is the risk of the task?

3. What is the timeframe of the task?

4. What is the complexity of the task?

5. What management style does the direct report want the manager to use?

6. What does the manager want the direct report to learn?

I’ll pick up here on Monday

Be well

Steven Cerri

Have It Your Way

”A Million and One Ways to Lead!”

Good evening!

If you’ve been reading my recent blogs you have probably gotten the seemingly radical message that there are a million and one ways to manage and/or lead. There is the best way to manage or lead in any given situation and the best way … depends.

It depends on the context, the situation.

This is the reason that, if we are to measure a successful leader by the amount of financial reward he or she accrues, we find that in the world, there must be a million and one different ways to lead because there seem to be all sorts of ways to lead and make money.

In fact, I hear people say things like, “Real leaders care about their people”. Not necessarily. Some do and some don’t and whether they do or they don’t doesn’t guarantee success. I’m sure you’ve known leaders who have cared about their people deeply and failed and leaders who have not really cared about their people, in fact abused them (verbally), and still they produced a hugely successful operation.

So we are back to the same answer… success is not tied to how you treat people…only. Success is not tied to how well you understand business. Success is tied to six parameters that all come together to define a context. The successful leader finds the most effective way to pull the strengths from each of the six parameters to make decisions that lead the organization forward successfully.

One of the six parameters in Contextual Leadership© is the expertise of the direct report or the team compared to the expertise of the manager. That means that depending upon the quality of the people you bring on board, that will have a huge influence on the management and leadership choices available to you.

In fact, one of the reasons that Jack Welch, the ex-CEO of General Electric was so successful, was that he wanted to function within a specific set of management and leadership styles and that dictated that he keep certain of the six Contextual parameters relatively constant.

One of those parameters that he needed to keep constant was the quality of the people. That is, the only way to narrow his management choices consistently was to be certain that he had a specific quality of employees reporting directly to him. That is why he spent so much time on his employees and that is why he used the A,B,C evaluation system. Jack’s goal was to provide him with a type of direct and indirect report (one layer below his direct reports) that would allow him to use a specific range of management and leadership styles; those that he preferred.

Had he been less diligent regarding report selection, he would have had to range further in his application of management and leadership styles.

By controlling closely the quality of the employees who report to you, you control one of the important parameters that will dictate how flexible you must be in your application of management and leadership styles in order to be successful.

(Note: I’m not a personal friend of Jack Welch. I have not interviewed Mr. Welch. The conclusions I have drawn here are based on my own understanding of management and leadership, new concepts of management and leadership that I have developed, and the books I have read about Jack, interviews I have seen with Mr. Welch, and speeches I have heard given by Jack Welch.)

Be well

Steven Cerri

”Define your context, get your management style!”

Good evening!

So ultimately we get back to the fundamental, basic question and that is:

What is the best management style to use in a given situation?

By now, after reading my last three blogs, you probably get that achieving results and selecting the management style that best achieves results is not just about the qualifications of the direct report or team being managed. In fact, I’m finishing a book right now and I’ve sent pre-publication copies out to friends, colleagues, and clients. Recently in talking to one who has been reviewing my book I asked him what was the one main idea he thought he’d gotten out of the book. (He’s a newly promoted manager in a technical company.) His response was:

“I now know that to the question ‘What’s the best management style in a given situation?’ the only answer that makes sense is ‘It depends. It depends on those six parameters you list.”

That is the answer to Andy Card’s situation. It’s the answer to what has happened at Hewlett Packard. It’s the difference between the Army sergeant and the software business development manager.

And the best management style depends on the “Context Definition” which is defined by the following six parameters:

1. The expertise of the manager as compared to the expertise of the individual or team being managed

2. The risk of the task or project

3. The time frame of the task or project

4. The complexity or interfaces of the task or project

5. The learning outcome desired by the manager for the individual or team being managed

6. The management style preferred by the individual or team being managed

These six parameters define the context and will direct a manager to the best management style for a given situation.

These six parameters make up the Contextual Definition©. The contextual definition then leads the manager to a sliding scale of management styles from authoritative/directive to participative/coaching. The more the expertise lies with the manager, the more the task has high risk or a short timeframe or is complex, the more the manager would want to lean toward an authoritative/directive management style. The more the expertise lies with the team, the risk is low, the timeframe is longer, and the task is less complex, the more the manager would lean toward a more participative/coaching management style.

It’s quite clear that in the case of the Army sergeant, the risks are high, the timeframe is short, and the expertise generally lies with the sergeant. Therefore, the more directive approach works best.

In the case of the software development manager, the immediate risks are low, the timeframe will be relatively long, the complexity of the immediate task is low, and the expertise lies with the team. Therefore, the better management style is a more participative/coaching style.

In the case of HP the same thought process holds true. When the HP board went looking for a replacement for Carli Fiorina, they went looking for someone with a “different management style”. From my vantage point, it’s not even appropriate to ask what management style an HP CEO should have. Carli Fiorina shouldn’t have had one, major management style to work from. Mark Hurd shouldn’t have one, major management style to work from. Their management styles should be tailored to the specific task to be achieved based on the six parameters that define the Contextual Definition. Their management style should change. A leader or manager shouldn’t be capable of being “pigeon-holed” as this type of manager or that type of manager.

The downfall of Carli Fiorina is that she joined HP with the idea that a specific management style, hers, was what was needed. It wasn’t a fit and a match and she was ultimately forced out. Now Mark Hurd is at the helm and he seems to have been labeled with a specific management style, one that currently is a fit and a match. As HP changes will Mark Hurd change his management style as well? Does he change it now as the tasks change on a daily or hourly basis or is the culture in such a backlash that his general style will due, for now, even if it doesn’t vary much?

Watch the news and the results will tell us.

Be well

Steven Cerri

”And the winner of the Best Management Style is….!”

Good evening!

In this blog, I want to continue the thread I started two blogs ago in the blog of 101606. The topic is how best to manage to get results. I’ve introduced Andy Card’s comments in the book “State of Denial” and the situations brought about by Carli Fiorina and Mark Hurd at Hewlett Packard.

The basic message is that different situations require different management styles to get results. I want to give you two more examples to bring this important topic home.

Example #1: “Who’s going to take that hill?”

Imagine you are a U.S. Army Sergeant. You have group of privates under your command. Your team comes over a rise and spots the enemy on top a three hundred foot hill about a thousand yards away. Your mission is to take that hill. Either capture or kill the enemy, but take that hill.

This is the situation.

The question is: What’s the best management style to get the job done?

The answer:

It’s probably self-evident that you can’t use a “coaching” or “participative” management style and get the mission accomplished. Can you imagine the sergeant huddling with his men discussing and asking the following questions: “Ok fellas, who thinks they can get to that hill first? Who has a family? Single guys, without wife and kids, you probably ought to go in front. What do you think? What’s the best approach here?” It becomes obvious that neither participative or coaching management styles wouldn’t be a very effective management here.

The rationale :

The risk to life is very high. The time frame is short and intense. The battle is immanent. The weapons are known and understood. The terrain is known fairly well. This is not a new and uncertain situation. While there may be uncertainties, the team has practiced for just this event over and over. The leadership style is very directive. The sergeant knows exactly what the best approach to success is. The sergeant knows what the choices are. And therefore, the best management style is one in which the choices are limited, the training is called into play, and the most effective management style is a directive, authoritative one.

Now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum.

Example #2: “How creative can you be?”

Imagine you are managing a software team and your goal is to come up with the functionality of a new software program to compete with Intuit’s Quicken program. What functions will you want to include in order to provide a better product than Quicken and what functions will you leave out? How do you know which functions fall into which category and why? How much work will the various functions take to implement?

