We started our careers out of
university focused on technical prowess and competent execution of algorithm,
circuit, and procedure. Because we were
good at it, we were promoted into higher levels of complexity from procedure
owner, to component owner, to senior engineer, to lead engineer, to product
architect, etc. through to CEO. Along
the way, we noticed that we were using IDEs, VMs, scripts, and build tools less
and less and instead using MS Word, PowerPoint, or Google Docs more and
more. We started spending a lot of time
in meetings, on the phone, writing emails, and delegating to others. Sometimes, we may find ourselves angry,
frustrated, and disappointed with our senior management, peers, and
mentees. Especially frustrating is the
point-of-view that being right should be enough. This is, after all, applied computer science
where repeatable and testable processes of “rightness” should be enough. So then why, you ask yourself, is technical
debt increasing, customer satisfaction decreasing, and both employee productivity
and revenue are falling. Why, you ask,
are you sitting in another meeting about what cloud platform to adopt (you
thought that was decided last month)?
Why is the company now switching UI frameworks when the development team
finally reached 100% cross-training only two months ago? Why is the company getting bigger database
hardware when it was decided (so it was thought) that the solution would scale
horizontally using master-slave replication?
Why is employee turnover so high?
Why is the organization struggling to make dates? Why is technical debt so high? And there are thousands of such examples.
You could say we were promoted into
incompetence. Early in our careers, we focused on individual tactical efforts
and have since evolved into a major contributor of group strategic thinking and
leadership. Unfortunately, our computer
science degree, Master of Information Systems degree, or certifications haven’t
taught us or prepared us for dealing with complex human and organizational
behavior.
This chapter, and the ones to
follow, will seek to help with a realization that you may, or may not have had;
that being right isn’t enough. That
shouting orders because we are the boss, have 20 plus years of experience,
wrote some great code at some time in the past, graduated from an Ivy League
college, or are certified in ‘xyz’, is not enough. What you know for sure is that you, your
team, maybe your entire company are struggling.
I know because I was struggling too, and being a typical human, I lashed
out angrily at people, sulked in silence at some “wrong” decision, sat at bars
with co-workers ruminating about our personal and company woes, and searched on
job sites for greener pastures. I let my
anger and frustration, combined with character weaknesses and flaws, diminish
me as a person as I became more malicious and aggressive in my crusade to “do
the right thing”. The good news is, with
this challenge there is opportunity to evolve and grow into a much healthier
and mature person, team, and company.
So, what knowledge and
understanding are we missing? To answer
that, I’m going to tell a short story. At the end of this story, you will either have
an “a-ha” moment or think it is total crap.
The story comes from a scene from the 2000 movie ‘Gladiator’. After a gladiatorial match in which Maximus
dispatches many opponents, Maximus is in the quarters of Proximo the gladiator
owner and manager. Proximo says to
Maximus, “You are good, Spaniard, but you're not that good. You could be
magnificent.” To which Maximus replies,
“I am required to kill so I kill. That is enough.” After more dialog, Maximus states, “I, too,
want to stand in front of the Emperor, as you did.” And Proximo states, “Then
listen to me. Learn from me. I wasn't the best because I killed quickly. I was
the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd, win your freedom.”
I’m going to break this down a bit
in the context of organizational behavior and technical leadership. Maximus starts by thinking he is required to
kill, so he kills, and that should be enough.
This is like thinking, to be a good leader, I must get a computer
science masters degree, I must learn the latest programming language, I should
file more patents, the team needs to adopt Agile, DevOps is what the team is
missing, perhaps another meeting, or edict from the architects. Proximo doesn’t tell Maximus that he should
work out 8 hours a day, getting faster, stronger, and deadlier. Instead, he tells him to understand the
organizational behavior that he is in, and, “win the crowd”. You are already a deadly technical coder,
scripter, architect, administrator, manager, officer, etc. That technical and administration skill is
only worth one fifth of the solution. To
win the crowd, you must apply your skills in an effective emotional, social,
and political context, to the largest network you can.
Did you miss that? I’m going to say it again. Many of the biggest problems you, your team,
your company are going to have are social and emotional, not technical.
There are five dimensions in your
leadership influence; technical, social, emotional, political, and
network. Therefore, your technical idea,
right or wrong, is worth 20% of your leadership value and influence. Think about all the silly policies, laws,
processes, decisions, wildcat IT, and dysfunctional implementations you have
experienced in your career. How did
those happen? Why didn’t “the right
thing” happen? Simply, there was an idea
that had 80% support against your 20%.
80 to 20 isn’t even a close decision.
Most of your ideas probably weren’t even seriously considered either by
subordinates or higher leadership. No
wonder you are frustrated. You got crushed.
I’ve been crushed.
If you resolve an issue, but not
the underlying social and emotional issues underneath, then problems will keep
coming back because there will continue to be disparate islands of people,
teams, and maybe even entire divisions.
Instead of collaboration, you have competition. Instead of partners, you have adversaries. How many teams, companies, and organizations
have you experienced that have groups and divisions working against each other
for sales, budget, employees, credit, promotions, etc? Within the toxicity of distrust, anger, gas
lighting, and competition, people and organizations will create problems for
each other. Why do you think you are in
another meeting about something that should have been decided weeks or months
ago? It is at these times, as a
technical leader, that you need to provide more guidance and knowledge than the
benefits of one technology over another.
Your technical knowledge doesn’t make you a good leader. Being a good leader makes you a good leader,
and to do that, you need knowledge and understanding of the complex human and
organizational behavior around you.
