The Misanthropic Developer

You Can’t Force Psychological Safety

March 12th, 2023

In recent years, a lot more emphasis has been placed on making spaces (particularly workplaces) into settings that have psychological safety. I consider this a fantastic trend (though a lot of people tend to disagree with me) because people who feel psychologically safe not only have a better quality of life, the results of their work tend to be better.

What sane, healthy business or leader doesn’t want to have happy employees who do great work?

The problem is that a lot of people have absolutely no idea how to foster this kind of environment (or, worse yet, say they want to foster it and then do everything they can to destroy that safety). Many of them seem to think that it’s as simple as saying “you’re safe. You can talk to me about anything.”

It doesn’t work like that.

The truth of the matter is that you can’t make someone else feel psychologically safe. You don’t have that power – only they do. There is no magic wand that you can wave and say “you’re psychologically safe!” (Especially since that’s usually followed by an unspoken “Now go do what I say”).

Real psychological safety happens when the other person feels that they have it. End of story.

So, if you can’t make someone else feel safe, how the heck do you get to a place where your team actually has psychological safety?

The answer is that it’s much like nurturing any other kind of relationship – you do things that help foster it and try to avoid things that harm it.

Things That Help Foster Psychological Safety

Treat people like people – I know I say this a lot, but the people around you are people. Not resources. Not human capital. They’re people, damnit. Treat them like it. You’re never going to have psychological safety in a group of people that you don’t treat like people.

Follow up on your commitments – Show the people around you that you do what you say you will. Every. Single. Day. People who consistently see that you do what you say are going to be more likely to open up.

Own your mistakes – Don’t bury mistakes that you make. Admit to them with your whole chest. Especially when they cause some harm (even small harm) to the people around you.

Apologize and make things right – After you’ve admitted to the mistake, apologize for it and see what can be done to make things right. Did you ever have moments as a kid when adults essentially told you to deal with it when they did something that hurt you? Did you like that? Did it make you feel safe? Yeah, well, it doesn’t make your peers or people who report to you feel safe either.

Realize that we all have bad days, even you. (Sometimes especially you) – Have some grace with people, including yourself. Sometimes we have an off day and things don’t come out right. As long as it’s not a pattern of behavior, that’s okay. Own it, apologize, and do better. The people around you will see you doing it and be more likely to model that behavior themselves.

Reassure people – when they make mistakes (and they will), make it a point to help put things into perspective and reassure them that it’s okay to make a mistake. Then work with them to figure out how to make things right if something has to be made whole.

One of the ways I help calm people down when things go sideways is literally to say “If that’s the worst thing that happens today, we’ll be alright.” My team hears this fairly often. The thing is that you have to mean it and then you have to help them fix it.

Celebrate the wins – Don’t just focus on when things go wrong. Call out the things that go right, and do it frequently. Even if something seems like a small win, it’s still a win. Celebrating victory helps bring people together and reinforces social bonds. Those bonds help foster psychological safety.

Share the credit – You should be doing this anyway, but sharing the credit for those wins makes people feel like they’re not going to be used by you (because you’ve literally demonstrated that you aren’t just using them). It also helps a lot of people feel like part of a cohesive group, and that can help foster a sense of psychological safety.

Realize that, while you may be the one “in charge” on paper (or in the org chart), at the end of the day, you aren’t in charge of a damned thing. You’re responsible for the people in your care – I guarantee that every person who works with you can get a job somewhere else. If they want to be somewhere else, they aren’t going to have safety here. Even if the project isn’t great, you can help your team feel safe and even look forward to working together despite the challenges.

Things That Destroy Psychological Safety

The short answer is that the things that destroy psychological safety are pretty much the opposite of everything on the above list – berate people for mistakes, go out of your way to find flaws when they don’t really matter, be “The Boss”, and don’t admit when you make mistakes.

People will see those things and they will instinctively know that they can’t trust you. If they don’t trust you, they aren’t going to feel safe. Period.

This is sometimes a lot harder than it sounds. Remember that you’re a person too and sometimes you don’t feel secure in your own position due to pressures that you are facing, causing you to revert to closed off behavior. Those are the times that leadership can feel lonely, but realize that you aren’t actually alone.