This is the situation.

The question is: What’s the best management style to get the job done?

The answer:

It’s probably self-evident that you can’t use a directive, authoritative management style here (although a good number of managers try to). Can you imagine sitting around a conference table and “dictating” that people come up with ideas and forcing a specific process to get the answers? Can you imagine a manager saying something like, “OK, I want thirty incredible functions that Quicken doesn’t currently have that are going to make our customers switch to our product, and I want the product to be cheaper than Quicken. And I want this product out the door in six months.” It isn’t going to happen.

The rationale :

Using the parameters discussed in Example #1 we know that there is no risk to life. The timeframe, while short as projected by the manager, may not be as short as six months. There is no battle around the corner. The elements of success are not really known. The functionality that will provide success is not known. This whole project is filled with uncertainties and what is most needed is creativity and decision-making, or even action. The group needs “ideas”. Therefore, the best management style is a “participative” management style that allows everyone in the room to contribute their best AND worst ideas.

With these two extreme examples you can see that a management style that works in one case will fail in the other. These extremes are everywhere in our everyday work environments. In the morning you can faced with a discussion about what equipment to purchase for your intranet and in the afternoon you can be faced with a crashed server that has to be brought up as fast as possible. These two situations can require two very different management styles.

On Thursday I’ll generalize this across a broad spectrum of situations and tell you what a coaching client says about the best approach.

Be well

Steven Cerri

I want my one management style!

Good evening!

I want to pick up on this blog where I left off on the previous blog… basically,

“What is necessary in order to manage to get results.”

Recently, I’ve been reading the new book by Bob Woodward, “State of Denial”. Now my intention is not to get into politics. This blog is not about politics, it’s about management. The book has an interesting example of management and managing for results, which is the topic of this specific blog.

The part I’m thinking about takes place on page 355. It recounts an episode when Andy Card, who at the time was George Bush’s White House chief of staff, is talking to President Bush at Camp David after Bush’s re-election to a second term. Andy Card is tired of government service and would like Bush to replace him. He is talking to Bush about the typical event that takes place when a president wins a second term; the removal of the old staff and the introduction of a new team to go forward with the second term. Andy Card is trying to convince Bush that it is time to get a new chief of staff and Card has compiled a series of candidates that he wants to discuss with the president.

Here is where the interesting part comes in. Card begins to list off names but does so by categorizing them into three “management style” categories as follows:

“The first type of White House chief of staff was a micromanager—tight control, someone who would pronounce that no person, no piece of paper could go to the president without the chief knowing and approving. They both knew that the model for this type was former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, the well-known imperial, blustery chief of staff in Bush senior’s first three years as president.”

“The second type was a prime minister type—a Hill operator, deal-cutter, negotiator and policy person who could handle the Congress, the media and the world.”

The third and final type would be a facilitator—doing what the president wanted, keeping the cabinet and staff focused on the president’s agenda. That was Card’s type.”

Now, the point I want to make and the most interesting point of this page in the book is that managers get a “reputation” of having a certain management style. Andy Card is clearly acknowledging that different situations require different management styles. And different people come “already prepped” with a specific management style. Also implied in this discussion is the idea that people don’t change their management styles. The goal is to “match” the situation to the person. Match the best management style for the situation to the preferred management style of the person. It’s the old “match the round peg to the round hole.”

The same situation is evident in the Hewlett Packard debacle. Carli Fiorina was considered to be the necessary CEO for HP when she took over the leadership role. By the time she was ousted, the consensus had changed. Now what the company needed was a hands-on manager, like Mark Hurd. So the board moved one peg off the board and brought in another, different shaped peg. It’s as if when Carli joined the need was a round peg for a round hole. Then the circumstances changed. The business changed. The hole went from being round to being square. So the board decided they need a square peg for the now square hole.

This is very much the old school of management thinking. People have their preferred and perfected styles and they fit certain circumstances and they don’t fit other circumstances.

Frankly, I think this is outdated, erroneous thinking. Circumstances are always changing and they are going to be changing at an ever more rapid rate. If companies have to keep changing managers and leaders every time the environment or the business changes, we are going to have a long parade of new leaders (and of course, that is exactly what we see in some companies).

The goal is to get managers who can shift their management and leadership style to accommodate the changing and shifting situations. What we need are managers and leaders who aren’t “married” to one management/leadership style. We need managers and leaders who are flexible in behavior and solid in values and ethics.

This applies directly to technology management. Many technology managers have their preferred management style and they use it in all circumstances. They might prefer a very directive, authoritative approach and they use it everywhere even when a coaching style would be more effective. Or they might prefer a consensus management style and they use it everywhere, even when a directive approach would work better. Or they might prefer a coaching style and they use if everywhere, even when the best style might be a consensus approach. Are you beginning to see the pattern here? And you probably know managers who have a preferred style and they use it in all situations. In fact, perhaps all the managers who you’ve come in contact with have a preferred and consistent style regardless of the circumstances.

I believe the single-minded, one management style fits all approach is not useful, not effective, and is not for our next generation of technical managers. It is time that our new technology managers be flexible enough to adapt to the situation so that they can be most effective. Whether you are the White House chief of staff, the CEO of HP or a middle manager in an IT department working with people around the world, you should not be the “constant in the system”. You should be the most flexible component in the system and therefore, the most influential.

I’ll write more on this topic on Monday. Have a great weekend.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Managing for results AND empowerment

Good evening!

It seems lately that everywhere I turn, much of what I read about management and leadership keeps pointing to the same set of management deficiencies. It may be the major issue of managers and leaders; not just technical managers and leaders, but all managers and leaders. And quite simply it’s the inability of managers to manage so as to achieve results. Do any of the following three scenarios ring true for you?

1. You are a new manager. You have been given responsibility for a project and you have also been given three direct reports. The direct reports are all technically competent people. They have been out of school for several years and have been accomplished individual contributors. You sit down with them, discuss the tasks they will each be doing and you then send them on their way to accomplish their tasks. At the end of their respective task schedules, none of them has completed their tasks as they said they would, either on time or to the level of detail they and you anticipated. What has gone wrong and what should you have done?

2. You have a disruptive direct report. This direct report is constantly challenging your authority when they are alone with you. When you and they are in a team meeting, the direct report seems cooperative. But when you are not there, this direct report tends to undermine you in front of other people. This direct report doesn’t seem to feel the sense of commitment regarding getting tasks done on time that you do. Missing a schedule is just not that big a deal.

3. You give a task to a direct report. This direct report has a mixed track record. The direct report sometimes completes tasks on schedule. Other times they miss their schedule. You don’t want to be known as a “micro-manager” but you are uncertain if the person will complete their task if you give them an independent hand. But you choose to give the person a good deal of independence anyway. The project slips and the direct report has an excuse for the inability to complete the task on time. After several attempts to give this person an independent hand you decide to step in and manage them closely so the task can get done. What went wrong? What should you do differently next time, if anything?

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? Do you have direct reports who behave like this? Should you manage closely or manage loosely? Should you ignore how people want to be managed and just manage to get the task completed?

Over the last several months, much of what I’ve read in business and technology magazines, and much of what I’ve heard from my clients, points to this one issue; how does a technology manager manage to get results and build a sense of empowerment and independence in employees at the same time? Or should a manager even try to accomplish these seemingly competing outcomes?

WHAT TO DO?