Are you having an “a-ha” or “pfft”
moment? If this is resonating with you,
then read on and stay tuned for the next chapters. We have a lot to cover. Let’s start by getting into a bit more detail
on the five dimensions I mentioned; technical, social, emotional, political,
and network. The technical dimension,
technical intelligence, is the most self-evident for most people reading this
article. It is your knowledge and skill
in a domain or technology. More broadly,
it is whatever idea you want to be adopted and embraced by others. It could be as benign as what to do for the
office holiday party and range to as pertinent as a product’s next set of
features.
Social intelligence is about your
ability to communicate, and simply, get along with others. Consider a playground of
kindergarteners. Which children are able
to share a toy and which directly take what they want? Which children play together and which play
on their own? There is plenty to read
about social intelligence and I’m not going to repeat it all here. To me, social intelligence is about the
ability to build trusted relationships with others, to know when to listen, to
know when to speak, and to know what role to play. Is it time to be the role of a friend, peer,
mentor, boss, angel, or devil? Personally,
the biggest insight and growth in my social maturity occurred, after many years
and many long unproductive meetings, when I recognized that aggressively and
maliciously arguing with someone will never change their mind or convince them
of the merits of my point of view. What
I learned from the school of hard knocks and from the literature, was that I
was making things worse and undermining communication. When a person is faced with that kind of
negativity, they will raise their shields, entrench their position, and engage
their psyche’s own defense mechanisms to ensure they don’t think, consider, or
understand anything about your idea or “rightness”.
Next is emotional
intelligence. As with social
intelligence, there is a lot of literature on the subject including body
language and tone of voice. Those are
handy to determine how a person is feeling in the moment. However, what I feel is far more important is
the empathy to understand ‘why’ others, and myself, are positioning the ideas
that we have. What are the forces that
are motivating us to say and do the things that we do? I remember a time as a staff programmer when
I was working a month on a new product feature.
A day before I’m going to finish, with just a few tests and reviews to
complete, my manager tells me, “Nevermind. It turns out that your effort the
past month isn’t a good fit for our product and strategy.” Now, what does your emotional intelligence
tell you about how I was feeling right then?
I can tell you; I was pissed.
Because I, as we all do, was attaching a part of my self-image to the
value of my professional work, and I was just told my work was worth zero, that
later that evening I was browsing the job boards and updating my resume. In this context, here is a point-of-view you
may not have considered; Agile technical spikes are as important to the
emotional health of developers, as they are to the business. Technical spikes frame in the positive what
would normally be considered negative throwaway work. Framed in the positive, they say, “You saved
us from going down the wrong path and wasting months of work and piles of
cash. Thank you.” That programmer is
going to feel a lot happier about their worth to the program, the company, and
themselves. Just as important as
understanding what is motivating others, is the understanding of what is
motivating within ourselves. What is our
‘why’? I personally have invested a lot
in Java, its APIs, and ecosystem to the point of being proficient and Maximus deadly. I suspect many folks reading this article
feel the same way about some technology.
I can admit that other languages like Python, C, .NET give me anxiety
because I feel threatened and afraid that they could undermine the huge
investment that I’ve made. However,
because I’m able to acknowledge and confront my own emotions and bias, I am a
better leader and consultant because I can manage those flaws and ensure I am
doing the best work I can for my teams and clients.
On to political intelligence, which
for many is a taboo subject. Political intelligence, to me, is understanding
how your team or organization works and who is influencing power. For example, who are the power-wielding
stakeholders? Is it the business
analysist, product owner, or maybe they are puppets to a micro-managing higher
executive? Many of these people perform
in non-technical circles. Have you
noticed that on many teams there are one or two people, among many that human
resources would consider peers or equals, which are a nexus of opinion, meaning
that whatever opinion they have tends to influence and change the opinions of
others. Google for “types of power” but
in the meantime I’m going to discuss the three most typical types in a
technical organization. First, is
legitimate power and in Gladiator it is the emperor and the simplest to
understand. Next, also from Gladiator,
are the senators. They are the nexus or
referent power. They are technically
very strong individuals who also have cultivated trusted relationships with
peers, higher managers, and subordinates.
Their opinion is highly influential to the votes of other senators Last,
is the crowd or the mob representing coercive power. United they can influence even the actions of
CEOs, presidents, or emperors.
Finally is networking. How many people are receiving and
understanding your idea? Networking is
closely related to the application of political intelligence. You might have a great idea and are using
effective emotional and social intelligence to communicate it, but if you are
passing that idea to one individual, and that individual is your pet dog, then
you still aren’t going to get very far.
Let’s consider the movie ‘Gladiator’ again. The size of your network could be the size of
just one person, the emperor. Obviously,
that single emperor wields a lot of power.
Inversely is the crowd where the size of the network is huge, but the
power of each individual is very small.
This may be upsetting for you to hear, but sometimes, the acceptance or
rejection of your idea comes down to a popularity contest.
Just as in programming, there are
many design patterns, so too there are many ways in which the five dimensions
of idea (technical), social, emotional, political, and networking can be
applied. How much energy you spend in
each dimension is entirely dependent on the context and your skill in applying
them. Work in the realm of organization
behavior is a skill that requires study and practice. It is my hope that this article has given you
a new awareness, knowledge, and understanding that will make you a better
technical leader. “But wait”, you ask, “What
about the technical part?” Earlier I
spoke a little about one way it applies inside Agile and I will dive deeper
into that. In addition, I’ll discuss
what organizational behavior has to do with waterfall development, test driven
and behavior driven development, enterprise architecture, business architecture,
Amdahl’s Law, Conway’s Law, Dwight D. Eisenhower, application design and
decision making, technical debt, chronically missed dates, professional
criticism, high employee turnover, troubleshooting troubled teams and
individuals, the business triangle, development conduct, major league baseball,
college football, my mom’s cooking, and probably more. Stay tuned.
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