The people that work with you (and especially the people that report to you) want to see you succeed and to feel secure because they themselves want to succeed and feel secure. If you put effort into it, unless you’re in a situation where no reasonable person could ever feel safe, they should at least start to feel like they’re safe in the space that you’ve created as a group.

Again, remember that power is with them, not with you. You can’t force it, but you can help it grow.

Also keep in mind that, while psychological safety can be hard to build, it’s incredibly easy to destroy. It’s something you will have to work to encourage every day, but it’s worth it – both for you and for those around you.
Becoming Agile – How Transformations Go Wrong and How To Start Doing It Better

March 8th, 2023

If you’ve been in tech long enough, you’ve either been through an “Agile Transformation” or you’ve seen the result of one. Usually what happens is the company brings in a consultant for a short period of time (sometimes a day, sometimes several weeks) and they introduce you to a bunch of Ceremonies that you basically follow by rote description and then they leave.

Congratulations! You’re Agile now! Go off and do the thing!

The problem is that these almost never work. Fortunately, there is a reason why they don’t work and it’s fairly straightforward – each group of people works differently. They all have different needs, and this means that they all have different paths to become “agile”, but almost every agile consultant comes in with a set playbook and either drops it in your lap before leaving or tries to mold your group into what they were taught and got certified for.

Agile consultants often describe their practices as being things that you have to do in order to speed up, but every team will have different things that cause them to speed up (and “speeding up” is the wrong way to look at it anyway).

Becoming “agile” isn’t having a standup, putting “points” on poorly defined “stories”, having a meeting where people say things that went wrong but nobody will ever change, or forcing your team to “commit” to shipping a certain number of points in a “sprint”.

In fact, it isn’t an end point or some finished state that your team reaches – it’s a journey that lets your team discover ways that work better for them. You’ll never “complete” an “Agile Transformation” because you will always find ways to improve.

At its core, an agile team responds well to change and works at a sustainable pace in order to provide value in a timely manner.

Seriously. That’s the secret. Responds well to change and works at a sustainable pace (and the definition of sustainable is not a fixed number of points) while providing value in a timely manner.

Sounds great in theory, right? The question is “how do we get there?”

The first part of the answer is that you need to realize that creating a product is a team activity. It’s not something that you compartmentalize by having someone write a bunch of requirements, hand that off to people who write software, have those people hand the software off to a group of people who do testing, etc.

For the more nuts and bolts answer, it depends on where you are right now. The best way to figure that out is to communicate openly and honestly. This can be done in three basic places – before work starts, while work is being done, and after the work is completed. You should communicate openly and honestly during all three.

Remember those Ceremonies I mentioned and that you’ve probably encountered? Some of them are actually good ideas if you do them in a way that works for your team instead of just using them to check a box. The trick is to do them for a reason that makes sense to your team.

Communication Before The Work Happens – User Story Refinement

At its core, a user story is a placeholder for a conversation. If you’ve been using a user story as a set of requirements that you hand off to the people writing the code and never think about again, you’re doing it wrong because no amount of specificity in a written document can cover all of the edge cases and questions that will arise when something is being worked on.

I’ve seen business analysts and product owners get upset when developers want to discuss the finer points of written requirements because “that’s not my job” (or even worse, saying that it isn’t the place of the developer to question anything). This is a team effort and you’re on the team. Expect to discuss the details of what the business is trying to accomplish and even question if the way you envision doing it is the correct one.

It’s easier and cheaper to fix problems early – ideally before they happen.

Communication While The Work Happens – Standup

If I can make one point about standup meetings it’s this – Standup isn’t a status report. It does not exist for your manager to get a daily update on who is working on what card. It is not everyone going around in a circle and saying “Working on card 123456. Making progress. No blockers”. And it is not a meeting that requires the presence of a Scrum Master in order to happen – the Scrum Master, if you have one, is a facilitator; nothing more and nothing less.

Your team is perfectly capable of speaking among themselves with one of them helping guide the meeting – take turns doing it. It will give the members of your team ownership over their own processes and will help them grow as communicators and leaders.

