Darrin Johnson's Weblog: Need for speed...

“Never take a person's dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.” - Frank Barron

Recently a colleague made a comment to the effect that "We didn't layoff the person, we just eliminated their position" which got me to reflect on all too frequent occurrence of RIFs - reduction in force. We see it in the headlines, we hear it from friends and family, we see it in our own companies and sometimes we are affected directly. It is most often driven by economic necessity and sometimes due to a shift in corporate strategy or investment. Corporate retrenchment is a reality that has become all too real.

The reality of RIFs also comes with the challenge of needing to deal with the trauma of impacting someone's life and/or being impacted which inevitably leads to feelings of guilt, disbelief, fear, anger, frustration, relief, etc. Also the more often it occurs, the stronger the desire to insulate oneself from the trauma and emotions. Having lived through more than 20 RIFs in my 16+ year career, I feel it is very important to not be insulated and go through the cycle of loss each and every time.

Becoming desensitized to the trauma can have serious consequences. First on an emotional level bottling up the issues can have a longer term emotional impact. Second it results in avoiding contingency planning especially for ones own career. Third, the strategic and investment decisions aren't guided by the lessons learned. Most importantly it makes it too easy to diminish the real impact on the individual(s) being laid off. The euphemistic comment made by the colleague might make it easier accept the action but diminishes the impact on the individual and in some sense dehumanizes them.

As an individual, and especially as a manager, it is critical to understand the impact of a RIF on an individual including their career, livelihood, family, etc. to at the very least empathize and hopefully be supportive in whatever way possible. Giving them the understanding and respect they deserve is the least I can do to preserve their dignity.

As a manager it is far too easy to focus on "meeting the numbers" -- finishing up that critical presentation, making sure every engineer is delivering on their deadlines, overcoming the never ending stream of email or voicemail, confronting customer escalations, squeezing in that last meeting of the day, etc. Employee morale all too often becomes an after thought or simply not a thought at all with the weight of the "world" on our management shoulders. However in my experience sacrificing the investment in the morale of employees is a significant impediment to "meeting the numbers" and diminishes the perceived and real value of managers. Additionally bad morale has a tendency to spread even though only one person started with an issue.

Simply put, managers can't solve all the issues that can cause morale problems -- bad economic conditions, corporate layoffs, death in a family, etc. However we can and should do what we can within the areas that can be influenced, often times needing to be a bit creative. There are numerous ways to help morale -- say "Great job" on a job well done, wish somebody a Happy Birthday, comment on their blog/microblog, ask them how their family is doing, learn about what interests them beyond working, give them a day (or more) off in recognition of a major achievement, buy them lunch, publicly recognize their achievements, be flexible on hours of work or working from home, wander the halls (or call them up) to have informal chats, reduce the number of meetings, etc. The great thing is that for the most part these are zero cost efforts, can be done even if there isn't a morale issue, and are simply good management practices.

“The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.” -- Dwight D Eisenhower.

I was recently reminded of the importance of helping employees to set their priorities. I am not talking about how to prioritize specific work or deliverables, but more general life priorities which often get lost in the drive to deliver, survive life events, etc. The issue of life priorities has recently arisen on several fronts - general economic pressures, family members dying, babies being born, and generally working too hard.

The priorities are simple - self first, family second and work third - in that order. Although these priorities can be switched it is in my experience that there is a price to be paid, and a potentially high one at that. Nobody on their death bed will ever say "I should have worked more" or "I should have spent less time with my kids." Barack Obama did the right thing to visit his grandmother before she died. I did the same thing recently.

There is a real benefit for me as a manager and benefit to company. Employees who share these priorities tend to have better morale, tend to work hard, and are much more receptive to stepping up to extraordinary challenges. Having work-life balance in ones life and family makes it much easier to achieve balance at work and in turn be a more valuable employee.

W. Edwards Deming has been quoted as saying, "Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures." I would like to propose the corollary of "Don't fear figures because they may be wrong." Often it seems we are presented with facts, figures, metrics, etc. which we automatically assume they are accurate and (re)act accordingly. However there are some basic questions that should be asked to critically analyze such data: What was the methodology used to generate the numbers?, Is the underlying data reliable that was used to generate the numbers (e.g. bad data in, bad data out)?, Does the intent of the numbers match up with the data?, etc. Understanding the intent of the numbers is particularly important because it can have a direct impact on both the methodology and the accuracy of the underlying data.

For example, bug metrics are often used to imply the quality of a product from a customer perspective. However in reality most bug databases include bugs that will never been seen by customers or have bugs that are seen by a repeated number of customers. When looking at the data it is important ask the question of whether or not the former should be excluded and the later should be given extra significance. This is particularly important for the downstream use of the data including prioritizing and resourcing which bugs to work on. A priority 2 hit by several customers should probably get resourced before a priority 1 bug that a customer is unlikely to ever see. Again the key is to always have a critical eye for any facts, figures, metrics, etc. that come your way because through validating them you will make better decisions.

I recently came across the term "heterarchy." The contemporary definition is "a form of institutional organization based on distributed intelligence and collaborative decisions rather than hierarchical structures. A heterarchy is an organizational structure resembling a network rather than the top-down tree of a hierarchy (www.yourdictionary.com)." Within a heterarchy the decision-making (e.g. power and authority) is distributed horizontally rather than vertically in a hierarchal organization. Some would consider a heterarchy to be the opposite of hierarchy but generally a hierarchical organization is constructed of vertically connected heterarchical elements with each of the elements having bounded decision-making authority (wikipedia.org).

