Rule #1: Never piss off the powerful

You should never piss off a powerful person. Anger is a formidable emotion and can be an instant motivator. But it's like tinkering with explosives; if you're not an expert, you'll get your head blown off.

When I was a consultant, I learned that the most powerful person is the client. The client is the source of your company’s revenue. If you piss off the client, you jeopardize that lifeline - not just yours, but every one of your colleagues that also supports that client. That is a lot of mortgage payments to put at risk.

If you anger the client, the decision on “what to do about you” is taken out of your supervisor’s hands. It won't matter how well your supervisor liked you or how talented you are. If the work is not there, or the client won’t work with you, you are - at best - an expense with no matching revenue. At worst, you are a liability for the firm.

As a government employee, power is diluted over several stakeholders. Elected officials, congressional staff, political appointees, executive leadership, constituents of your agency mission, and watch-dog organizations - each of these have a bit of power that collectively make up the equivalent of private industry’s client. Some have more power than others and it is different in each mission space. In addition, there are legal constraints and processes that provide some protection for government employees from the negative impacts of rash action.

Despite this, angering a powerful person is still a significant hazard. If you let your professionalism down, even if it is worn down, the offense you risk giving can result in you being assigned to the crappiest post, where you will live out your career in lonely misery. On top of that, you may never learn who was offended or who gave the order that sent your career into oblivion.

If you don’t know who the powerful is, assume everyone is powerful and treat them accordingly. If you don’t know who the client is, treat everyone as if they are the client.

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2015

thiasuswake.blogspot.com

Rule #2: Never build yourself up by tearing someone else down

You should never build yourself up by tearing someone else down. Your intent may be honorable, or your motivation may be deep rooted in a strong sense of justice - indeed, it takes phenomenal courage to be a whistleblower - however, if you think of this primarily as a means to advance yourself, you are sorely wrong.

Many times I have heard the mantra of the employee who came to tell me of the bad acts of one of their teammates. Clearly, they thought that not only would I immediately act on it, but that I would also be grateful for their report. Each was shocked when I spent the rest of the meeting discussing the actions they could have taken before bringing it to me. It is a hard lesson in what teamwork really means.

Pushing everyone else down, is not an act that raises you up. You merely remain standing over those you have injured; and when they find out that it was you that did it, they will resent you for it. You should never assume it won't get back to them. It always does. And, consider this: you never know who they will grow up to be. If they become the boss, you are screwed. Enemies have long memories.

In government employment, where work is often thankless and compensation is highly regulated, the one who advances without obvious and credible good reason is often assessed by the rest with a chorus of “why him and not me?” Resentment is a hazard, and left untreated, will develop into the sport of "taking 'em down."

But it’s not just government employment that has difficulty with this rule: politicians, comedians, and lawyers are all rewarded for ignoring it.

However, if you work with those who often act badly, it is difficult to NOT do onto others as they do onto you. But the truth is, you don’t have to "take someone out" because people take themselves out. Those who advance without the training, without being tested, now have power they wield recklessly. They will piss off the powerful eventually.

This is the hardest rule. It is not enough for you to report that you witnessed something wrong, you have to help your teammate do the right thing. Do all you can, and only after that - and to protect the team, the boss, and the mission - do you escalate. If you don't know how to do all that, ask the boss for advice. You're not a rat if you ask what you can do to help.

Taking the high road is hard on your knees, but the view is worth it.

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2015

thiasuswake.blogspot.com

Rule #3: Always appear to be willing and able

You should always appear to be willing and able. The operative word is "appear." Capable people in government and industry are consistently approached with new work. Good work attracts more work, but they wouldn't get that reputation if they took on every task or project that came along. Some of those jobs are time-wasters and career-killers.

So how do you avoid the bad jobs and still be considered for the good ones?

When I was a contractor, my boss used to say, "Never turn down billable work." The implication was that there will always be tasks that are not related to revenue generation. When my time could be charged to a contract, I was encouraged to take on those billable assignments without checking with her first. But when it came to the other kind, she would caution, "whoever is looking to task you, don't turn them down. Let me do it.” In government employment, “billable work” is not an applicable term; you have core duties and collateral assignments. Whatever the label, the technique is the same.