In order to answer these questions I first want to establish some common ground. And the first area of common ground is this: I want us to agree that the only tool a manager has is communication. It doesn’t matter if you have hire and fire authority of if you don’t; you still only have your ability to communicate as your tool of influence. Threatening an employee with termination if they don’t get the job done is still just a means of communication. A means called “intimidation”. So let’s agree that as a manager your most powerful and only tool is communication.

If it is true that communication is your only tool, then the next question is “How do you use communication to manage for results without making an employee feel that you do not trust them, that you don’t want them to make decisions; basically how do you manage and yet make an employee feel that they are empowered to make certain decisions on their own?

These will be the questions I’ll address in the next couple of blogs and I’ll use the three examples I presented at the beginning of this blog as examples.

See you Thursday.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Part-time technical and part-time manager

Good evening!

As I indicated in my previous blog, I taught a class this week on being a technical professional and technical manager at the same time. This is usually the situation that arises when a technical person is first promoted to management. They are promoted to a position that is part-time technical and part-time manager. During the class I taught, we discussed how and why a technical person is promoted to this “schizophrenic” situation; a situation in which they have to shift from technical to manager and back and forth and back and forth. It seems pretty difficult to be both at the same time and yet this condition seems to occur with regularity.

So I thought this would be a good time to discuss the thinking process that managers go through when they promote their best technical people to part-time manager and part-time technical individual contributor.

The first point I want to make is that very, very rarely does a full-time technical person get promoted to a position of full-time technical manager, and for good reason. Experience counts for something. Judgment is important. It’s very risky to take someone who has not done management work and promote them to full-time manager. So it makes sense that a technical person will be given management responsibilities in a piecemeal approach. It’s more like a proof of concept process.

However, the issue is that it’s usually a proof of concept without adequate training. Most technical professionals get very little if any training before they are given their first management assignment. And for this reason, most technical professionals who get their first promotion to part-time manager have a very difficult time.

It’s not uncommon for a person who is 50% technical person and 50% technical manager (i.e., it might be a team lead position, or manager of a small project with one or two people) to get frustrated because the team he or she is managing isn’t delivering their tasks on time or in budget. The new manager is often trying not to look like a “micro-manager” and yet by taking such a “hands-off” approach, the tasks aren’t getting done. This was exactly the situation facing one of the students in this week’s class.

So let’s talk first about how the best technical professionals get promoted to this position of part-time technical and part-time manager usually without adequate training. Why would a manager pick the best technical person and promote them out of the job they do so well into a new job without training them?”

From the manager’s point of view, the best technical employee may seem to get their work done very quickly and effectively, and therefore, may have something to teach other employees. But most of the time, the reason the manager picks the best technical person is because the manager certainly can’t pick the worst technical person to manage technical people who are more competent.

So once the best technical person is targeted for promotion to part-time manager, the manager has to justify the selection. The rationale for the selection process is comprised of several myths. I call these myths, “The Myths of Early Management Selection”.

Myth #1

The first Myth is what I call: “Good Technical Job: Why Not Manage?” The thought here is that “if you can do your technical work well you can obviously manage people doing the same or similar work.” Underlying this myth is the belief that you can manage a small team or a small project because managing people doing the same work you do is easy.” It is, isn’t it? This myth completely ignores the fact that your technical work and the management job are completely different disciplines.

Myth #2

The second Myth is what I call “Osmosis”. This myth says “Don’t worry. Just hang out and assist a good manager in the company and you’ll learn what you need to learn from that manager.” The unfortunate part about this myth is that while you may well learn some good practices you’ll also pick up all the weaknesses and faults of your teaching manager. Myth #2 produces a series of managers that all have the same strengths and the same weaknesses.

Myth #3

The third Myth #3 is what I call, “Trial by fire”. It translates into a philosophy which is something like, just jump in there and do the management job. It’s a “sink or swim” approach. It’s similar to throwing a child who can’t swim off the deep end of the pool expecting them to dog paddle their way to the edge of the pool and thereby, gain the ability to swim. Or maybe it’s like putting a novice in the left seat of an airliner and expecting them to fly you from San Francisco to New York safely. By any stretch of the imagination, Myth #3 is a looser.

The point I’m driving home is that none of these myths include management training. They are based on the basic assumption that technical management, at least in the early stages, is a no-brainer. It’s easy. It’s obvious.

The reality is that technical people haven’t taken any training to speak of by the time they have graduated from college. They’ve focused most, if not all their time, on their technical work.

And the necessary training I’m talking about is not training in Microsoft Project, or in budgets, or schedules. I’m talking about the skills of

Communication;

Motivation;

Conflict Resolution;

Delegation;

Management Style Selction;

Personal Flexibility

and other inter-personal skills that make the difference between success and failure.

Before taking your first step up the technology management ladder, get some preparation in the inter-personal skills that truly make a manager a manager.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Communication

Good evening!

Today I conducted a training class at a customer site. The topic focused on being a technical individual contributor and a technical manager at the same time. This is typically what happens when a technical person is promoted to management of a small team or a small project. In most cases a technical person is simultaneously a part-time technical individual contributor and a part-time technical manager.

During the class a discussion occurred about the tools that managers can use to do their job. When I asked the class what the most important tool was at the disposal of a manager, I got several answers, including, “listening” and “the people”. I have always taken the position that the only tool of real significance that a technical manager has is “communication”.

There is no doubt that listening skills are important. There is no doubt that the people on the team are important. There is no doubt that there are other “tools” that are important as well. But I believe that all of them rely, at their foundation, on communication to be effective. Listening is about communication. People are motivated and inspired by communication. Everything we do as managers comes down to one fundamental capability, communication.

So even hire and fire authority doesn’t amount to much in the final analysis. The power and impact of hire and fire authority are only transmitted through communication. And so, ultimately, communication is the only tool that any technical professional or technical manager has to do their job.

Many technical professionals who become even part-time managers worry that if they don’t have hire and fire authority over people they won’t be able to manage them. The typical new manager has often not cultivated the communication skills necessary to be successful. Rather they are often looking for their “authority” to help make their management function easier.

Certainly, hire and fire authority makes management seem easier. However, throughout my career, I would guess that only half the time did I have hire and fire authority over the people who I needed to work with. I would guess that half the time I got my projects done by utilizing people who worked with me only because they wanted to and were willing to help me out. Even as a product manager, I relied on departments and people within those departments over whom I had no real authority. They put my project tasks in their schedules as they saw fit. I got my tasks moved to the front of the task list only because they wanted to help me get my product out the door.

This is the difference between formal and informal authority. Formal authority is authority that is given to you by your position, your title. It is less related to you as a person, and more related to your position. Formal authority is clearly tied to the formal organizational structure.

Informal authority is a function of your personality and your force of will. Informal authority is given to you by who you are and not by what your title is. If your informal authority is high, people work with you because they want to. They assist you because they want to. Informal authority is a function of your ability to build positive relationships with people. In my career, even when I had formal authority over people, I used it very sparingly. I would rather motivate people through informal authority than through formal authority even in those cases where I had the formal authority.

So as a technical professional or a technical manager, it is important to understand that the power of your communication, the power of your ability to communicate well and effectively, the power to use communication at the level of informal authority to motivate people, is most important to your success.

Motivating people through hire and fire authority has an underlying motivational process that is based on fear. Motivating people through a desire to assist you is motivating them through a willingness and desire to cooperate. I’ll take motivating people to want to assist me over motivating people to fear me any day.

Be well

Steven Cerri

My Boss Won’t Share Information

Talk to me!

Good morning!