Can a pure heterarchy (e.g. lacking the hierarchical framework) exist in a corporate environment? Or more importantly what conditions need to exist to make it successful without the loss of efficiency? If it can be made to work, it would seem that there is a tremendous value in leveraging this type organizational structure as a means to adapt to the often often dynamic nature of some business environments. Having the ability to dynamically connect a network of experts, empowering them to make the decisions, delivering on the objective(s) and then dissolving the organization for reuse for the next objectives seems like a powerful tool. Do any of you have pointers or anecdotal information where heterachical structures have worked?

Recently I have encountered a phenomenon that I thought was reserved for actors.....being typecast. In this case being typecast as "just a manager" with the perception that once one becomes a people manager they have a lobotomy that limits their ability to function beyond certain boundaries. Those boundaries of course are not well defined but seem to be centered around the common tactical managerial tasks of status reports, performance reviews, project management, etc. Being "just a manager" seems to preclude having technical depth, contributing to the strategic direction, or having a broader understanding of technology or business in which we work. Having been a people manager for nearly a decade, I have prided myself on trying to master both the classic skills of a people manager as well as going beyond those boundaries to leverage my experience as a scientist, engineer and business person to add greater value to my team/organization/company and for my own personal fulfillment.

Fortunately the typecasting is the exception, not the norm, and has helped me to reflect on what is important to me and what I think should be important for my fellow managers. Don't limit yourself to being "just a manager" and take it upon yourself to define your own boundaries. Take on the role of being a strategist, technologist, leader, business person, etc. if only for your own personal fulfillment. Take pride in breaking the typecast by being able to add to your own credits by being a scientist, author, change agent, entrepreneur, technologist, inventor, visionary, etc.

Change - To undergo transformation or transition.

In my experience, management is laregly about managing "change" rather than managing people. Also leadership is largely about driving "change" by leading people in a certain direction. Sun has seen a rather large number of high profile transitions:

• John Loiacano leaving his roll as EVP of Software
• Scott changing his role at Sun
• Jonathan becoming CEO
• Rich Green rejoining Sun as EVP of Software

The transitions have also been closer to home losing a couple of key senior engineers and a manager, but also gaining a great new college hire and some senior engineers. Some may lament at losing good engineers or revel in gaining new ones or even express frustration that there is just to much change. I however believe that change is a vital element of progress and success (however you define it) is result of embracing that change.

The "I Ching" has a quote (loosely translated) - "Before the beginning of brilliance, there must be Chaos." I have found this to be very accurate. Through the transitions outlined above I have seen junior engineers step up deliver as if they were seasoned engineers, senior engineers come to life to become leaders influencing not only their group but a much broader organization, and lastly I have seen myself step up to take on roles that I had never really considered.
At the heart of change appears to be opportunity.

Although there is some question about the authenticity of the quote it is still interesting from a management or organizational behavior perspective:

"We trained hard, but it seemed that everytime we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."

Petronius Arbiter (210 B.C.)

Reorganizing is often done for many reasons including new leadership, failing to meet objectives, attempting to increase efficiency, eliminating redundancy, performance management, latest management fad, etc. Sometimes the reorganization is driven by a desire to create a "matrix", "flat", "functional", "hiearchical", "hybrid", etc. organizational structures.

To acheive a successful reorganization I think a fundamental question always needs to be asked..."What problem(s) need to be solved?" Then is it is paramount to understand what is the root cause of the problem. This is probably one of the hardest steps because it often takes time, requires effective measurement ("If you don't measure it, you can't improve it."), and often results in redefinition of the what the problem really is. The other challenge in understanding the need for reorginization is to validate the assumptions being made. Once it is understood "where the organization is coming from" it makes it far easier to understand where it needs to go.

Where the organization needs to go is often very subjective with numerous organizaitonal structures that can accomplish the goal. However regardless of which structure is choosen it is essential to evaluate progress towards the goal(s) of the new structure. All to often the "fire and forget" approach is taken resulting in a "rinse and repeat" every 6 to 12 months. It is far easier to make slight course changes as the reorganization is occuring rather than having to reorganized the reorganized organizations.

The cliche "It's not what you know, but who you know." seems to be more relevant in the ever increasingly connected world with web tools such as Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc. becoming ever more popular. Regardless of the tools available, "social networking" is becoming ever more important and especially given the potential of the "social capital" gained by having an extensive network. Social capital is simply the resources available in and through social (business and personal) networks including information, ideas, leads, business opportunities, power, influence, support, trust, etc. Some people have also called these shared assets.

There are those who believe in the myth of individualism in which everyone succeeds or fails on the basis of an individuals own abilties and efforts. However research, and certainly my own experience, shows that having a strong social network (and the corresponding social capital) increases the chance of getting a job, pay and promotion, influence and effectiveness, etc.

People are often surprised when the spend a little time thinking about who is in their network including family, friends, team members, employees, managers, partners, customers, admins, etc. Looking at who you interact with frequently, who are you dependent on, who is dependent on you, and who you just like hanging out with is another way to generate the list. Finally and most importantly thinking about who should be part of your network and pursuing those connections will even further expand the social network.

If you want to read more on the topic I can recommend "Achieving Success Through Social Capital" by Wayne Baker.