The purpose you should be pursuing in standup is twofold – to get your team on the same page and to surface any problems as soon as possible so you can work together to solve them. Here’s an example.

Joe: “I’m currently working on the authentication for the app, but I’m having a problem getting the company-provided auth library to work. It just sort of hangs after I send the request. I’ve tried reaching out to the team that maintains it, but nobody’s responded.”

Tomoko: “I’ve had to get that working with another one of our products. Let’s take a look at it after standup.”

Notice that at no time during that exchange was a Jira card number mentioned and that the conversation contained actual information that could make sense to the people on the team. As an added bonus, Joe even helped limit the solution space by saying that he’s already tried getting an answer from the other team.

You might also have noticed that this exchanged surfaced two problems – that Joe was having problems getting a company provided library to work (which may indicate that it is poorly documented or buggy) and that he was unable to get a response from the team that was responsible for maintaining it. Both of these things are important to be aware of because they make the team less able to provide value in a timely manner.

Fortunately, it seems that the immediate problem of getting the library working will be resolved by two of our teammates collaborating and sharing knowledge. This is a great sign and one that you want to see happen as often as necessary.

Communication After The Work Happens – Retrospective

It’s a good idea to get together as a team periodically to discuss how things went. Once every week or two is probably optimal because it’s often enough that things are still fresh in your mind and of a manageable size to consider and discuss but not so often that it becomes a burden.

This is literally just a discussion. Talk about what went well and what you can do to keep doing that thing, the things that didn’t go well and whether you can do anything to improve them, and the things that went okay but might be better with a little work. Celebrate your wins and come together as a team.

Some of you are probably (quite understandably) wondering how I started off saying that the Ceremonies don’t matter and then advocating for using a bunch of them anyway. The truth is that the Ceremonies don’t matter – what matters is that your team start to come together as a group and have meaningful conversations.

You don’t need pre-set meetings for that, though they can be helpful. If part of a framework doesn’t produce value for your team, don’t use it. Sometimes it’s not a good fit for your team; other times it’s not a good fit yet. Let your team come together and figure out what the next step is to make them be able to work at a sustainable pace while being responsive to change and providing value in a timely manner.
Assuming Good Intent is a Bad Idea

February 22nd, 2023

Telling people to “assume good intent” when they interact with others is one of those things that sounds great because it acts as a social lubricant, but is actually a really bad idea and can cause a great deal of harm.

It Actively Hides Bad Actors

Part of how it causes harm is because it lets bad actors hide their actions behind the thinnest veneer of appearing to mean well.

Go ask any member of an underrepresented group (BIPOC, LGBTQA+, etc) just how many of the problems they face on a regular basis are purposely perpetrated by people who put on a show of being a “good person” and, if they actually answer you honestly, you’d be horrified at the answer.

Most of the problems that members of those groups face aren’t because of some Hitler or David Duke style figure (though they certainly cause a hell of a lot of damage) because those are a lot easier to spot and rally people against.

It’s the day to day issues caused by a bigoted manager, like passing someone over for a raise/promotion or not hiring them because they “aren’t a good cultural fit” that impacts people on a longer timeframe, causing them to earn less in their lifetime.

It’s the politician that votes for legislation that “preserves life,” which is actually used to take away bodily autonomy from people. It’s the (often same) politician that votes for legislation that prevents trans people from getting gender affirming healthcare for whatever bullshit reason that they can come up with to play to their base that takes away peoples’ rights in order to shove some zealot-level religious ideology on everyone else that hurts so many people.

To take it even further, it’s honestly also the people who vote for those politicians because they like those policies (or, possibly worse, because they like the “fiscal stance” that those politicians take and don’t consider the bigotry and harm to be a deal breaker).

Most people would, I hope, agree that Hitler was bad and would fight against that shit happening again (even though current events suggest otherwise…). Most people, however, would insist all day long that their racist uncle wasn’t really a bad person, but was instead “a product of another time” while trying to do mental gymnastics to minimize the damage caused by that racism.

It Upholds The Status Quo

When you don’t challenge people because you’re sure that they “mean well” when they do things that unfairly advance their causes at the expense of others (especially at the expense of those who aren’t like them), you get a situation in which nothing really changes.

