Do you have one of those executives that harasses you with status updates to projects, yet never attends the status update meetings?

Perhaps they call you, email you, stop in to your office, and want to know what the latest on project X is?

Is the behavior effecient?  What suggestions do you have about how to convey project status communication within your organization?

Mike J. Berry  www.RedRockResearch.com

I was sitting in a KFC eating lunch, reading the slogans muraled on the wall.  This particular KFC is supposedly the first KFC in America.  Yes, it's in Utah.  Along with some chicken legs and a drink, you can enjoy a small exhibit showing Colonel Sander's original briefcase, white suite, shoes, etc.

One mural read, "Somehow we'll do it, by the principles of thrift, honor, integrity, and charity."

I thought for a moment.  Some of the financial service companies I've worked with would fail if they valued charity.  Then I thought about how trust is a wonderful interpersonal dynamic, but the companies I've worked with in the medical field allow no latitude for trust.  Everything must be written down and authorized by a credentialed physician.  Walk into a pharmacy and you'll need a signature on piece of paper to get a prescription filled.

Hmmm, just like charity is an anti-value in the financial services industry, trust is an anti-value in the medical industry.

I spent the day thinking about this new concept.  I owe the title of 'Anti-Value' to the Discovery-Channel documentary about Anti-Matter I was watching the night before.  I  guess I'm coining the phrase here, but it makes a lot of sense to me.  Normally, a value is something our society charish's, yet in a particular situation, or line of business--it becomes the wrong thing to do.

I started seeing how this concept can be applied all over to help clarify the decision making process.

I remembered taking third place instead of second in a Maryland school-district programming competition in high school because I let the guy from our rival high school cut in line in front of me to turn in his test.  When the results were announced we had both scored the same grade, but because he handed his paper in first, he won second place and I won third. (I beat him in the State programming competition the following month.)

I've never forgotten this experience, and actually now that I think about it, offering your competitor any leeway is an anti-value.

Some business meetings I've been involved in are a collage of participants cutting other participants off mid-sentence to make their point known.  Rude? Yes.  But, in fact, politeness may be considered an anti-value in these types of situations.

I think the concept is fascinating.  Just as a good value system should be in place to help an organization, department, team, or individual govern their decisions, an anti-value system can compliment a value-system by providing additional clarity for the decision making process.

One example of this is the U.S. government's policy on dealing with terrorists.  The government values having a "no negotiating with terrorists" policy.  As a disincentive to future terrorism, they have an additional policy to provide or produce exactly the opposite of what the terrorists are demanding.  The notion--to give them what they want--really becomes an anti-value, and is an additional input to the decision-making process.  So, in fact, their policy is set by values, and anti-values.

I hope you find this concept as fascinating as I do.  It was the best $7.79 I've spent on lunch in a while.

Mike J. Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

Marshall Goldsmith's New York Times Bestseller, What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful is an excellent self-help book for executives and managers wishing to improve their "soft skills" and other interpersonal traits.

Goldsmith is an executive coach who has worked with more than 80 of the worlds foremost CEO's.  As a symbol of his influence,  Alliant International University recently renamed their school of management after him.  With these credentials, probably anything he writes is worth reading.

In his book, Goldsmith lists twenty-one common "soft-skill" dysfunctions he has encountered while coaching top executives.   He explains that the higher you go in executive management, the more your problems are behavioral.  A few of these behavioral problems are as follows:

1. The need to win too much

1. Making destructive comments

1. Starting sentences with "No," "But," or "However"

1. Telling the world how smart you are

1. Speaking when angry

1. Withholding information

1. Clinging to the past

1. Playing favorites among direct-reports

1. An excessive need to be "Me" (or, "I can't change, that's just how I am")

1. Goal obsession

To get the whole list, you need to read his book.  The first half of the book details these ten and the other eleven common issues at length.