Once again, I was reading a magazine and thought I was dreaming. This time it was the October 9, 2006 edition of BusinessWeek. There happens to be a weekly column called “Analyze This”. The question came from C.J. of New York City. C.J. wrote, “I work with a top executive who regularly fails to share information I need. I wind up hearing about concerns he has or steps he has taken from colleagues in other departments. Then I have to scramble to adjust a deadline or a budget, sometimes narrowly averting disaster. During project postmortems with him, some of us have broached the issue by pointing out problems that might have been avoided with better communication. He’s quick to apologize, but his behavior doesn’t change. I’m stymied.”

Now, who among us with some experience hasn’t run into a person like this, be they our boss or a colleague? They’re out there. It’s clear that this isn’t the best working relationship and C.J. is understandably “stymied”.

What I found interesting was the response C.J. got from the column author. The author began his response by stating what he thought “psychoanalysts” would call this person. Some 343 words were devoted to the article (yes, I did a word count on the column). Of those 343 words, 317 were devoted to the psychoanalysis of C.J.’s boss and 26 words were devoted to suggestions that C.J. could implement to enhance communication with the boss. In the final analysis, the column suggested that there probably wasn’t much C.J. could do, that C.J. would probably have to continue working around the boss, and that C.J. should “try to establish greater trust with (the boss) in other ways, and to tactfully reinforce (the boss’) rare moments of openness.” I have to tell you, 26 words out of 343 doesn’t make a very useful response, even in a short, cramped, magazine column.

Now in the world of technical professionals and technical management, this BusinessWeek response wouldn’t fly. Probably more than any other group I’ve worked with, technical professionals and technical managers are very leery of “psycho-bable”. If you want to loose a technical professional just start talking about the psychological implications of their childhood or of the childhood of someone they work with.

Frankly I agree. As a technical professional and a technical manager, I’m paid for the necessary and appropriate behaviors that lead to results. I’m not paid for psychoanalysis.

So, how would I go about dealing with the person C.J. is working with? Whether it’s my boss, and it has been, or whether it’s one of my colleagues, and it has been, the approach is basically the same. Let’s assume that my situation is exactly like C.J.’s. My boss has a tendency to withhold information. My approach follows some very basic, fundamental rules or theorems of communication and relationships.

The first theorem is: No one exists in a vacuum. We all exist in “relationship to one another.”

So when I think about communicating with my boss in order to get an open communication, I have to think about a “communication system” made up of me and my boss. This is not just about my boss and his behavior. It is about my boss’ behavior in relation to me. It’s about our communication process and I’m going to be looking at how I can communicate with my boss in order to alter his openness. And it will be my communication that will either motivate him to share information or not. (My assumption here is that there is a possibility for openness, and therefore, I can get the openness to show up at some point with the right “stimulus”.)

The second theorem is: Every behavior that a person exhibits has some positive purpose, some positive intention, from their point of view.

Therefore, my boss is withholding information because he thinks there is something positive he is getting out of it. I’m not interested in his childhood or his “terrible twos”.

For example, I once worked with a colleague who always, and I mean always, took a contrary point of view to any new idea that I or someone else put forward. One day I asked him what the positive purpose of his approach was. He nonchalantly indicated that he felt it was his mission to make certain that we didn’t overlook any potential flaw that could cause us great difficulty on our project, down stream. It was a reasonable goal but his implementation sucked! But now I understood and I could work with him to support his need to find “dangers” while moving the project forward.

Also, in his question, C.J. indicates that in the “project postmortems with him, some of us have broached the issue by pointing out problems that might have been avoided with better communication. He’s quick to apologize, but his behavior doesn’t change.” C.J. is falling down on the job here. Telling his boss about “problems that might have been avoided with better communication” is not explaining to C.J.’s boss what the issue really is. Saying that problems could be avoided with more open communication isn’t explaining to the boss that the boss has a habit of withholding information. C.J. is only saying we would all be better off with better communication. That goes without saying. C.J. has to step up to the plate here and explain that his boss has a behavioral style that puts projects and people consistently at risk. If C.J. or others on the team aren’t willing to be this open how can they expect their boss to understand his need to do the same?

The third theorem is: If I can find out my boss’ positive outcome, his positive intention, I might be able to structure my conversations and requests for information so that giving me the information supports his outcome rather than seeming to undermine it.

Think of it this way. If my request for information seems to my boss to be contrary to the outcome he desires from withholding, he’ll just withhold more stringently. The way I find out my bosses positive outcome is to ask him. Many times I’ve asked these questions;

“I’m curious, what is it that you are attempting to accomplish by not giving me all the information you have about a topic as soon as you have it?” (By the way, the boss may not even know that he is withholding important information.)

Or,

“What is it that is important to you about holding information close to you and not letting it out?”

Or,

“There seems to be some information that you keep and act on. Is there something special or unique about that information that causes you not to share it with me and others?”

You may have to ask these questions over and over, perhaps over several weeks time but sooner or later you will get the answer. And when you get the answer you’ll know that it’s IT! There isn’t any way I can tell you what the answer will be or how you’ll know it. It will be context specific and that means that it will relate to the situation at hand.

Here’s a real-world example. I once had a software engineer who wouldn’t release his software to the customer. The project was a rapid-prototype for a database user interface. The program manager didn’t know how to get the software out of the developer’s hands and into the customer’s hands for first stage evaluation without making a scene. I was called in and after talking to the engineer for a few minutes I asked my question, “What’s important to you about holding on to the software and not releasing it now?” His response was that he wanted to pack as many features into the interface as possible so the customer could give him the maximum amount of feedback.

Once again, a reasonable goal. What he didn’t realize was that if he released the software immediately, he could get it back from the customer in time to perform one more iteration and get the customer’s feedback a second time. When I explained to him that a quick release would guarantee that he would actually get two cycles from the customer instead of one… the software was in the customer’s hands the next day.

I don’t know what C.J.’s boss is trying to accomplish by withholding information. However, what I do know is C.J. has a lot of options still open and available that he hasn’t yet tried. Before C.J. makes a habit of going around the boss or of trying to compliment the boss when he opens up, C.J. has plenty of proactive questioning and discussing that can be done with the boss. Nine times out of ten, my experience is that you can be successful in these kinds of situations, regardless of what Freud said.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Customer Service!

Big Deal or Not?

Good evening!

Customer service is a big deal… to customers. It doesn’t seem like such a big deal to businesses… at least some businesses. When I’ve been involved with customer service it’s seemed pretty easy to me and yet, apparently not to some. It’s considered such a confusing topic that this month’s issue of Fast Company devoted most of a whole issue to it.

I picked up a copy of the September 2006 issue of Fast Company off the newsstand, the one with Lewis Black on the cover looking like a surprised and disgruntled customer with smoke coming out of his ears. The first thing I read was the “Letter From The Editor”, Mark N. Vamos.

Mark begins by stating that, “Giving your customers great service…is easy.” He then proceeds to say that it really is difficult because what all (or most) customers want is to talk to the proprietor of the company to get their problems solved. He goes on to say, “I think most of us have an unspoken expectation of that relationship (i.e., between customer and company) that’s rooted in an idealized image of early-20th-century small town commerce. When we do business, we want to feel as if we’re looking the proprietor in the eye over a wooden counter. We want the owner of the hardware store to know us. We want the owner of the bookstore to remember that we liked the last book by that Sinclair Lewis fellow and to set aside the new one for us.”