The people in power continue to be in power, and they continue to work to advance people just like them. We, as a society, let them get away with it because “they mean well” and “well, they’re in charge for a reason”.

Both of these viewpoints are bad and lead to the world not becoming any better. The path we’re on is because of that mindset. Think about that for a minute.

“Good Intent” Doesn’t Matter When It Causes Harm

I’m going to come right out and say it – by and large, your intent doesn’t matter. Your actions and their consequences matter.

Talking about your intentions and how you “meant well” is something you do in order to help absolve yourself of the responsibility for the consequences of your actions. It’s something you do to help you sleep at night when you do something that actively causes harm.

The people you hurt don’t care if your “heart was in the right place.” They’re still suffering because of what you did and no matter of “hopes and prayers” or “good intentions” is going to change that. The only thing that does change that is action to undo the harm that you’ve caused. Even then, that doesn’t change the fact that you caused harm; just that you’ve done something to minimize the damage from having done it in the first place.

By the same token, you tell others to “assume good intent” not because it undoes harm but because, on some level, you see yourself in the shoes of the person who has done harm and want to somehow convince yourself that it’s okay when you’re the one who screws up or that, for some reason, that makes the harm okay instead of being something that has to be fixed.

Instead of telling people to assume good intent, start looking at the impact of the actions of yourself and others. Judge by that.

The only thing that telling people to assume good intent does is perpetuate harm in order to gain the illusion of a civilized society.
It’s Not My Fault But It Is My Responsibility

February 15th, 2023

The nature of a lot of my work means that I find myself put into situations where my team and I come in to continue (or fix, depending on the day) the work of other people who have long since rolled off of a project or out of a company.

Sometimes this means coming into an environment where tensions are already high and trust is already low because of the actions of people who left before you ever arrived. This can lead to some unpleasant interactions. In hindsight, they’re often funny, but in the moment they’re a recipe for a really bad day.

I once found myself apologizing to a member of my team because they had gotten raked over the coals for something that they weren’t aware of as being a problem (and which I inadvertently set in motion because we were all new). They tried to assure me that it was okay and that it wasn’t my fault which, frankly, was extremely nice of them.

I made it a point to turn it into a teachable moment by telling them it may not have been my fault but that it was my responsibility and that those two things are different (though both are important).

As a leader, you may not be the cause of the underlying problems (i.e. it’s not your fault), but it is on you to take care of things going forward – making sure that your people have the information, skills and tools that they need, managing expectations both of the people who report to you as well as the expectations of the people above and to the sides of you, and keeping the lines of communication open to help ensure success in what you’re doing (or at least as close to success as you can reasonably get).

That’s what it means to take responsibility for not only your actions, but the outcome of the projects you’re placed on and the success or failure of the team that you lead. The one common element in all of your successes and failures is you and you need to own that.

If something didn’t go well, examine first if there was anything you could have done differently to improve the outcome then expand the scope to see if there is anything that the team could have done (Hint – most of the changes the team may have made would have probably at least been impacted by something you could have done).

If something went well, look at the things that caused the success and then look at things that you could have done to make it go even better. After all, failure isn’t our only teacher.

Taking responsibility for situations isn’t easy. In fact, sometimes it’s downright frightening, but it’s the only way to consistently get better and to more consistently be successful (again, not everything is going to work out well, and that’s okay too).

However, you’re going to need to temper this mindset a little. It’s true that you’re responsible for things at your level as well as for how the actions of people you’re leading work out. It’s equally true, and just as important, that you empower the people you lead to be responsible for the things at their level (and that they do the same for the people they lead).

This is how you get self-empowered teams that can take ownership of tough problems and (hopefully) succeed where others might not.

If you take literally everything on your own shoulders, your team will come to rely on you too much. This will slow them down and lead to even more problems because they don’t feel like they can act on their own. In contrast, empowering them means that they can make decisions which they are better equipped to make and execute on than you would be. That makes success more likely and, honestly, makes you look kind of amazing to the people above you because you’ve helped gel a team that Gets Things Done.