One of the primary challenges Goldsmith writes about is getting executives to understand how they are perceived by others in their work environments, and at home.  He separates our personal "perception" into four categories:

1. Public Knowledge (Traits known to others and self)

1. Private Knowledge (Traits known to self but not to others)

1. Blind Spots (Traits known to others but not to self)

1. Unknowable (Traits unknown to others, and not know to self)

Goldsmith says that the most interesting traits to examine and study are #3, the blind spots known to others but not to ourselves.  He provides a formula for detecting these traits, examining them, and fixing any negative discoveries.  The formula is:

1. Collect feedback from everyone around us, using both deliberate and subtle tactics.

1. Apologize to everyone for any negative traits.

1. Advertise that you are beginning a personal campaign to improve and that you would like their feedback periodically as you work on improvement.

1. Listen to feedback in terms of "what can I do in the future to improve" and not "what did I do wrong in the past" (one is positive, one is negative)

1. Thank people for their suggestions, and don't disagree with them.

1. Follow-up relentlessly.  This is the key to the improvement process taking shape.

He explains, for example,  that as a professional coach, he and a colleague call each other each evening and report to each other on the progress of their goals.  This simple practice enables them to metric their performance over time--the same thing effective executives do to examine trends in their departmental interests.

Goldsmith discusses several other topics in his book.  One interesting aside is a list of common reasons why goal setting can fail:

1. Time: It takes longer than expected, so it couldn't be completed.

1. Effort: It's harder than was expected.

1. Distractions: Nobody expected a "crisis" to emerge that took resources or time away.

1. Lack of Rewards: After they see some improvement, they don't get enough positive response from others, so they give up.

1. Maintenance: Once a goal is met, there is no fortitude to stick with the pattern that brought success.

One of the closing thoughts in Goldsmith's book struck me as quite novel.  As one of his executive coaching tools, he sometimes asks executives to produce a "How to Handle Me" guide for his staff.  This is a short memo detailing behavior, values, lessons from past experience, and input from past and present coworkers and direct reports.

As new hires are on-boarded, part of their welcome packet is the "How to Handle Me" guide from their manager.

I found the most valuable part of Goldsmith's book to be his formula for collecting feedback about others' perceptions of us, and how we can affect change within ourselves where needed.  I appreciated Goldsmiths continuous transcendent theme that all of these tools and dynamics also have value at home to improve our family lives and social relationships.  This was a reoccurring theme in his book.

I recommend Goldsmith's book for middle to senior level management, and to any husband or wife.

Mike J. Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

Wether you are starting a new job, or you just got promoted, the first week as a Software Development Manger, VP, Director, etc, can be a dizzying experience.

Depending on your particular situation, you'll likely have to meet many new people, learn about new systems, and remember to smile often.

A good starting point is the be sure the following items are in place:

1. Make a contact list of everyone in your department, your peers, you manager.  Include their desk phones, mobile phones, and email addresses.  Keep this list updated.  You will use it for a long time.


2. Find or Create the 'Development Procedures Manual.'  Include in it the following:
   
   
   
   1. Corporate Mission/Vision Statement & Values
   
   
   2. Department Mission/Vision Statement & Values
   
   
   3. New Employee Hire checklist
   
   
   4. Development Workstation Setup checklist
   
   
   5. Software Development Procedures
   
   
   6. Coding Standards
   
   
   7. VPN Setup Instructions
   
   
   8. Weekly Meeting Schedules
   
   


3. Create a 'Development Managers Log' containing the following:
   
   
   
   1. Employee Time Off Log
   
   
   2. Observed holiday list
   
   
   3. 3rd Party Software Licensing information
   
   
   4. Historical Release Log
   
   


4. Be sure you have a source code repository


5. Be sure you have an issue tracking system


6. Review/Create the Disaster Recovery plan for all of your critical systems:
   
   
   
   1. Source Code Repository
   
   
   2. 3rd Party Code libraries
   
   
   3. Issue Tracking System & DB
   
   


7. Make a 'projects list' containing an ever-updating list of projects and their status.


8. Have a 'welcome meeting' with the group you oversee to tell them something about you.  Whomever interviewed you knows about you, but chances are the group you are now managing doesn't.  Tell them your past work history, your management style, communication plan, and something fun and personable about yourself.


9. Ask your group what would make their jobs more rewarding.  Ask this question a lot at first because they won't believe you mean it until you have asked the question many times.

Good Luck!  You're off to a good !

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

My sister was recently promoted to manage a team of software project managers for a large bank on the East coast.  She told me she gets to hire someone for the first time in her career.