Well, I don’t know how Mr. Vamos makes purchases but that is not at all what I want nor is it what I expect. I don’t care about the proprietor. I don’t want anybody guessing what book I want. I’m certain the days of living down the street from the hardware store where everyone knows my name are long gone or certainly seem so. When I call a customer service department and the person on the other end of the line calls me by name, I know they’ve already pulled up my information in their database. So let’s not get overly sentimental about the “old days”. The only time I expect someone to know my name is if I’ve had repeated contact with them in a short enough span of time that I appreciate that they haven’t forgotten my name or other pertinent information. Most of the time all I want is someone to talk to, rather than a machine, and I want that person to be the first and last person I talk to in order to get what I want done. That’s it.

The reason Nordstrom’s does so well is not because the customer has access to the proprietor or because they call me by name.

It’s because the sales person on the floor can and does ACT LIKE the CEO

But they are not the proprietor nor do I expect them to be. It’s because the sales person on the floor takes care of my issue. They are the first and last person I have to talk to in order to get what I want done. Get it?

Customer service is easy. I’ve provided a lot of good customer service and it was not rocket science. I know rocket science and customer service isn’t it. To get to good customer service all you have to do is ask two questions, “What does my customer want?” and “How does my customer want to be treated in getting it or in not getting it?” That’s it. The reason customer service is so difficult to find in the world is that companies don’t ask those two questions. They ask a different question instead and that is,

“What minimal contact do we have to provide to deal with the customer after the sale is complete?”

Whether company personnel ask that question out loud or it’s implied in their discussions, you know that’s the question they are answering when they implement their customer service policies. Just notice what customer service processes they have implemented.

Most companies treat customer service as an expense instead of an investment

When I was a product manager at a printer company, there were many instances in which I talked to customers and provided support to my customers. My overriding questions were always, “What is of interest to my customer?” “What has my customer told me they are interested in?” “What can I do to make my customer’s life easy regarding my product?” “How do my customers want to be treated?”

So if you’re a technical professional, how do you provide great customer service? Let’s say you’re an IT professional whose job it is to integrate hardware and software for clients. Your clients may be internal users or they may be external customers. How do you provide customer service that is exemplary?

The answer comes in several parts so remember that there isn’t a silver bullet here. It takes a focus on several components.

The first component relates to your perception of your role. You must first think “systemically”. That is, you must think beyond your own area of the organization, beyond your own immediate world. You must begin to understand how other components of your product, the customer’s needs, and your company’s support components fit together to form a “support system”. Because it is your ability to influence of this “support system” that will allow you to provide great customer service.

The second part is your perception of the customer. If you consider the customer a source of problems or if you consider the sale complete when the customer has purchased your product, you’re in trouble. The customer is an on-going source of business and you must think of them that way.

Third, you must establish informal relationships within the context of your larger organization. If your company is large enough to establish these relationships formally that’s fine but don’t rely on them solely. What allows you to act like the CEO in the customer’s eyes is your ability to have the informal relationships that allow you to behave in a semi-independent way. You just can’t do this well unless you have established informal relationships in your organization that support your independence and your independent decision-making.

Finally, the fourth part is communication. Communication must be open and flexible. You must be comfortable being in a fish bowl. Whatever you need in order to provide great customer service, you have to be able to ask for it (within your own organization).

Notice great customer service is not about the implementation of technology. Mark was right in his implication that we want that human touch. In the final analysis, good customer service is really very easy to provide, in most situations. However, what we often see in the business world today is that customer service is a “must have expense” that most companies attempt to automate so it can be provided at the lowest possible cost. Big mistake. The only way to a build business that keeps your current customers and attracts new ones is to build relationships. Good customer service is one cornerstone of those good relationships.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Find Your Mentor and Coach

Find Your Sam or Samantha

Good morning!

In this blog I want to tell you about Sam. Sam Garcia. I don’t even know if Sam is still alive and so this might be a way for me to thank him and to acknowledge his existence in some small way.

I graduated from college in 1969 with a B.S. in aeronautical engineering. After starting out in the ground support equipment department of the Apollo manned space program at Rockwell International in Downey, California I was moved to the advanced space systems department in Seal Beach, California. I didn’t like ground support equipment work much but I really enjoyed the advanced systems work. I met some very good engineers (in both groups) who took this young kid under their wings and guided me along.

I was always a little more aggressive than my years or knowledge would probably support and soon I was picked to work on a new project that was part of the then, theoretical work leading to the development of what is now the space shuttle. The project I was placed on was called the Space Tug. The Space Tug was an on-orbit propulsion vehicle that was to go up in the shuttle cargo bay, with the satellite payload, and was to be used to place the payload into its final orbit.

My job was to perform flight performance analysis of the tug, which means that it was my job to calculate what sizes of payload the tug could place in various orbits. The program manager, the person in charge of all the analysis, design, and development of the Space Tug program was Sam Garcia.

Now when I first met Sam he didn’t strike me as anything other than an older guy who had knowledge and some power and responsibility at Rockwell. He was short and stocky, bald, with a deep, raspy voice, a quick smile, and an attitude that made you think that he would always find the funny or ironic component to any situation. And he had a slight “Spaniard’s” accent.

At first whenever I heard Sam talk to the program team, I noticed that he sounded like he was just talking to us. That’s all, just talking to us. I was the youngest guy in the group. At the time I was about 22 years old and the average age of the team, other than me, was probably 45 to 50 years old with Sam at about 50 years old. It wasn’t long before Sam and I became good friends. He once said that he saw a lot of himself in me when he was my age.

In any case, Sam began to talk to me about management and leadership, and it wasn’t the typical stuff about project management, schedules, and budgets. Our talk was about people. Who had what strengths; who had what weaknesses. How to make decisions about who to have do what and who to take to customer briefings. I got to go to all the customer briefings, something that was unheard of for someone my age and with my limited experience, but Sam trusted me and gave me opportunities.

One of the aspects of Sam’s life that he thought was important to who he was had to do with what he did after graduating from high school and before going to college. I don’t now recall much about what he said about his childhood or his father or mother or family, but I remember that Sam said that upon graduation from high school he boarded a merchant ship and traveled the world for two years. A young man of 18 years old, traveling the world. That experience gave him a different perspective than those of us who had gone from high school to college to work.

After this two-year period, Sam decided to go to college and got a degree in engineering. He now had a family, a daughter, and a good career at Rockwell. And he was teaching me how to deal with people.

After three years at Rockwell, and two of those years working with Sam, I decided it was time to go back to school to get a M.S. in geophysics. My reasoning was that if I didn’t branch out I would end up like so many 50 year-old engineers I saw around me; 50 years old and doing the same work that a young kid out of college was doing (i.e., the young kid was me.) I didn’t want that and so I thought the best approach was to branch out.

I asked Sam for his advice. My question was, “Do you think that my move to branch out into geophysics is a good move?” Sam’s response was indicative of how I think a good manager deals with direct reports, whether about personal matters like college or about work matters like presentations or analysis. His answer was also a reflection of a man who traveled the world at eighteen not knowing what he wanted to do with his life. His answer was, “I can’t answer that for you. This is something you have to decide. If you don’t do it or you do it because of something I say then you will never know if it was the right decision or not.”

There was another time I recall when Sam’s approach to me was very different. I had been performing an analysis on the Space Tug’s performance. I had developed a series of charts indicating how the tug would perform with different payload weights in different orbits.

As I left work one day, half-way through the parking lot on the way to my car, in a flash, I had the realization that one of my equations could be wrong. I might have divided by a constant instead of multiplying by it.

I worried about it all night and the next morning ran into my office to verify the equation. Sure enough, it looked like I had made a mistake. I ran to Sam to tell him that the numbers on my chart were wrong. I told him I’d fix the numbers and get back to him. I felt proud that I had found the mistake this early in the program and that I could admit my mistake as well. He was supportive.