Do what you can, take responsibility for the outcomes, empower your own people, and see that they do the same. It’s a massive change in mindset for most people, but the results might surprise you.
What Are You Waiting For? A Different Take on a Trite Question.

February 6th, 2023

If you’re anything like me (or many of the people I’ve known), you’ve gotten asked “what are you waiting for?” more than once in your life.

In these instances, the emphasis is put on the word “waiting”. “What are you waiting for?” – as though the act of waiting is, by its very nature, offensive to the person asking the question. And, truth be told, it probably is offensive to the person asking the question because they’ve been conditioned to think that you have to always be doing something or else you’re a sinful waste of flesh (the Protestant Work Ethic strikes again).

The thing is that it’s a perfectly valid and useful question – just not the way they ask it, so we’re going to ask it in a way that may actually be of some benefit to you.

What are you waiting for?

Taking the emphasis off of the act of waiting and putting it on the thing that will cause you to stop waiting hits a little differently, doesn’t it? Almost as though you are waiting for a valid purpose.

Here’s a hint – you usually are.

Waiting (or at least appearing to wait) is sometimes a perfectly valid option. There are even times when it’s the wisest option.

You may be taking a break after having done a lot of work. You may be waiting for a long running process to finish. You may be waiting for political infighting to get to a point where it’s to your advantage to act. You may even be performing actual work (thinking, for example) in such a manner that it only looks like you’re inactive.

These are all valid reasons to wait, and are by no means the only valid reasons. Some of them are even covered in classic written works on strategy.

The real question, however, is what will get you to stop waiting?

Have a criteria that will cause you to start being active again, otherwise you run the risk of falling into indecision (also known as analysis paralysis). When that criteria is met, act with purpose and at a pace which makes sense. You don’t always have to be “busy” doing something, no matter what a lot of people in this society may try to tell you. Waiting can be a useful choice as long as you know why you’re waiting and know (roughly) what you’re going to do afterward.
Git – For More Than Just Source Code

January 25th, 2023

At this point, the majority of developers are using some sort of version control (or at least I hope they are). It’s widely used for a reason – it helps save our butts on a regular basis.

Modern version control systems like git allow us to roll back uncommitted changes or check out previous commits, which let us try approaches to problem solving that are much harder without that safety net (provided we commit frequently). They let us have multiple people working on the same program at once with less of a risk of people stepping on each other’s toes. They even help us with deployment strategies.

What if I told you they can help you do a lot more than just that?

For me, git has become kind of like Frank’s Red Hot Sauce – I use that shit on everything.

Seriously. I obviously use it for source control, but I also use it for the majority of my writing, for maintaining workshops and talks that I create, and a myriad of other purposes. Leveraged properly, it can be an amazing tool with the added bonus of giving you an off-site backup of whatever you keep in it.

All of the writing for this site is kept in source control. Just like with my code, I make regular commits with (generally) meaningful commit messages. This allows me to keep multiple pieces of writing in flight at once as well as lets me edit my drafts without any worries – if I don’t like how an edit comes out (if it feels clumsy, for example), I just revert my changes.

Workshops and talks are another place where I leverage git, for many of the same reasons that I use it for my writing – it lets me try different approaches to things. If I need to make changes for a specific presentation, I can just make a branch off of main and make the changes there. If I decide I want to make them part of my base talk, I can just merge them back in. No pressure.

Where it really shines, though, is in keeping my resume up to date.

I edit my resume fairly regularly, and sometimes those edits are significant. With source control, just like with my regular writing, I can make changes without worrying because I can always revert back to a previous version. Even better, if I want to tailor my resume for a specific company or job (or to accentuate a specific type of experience that I have), I can just make a branch and do the edits there.

I name the branch after the position or company and drop in a text copy of all of the artifacts for that position (description, correspondence, etc). It helps me keep things organized and lets me refer back to older copies if I talk to the same company at a later date.

Version control systems like git have honestly become one of my most used tools for coordinating and editing non-code work. Hopefully this has given you food for thought on how to leverage it (and possibly other tools that you already use) outside of your normal coding practices.
A Job is a Business Transaction – You don’t Owe Them “Loyalty”

January 16th, 2023

I recently saw someone that I know post that they look suspiciously at people with short resume entries. He then went on about how he just “knows” that they won’t stick around and that he’ll expend time and emotional energy to teach them, only to have them abandon him (not the word he used, but the intent was there).