I told her that hiring is always a bit of a dice roll, but I offered her some advice after having hired about 15 people at various times in my career:

1. The most important indicator of future success is past success.  Good interviewers know this.  Dig into people's past work experience and try to find out if they have been generally successful, or not.  Some indicators of this are whether they have changed jobs often.  If they jumped jobs on their way up the ladder of responsibility, this is OK.  If they jumped sideways, or sometimes down, this is a red flag.  Drill them about each job change.  You will get interesting results.  People will say they were fired, or had fights with their boss or coworkers.  These are usually not your desirable candidates.  If they fought with their previous peers and managers, chances are they will fight with your group also.

2. Look for enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm is a great sign of a star employee.

3. Examine their personal lives (you really can't do this in an interview).  But whatever they tell you can be a clue as to how they respond to accountability, pressure, authority, and responsibility.  If they hate police, or the government, or have been divorced five times, then they may have issues with authority or responsibility.  You have to be careful here because you cannot descriminate.

4. Call their references and ask their references if that person was successful, and if they would re-hire that person.  Ask how socially distracting they were inside the workplace, and what time they came in the morning and what time they went home.  Ask if they were a good team-member, and if they were typically dependable enough to get things done.  Ask why they left and compare their answers to the candidate's explanation.

5. Because software development is not always a 9-to-5 job, a good question to ask is if they have any extra-curricular activity that would prohibit them from staying late if needed.  I have hired people to discover that every day at 5:30 they need to pick up their kid from daycare.  This obligation makes them incompatible with leading a team that may require them to stay late and fix a critical problem.  This is a good thing to find out before you hire someone for a position like that.

6. Try to get them to express an opinion about something business related and that they are passionate about.  Pay attention to how they express their opinion.  Do they express themselves dogmatically, as if their opinion is fact and you must argue with them to object, or do they express their opinion in a collaborative way, where they would be more of an asset in a group discussion where others may disagree.

7. Pay attention to how they show up for the interview.  Are they on time, and dressed for the part.  Did they bring with them a copy of their resume? Are their shoes shiny?

8. Ask them several obvious question about your company to see if they did any research before the interview.  Find something on your website homepage that they would know if they looked there before the interview. This is a clue as to their proactive abilities.

9. Pay attention to how they describe their previous workplace, management, and executive staff.  This will likely be an indicator of what they will think of your staff.

10. If you sense an extreme level of dissatisfaction, high-maintenance, or lots of questions about what's in it for them---beware!  This is an employee that will likely perform the bare minimum and be unnecessarily needy.

There are lots of books and tips about how to be the interviewee, but not so much is written about how to interview.  I wish I could have read these tips years ago when I began hiring people.  I hope this helps others and I would be interested in hearing what readers have to add.
< ike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

John C. Maxwell's book,  The 360 Degree Leader, is an excellent field-guide for navigating the challenges of leadership at all levels of an organization.

Maxwell starts his book by dispelling many common dysfunctional myths that are found at line-level, or middle-level management.  Ideas such as "When I get to the top, I'll be in control," and "If I were on top, then people would follow me" are inaccurate adolescent attempts to understand the true nature of leadership--which is influence.

Maxwell continues by explaining the characteristics of influence:

1. Position - Influence because people have to follow you.


2. Permission - Influence because people want to follow you.


3. Production - Influence because of what you have done for the organization.


4. People Development -Influence because of what you have done for them.


5. Personhood - Influence because of who you are and what you represent.

Maxwell gives examples of effective leadership in all directions: up, across and down.

To lead up well, he suggests you lighten your leaders load, anticipate your leaders needs and use their time wisely, and invest in Relational Chemistry--get to know what makes your leaders tick.

To lead across, Maxwell suggests you focus on completing your fellow leaders, instead of competing with them.   Be a friend, don't pretend you're perfect, and avoid office politics.

To lead down, Maxwell suggest you develop each team member, place people in their strength zones, model the behavior you desire, transfer the vision from above, and reward the results you desire.

Overall this is a good book worth reading and re-reading every so often.  I recommend it for managers at all levels.

Mike J. Berr >www.RedRockResearch.com

What is a value system?

