Tag: management

What do executives do?

An executive with 8k indirect reports and 2000 hours of work in a year can afford to spend, at most, 15 minutes per year per person in their reporting hierarchy… even if they work on nothing else. That job seems impossible. How can anyone make any important decision in a company that large? They will always be the least informed person in the room, no matter what the topic. The job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions. That’s all. Not to decide. Not to break ties. Not to set strategy. Not to be the expert on every, or any topic. Just to sit in the room while the right people make good decisions in alignment with their values. And if they do, to endorse it. And if they don’t, to send them back to try again.

Cynefin

Things we believe to be true that ain’t necessarily so
There are underlying relationships between cause and effect in human interactions and markets, which are capable of discovery and empirical validation. Under this assumption, an understanding of causal links in past behavior enables us to define best practice for future behavior. There is a right or ideal way of doing things.
Faced with a choice between one or more alternatives, human actors will make a rational decision. Under this assumption, individual and collective behavior can be managed by manipulation of pain or pleasure outcomes, and through education to make those consequences evident.
The acquisition of capability indicates an intention to use that capability. “We accept that we do things by accident, but assume that others do things deliberately.”

Against Performance Reviews

The annual performance review has been falling out of favor in some quarters. Microsoft and Gap are among several companies that have reformed their evaluation processes in recent years. Accenture, an emblem of traditional corporate culture if ever there was one, announced that it is getting rid of annual evaluations for its 360k employees, replacing the process with a system where managers will give feedback on a more regular basis. The existing evaluations are cumbersome and expensive. “the outcome is not great.”

What is code?

This is highly amusing and you can send it to your tech-illiterate friends.

You consult a spreadsheet and remind him that the Oracle contract was renewed a few months ago. So, no, actually, at least for now, you’ll keep eating that cost. Sigh. This man makes a third less than you, and his education ended with a B.S. from a large, perfectly fine state university. But he has 500+ connections on LinkedIn. That plus sign after the “500” bothers you. How many more than 500 people does he know? 5? 5000?

In some mysterious way, he outranks you. Not within the company, not in restaurant reservations, not around lawyers. Still: He strokes his short beard; his hands are tanned; he hikes; his socks are embroidered with little ninja.

“Don’t forget, we’ve got to budget for apps.” This is real. A Scrum Master in ninja socks has come into your office and said, “We’ve got to budget for apps.” Should it all go pear-shaped, his career will be just fine.

You keep your work in perspective by thinking about barrels of cash. You once heard that a US dry barrel can hold about $100K worth of singles. Next year, you’ll burn a little under 1 barrel of cash on Oracle. 1 barrel isn’t that bad. But it’s never 1 barrel. Is this a 5-barrel project or a 10-barreler? More? Too soon to tell. But you can definitely smell money burning.

At this stage in the meeting, you like to look supplicants in the eye and say, OK, you’ve given me a date and a budget. But when will it be done? Really, truly, top-line-revenue-reporting finished? Come to confession; unburden your soul.

This time you stop yourself. You don’t want your inquiry to be met by a patronizing sigh of impatience or another explanation about ship dates, Agile cycles, and continuous delivery. Better for now to hide your ignorance. When will it be done? You are learning to accept that the answer for software projects is never.