The hilarious part of this, to me, is that I know for a fact that most of his engagements with companies have been under two years, so not only is he being ridiculous about this, he’s being a hypocrite.

Let’s get real for a minute and dig into this a little, shall we?

Your job is a business transaction. You are literally trading your time, effort, and experience to a company in exchange for a paycheck. You aren’t joining a “family” and you aren’t selling yourself into bondage or serfdom.

That’s not to say that you can’t have emotional attachments of friendship to the people you work with, but you shouldn’t have them to the company because they most certainly won’t have it for you. One-sided emotional relationships are ripe for abuse (and that’s exactly what some really bad companies foster and exploit).

Instead of operating from a sense of loyalty, operate from a sense of enlightened self-interest.

When your job, which is a business transaction, is no longer in the best interest of both parties, it’s time to start considering alternatives. A company won’t hesitate to show you the door when they decide it’s in their best interest to let you go. You need to look at your current job the same way.

It could be that your raises haven’t kept pace with the increase in salaries in the market. It could be that you aren’t able to advance where you currently are. It could be that you aren’t learning and growing your skills as much as you think you should. It could even be that every day feels like an endless slog and you need a change.

Any of these (and more) are completely valid reasons to leave one position for another one. Don’t let anyone try to guilt trip you into staying someplace that it isn’t in your best interest to be.

As for bosses complaining about the time and effort they spent to grow you in your current position –that’s part of their job. It’s literally part of the deal that most of us make when we sign the contract – we get paid to provide value and, in the course of our job, we get to learn new things and grow our skills.

Not only is it part of the deal, it’s in the best interest of the company to help you learn and grow. Having a technical member of staff who doesn’t learn new things over the course of their time at a company is a recipe for disaster for that company. Don’t let them try to act like they’re doing you a favor by letting you stretch yourself.

I’ve been doing this job for a week or two at this point (okay, it’s been something over 20 years now, but who’s counting) and I have to tell you that I’m legitimately happy for my mentees and the people who work under me if they go somewhere else as the next step in their journey.

It may be rough for my team in the short term, but we’ll manage. As a general rule, nobody will die if a person leaves your team – and if a business fails because of someone leaving, well… that’s a whole other problem (and also not the fault or concern of the person leaving).

In the end, hopefully we had a good time working with each other, learned new things all around, and came out of the deal better than when we went in. We’ve both also increased our networks and can use that to not only help ourselves, but also help others by leveraging the relationships we have.

I accept that anyone I hire will eventually move on from the company I’m at. I also accept that some day I will move on too. It’s a fact of both life and business – situations and priorities change and you shouldn’t have to feel misplaced loyalty to an organization that won’t love you back. Your loyalty is best placed with yourself, your friends, and family (either by blood or by bond).

Anyone who thinks that you owe them because they hired you is someone that’s sending off both massive red flags and showing a lot of insecurity.
Re-Evaluate Corporate Goals. Don’t Just Add.

January 10th, 2023

It’s a new calendar year and we all know what that means – new year’s resolutions.

Only I don’t mean the kind where we say that we’re going to get six pack abs and climb Mt Everest. I mean the kind that your company is starting to set for the next year.

Increase revenue by 30% year over year. Cut costs by 20% year over year. Launch 15 new product lines.

You get the idea.

If you’ve been in this career for more than a few years and you’re able to pay attention to the world around you, you’ve probably seen this in most places you’ve worked. Honestly, we probably start to get a little nervous if we don’t know what the business’ new goals are because that means that we have no idea what we’re working toward (and, therefore, what our KPIs/OKRs/EIEIOs are going to be based on).

There’s nothing wrong with setting new goals at any point in the year. In fact, we should assess where we are and where we want to be multiple times a year, not just at the beginning/end of the year (be it calendar or fiscal). And we should do this both for companies and for ourselves.

The problem is that, much like personal new year’s resolutions, corporate annual goals also tend to be unrealistic for one very specific reason – they add the new goals on top of the old goals.

