Archive for the ‘People Management’ Category
Twenty20 hindsight
Many of my readers living in cricket-playing countries would be aware that India recently won the inaugural World Twenty20 cricket title. The win was somewhat surprising because India fielded a young and inexperienced team – minus their established stars and with no coach. Further, many players on the team had had no prior experience of playing a Twenty20 international.
In retrospect, the absence of star players was a good thing for at least a couple of reasons:
- The team had to play as a team without relying on a few individuals. They did this well; several specialist players contributed to the team’s eventual success, as is borne out by the batting and bowling averages .
- The young, and relatively inexperienced, captain, Mahendra Dhoni, could make decisions unconstrained by the presence and opinions of so-called stars. Many analysts, including India’s ex-coach Greg Chappell agree that Dhoni’s leadership was one of the reasons for India’s success. One of the more striking aspects of Dhoni’s captaincy during the tournament was his ability to draw outstanding performances from fringe players .
The last point is the one that interests me here. Project teams are generally made up of individuals with a range of (professional) skills and (personal) attributes, brought together with the common goal of seeing the project through to completion. As is the case with groups in general, a small number of these individuals – those with strong personalities – tend to dominate decision-making forums such as team meetings. It is up to the project manager to control these alpha male (or female) types, and draw out the quieter folks who, presumably, are just as important to the success of the project (if they aren’t, why are they on the team at all?).
Letting big egos interfere with calm and considered decision making is a recipe for failure – both on the cricket field and in project work. Dhoni was lucky not to have to deal with star sized egos in the tournament. A project manager will seldom be so fortunate.
Going walkabout
“Hey, when are you going to get to your office and do some real work?” jibed Mike, as he spotted me walking past his office.
It was one of those days. I must have walked by his door at least four times that morning and the day was still young. I looked his way, just a tad irritated by his tone. He had his trademark grin on his face.
“Shouldn’t you be sorting out the problem with the web module instead of tracking me?” I retorted, continuing down the corridor.
He said something in response that I didn’t quite catch.
Despite Mike’s grin, I suspect his question was at least partially serious. So it deserves more than a flippant response.
I do spend a great deal of time away from my desk. Why?
I’ve been practising MBWA or management by wandering (or walking) around. In a nutshell, this means wandering around the office and talking to people to get a feel for how things are going.
My wanderings incorporate regular, informal, face-to-face chats with team members, to get a first hand view of their concerns and problems. There are innumerable ad-hoc tasks vying for the attention of developers in a corporate environment (2nd/3rd level support issues, just to name one). Talking to individuals regularly let’s me know if there’s something I can do to help them focus on their work. This usually boils down to helping them with non-technical tasks. Some examples include: prioritization of work; doing some admin tasks on their behalf; helping them negotiate with unreasonable customers from the business; assisting with documentation etc.
Obviously MBWA needs to be done in a non-intrusive way – the last thing one wants to do is to make people feel like they’re being spied on or micromanaged.
The technique works well with customers (end-users from the business) too. Often, when someone sends me an email requesting assistance from my team, I’ll walk over to their office and have a chat instead of responding by email or phone. Face to face communication is almost always better than a disembodied voice via a telecom device or, even worse, words on a screen.
MBWA is a great way to communicate with your team and your customers. Apart from the immediate benefit of getting a first hand view of people’s problems and needs, it helps build relationships. Which, in the end, is a large part of what management is about.
A bank loses a valued asset
My mate Raj used to cut database code for a large corporate IT shop. He was one of a team of several super-specialised database dudes at The Contemporary Bank. Raj’s job at Con Bank (as the fine financial institution is referred to by certain cynics) was developing data interfaces. In fact, he’d done so many of these, that he was the indisputable imperator of interfaces at Con Bank . Raj was a reluctant rajah, however. He’d rather not have had anything further to do with interfaces. So fed up was he, that he didn’t want to hear about another interface until at least the midnight of Friday, December 31 9999. [Incidentally, when queried as to why that specific date he told me to go and look it up in the online documentation for DB2. As is evident, he’s a true database devotee.]
Anyway, unwilling to wait until the end of time, Raj teed up a meeting with his manager to discuss the unhappy state of affairs, and what might be done to redress it. The manager – call him Franz – gave Raj a patient hearing. He proferred platitudes (“Oh, I understand how you must feel”) and promises (“We’ll move you to the DBA group in a few months”) in plenty, and for a while the promise of change was enough to keep Raj going. Nothing changed. Three months later, thinking that three months certainly qualified as “a few”, he approached Franz for another chat. Franz, guessing what the subject of the chat might be, continually made excuses to postpone it. Finally when cornered, he admitted that it wouldn’t really be possible to move Raj to another group (who would do the interfaces then?).
The sorry state of affairs finally led to the inevitable conclusion; one that is played out again and again in countless organizations the world over: Raj started to look for another job. He found one within a few weeks and put in his resignation. Franz tried to persuade Raj to reconsider, but Raj wouldn’t.
Con Bank’s still looking for another data interface specialist. They might have saved themselves the trouble had they offered Raj a little more variety on the job.
Eight to Late 