The requester should always be under the impression that you have the skills and willingness to take on the assignment, but it is your supervisor that has to approve and assign new work. This sets up your supervisor, not you, to be the bad guy. But guess what? That's their job. They make the assignments and prioritize the ongoing work. They are the gatekeepers to your skills.

The key is to work out a system in advance with your supervisor.

DON'T SAY: "Let me check with my supervisor."

DO SAY: "You have to check with my supervisor."

What's the difference? In the first version, you are still the person who ultimately says "no" - even though you may only be the messenger.

If you use the second method, the requester has to do the work of getting the assignment cleared with your chain-of-command. After all, you are busy with a priority assignment, remember? As a bonus, the lazy requester might give up, especially if they know their request is hard to justify. Some problems do just go away.

Sometimes the requester is as industrious as you are. For this, you need to bake in a signal that your supervisor will recognize, so the two of you have a chance to talk about the crappy inbound request. For instance, you could use the same phrase with the requester, "My supervisor has me working a top priority project that I am not allowed to put aside ..." Then when the requester goes to your supervisor and tells them what you said, they will respond with, “Oh right, that project is a high priority, but let me see how far we are with that assignment and I'll see what we can do about yours."

Time is purchased. Now the two of you can talk about the new horribleness coming your way. Perhaps it can be deflected, changed, reduced, or killed off completely. Your supervisor may have to play this role too, kicking the request further up the chain-of-command, but they will probably need your help explaining why the request is a dog.

There may be unrecognized forces at play and you end up doing the work anyway, but you and your supervisor (perhaps the whole team) will learn this and be better equipped next time.

Your success, your survival, depends as much on the perception of your willingness as it does on the facts of your accomplishments.

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2015

thiasuswake.blogspot.com

Rule #4: Always, No Surprises

Some people think surprises are fun, I'm definitely not one of those people.  I think it's better to know than not know and there are ways to make sure you learn things at the right time.

People don’t like to feel stupid. They don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, but they definitely don’t want to be the dumbest. The dumbest people get the worst deal.

One way people feel stupid is when they are confronted with information they could have or should have known earlier. It's embarrassing to be unprepared, to look stupid. They were surprised by something that should not have been surprising.

If that person is your boss and you had the needed information, things are going to get ugly. The boss is responsible for managing you and your peers. If they are surprised by a development related to one of your assignments, and they did not learn it from you, it appears as though they are not managing well. It's not always written in your job description, but it is always a good idea to keep the boss up to date. When you fail to keep the boss up to date it hurts their leadership, it hurts the team, it hurts you.

Don't let your boss be surprised. Your boss should learn it from you before they learn it from anyone else.

Although this is the fourth rule, it could be the only rule - if all issues could be anticipated. All the previous rules are really special guidance when there is not enough time or opportunity to follow this one. If you remember only one rule, it's this one. Understanding and following this rule is a good way to avoid breaking the other rules.

There are lots of ways of being smart. A good one is not to be surprised.

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2015

thiasuswake.blogspot.com

Better to know than not know

It's always better to know a thing than to not know it. That's why there is a popular saying about those who don't learn from history. As you probably have guessed, I'm not a believer in "ignorance is bliss."

However, once you know something you can't unknow it, at least not without experiencing some form of cognitive trauma. Almost no one wants that.

Certain information, once learned, must be acted on, regardless if the learner is ready for it or not. When your subordinate comes to you and says, "I don't want you to do anything, but you should know...", whatever comes next will put you in a bind. It may only be awkward, but in the extreme, you could find yourself in front of the judge answering the question, "once you learned this, please explain to the court, what did you do next?"

Skilled leaders manage how they come to know things. They hone an environment where they learn about situations as they develop, thus buying them time to work a solution.

The skilled leader has created a place and time where the helpful subordinate can complain before something becomes an unavoidable fact. (Who ya gonna call?)

They will not turn away the employee that is about to rat out their colleague, because this is a teaching opportunity (Rule #2), or that employee will be intercepted by a diverse inner circle of advisers. Its diversity helps the timid watcher by offering a choice of who they feel is approachable when they don't want to go on record with the boss.

