A One-Eyed Man is King

Before I follow through with the outrageous boast I made at the end of my last post, I’m going to make some stipulations.  Stipulations, I said.  Not weaseling.  Not waffling.  Merely stipulating.  The thing is, they’re big.  Huge, even.  Like if you can’t get these things in place, you are ultimately doomed to a horrible flaming demise while your coworkers laugh and point.

Seriously, though, it will be impossible to get as much mileage out of the rest of what I say without these things in place.  The thing is, technology workers and even technology leadership can’t make these things happen.  Or can’t make them happen by themselves.  The leadership of the business (CEO/Owner/President/Whatever you call the person at the top along with all the people he or she listens to) must step up and provide this stuff.  (How to convince them to do so will be another post entirely.)  Here they are:

1. A reasonable budget to get the job done.  Have you ever worked on a project that was underfunded?  Or that didn’t have a set budget so that getting every dollar was like going to war?  How did those projects turn out?  I don’t think that IT should necessarily be the ones to set the budget (on their own anyway), but any project must be well enough thought out to allocate it a budget.
2. Clear priorities and objectives.  Every technology worker has run afoul of this at one time or another.  Work for a couple of months on a project and then all of a sudden someone says we’re not doing that anymore, we’re doing this thing over here now.  Not only will this kind of thing sap your team’s will to live, it will guarantee you’ll never get a happy return on the dollars you’re investing in them.  As with the budget, the business needs to think things through, make a decision about what’s important to it and then stick with it.  
3. An executive sponsor who accepts full responsibility for success or failure.  The old saying goes something like “when everyone is responsible for a thing, then no one is”.  Without a sponsor or champion that takes absolute responsibility for a project, that project will never enjoy a happy life and will rarely come to a good ending.  The sponsor has to be a person who has a seat and a voice at the big table.  You can’t just grab a lower level project manager and say, “You’re on the hook for this.  You better get it right.”  That won’t work because he has no ability to advocate for or smooth the path in any way.  It has to be someone who can effect real positive change to conditions that will affect the project.  Sometimes it can be the CIO/CTO, but sometimes even they don’t have the wherewithal to get the job done. 

I’d love to hear your stories confirming or denying my opinions here.  I’ve seen a lot of projects and a lot of teams over the course of my career and these seems to be recurring themes when things go awry. 

I have been thinking big thoughts for the last few days.  I mean BIG THOUGHTS.  I’ve been pondering what it all means, what my place in it is and how exactly I think I’m making a difference in this crazy world. 

Over the last several years, one of the things that I have felt the most proud of is the development of a first rate team.  I have mentioned them on this blog more than once.  The thing is, as great as the individuals that made up the team were (and they were exceptional), it still took a LOT of work to bring them together and keep them going in the right direction. 

It’s not easy getting a team to do what you need them to, especially when we’re talking about technology teams.  They’re smart (often accustomed to being the smartest in the room),  they have definite ideas about how things should be and they aren’t afraid to speak up (or simply leave to find another job) when they’re unhappy.  Couple these factors with the high personnel costs and you have very little margin for error. 

As I have ruminated on this stuff, I realized that I have uncovered a need that I don’t see anyone filling.  A business that is spending on average $66,000 per year on a technology worker (that’s according to the US Department of Labor) needs to know that it is getting the most out of that investment.  A company whose existence is riding on the quality of its software products needs to take care of those developers that brought them to the dance and make sure they are not lost to competitors.  A startup company that is watching every dollar it spends needs to be sure that they have the right people making the right decisions.  These are not touchy-feely, new age ideas.  This is life and death stuff for a business of any age or size. 

So here it is.  I will break down for you exactly what it takes to create a team that can not only handle the tasks you set out for them, but do it with maximum efficiency and love every minute of it.  Does that sound like a line of bull?  Tune in and see for yourself! 

What happens when one person who is used to being the smartest person in the room has to work with another person who is used to being the smartest person in the room?  Or how about 3 or 4 of them?  I’ve worked for a lot of companies that would give anything to have this type of situation, but what about the unforeseen side effects of such a thing?  Sir Isaac Newton famously (and humbly) said “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”  Would he have been as gracious if he had to go to staff meetings with those giants week after week?  Would he have been as quick to self-deprecate if he had to constantly defend his ideas to those giants? 

I’m sure you’ve know people like this.  Maybe you are one of them. Over the course of their lives, they have always emerged as the people that others turn to when they need things done.  They tend to be accustomed to having the best, fastest answer to any given problem.   I think the conditioning that happens to this sort of individual happens so subtly that they don’t even realize it’s happening.

So what’s the big deal?  My esteemed colleague (I told you I would give you credit, Steve) and I have been talking about this for some time.  Here are a few thoughts on the danger this presents to teams.

1. Tunnel Vision – Every human being has an ego that tells them that their ideas are better than someone else’s.  Your ego in this has been fortified by your entire life’s experience in which your ideas were always the ones that were picked.  This can really negatively impact a group of people who are trying to solve a problem.
2. Assumptions – You’re smart.  You know your teammates are smart.  Therefore, they must know the same things you do, right?  I think this leads to NOT exploring ideas and NOT talking through how you came to your conclusions.  Assuming in a team full of smart people can be lethal.
3. Communication Gap – I suppose that communications is really at the heart of any team’s problems.  Any time you have more than one person working towards the same goal, communication becomes the glue that holds it all together.  I think smart people don’t sit and think, “I’m not going to communicate with that other person.”  I think more often it’s a combination of “We have daily/weekly/monthly status meetings to get us on the same page” along with some “I’m doing the WORK, I can stop and talk about it every five minutes”  with just a dash of “I figured it out, so should everyone else.”

I am fortunate to work with as many HIGHLY talented people as I do.  Every last one of them has some area(s) of absolute genius.  In spite of that (I suppose I’m arguing here because of that), we’ve fallen prey to some of these problems, mainly because we were unaware of this subtle cause.  But as GI Joe cartoons taught me when I was young, knowing is half the battle.