Management

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Some Thoughts on Manipulation

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Recently I've got a question from a colleague: "Have you had a situation when somebody was trying to manipulate you  or your behavior? What can be the best way to stop/resist this sort of attitude? Stop any interaction with the person?" From my perspective manipulation, generally, has to aspects to it:

  1. Other person wants you to do something (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
  2. She wants to make you do it in a sort of "covert" way, which I would generally call a bad thing in professional environment.

When it comes to response to manipulation, all things being equal, I would have a conversation with a person saying something along the lines of "Hey, I've noticed that you try to trick me into something and don't like you doing that. If you need something from me, let's discuss, but don't try to trick me."

This kind of feedback serves two purposes: (a) letting other party know that you've noticed manipulation and don't like it (who does?); (b) showing a better way to do business with you. If a case is not helpless, this should help.

What do you do when somebody tries to manipulate you?

Metrics that mean

We all know this law coined by Elia Goldratt:

Tell me how you’ll measure me, and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave.

This cause-consequence relationship between incentive and action is very important for managers. As with many other things this can be applied on different levels. Consider the difference of measuring someone by number of oranges sold versus number of happy customers returning to the store to buy oranges.

I came across a great example of metric taken to the next level in post £24m School Can't Get Its WiFi Working by Fraser Speirs:

In my school, we aim to lose no more than five teaching hours per school year to computer failure.

Do you see how this metric not only prompts "correct" behavior, but also sets the goal? Metrics like this are less prone to "local optimum" problem when person compromises on quality and results in some other areas make up for particular target, because they do not control action itself (like, selling oranges), but instead control ultimate outcome of the action (like, happy customers).

Are you and your team starve to get more happy customers or try to sell more oranges?

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Weekend listening: a couple of interesting podcasts

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Now when my commute went from 10-20 mins to 30-40 mins in each direction I quickly burned the backlog of podcasts. I gave a try to some new and so far I like what I hear. Here they are:

What are some of your favorite podcasts?

Be reasonable

Be reasonable with your requests. Be reasonable with your responses. Human actions (at least, in professional and business fields) are mostly driven by reasons. People never (or very-very rarely) do something out of spontaneous wish at work.

Yes, you can have a spontaneous idea, but it, anyway, will serve some particular purpose. Idea tries to solve a problem, and the is the reason why you do that - you want right the wrong or make something better.

Often times in order to do what you want to accomplish, you will need to request something from your fellow colleague. Usually, you will need to have it done by certain deadline. This is where the interesting part begins.

You know exactly why you want something to be done by certain date or time. But are you sure your fellow colleague, from whom you request, comes to know that by reading your e-mail? Does he get why this needs to be done today? Is it in any way more important than what he is working on now? Unless he is a powerful mind-reader the answer to all such questions is "No!". E-mail just does not bear with itself enough of  the mental energy to discover all of that!

Do you want you request to be handled in the best possible way? I bet you do. So, be reasonable. Write you request in a best possible way. Explain why there is a need to do something and why deadline is such as it is. Do not send unreasonable requests!

Same line of thought applies to responses. And even if you receive an unreasonable request - there is a reason why it went out. Help the requestor. Ask him questions. Unreasonable response will just turn into a dead-end. Often quickly bricked up behind your back while you drive there.

Do your best to explain your reasons and understand reasons of others. If you are not sure if you were understood correctly - follow-up your e-mail with a call.

And be reasonable with what you write and what you say.

Developing software is not enough...

... someone has to be using it. Guys from 37signals got it right:

It feels great to be done with something on the programming side and then feeling free to move on to the next thing. We all do that at times. But it’s not really real until our users are able to enjoy it.

Way too often more attention is paid to the process of creating something than to the actual value of the result for others. The truth is that value is realized not at the moment the product is created and the more so not in the process of creation. Value is realized when the product is delivered and used.

Declaration of Interdependence which is going (hopefully) to drive the way we manage projects puts essential focus on delivery of value:

We increase return on investment by making continuous flow of value our focus

Like quality is everyone's business every day, so delivery of value should be.