So, if last year’s goal was “increase revenue x%” and this year’s goal is “decrease costs y%”, a lot of businesses want to continue to do the old goal (increase revenue) because it made the owners/shareholders happy and now they also want to decrease costs – “do more with less”.

That sort of thing doesn’t generally work in the real world. After a while, you run out of inefficiencies to improve.

Instead, we need to start setting realistic priorities for our companies at the strategic level as well as for our departments, operating groups, and even team levels (which will tend to be a mix of strategic and tactical).

This means that we need to come in with the mindset of choosing (at most) a few key areas for improvement while leaving enough slack in our plans that we can respond to change.

I think I just heard an executive scream in pain at both concepts in that last sentence.

Let them scream and do it anyway.

We need to limit the number of things we focus on because we, as people, can only do so much. To quote Sun-tzu “If he [the enemy] sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.”

The same is true of us. We can’t focus on everything and do it all well. We have to limit the number of things that we work to do (or improve) at any given time. If we try to do too much, we won’t actually accomplish any of our goals and will end up burning out ourselves and our co-workers.

The slack is equally important because if we become so focused on our stated goals that we’re unresponsive to change, we can miss opportunities to improve our operations (or even our bottom line) or we can miss things that can cause a lot of pain to our business/department/team.

Having the time to breathe and think makes it more likely that you can take advantage of the situation and also that you’ll be able to spot it in the first place.

Limit your initiatives, growth areas, and targeted areas of improvement. The more you commit to, the less you’ll actually accomplish. Instead, commit to a few things and reassess throughout the year to see what progress you’ve made and if your plans need to change.

Honestly, getting that six pack and climbing Mt Everest in the next 12 months would be easier than what a lot of companies try to do every year.
There’s More To Life Than Work

January 2nd, 2023

There’s frequently a worship of “hustle culture” in this, and many other, industries. You get told that if you work really really hard and do insanely long hours that people will somehow recognize you and you’ll magically get ahead.

It’s a lie and I think a lot of people are starting to realize it. The fact that every business journal has articles on “quiet quitting” and people refusing to work extra hours is a sign that this is both the case and that the people at the top are terrified of this trend because they’re working so hard to change it.

Working insane hours for someone else will almost never let you get ahead. In fact, it’s more likely to wear you down and encourage others to exploit you because you obviously don’t value yourself or your time. (Remember that we encourage the behavior that we allow.)

Sure, it may work on extremely rare occasions if you’re working for someone else. It’s more likely to work if you’re working for yourself rather than someone else, but even then, the odds are against you for a number of reasons.

In my career, I’ve literally seen people work themselves into the hospital or even into an early grave. I’ve honestly lost track of how many of my friends and coworkers have had heart attacks, cancer, and other health issues that were, at the very least, exacerbated by (if not caused outright by) the stress of working ridiculous numbers of hours and being “always on”.

I remember a coworker of mine being in the hospital after a heart attack and his boss visiting him, demanding to know why he wasn’t using the time to study programming instead of resting like his doctor ordered him to. I wish this was a joke or an exaggeration.

If you add in the people who have suffered extreme burnout or had their doctors literally tell them that their job was killing them and they needed to find someplace else to be, the number is even higher.

For my own part, my doctor was overjoyed when I left my position with a Fortune 50 mega-bank because of what it was doing to my health. She had reason to be happy that I quit. It’s left me with health issues that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. Thankfully we caught them early, so they’re manageable with lifestyle changes, but the damage is still there.

As a result, I’ve gone out of my way to set healthier boundaries for myself. I’ve also worked hard to help set healthy boundaries and expectations for the other members of my team.

This is often more difficult than you’d think.

Most of my current team is in India. They’re a great bunch of people and I enjoy working with every last one of them. There is, however, a downside (as there is with working with any group of people).

Their work day ends at about 11am my time. This in itself isn’t a problem, though it does occasionally make it difficult for them to get access to some of our coworkers in the US. The problem is that they are a truly driven bunch of people (which is great and part of the reason that I love the lot of them – they honestly help inspire me to keep improving as well) and I have to make sure that they don’t overwork themselves (which is bad).

