Manager Tips For Biases, Equal Opportunities and Rewarding

Inspired by REAL Anonymous Boss Feedback (Data Drop #7 https://lnkd.in/eMFFanwR): 𝟴𝟱% 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 >𝟭𝟬% 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 📈 𝗶𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗯𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱!

In this post I'm looking at three key performance drivers: 𝗕𝗶𝗮𝘀, 𝗘𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗢𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱. Now imagine - what happens to team dynamics if you as manager are seen as biased, unfair, and inconsistent with rewards? What if all three go wrong?

𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 says:
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 🥳
🌟 2 in 3 say their boss is unbiased and gives equal opportunity
🌟 2 in 5 say rewards are fair and objective
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗱
😬 1 in 3 see bias their boss won’t admit
😬 2 in 5 sense hidden gender bias or inconsistent rewards
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗴𝗹𝘆
🚨 1 in 10 see clear gender bias
🚨 1 in 10 say rewards go to friends

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗮𝗱 & 𝗨𝗴𝗹𝘆:
🔬 Isolated, unnoticed, stressed, hyper-vigilant, lonely, eating alone
🔬 Fake laughs, filtered feedback, a sense of unease around you 24/7. Sleeplessness
🔬 Disconnected from most of the team - relying on an “inner circle” to tell you how "the rest" are really doing
🔬 Regular "desirable" churn of “under-performers,” but no actual performance improvement after they leave

𝘐𝘴 𝘪𝘵 "𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳"?

𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦. But perhaps there's just one piece of insightful feedback "the system" gives you that gets you thinking. Or, you consider yourself to be a good manager, so you pause and reflect as a healthy habit.

💡 𝗧𝗵𝗲 "𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱" 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺
The ego makes it seem all is well, even when it is not. It always protects your "good mood" by finding reasons in the external world why those people are the way they are, and that you're fine.

💥 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
You never hear the real truth.
"truth does not talk to power". Consciously or not, people can't.
Your mindsets operate sub-consciously to prevent you bringing truth fully into your consciousness.

𝘛𝘙𝘠

🧠 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁
Where are you creating exclusion zones, exclusive groups?
Do you stereotype? Do your friends? Are you okay with that?
Where do you prejudge?
Who did you reward? Any biases present?
Who is saying things you agree with?
How often do you change your mind due to others' opinions?

🗣️ 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀
Watch your inner voice and speech for these kind of phrases:
🗣️ “I am not <some label>, BUT” or
🗣️ “I have no problem with anyone, except”

🫵 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂
Engage a depth coach.
Run the Anonymous Boss Checkup - see if you pass >80%. Find your weaker areas, improve them, save your company a tonne of money, make your team hyper-performant. Feel great, because you are.

💬 Share thoughts below. 👇

My favourite coaching tools: SMART Acronym Another Update

What the heck!? The SMART acronym again?

SMART - 3rd Time Lucky?

I thought I had all this simple stuff figured out. By 2012 I was willing to post my original thoughts and approach to SMART Goals/Objectives in the original post: http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-favourite-coaching-tools-smart.html. It had evolved from my own practice as a delivery team lead, management student, and, later on, my first 2 years of agile training classes, coaching individuals and teams, and supporting departments through successful transformations.

Through 2016-2017, after supporting more transformations and agile adoptions with much more variety I realised some useful nuances to this multi-purpose tool had emerged by working with it in so many different ways. So I put out my update - http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-latest-smart-acronym-update.html and thought "that's done now!".

Silly me. When is learning ever done? And so it was again. Late in 2018 I was on a totally non-agile, non-software, non-management, non-"normal" experiential psychology course. As we approached the end of the course we were asked to come up with 1 (I really like 1, and only 1, "there can be only 1!") SMART objective to help us take the next 1-2-3 steps after the course ended.

Whilst I was considering my objective, something else clicked into place for me that I'd been overlooking. Well 2 things actually. :-)

1, The confidence-risk level could be assessed with the "A" for "How Achievable?".
2, The alignment to purpose/direction/bigger picture could be assessed with the "R" for "Really-make-a-difference-in-the-direction-we-are-going?".