I spent the rest of that day pouring over the numbers only to determine that my original data were correct. No need to worry I thought. I’ll tell Sam I made a mistake about my mistake, my original numbers were correct.

When I told Sam of my error in thinking that there was an error, he looked at me like he could have handed me my head. With very little emotion in his voice or on his face as he spoke, which made his statement all the more stern, he only said these words, “Don’t ever do that again.” As I walked out of his office I knew I had screwed up.

One of the aspects I didn’t realize until years later about Sam’s management style was his ability to vary that style depending upon the circumstances. He could be calm and helpful; he could be playful and joking; he could be ruthless and demanding; and he could be a friend. As my own career advanced and as I began to develop my own way of moving through my technological business world I, unconsciously at first and then by choice, began to understand the usefulness of being able to adopt a wide variety of management styles. Sam was able to move smoothly through a wide variety of different situations with a wide variety of people. I ultimately saw that ability to be a key to management success.

Sam was my first coach and mentor. He talked to me about life and work and people, explaining to me what was important both at work and out, and how to know what was important and how to know what was not. What was important about Sam’s coaching was that he told me “what he was thinking”. He let me see into his mind, into his thought processes. That was so much more important to my learning than just “telling” me what to do. I got to see the “why” as well as the “what”.

I left Rockwell to go back to school and received a M.S. in geophysics. Several years later I ended up back at Rockwell at Seal Beach, and Sam wasn’t there. He had been transferred to another division of Rockwell, and I never saw him again. And yet what he taught me is still with me, so much so that I’m compelled to write a blog about his impact on my career and my life.

To all you technical professionals out there I urge you to find yourself a mentor, a coach. Someone who can teach you early (or late) in your careers what to focus on and what not to focus on, what is important and what isn’t. You don’t have to agree with your mentor or coach but they will help you by starting the process of asking the right questions and giving you their opinions from which you can begin. If they’re really good they won’t tell you, they’ll give you a view into their processes. Find your own Sam or Samantha. Seek out the wisdom in your technical profession. Look for the people who are not only successful but seem to have the respect of a wide variety of people in your organization. Not the people who just have their “like-minded” friends. But those people who receive the respect and support of a wide variety of personalities throughout the organization, throughout the community.

I don’t know where Sam is now, or even if he is on the planet. I’m sure there were others he gave guidance to throughout his career. For me, I still remember Sam as someone who had an important impact on my technical career and on my personal life. Thanks Sam.

Be well

Steven Cerri

So You Want To Be A Manager

How Does A Technical Person Get Promoted To Manager?

If you’re currently a technical professional and you’re thinking about going into management, it’s important that you be aware that your transition to management isn’t going to be an overnight process. You’re not going to go to bed one night as a technical professional and wake up the next morning as a technical manager. But you knew that, right? What you probably didn’t know is that it can be a very slow OR a relatively fast process. And it most certainly won’t be orderly because your boss or your company probably won’t prepare you well for the transition.

I’ve seen a lot of technical people get selected for management and so I’m going to tell you one of the likely scenarios you might experience.

First and foremost, most managers, and here I’m speaking of your manager; most managers don’t really understand management as a discipline. (I know, it sounds like a ridiculous statement, but all I can do is ask you to consider how competent you believe the managers are that you’ve met? Most of you will say, “not very”.) This is because most managers think that management is a no-brainer, or at the very least, it’s not a very rigorous discipline. Therefore, if you do your engineering work well, and you seem readily capable of talking to people, your manager will think that because you can do your technical work well you can manage other people doing the same or similar work.

That’s right. Most technical professionals who do a very good job at their technical work are “assumed” to be competent to manage a team of people doing the same or similar work. You manager is thinking something like this: “Well John (or Betty) is a really good engineer. He really seems to know his stuff when it comes to the technology. And he seems to be a nice enough person. He seems to communicate well enough with other people. Most people like him. He doesn’t seem to raise his voice or get into verbal disputes. He can probably manage one or two people doing similar work to what he has been doing. I’ll just give him a simple management task with a few people to manage and see how he works out.”

That’s it. That’s how you get selected for management. There is usually no more preparation than that. As you will probably notice from this scenario, you’ve been selected for a relatively small project. That’s reasonable. You’re not going to be selected to be a full-time manager without significant experience. However, the key here is that you will often be selected for your first management position without being given sufficient training. You’ll be seen as a good technical person. You’ll be seen as someone without significant inter-social faults. You’ll be asked (usually) if you want to be a manager and most of the time the response is “sure”. And that will be it.

Now once in a while a good technical person is selected to manage a small project and they are given some training in preparation for this new responsibility. The training will often come in the form of one or more of the following classes: corporate human resources/personnel policies; project management; budgeting and scheduling; good listening skills. While these classes regarding the “doing” of management at your company are useful, they are not what you need as a new manager. Primarily what you need as a new manager is a way to understand how to make the transition from individual contributor, the “doer” part to the motivator, the “doer doing less and motivating others to do”.

As an individual contributor you got your rewards from the doing. As a manager, you will get part or all of your rewards from what others are doing. This is the shift you want to make. This is what you want to learn about. This is what will make or break your transition.

I want to point out one more major dilemma in this early stage transition, and that is you will have “one foot” in the management world and “one foot” in the individual contributor world. That is, you won’t be a full-time manager and you won’t be a full-time individual contributor either. This is a very difficult situation to be in but unfortunately, we all have to go through it. There seems to be no other way to get from technical professional to manager. At some point in the early days of our transition process, we all have to be part-time manager and part-time technical professional. You will have to “change hats” frequently from manager to individual contributor and back and forth and this will definitely get confusing and it will be a challenge… I can guarantee it. But frankly, there isn’t any other way. You won’t have sufficient experience to be a full-time manager so you’ll have to make it a part-time gig. And about half of you will not succeed.

You won’t succeed because you never wanted management in the first place. If you had wanted management you certainly wouldn’t have studied all those years to be a technical professional. So let’s be clear. Being a technical professional is generally not a “people oriented” profession. Technology deals with ideas, laws of physics, machines, equations, and only peripherally, with people.

Now all of a sudden, because you do your technical work so well, you are going to be asked to focus on “people”.

I take the position, that from the technical professionals’ point of view, management is a new career. One that you didn’t ask for and one you didn’t prepare for. And yet, here it is. It’s going to require preparation and practice. And it’s going to require more than just knowledge of how to use Microsoft Project, or how to set up budgets and schedules. It’s going to require an understanding of how to deal with and communicate with and manage people. It’s going to require a personal understanding of your own motivational forces and an understanding of the motivational forces of others. This is why the transition to management is such a challenge for many technical professionals.

It’s a new career. It can be done. It can be done smoothly, elegantly, and successfully. It must be done with a conscious process of choice and an understanding that, for most technical professionals, it’s a second career.

Steven Cerri

Can People Really Change? (Part 2)

The Answer To The Million Dollar Question.

Good morning!

I’m now going to answer the question I posed in the previous blog—“Can People Really Change?” In the previous blog I pondered exactly what that question meant. And I’ll now answer it in two ways. First I’m going to say that if the question is really asking if people can change their personalities, if they can change “who” they are, then my answer is “I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter”.

A manager’s job is not to “change” someone. If that’s the manager’s life mission they should have been a therapist.

Second, a better question to ask is, “Do People Change Their Behavior?” And the answer is absolutely “YES”.

As a manager, your job is to get a specific behavior from people, behaviors that support the goals of the organization, not to change their personality.

People are constantly changing their behaviors to get what they want and a manager’s job is to find a way to get people to behave in such a way that is productive for the team, the company, the project, and the individual.