True story. I literally have each of them pinned on my Teams chat list so I can make sure that their status isn’t “online” well past their normal hours. I occasionally have to remind them to log off and go have a life if they’re working too late.

I’ve also had to check in with my onshore colleagues when they send messages well outside of hours to make sure that they’re doing alright, that they don’t feel overwhelmed with work, and that they aren’t doing too much outside of normal hours.

When leading a team (or multiple teams), it’s literally part of my job to make sure that my people have what they need. This includes having enough time off to recharge, be people, and live their lives.

If anyone tells you that it isn’t your job to be concerned for the wellbeing of the people who report to you, you have my permission to tell them to pound sand (using whatever level of politeness you feel is appropriate at the time). People like that shouldn’t be in leadership positions.

Work is not, and should not be, the only thing in your life. We are whole people who spend part of our waking hours working in order to be able to live our lives. And I think that we’re finally starting to realize that again as a society.

It’s long past time that this expectation of overwork stop, and the only ones able to stop it are us. Value yourself and those around you – especially the people that report to you. You help set the tone for what is expected and acceptable.
Are You REALLY Listening? Probably Not.

December 12th, 2022

One of the most underrated skills as a leader, and indeed in business in general, is listening. Actually listening.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t do it very well. We may think that we do. We may even retain information that was said, but we aren’t really listening. At best, most of us are simply waiting for our turn to speak – partially because in this society, being heard is more valued than listening to others.

The type of not listening takes a number of forms.

On the far end of the spectrum is where we actively ignore people. We aren’t listening and we make our disinterest in what the other person is saying clear.

Then you have the situations where we pretend to listen, but aren’t retaining any information that the other person is saying. If someone’s doing this, you can sometimes see their eyes glaze over, or they might be pretending to take notes on their laptop, but they’re actually doing other things. This is commonly seen during meetings though it also happens in other situations.

Farther down the spectrum is where we retain information from what the other person is saying, but we still aren’t actually listening.

Some people will argue that this is listening, but they’d be wrong. It’s a necessary part of listening, but it isn’t listening.

Retaining information means that you’ve heard someone. That’s not the same thing.

You haven’t listened until the other person feels like you have.

That’s it. That’s the secret.

Your own perception has nothing to do with it. Whether or not you’ve listened depends entirely on the perception of the person you’re listening to.

One of the more straightforward ways to arrive at a place where the other person feels heard is to be an active listener. Ask questions. Summarize in your own words what you think they’re trying to convey. Be involved in the conversation instead of just passively sitting there.

It’s a display of empathy and interest.

If you’re actively involved in the conversation (instead of just waiting for your turn to speak or talking over someone), they’re much more likely to feel heard. This not only makes most people more positively disposed toward you, it often leads to them revealing information that they may not intend to.

In business, both of these things can be absolutely invaluable. Having them think well of you makes them more likely to cooperate with you. Getting unintended pieces of information can help you see the bigger picture or even give you an edge in negotiations.

Even if we aren’t taught it explicitly, the implicit lesson that we learn as we grow up is that the person speaking is the one who has the power because other people stop what they’re doing and pay attention to the one speaking. How many times as a kid did you hear some variation of the admonition “I’m SPEAKING” come out of the mouth of one of your teachers or other authority figures. They’re just leaving the “that means I’m more important than you” part of the sentence unsaid.

And that’s what a lot of us internalize as we grow up. (Though you’ll notice that the same people who make the demand of “I’m SPEAKING” often don’t care about listening when anyone else speaks. This isn’t a sign of strength and authority. It’s actually a sign of weakness and fear.)

The truth is that the person who’s listening can often gain even more power because they’re able to build relationships, see the larger picture, and negotiate more effectively.

As a bonus, the applications of listening go beyond business and into most aspects of our lives where they involve other people.

Isn’t that reason enough to stop hearing and start listening?

Things That Help Foster Psychological Safety

Things That Destroy Psychological Safety

Communication Before The Work Happens – User Story Refinement

Communication While The Work Happens – Standup

Communication After The Work Happens – Retrospective

It Actively Hides Bad Actors

It Upholds The Status Quo

“Good Intent” Doesn’t Matter When It Causes Harm