As of late, corporations have discovered that mission-statements are only somewhat helpful in providing direction to a company.  Being strategic in nature, they don't provide enough detail to govern tactical decisions made by the corporate employees on a daily basis.

To answer this need, value-statements, and value-systems have come into vogue.  Many companies have value-statements to underscore their mission statements.

Just as some mission statements are more effective than others, some value-systems are more effective than others.

The simple approach to establishing corporate, department, or team values is to get everyone together in a room and have them suggest values the team should adopt.  Voting happens, and the group committs to their agree-upon values.

After one of these sessions, the group might come up with a list like:

• respect


• trust


• excellance


• high performance

This list is a start, but only representative of a one-dimentional value system.  These values, by themselves, realy don't project any context or weight.

A more effective approach would be a two-dimensional value system.  A two dimensional value-system provides a greater context fabric.  For example, you could say your group values:

• respect over cynicism


• trust over hope


• excellence over heroics


• high-performance over sub-optimization

These comparison value statements proved direction and context.  This represents a two-dimensional value system, and is more effective that a simple list of values.

A three-dimensional value system is a prioritized list of these comparison statements.  For example, you could say your group values these statements in this order:

1. trust over hope


2. excellence over heroics


3. high-performance over sub-optimization


4. respect over cynicism

This list shows that trust is the highest factor in inter-departmental dynamics.  It shows that excellence is more important than high-performance (so no cutting corners!), and that the group values trust, excellence, and high-performance more than respect.

Every group will have their own values and differences in priorioties, but putting a three-dimensional value-system in place with your team is a great step forward in building functional team cohesion.

Once in place, a reward-systems can be built around your value system to promote it' ectivness.

Mike J Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

Ed Sullivan's book, Under Pressure And On Time, is a no-nonsense guide for delivering software products to market in a timely manner.

In this industry where the average software project is late, over budget, or a complete failure, there are so many books written about what not to do.  It's refreshing to read a software development book that tells you "what to do" for a change.

Sullivan skips past conventional theory and provides real-world experiences and wisdom for how project managers and software development teams can succeed in this challenging industry.

Novel to Sullivan's recommended approaches is the concept of one-team-per-project, reporting to a single manager.  Conventionally, most companies split out development, quality-assurance, and product management into different departments.  Sullivan describres this configuration as a model set-up-for-failure.  Too many factors, he says, complicate team performance when each team-member is reporting to a separate manager.

I consult with software development companies to improve their product delivery speed and product quality.  I call Sullivan's single-team suggestion the "lean model," and I agree with his conclusions.

In the manufacturing sciences, there is a belief that the production manager and the quality assurance manager have an inherent conflict of interest, therefore, they should be separate departments within a manufacturing organization.  Many business books are written about this.

In software, however, this model is a less-effective approach.  It can work, but it creates barriers between project teams for several reasons:

1. Contention can arise as an "us vs them" mentality builds when team-members go back to their respective departments dougouts, to commesurate with their non-project department staff.


2. As team-members need each other to succeed, it becomes easy for a team-member in one department to delay requests, or grandstand, because their department manager "has asked them to work on other things this week."


3. A department manager will tend to be uninformed about upcoming urgent project team needs and may unintentionally delay the project by asking their employee to do other things at the most inconvenient time for the project.


4. A lack of focus will accompany any project team-member who has continuous department responsibilities outside of the project team.


5. If contention arises, the project team-members from different departments may value disparaging another department, rather than working together to solve the problem at hand.

Sullivan goes on to discuss effective hiring techniques, retention techniques, and general healthy corporate culture factors.  He talks about ranking employees in terms of inner-circle, middle-circle, and outer-circle.  This reminds me of Jack Welch's theory on differentation.

Another novel concept Sullivan describes is his simple but effective project scheduling process.  He breaks each month into daily rows, listing team members names as column headers.  Inside of each cell is a letter/number combination representing who needs to be finished with what task on that day.  In my opinion this is much better than a gantt chart.

Sullivan goes on to describe meetings, schedule management, release management, and project closure.

I found this to be a beneficial book to read.  I would recommend reading it topically, as a reference, rather than cover-to-cover.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

What is a value system?