In fact, that’s exactly why I got the reputation of being a manager who could build high performance teams with people no other managers wanted to work with. I was able to focus on getting the behavior that I wanted. And it’s why my coaching programs produce such powerful results (I know that’s blatant self-promotion, but it’s a fact.)

The best way to think of it is this way. Imagine that each human being is an iceberg floating in the sea of life. (Sounds poetic doesn’t it?) From our birth through our early years our iceberg has the potential to float pretty high in the water. A good deal of our potential way of being, our potential personality and the behaviors produced are visible for all the world to see. We play, we express ourselves, we laugh, we cry according to some internal and innate sense of who we are and who we can be and who we are becoming! Our behavior is flexible and varied.

Then life occurs and “stuff” gets added on top of our iceberg and more and more of our iceberg gets pushed under the surface of life, invisible to most people. We “grow up”, we go to college, we become technical professionals and our iceberg gets well defined as a “technical professional’s” iceberg. Now life just keeps happening and maybe all of a sudden the waters change. Maybe they get warmer; maybe they get colder; maybe they get rougher; maybe they get calmer. Whatever new situation arises, it’s a new situation and the question becomes, “What happens to our iceberg?”

Well, we generally attempt to ride in the “new” waters the same way we rode in our “old” waters. And often that doesn’t work. So a manager, coach, mentor comes along and starts to interact with us. All of a sudden things are different. The person (in this case, the “we”) begins to behave differently. As I said, in my career, my experience is that I can take people who have not been willing to change their behavior and when they find themselves traveling in the waters I manage, they’re different. What’s unique? Is it me, is it the other person, or have both of us led to this difference?

I’ve now come to understand what happens not so much as a change process at the core of an individual but as a “potential” for changed behavior and the appearance of that changed behavior in the world. You see, many people are hiding most of their potential under the waters’ surface, out of view of the world. If you know how to change the surface “weight” on their iceberg, (i.e., the environment, the communication, their relationship to their world) you can actually get people to “expose” a capability they have always had but that hasn’t been visible, yet. The capability has always been there and because of fear, or lack of need, or lack of knowledge, it stayed hidden. The really exquisite manager, or mentor, or coach, can bring this capability to the surface and help the person expose it and all of a sudden it looks like the person has changed when in reality they’ve had the capability all along and all that is different is that the person is behaving differently. Have they “changed” at the core? Maybe; maybe not.

But as a manager, I’m not interested if they’ve changed at their core, I’m most interested in their ability to change their behavior.

Now some people don’t have certain capabilities. No amount of coaching, managing, or mentoring will bring a behavior to the surface if it’s not under the surface to begin with. For those people, training and desire are then necessary. For example, let’s say my manager decided that the company needed a brain surgeon and I should be it. I’m not a brain surgeon and I haven’t been trained as a brain surgeon. It’s not a reasonable potential for me, yet. No amount of coaching, mentoring, or managing is going to make me a brain surgeon by uncovering that hidden capability. In order for me to be a brain surgeon I have to want it, badly, and I have to be trained in it. Once trained, I can have that behavior as a potential.

Likewise, if a manager wants an employee to behave differently and the necessary capabilities are not there, such as communication skills, or management skills, or and interpersonal skills, no amount of prodding is going to make it happen. The direct report will have to want to make those changes and will have to acquire the knowledge and training necessary to have those capabilities.

On the other hand, if your manager wants you to make a presentation to a thousand people, and you already have comfort speaking in front of a few people, but you just haven’t spoken to a thousand people before, then getting you to step up on stage to speak to a thousand people is merely a capability that has been hidden from view. And in the right circumstances, that behavior will show up.

So I’ve come to believe that I don’t know the answer to the question “Do people change?” What I have concluded is that people have a vast potential that is unexplored, unexposed, and not used in the way they can behave. A vast potential of how they can become given the opportunity. And there are two requirements for a behavior to show up. Number one they have to want it. A desire to have the new capability and the new behaviors is a necessary but not sufficient requirement. The second required component is the exquisite mentor, coach, or manager who can create an environment where some of that vast potential of the person can indeed be exposed. It’s what Peter Drucker meant when he said a manager’s job is to emphasize people’s strengths and make their weaknesses irrelevant.

There you have it. Like the iceberg, there is much more under these words that goes into their application. This is the process that I use in my coaching program. At some point in your career, as a technical professional you’ll be asked to behave not so much as an engineer, scientist, or technologist, but as team leader, a manager, a facilitator, or marketing communicator (or maybe you’ve already been asked). All or some of these requested behaviors might be potential behaviors that have been hidden but have not yet become available to you. How do you make the shift? How do you behave differently and keep yourself intact. This is where coaching, and judgment come into play.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Can People Really Change?

The Million Dollar Question.

Good morning!

Recently I was in a coaching session with a high level technical manager at a high-technology company. This manager has been struggling with a difficult direct report. In the course of our session the manager asked me point blank: “Can people really change. I’m beginning to get to the point where I think we really can’t change people.”

Now that’s the $1 million question, isn’t it? As managers, can we change people? Should we change people? Do we have the ability or even the right to contemplate the phrase; “Can I change this person?

Have you changed? Have people close to you changed? When you think about whether you have changed are you looking at a time frame of months, or years, or decades? When you ask the question: “Have I changed?” what’s your answer? Do you respond, “Well I’m the same person but I’m different too.” “Different in what ways?” “The same in what ways?” If you focus on what’s the same, does it mean you haven’t changed? If you focus on what’s different, does it mean you have changed?

Can we change people only if they want to change? Do we change at the “surface” but not at our “core”? What is the core anyway? If I’m a technical person am I a “technical person” for the rest of my life? Do people need a life-altering situation in order to change?

Frankly I don’t know the answers to these questions. These are age-old questions, aren’t they? I like to think that people change and yet for every example I can give you of how someone has made a miraculous change I can give you another example of someone who has resisted change. Is there a “truth” in there somewhere or is it just my perspective? I believe that anyone who tells you they know the answers to these questions is full of hot air.

Having said all that you might ask, “Well, as a technical manager, what’s the use of trying to help people to be successful? People come to work as who they are and that’s that. They either do their job or they don’t. It’s not my job as their manager to change them.”

Now that last paragraph is one I really don’t agree with. I do think there are certain boundaries and generalities that we can make about the possibility of human change. I’ve seen people make radical shifts or changes in behavior in my years as a manager. Is a shift in behavior a change in them or just a change in behavior? Remember, as a manager, you ultimately manage a person’s behavior; you don’t manage changes in a person’s personality. What you want as a manager is a specific behavior from an individual, not their soul. Let me explain; let’s take this a step at a time:

First, we probably all know people who fall into the category in which they are not going to change, no matter what. They are set in their ways and they’ll gladly say so to anyone who will listen. They like themselves just the way they are, and it’s clear, just in conversation that they are not interested in changing one bit. These are not the people I’m talking about here. We can exclude them from this conversation.

Second, we also probably know people who don’t seem to have a sense of themselves. They adopt whatever demeanor, behavior, and personality are best suited to the situation. They are also not the people I am talking about here. We can exclude them from this conversation as well.

The third group comprises the people I am talking about and they are those people who have some sense of themselves in a way that is stable and identifiable to the outside world. Their way of moving through the world, their way of being, for them, has worked well enough in life. Perhaps things have moving along just fine and now they are coming up against some “personal life force or situation” that requires them to change in order to deal with it. They can either change and deal with the situation successfully or they can revert to old behaviors and get hammered by the situation. The bottom line is that we probably have enough experience in our own life and in our observations of others to know that about 50% of the time people change and 50% of the time they get hammered.