The A

An achievableness on a scale of 1-5, from improbable to highly probable ... we get a sense of how much risk the individual, team or group is willing to tolerate/try move through. Often it's okay (great!) to "try" for an easy win with a 4-5 level of confidence. Sometimes it is better, for learning or even to save the company, to try for something harder to do (with a friend, coach or mentor especially to support!) in the 2-3 range. So many "it depends", so little time to elaborate experiences here! :)

The quantification of achievableness is important when considering the alignment of this objective/goal to the purpose of the individual, team or group. Sometimes we could do the easy thing which is highly certain, we are confident in our capability to achieve it, and it will have no,  negligible or insufficient impact on achieving our purpose.

Such highly certain successful outcomes could be a waste of the one thing we always run out of, that no money or anything else in this world can get more of: time.

Using the R to confirm that we're aligned with purpose is really useful. Yet being aligned with purpose could expose us to a context, circumstance, super-ego, mindset or organisation "change anti-bodies" - "historical baggage" often - that do not really make it easy for us to align our efforts to our purpose and pursue that wholeheartedly. And it's good to reflect on this before, during and after - there is so much growth possible by understanding this "stuff" deeply!

The R

Reality. Realisation. Becoming real. That which is real. Turning deep desires (especially one's purpose) described by abstract thoughts or ideas into abstract words and then into "real world". Something really shifted in me that day in 2018, and I don't know why or what the final effect will be. Essentially it was around my previous interpretation of "responsible person assigned".

I really believe something better can be done with the acronym here. I have seen "realistic" in many places in the past - as in "the goal/objective is achievable and realistic". Or "actionable and realistic".

SMART Objectives Aligned To Team or Individual Purpose Creates A Desirable Tension Around Potential Which Then Unleashes Huge "Action" Energy To Achieve The Change In The Real World

What shifted for me that moment was that it could be better used as "really aligned to purpose". This is imho much stronger / more energetic / more focussed. For any objective or goal. And if its a tough thing to change, we absolutely need to believe we're going through the tough bit to get to a better place, else we will give up. And that defeatedness because of giving up can be a really worse place to land up.

With Specificness (as per my 2017 SMART update), it's easy to include the responsible person there as an attribute/quality that makes the change even more Specific. Similarly with tight "Measured by" criterion set that matches that Specificness.

OKR's (Objective, Key-Results) try to approach this slightly differently. But there is overlap that I guess I will draw out in the future when my thoughts and experiences are clearer.

Einstein apparently said something along the lines of - given an hour to solve a problem he'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem [in detail, in depth, from multiple perspectives, etc] and 5 minutes attempting to solve it. That way you'd be more certain which part of the problem your solution addresses well or not as well, and what other potential things you could change or try with another attempt later if need be. The solution matches the problem. Often - because it is in our nature, society and expectations from others - we solutionise too quickly and what we come up with may be good, but misses the original problem. A great shot that misses the target...is just a great shot. Same time, same cost, same effort. Miss. Absolutely useless in the context that mattered before the shot was taken.

Thankyou! As always happy to hear your thoughts on the above! Be careful out there, AND don't be too serious - fun provides a lot of goodwill and positive energy to achieve goals!

How to get it done in organisations

I was attending a course during 2016. Attending were a whole bunch of people from many different walks of life, and many different organisation experiences and levels.

Out of the blue, one of my fellow trainees was explaining how they, in their role of working with many organisations on big business-to-business transactions, had discovered a very useful approach to getting things done in their own organisation, as well as client organisations.

"Want something done? Give it to a busy person"

This statement about "how to get it done" in large organisations drew quite a negative reaction from within me.

I realised the statement was right and wrong at the same time.

Busy people have figured out ways to give and to create more value to the organisation - by being of good service, they are asked to do more and more. They figure out ways to do more and more - usually alternative work practices that make them more streamlined / efficient. They become extremely knowledgeable across the whole organisation - knowing who's who, and who to go to directly and for what. Also importantly, they know which avenues to not even bother to try - saving everyone time and frustration.

So...the statement still makes me feel a bit ill, but I also recognise the truth in it. Many organisations I have worked within are literally functioning mostly as a result of these very busy network nodes.