The inner circle can triage these issues, validate assertions, keeping the skilled leader appraised as appropriate, allowing for decisions to be mapped and contingencies planned. The skilled leader can then be nimble and decisive when s/he learns the facts. (Got Troika?)

These techniques will help you manage outcomes and maximize the choices for your team's success.

Lastly, don't confuse this with the political technique called "plausible deniability"; although the same skills are required ... so I won't blame you if you did.

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2015

thiasuswake.blogspot.com

Got Troika?

The word, troika, is Russian for "group of three" and "The Troika" was the collective nickname for President Reagan's advisors: Baker, Meese, and Deaver. The monicker was an ironic wink to the famously anti-soviet union agenda of his administration. (Take note, hipsters.)

On one of my early assignments in government, I got together with two of my colleagues. The three of us got along great and shared a great deal of respect for our manager. So, we made a pact to advise and generally protect this manager we had in common. We jokingly referred to ourselves as the "Troy-ka." His first name was Troy and he happened to be a republican, so he got a kick out of it too.

We shared office gossip (what industry calls "business intelligence"), mistakes (what industry calls "lessons learned"), and the lies we told to get out of trouble (what industry calls "marketing"). Mostly, it was a safe zone where we had a lot of laughs with the professional filter off. It totally worked, each of us got promoted, and we accomplished some really cool things.

Looking back, the jobs I hated were the ones where I did not have, or was not part of, a troika. As I progressed in my career, I strove to recreate this environment for both my respected leader and for myself. Along the way, I found ways to improve it.

The key enhancement is the diversity of the group to ensure the respected leader gets a good variety of advice. It was most important to make sure it included people who thought differently than the others did. The simplest way to do this is to seek out personalities who have different sex, age, and backgrounds from each other, yet has enough chemistry that communication works and does not become part of the problem. Honest and effective communication in your troika, who think differently but are not completely different, will get you the best and most direct advice.

The diversity has a side benefit. It provides direct reports with a choice of who they consider to be more approachable when they are unsure if their concern is boss-worthy. The meek may have an earthy inheritance, but confronting the boss may not be part of their ambition. However, be careful not to let your troika fully insulate you, intentionally or otherwise. Reagan's Troika had the criticism that it created a bubble for the President. The Troy-ka did this intentionally, it was part of our verbal charter, but long term it is a hazard.

How to mitigate this problem? Answer: watch mafia movies. (you should do this anyway.) There's a pattern to observe in the famous work of Francis Ford Coppola (Puzo for you book reading types). "The Godfather" had a troika, of sorts.

In the Godfather novel and movies, Vito Corleone had two partners, Clemenza and Tessio. When he took over the lead of the crime group, he kept Clemenza close and set up Tessio in Brooklyn (to prevent them from conspiring against him) and of course, he had a consigliere in Tom Hagen. Three makes troika. If you watched the movies or read the book, you know things got messy and the analogy breaks down quickly. If you think I just ruined the movie for you, it wasn't personal, it's just business.

You may not have a staffing inventory that allows for two deputies and a councillor without portfolio. Indeed, paranoia may not be enough of a concern to warrant extreme separation of your deputies. If paranoia is your main driver, this article is probably not going to be helpful anyway. The point is to have a fundamentally different interaction with at least one member of your troika.

Having at least one member of your troika outside your day-to-day, will force you to recite and thus hear your own description of your trials and troubles - which alone is helpful - but will also be that sanity check (paranoia again) that could be missing in everyday life. The outside adviser role is best played by your mentor, because they likely have a different job anyway.

It is not just the leader who benefits from this arrangement, the whole team succeeds. Everyone in the original “Troy-ka” earned a promotion based on the team’s accomplishments. Each member of a troika should benefit for such services; after all... we are not Communists.

-AR
© Aron Ruthe, 2015
thiasuswake.blogspot.com

How to explain IT to lawyers

Recently I was asked to explain, in plain language, the size of a certain data set that was several terabytes as measured in disk space. I was not allowed to simply state that a byte was a character, a kilobyte a thousand characters, a megabyte a million, a gigabyte a billion, and a terabyte a trillion. This was not plain enough. 