As of late, corporations have discovered that mission-statements are only somewhat helpful in providing direction to a company.  Being strategic in nature, they don't provide enough detail to govern tactical decisions made by the corporate employees on a daily basis.

To answer this need, value-statements, and value-systems have come into vogue.  Many companies have value-statements to underscore their mission statements.

Just as some mission statements are more effective than others, some value-systems are more effective than others.

The simple approach to establishing corporate, department, or team values is to get everyone together in a room and have them suggest values the team should adopt.  Voting happens, and the group committs to their agree-upon values.

After one of these sessions, the group might come up with a list like:

• respect


• trust


• excellance


• high performance

This list is a start, but only representative of a one-dimentional value system.  These values, by themselves, realy don't project any context or weight.

A more effective approach would be a two-dimensional value system.  A two dimensional value-system provides a greater context fabric.  For example, you could say your group values:

• respect over cynicism


• trust over hope


• excellence over heroics


• high-performance over sub-optimization

These comparison value statements proved direction and context.  This represents a two-dimensional value system, and is more effective that a simple list of values.

A three-dimensional value system is a prioritized list of these comparison statements.  For example, you could say your group values these statements in this order:

1. trust over hope


2. excellence over heroics


3. high-performance over sub-optimization


4. respect over cynicism

This list shows that trust is the highest factor in inter-departmental dynamics.  It shows that excellence is more important than high-performance (so no cutting corners!), and that the group values trust, excellence, and high-performance more than respect.

Every group will have their own values and differences in priorioties, but putting a three-dimensional value-system in place with your team is a great step forward in building functional team cohesion.

Once in place, a reward-systems can be built around your value system to promote it' ectivness.

Mike J Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

I just finished reading Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, by Jim Collins.  This #1 bestseller is the best business development book I have ever read.  In fact--I would even say--I can recommend it with every fiber of my being.

Collins takes a team of 20 graduate students from the University of Colorado and dedicates roughly 15,000 hours of research to this book.

Collins's team explores why some good companies become great companies, and why the rest never do.   Their research subjects were companies that outperformed the stock market index by an average of seven times during a fifteen year span.  Their findings are novel and counter-intuitive.

The first major takeaway I got from reading this book is that great companies have learned to say "no."  They don't pursue opportunities that don't meet certain internal criteria.

The second takeaway is that achievements, although seemingly "sudden" when viewed by outside groups, are really a long set of disciplined decisions made over time by these companies.

The third takeaway is that leaders of these great companies were not magnanimous superstars, instead they consistently seemed to have a compelling modesty about them.

A forth takeaway is that these companies seemed to consistently put their best people on new opportunities, not on their biggest problems.

Another concept Collins introduces is the Hedgehog Concept.  This concept is that companies are most successful following opportunities that have three criteria:

1. The team or corporation has a deep passion for the subject matter of the opportunity.


2. The team feels they can become the best in the world at it.


3. The opportunity is in-line with what drives the corporation's economic engine.

I think I could write a twenty-page review about this book.  Let me just say you need to go and read it.  If you read any business-development book this year, read this one.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.comWith a forward by Zig Ziglar, John C. Maxwell's book titled The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is an assured home run.

Maxwell breaks down leadership into 21 categories.  He then goes to great lengths to explain each category and give real world examples.

He describes the progression of leadership by highlighting great leaders who have created momentum in others around them.  For example, he explains that early in Michael Jordan's basketball career, he relied heavily on his personal talent to win games.  But as he matured, he turned his attention more to being a leader and making the whole team play better.

Jordan is quoted in the book as saying, "That's what everybody looks at when I miss a game.  Can they win without me? ...Why doesn't anybody ask why or what it is I contribute that makes a difference?  I bet nobody would ever say they miss my leadership or my ability to make my teammates better."  Yet, that's what made him such a great teammate.

Some of Maxwell's principles are predictable and conventional, but some of them are quite novel.  I enjoyed reading about the Law of Magnetism and the Law of Connection.

The Law of Magnetism states that you are who you attract, and the Law of Connection states that you must touch people's hearts before they will trust you.

This book is a great reference for leaders in all stages of their career.  A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week bestseller, I highly recommend you buy it, read it, and consult it often.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com