For managers and leaders - look after your ever-busy people - they are busy keeping things moving in the right direction. You may not know what keeps them so busy - but perhaps that's where a little more curiosity and study will be quite revealing!

Agile In A Nutshell Part 4

About 1 year has passed since I posted my first attempt (Agile In A Nutshell), and very quickly after that one, the second (Agile In A Nutshell 2) and third (Agile In A Nutshell 3)!

And, along the journey this past year, reading through some more random bits of Alistair Cockburn's blog and Martin Fowler's blog (which I always find nuggets in) it occurred to me that Alistair mentioned during his Heart of Agile advanced agile training course a few things.

To the best of my recollection Alistair told the story of how on day 1 of the 2001 first meeting of the 17 folks who wrote the Agile Manifesto, Alistair was facilitating the choice of the word to describe what they were trying to describe. 8 people diverged, and then converged onto "agile". 8 people diverged and converged onto "adaptive".

I wonder now, looking back, what would have happened to the software industry if "adaptive" instead had won the final coin toss / selection process. Of course adaptive is a harder "sell" as it seems so ordinary and so ... common sense.

And that's my point. Yes, "quick and nimble" is the right word to describe what is desirable from any (not just software delivery) process. That would be awesome if all processes we encountered in our moment to moment experience was quick and nimble.

And people would totally freak out with happiness if the process was also adaptive to the specific context it was applied in, correctly by the people applying it.

And that's what the promise of agile is, adapative-quick-nimble. Able to move in a direction at speed, and change direction (due to an unanticipated target movement) without loss of speed. And, achieving that as a organisation of people where information is real-time communicated and hence looking at the organisation as a social organism, it becomes much more responsive to its environment it operates or lives in. That's where the challenge and the benefits lie. The organisation/organism that adapts fastest and best to its changing environment lives to see another day, and if it gets so good at being responsive that it actually achieves an insight into the requirements of the future, and achieves that before any competitor, then its thrives to outlive them another day.

Because marketing is a zero-sum game. Those who learn the right thing the fastest, lead, and then win.

For more nuts, see What Is Agile For! Thankyou!

My favourite coaching tools: SMART Acronym Update

So I've been using SMART/S.M.A.R.T. for quite a while (http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-favourite-coaching-tools-smart.html) to help everyone understand the specific Task / Action / Goal / Objective clearly, so that success can be pursued by several people committed to achieving it together!

SMART Acronym Updated!

And along the way, I've come across Tom Gilb, and his 4 foundation rules for improving Specification Quality:

1. Every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph is clear to intended readers (RB: and lowest common denominator MUST be considered here: the newly joined member of the team)
2. Every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph is unambiguous (RB: so a glossary is a darn good idea, especially in abstract knowledge work, aka software delivery; note glossaries / data definitions / configuration libraries were a big thing in software since the 1960's at least)
3. All qualities are quantified (RB: so not faster/cheaper/better/blah...instead: Unit of Measure clearly defined, the meter clearly defined, the current state or measurement clearly noted, and then the future state survival and/or target and/or stretch and/or wish thresholds are expressed)
4. No solution language unless the document is specifying the solution (RB: keep the language in the problem domain/space ie common business layman's terminology)

And through Tom's teaching, Lord Kelvin's "To Measure Is To Know".

Thinking about all the lessons learned, and helping many individuals and teams move towards their desired future states, I've been modifying the SMART I use to mean the following these days:

    S - Specific (following Tom Gilb's #1 and #2 rules)

    M - Measured By (following Tom Gilb's #3 rule)

    A - Achievable (as a sanity check of the S&M against the R and T coming soon)

    R - Responsible person to agitate that this SMART is delivered is <...> (a single person is a must, if only to remind those who have to do the work, or even better, the person who is going to get the Task / Action / Story / Work Done!)

    T - Timebound on or before  

For Retrospectives

If this is a SMART Action that a team is generating from their Sprint or other Retrospective, as facilitator I encourage the Timebound to be on or before the next Retrospective (which the team commits to knowing and understanding what dd-mmm-yyyy that is!)

