Team Member Tips for Manager's Bias, un-Equal Opportunity and non-Rewards

Inspired by REAL Anonymous Boss Feedback (last Wednesday Data Drop https://lnkd.in/eMFFanwR)

In this post's data-led insights, I sow on hard ground. Data or not, team members who experience any of these 3, or combo of them, are not performing at their best. Worse, from anecdotes I hear, boss biases are extending into the neurodiverse spectrum:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 (those who chose their management well, or got lucky with being inherited by the good)
🌟 2 in 3 have unbiased bosses
🌟 2 in 3 have bosses who give equal opportunities to all demographics
🌟 2 in 5 have bosses who reward with promotions and prizes objectively
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗱
😱 1 in 3 feel boss is in self-denial and is biased
😱 2 in 5 feel boss is in self-denial and is gender biased
😱 2 in 5 feel boss sometimes rewards objectively
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗴𝗹𝘆
😱 1 in 10 feel boss is obviously gender biased
😱 1 in 10 feel boss rewards friends

𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝗴𝗹𝘆?
🦠 Anger / cynicism / disengagement / fear / disgust / distress / unsafe / superficial team building / clock watching?
🦠 "𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿" - 𝗔𝗗(𝗛)𝗗 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗦𝗗

🫣 Leave! Leave! Leave! 

But sometimes, it's not possible to go immediately. And sometimes if you stay long enough, they will leave before you...

So today we're looking at survival strategies in a toxic environment. These improve your health for the whole of your life, whether you end up staying because you can happily and magic happens, or you end you leaving because you do land a better job and manager elsewhere. 

✅ 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆
The famous "growth mindset" works! Step into it, every day, all day, intentionally! You have a context, a clear cause, and you can focus on a few conditions to intentionally make changes.

✅ 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗵
Grow and protect your energy levels. We need more than air, food, water and sleep. Develop your "life affirming essential" rituals - and practice daily.

✅ 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀
Be listened to - tell them what's going on, how you are feeling.

✅ 𝗦𝗮𝘆 "𝗡𝗼" 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
Learn and establish your boundaries, based on your own needs, prioritise your own holistic health.

✅ 𝗦𝗲𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀' 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀
Differentiate your boss as a person from their mindsets. Name the mindset in a question - "Can I check something with you? It sounds like you have a strong belief/attitude towards [some label]? I'd love to understand you more - are you ok to talk about it?"

✅ 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱
Grow a movement, leading by example the above tips.

💬 Share thoughts below. 👇

Strange ATM / Cash Card bug?

I recently had a cash card from a major UK bank.

I used to put it in any ATM / Cash Point, punch in my pin, and get access to the services. I used to be able to draw statements and check my balance. But as soon as I tried to draw money, immediately the machine would eject my card and give me the error message "Temporary error processing your request. Please try again later". No matter which machine or bank I tried, always the same result.

A while ago, friends of mine in that space told me about the ATM / Cash Point algorithm. And the only really significant thing that I remember, is that the machine only actually authenticates your pin against your bank once you select the service that requires authentication... eg balance request, mini statement, draw money.

So...what was going on? I have thought about it for a while now, and still no idea. When I eventually contacted my bank, they told me not to worry as clearly the faults I was experiencing were temporary faults that existed only the Cash Point machines. Yet all my data points told me something else was happening. Eventually the "helpful" call centre operator suggested I just get a new card. Which I did, and it did solve my problem.

I can only think that there was a "magic sequence" of numbers encoded somewhere in the chip / magnetic strip of that particular card which was causing a very nasty bug on the various Cash Point hardwares/softwares to show itself. Lucky me.

Or unlucky them...could such a magic number really exist somewhere and be used somehow to cause a buffer overflow attack on what I've pretty much taken for granted is a well and truly stable set of components and systems after all these years?

These kinds of puzzles is why software, software engineering and software quality will always keep me interested.

What's Up With All The Cynicism in IT?

At SPA2009, I had a little session titled "What's Up With All The Cynicism in IT?". It was unfortunately quite time reduced from my original plan, but I did manage to impart a little knowledge of Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats method to a group of 8 varied participants, who did supply quite a bit of "food for thought".

I've published my presentation, and the outputs of the group work sessions on the SPA2009 wiki: What's Up With All The Cynicism In IT? Outputs

WikiLeaks - Oops!

Wikileaks is a very interesting little web site that came to my attention because of some sensitive documents that were leaked in/by South African affairs recently. Some very interesting cartoons, names and documents, from some the most ?unlikely? people and countries I would not have guessed at.

Light Motivational Relief

Despair.com for wonderful miscellaneous motivational posters and sayings....all twisted into a very cynical viewpoint. It is a really good laugh!

Best Practice Applied In Wrong Context - Example 1

A friend of mine was ranting the other day. He had just done an iteration retrospective with his development team wherein they took a look at their quality metrics and discovered that "quality" had actually dropped off even though his team had spent more time than ever before on the client's official Quality Process.

I discussed this further with him and we agreed that quality is a mostly subjective concept when it comes to software ... we agreed that it can't be objectively meaasured ... we agreed that it can't be artificially injected "to meet the required metric" ... we agreed that it is something that Software Quality Assurers infer based on monitoring the various metric trends that make sense in the particular environment/context that the software is being developed in/for.

So with all this agreeance I asked him to explain further.

This story is probably a symptom of why I think there is so much cynism in the software industry. Read on if you dare!

It turns out that the client has a well worked out, well defined Quality Process that they are extremely happy with. This Process is guaranteed to prevent massive loss of life/income/spiralling out of control costs/etc etc - you can imagine why a large company invests huge amounts of time and money in creating a bullet proof Quality Process: manage risk, whatever that risk is.

Okay ... so why is my friend ranting? His team followed the process, passed a bunch of procedural milestones apparently and everyone was happy. Yet when he and his team look at the metrics they defined for how they measure quality, they noticed that the number of issues had risen, that some important tests had not been run early enough in the iteration to find issues that they could then respond to before the end of iteration. There were known open issues, and the were issues that had been addressed, but had not been signed off. There was waste accumulating that had not been a problem before.

How did this happen? The people whose responsibility it was to run the tests, to provide the early feedback had been too busy ensuring the team met the Quality Process requirements - they had been documenting, and reviewing and getting documentation reviewed and spending a large amount of time away from the product they were responsible for delivering. They were going on a tangent from users' needs.

And it showed.

There is no happy ending here - key client representatives (project stakeholders, but not users) have to ensure that their organisation's process is followed. Even if they know, and everyone else knows, that the process is not adding value, and that indeed, as above, the process is actually diminishing value. And it appears often that several times a group of client representatives need to experience failure and pain before they will attempt to address a badly formulated, or in the example above, placed, process. Sometimes, regrettably, these lessons are learned during retrenchment phases.

Yuck!