From this third situation what are we to conclude? Are we to conclude that people don’t change, that people do change, or that some people can change and some don’t? As I said earlier in this blog, to this question I must say that I don’t really know the answer. But I do have a different way to think about this that makes a great deal of sense to me and explains the observable facts better than the black and white answers, “yes” or “no”.

I’ll elaborate in Thursday’s blog. See you then.

Be well

Steven Cerri

Are you using all your skills at work?

Most technical professionals aren’t.

Hello,

I want to introduce you to what is probably a new concept for you. The name of the concept is, “The Fully Integrated Technical Professional©”. I’ll explain what that means in this blog.

You go to college to learn your trade. You learn how to be an “individual contributor”, a technical professional who can solve specific technical problems. That’s all well and good.

Then you work at a company for a number of years and slowly or perhaps not so slowly you are given greater responsibility, especially responsibility for the management of projects and the management of a small team. You are expected to contribute positively to the team and maybe even display a little leadership in meetings. You are expected to be able to compromise and find the most effective solution in collaboration with your colleagues, those down the hall and those halfway around the world. You are expected to communicate and communicate well with a wide variety of people.

And from this situation there are two possible paths your career can take. You either do all this well and you succeed and therefore move along a path to management, or you don’t succeed, you crash, and you get relegated to doing “technical work” only. Now don’t get me wrong, you may choose to be the manager or you may choose to remain completely focused on the technical work.

The operative word here is “choose”. If you choose the path you want, fine. But many technical professionals, who get relegated to the technical world after attempting the management path, don’t get to choose. They find they haven’t measured up and they are disappointed, frustrated, and bitter. In fact, it’s mostly for this reason that many companies have developed the “dual-track” for those technical professionals who want to stay technical and those who want to become managers. The dual track allows technical people to “stay technical” throughout their careers, and while some choose this path, some end up there because they didn’t know how to make the successful transition to management.

Here is my position; let’s throw this whole concept of two paths and failing on any one of them out the window. Let’s make what we do with our careers a choice… a conscious choice, made because we understand what we want to do and what we are best suited to do.

That means that when you graduate from college and enter the work force as a technical professional you have one of two major paths to take; either you remain primarily technical or you move into technical management. However, whatever path you take you will contribute ALL of your capabilities. Regardless of whether you stay technical or you become a manager you will develop your skills at communicating with anyone in any situation. You will develop your ability to manage and lead be it in a meeting or with a company wide project. You will learn how to think systemically. You will learn how to vary your communication style so that you can motivate people whether in a small meeting down the hall or when talking to an auditorium full of your employees.

This then is what it is to be a Fully Integrated Technical Professional. It is to be a fully developed contributor to your organization either as a technologist or as a technical manager. It’s to continue your personal development process after college. It’s to be able to live your professional career from a position of choice not from of position of limitation. The Fully Integrated Technical Professional is a technical professional first. It’s someone who understands to varying degrees technology, its implications, and its capabilities. And it is someone who can also communicate and interact with, understand, and motivate people and situations so that things can get done, not just by one person, but also by many people. Remember, the days of living in the corner lab and working alone to accomplish what needs to be done are mostly gone. Look around. Nothing of significance gets done anymore without the contributions of many people. To me, the Fully Integrated Technical Professional is the only way to be a technical person in the 21st century. Like I often say, the Fully Integrated Technical Professional is a technical professional who is more than technical.

Be well

Steven Cerri

My Introductory Blog

Who is this guy?

Good morning,

You’re probably wondering… who am I and why do I have this blog? The answers to those two questions are very important to me as they are to you.

To the first: I’m an engineer, a scientist, and a business person and entrepreneur. I have degrees in each area: a BS in aeronautical engineering; an MS in geophysics; and an MBA. I’ve done international training, I’m an author, and I’m an adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in theTechnology Management Program Department. I have over 30 years of experience in aerospace engineering, software development, and printer manufacturing companies, in both the technology and the management areas. And that experience has been in commercial, government, and in department-of-defense business arenas. So I’ve gotten a taste of how all three of these environments function.

I began my career as an engineer and ultimately became a general manager. I’ve made the transition from technical professional to technical manager and beyond (product manager, general manager, and corporate trainer). By most standards I’ve been very successful and yet, I got very little help along the way. By that I mean I got very little help that would have made my transition to management easier. Primarily this was because there was no one who really, and I mean really, understood what a technical person goes through when they become a manager. Technical people either make the transition to management or they don’t and if they succeed their success is attributed to some “innate” ability.

Oh, for sure, there were the psychologists who could teach me what they thought I should know about people and management. But they were psychologists; what did they know about what was going on in my head, the head of an engineer? And there were the engineers and technical managers who would teach me about project management, schedules, and budgets. But those were the easy functions. No one was there to teach me what I really needed to know to make management “comfortable” for me. There was no one there who was willing to discuss the “transition” from technical professional to technical manager. And while I was lucky enough to be successful, I made the trip pretty much on my own, so to speak.

In fact, I was extremely successful in building teams. I was able to turn projects and organizations around, even in situations where others had failed. Somehow I had learned how to motivate and move people to achieve results that others could not. And I began to help those who worked for me make the transition from technical professional to technical manager. I began to groom program and project managers to take on their own major projects. Some even started their own companies.

To the second question: From these results, I more and more began hearing myself say; “I want to teach technical professionals how to do this because I really think I understand what they need to know that no one is telling them. Most of my approaches to building teams and managing people and projects went against the accepted practices, and yet the results were fantastic. So I had to ask myself what was going on here and why was I successful building technical teams and grooming managers while others weren’t as successful?

I decided about 15 years ago to embark on a consulting, training, and coaching career. I decided that it was important to me to get what I considered to be my message out to technical people. And so while I’ve continued to work inside corporations on and off since I started my consulting, training, and coaching company, my main interest has been in training technical professionals to have successful long-term careers, either as technical professionals or as technical mangers and helping them make a smooth transition if they decide to become technical managers.

The message of this blog then, is really my message. It’s based on my experience, and on my ideas about what works and what doesn’t work in technology management. It’s about the personal development of the technical professional required to become a truly long-term success as a technologist or a manager in their organization.

You won’t find a compilation of other people’s ideas here. You won’t find any straddling of the fence either. You won’t find me giving you several ideas about a management topic and then telling you that it’s up to you to decide what to do. If that is what you want, there are plenty of good blogs that you can visit that will provide that kind of information. That’s not this site and it’s not me. I definitely have an opinion developed over a long career. I have strategies that work in a wide variety of technology management situations. They have worked for me and they have worked for the people I’ve trained, coached, and taught. This is not about theory, it is about practical technical management.

On this site, my message will consist of my ideas, my experience, and my suggestions. Try them out. If they work, please come back. If they don’t work then please feel free to let me know. I encourage you to ask me questions; pose specific situations you might be facing; get specific. This can and should be a powerful learning process. And that’s what we do as technical professionals, we learn and we apply what we learn. You’ve learned about the physical laws of the universe. It’s time you learn about the “laws” or maybe “theorems” of technical management.

You’ll find that my message consists of three parts and three parts only. Part one is that I help technical people be better and more effective as technical people in their technical organizations. Part two is that I help technical managers be better technical managers. And part three is that I help technical professionals make a smooth and effective transition to technical management. All three of these components comprise a program I call “The Fully Integrated Technical Professional” (more on this in future blogs.)

I’ll update this blog twice a week; on Mondays and Thursdays. Enjoy and much success.

Be well

Steven Cerri