For Management Tactical or Strategic Objectives

Again the management team commits to the next planning date dd-mmm-yyyy for the Timebound element and we block out the calendars to ensure that happens! Nothing drains morale and energy than constant slipping of important - especially Strategically agreed important - Tasks/Actions/Objectives.

For Individuals or Delivery/Product Teams I'm Coaching

Exactly the same as Retrospectives or Management: we're all talking about changing the Current Reality to the Future Reality. Usually though, individuals are setting target states for the end of the current or next month - ie shorter windows in which to achieve shifts of consciousness and/or behaviours that impact or lead to the outcome they're trying to achieve.

Thankyou for supporting! Let me know how you do!

Agile In A Nutshell Part 3

Okay... I don't know if you noticed... but it is really really hard to really curate an agile in a nutshell post that is quick to read, grasp and move forward. This is partly why I avoided much agile postings over the past decade - it's a very very long piece of string (or rope to hang oneself with)!

:)

The previous 2 attempts at this (Agile In A Nutshell and Agile In A Nutshell Part 2) I like and I teach fluidly. But I also add the following nugget when I am teaching.

Where did these agile manifesto, the 12 agile principles, and especially those 10,000 odd agile practices (half of them technical/technology focused like pair programming; and half of them people/organisation/management/process focused like standup meetings) come from?

Well it's clear where the agile manifesto was written and by whom in 2001 - 17 world-recognised software engineering consultants, coaches, managers and all importantly - practitioners.

And it's clear as well where the agile principles were written and by whom in 2004 - the same experts that formulated the agile manifesto.

But what about those 10,000 agile practices?

The agile practices have been observed by team members, team managers, coaches, consultants, and other observant people ... of high performance teams. These observers have then documented them online, or in books, and have presented them at conferences as well as internally. 

This means that we're still discovering practices all over the shop/place that help organisations become quicker and nimbler.

In my opinion, the smartest organisations are recognising their own unique practices that are giving them competitive advantages, and keeping them secret. The even smarter organisations are making their unique practices transparent and world-wide accessible because they realise others may contribute small tweaks that give even better performance - ala open source.

They also recognise that thinking is really hard to replicate and their organisation as a whole organism is thinking differently and hence behaving differently. Behaviours are easy to observe and replicate, but does not mean you will get the benefit.

Countless stories abound how GM documented all the things Toyota was doing in their factory in Japan and tried to replicate in the US - but failed. And we see that quite a lot industries - competitors hire people from the other organisation (or the same consultancy!) and then try to copy what worked elsewhere - and it usually fails expensively, spectacularly, and hurts a lot of employees, shareholders and stakeholders.

The simplest way to deeply understand this is a story about a piano made by a world famous piano maker. A wood furniture carpentry company decided to move into the piano manufacturing business as they had the same required tools, they could buy the same materials, and they thought they had the same skills required. So they bought a piano and dismantled it, making notes and designs about how to assemble. Then they assembled it back. But once it was back in "1 piece" there was a problem. It did not sound like it had. So they tried to manufacture a new one from their instructions. And they succeeded in making a pretty good replica of a real piano, but once again there was the problem - it did not sound right. So they got out of the piano making business (wisely). They lacked the "secret sauce" of being musically minded and aware how all the complexity of sound generation, amplification, transmission integrated with the different moving complicated parts of a piano.

And that's also what agile is - the practices help - in the same way that knowing what the keys of a piano are what notes. But playing a piece of beautiful music on a piano is differently from knowing things about music and piano operations. Yes the analogy does stretch to "practice is required, and feedback" to get them right.

But more importantly it is the secret sauce - it is the agile mindset that causes these agile practices to evolve into something unique for the organisation and its context. Some practices are individual targeted (like disciplined arrive on time to meetings), some are pair targeted (like pair programming to create, quality assure, reflect, learn, and make better realtime), some are team targeted (like whole team planning game), some are larger organisation targeted (like town hall meetings), some are senior management targeted (like go-and-see/use-your-legs reporting walks). And on and on :)

It is much more important to be agile than to do agile!

For more and deeper thoughts about agile check What Is Agile For You What Is Agile For Us. Thankyou!