So, I couldn't use the direct approach. After all, if you read this whole article, you will have read about 2,000 characters and it would be 135 kilobytes in size, but that really doesn’t help comprehend what the 7.3 billion copies of this article would look like (it would be a 471 mile-high stack of paper). I'd be surprised if this article was read more than once anyway. 

Forget characters, bytes, and colossal stacks of articles, I had to use seconds instead. (As in, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, … not helpings of a meal). This is how I explained it:

One thousand seconds is over 16 minutes (a KiloSecond). According to Andy Warhol, everyone will be famous for 900 seconds. One million seconds is more than 11 and a half days (a MegaSecond), but one billion seconds (GigaSecond) is nearly 32 years. That's a big jump, but just enough time for one generation to grow up and produce another generation. 

A human life span is typically two and a half billion seconds, unless you are River Phoenix who got way less than one billion, and the oldest lifetime claim is 127 years of age, which means they made it to only 4 billion seconds. Even human life spans don't get you into the trillion neighborhood. 

Imagine this: one trillion seconds (a TeraSecond) is over 31 millennia - a millennium is a thousand years - the year 2000 marked the year that ended the 2nd millennium in the common era. As I write this, there have been about 63 billion seconds so far in the common era, give or take a few.  

So, going back to the life of Jesus is not enough seconds ago, not even close to a tera-second. Even with this conversion, the numbers are too big to think about. The oldest written language dates to 3200 BCE, although Egyptian glyphs date to 3400 BCE, still only hundreds of billions of seconds ago.

The practice of farming is arguably about 12,000 years old, which is not even half a trillion seconds ago. You have to go back to the stone age - before words, before farming, to a time when the human population was just expanding enough to no longer be considered an endangered species - to count enough seconds to add up to a trillion. From cave man to modern man, just a TeraSecond, to get 900 seconds of fame each.

-AR
© Aron Ruthe, 2015

It's Not What You Know

It's not what you know. It's not who you know. It is what you know about who you know that counts. How well do you know the people you have to motivate, influence, or persuade? 

I have had countless meetings with different industry representatives who have done one of two things: dropped names or dropped facts.  Rarely, did they do this with any sense if either were important to me. If they dropped both, almost never did the "name" relate to the "fact."

Why it's not who you know: 

Don’t drop names. I know why you do it. Having mutual friends can be a device to build trust - if done in context and in moderation. I had one guy go through twelve names before he stumbled on one I knew. I didn't tell him what I thought of our "mutual friend." If he had done his homework, he never would have mentioned that joker in my office. 

If you must mention a name - for instance, you want to shorten your explanation and it would be easier if I was already familiar with their work - make sure you establish that context. Otherwise, it looks like you are just bragging that you know someone I don't. Besides, it's all I can do to keep up with my own crap. I don't have time to track other people's crap. 

It is never good to just name drop. You have to remember what mattered to the person you know and why that matters to me. Do they have a similar problem which has the same solution that I would need? Is the person with the problem/solution someone I would want to know more about?

Why it's not what you know: 

Being smart is not enough. You could be a brainiac with a triple PhD, but if you don't know where I am, what motivates me, or what my "care-abouts" are, all those smarts are wasted. Don't show me your super widget and ask what "my challenges are" and if I think your thingy can solve them. Do your homework, read my website, review recent congressional testimony by my leadership - my problems, my challenges, the context you need is usually out there. I probably wrote some of it myself. I certainly reviewed and cleared a lot of it. If my problem was not specifically, or even remotely, addressed in your demonstration or pitch, you just wasted everyone's time. 

You, at least, have to meet me halfway. Explain why the scenario you are about to use is like, or similar to, my problem. Don't expect me to have the epiphany. If you can’t work it in, skip the demonstration and ask for an informational meeting where I can answer questions about what you read on the website, or in the testimony, etc. 

It's what you know about who you know:

If you know what matters to people, it is easier to connect with them and get them to help with your agenda. The people you know, who know me, can help you understand me and what I have going. Ask them what I care about, what do I not care about. If they don't know, ask them who does know. If there is one thing everyone likes to do, it is talking about other people. 

By the way, remember the serial name-dropper that I mentioned earlier? I ended up giving him a list of names of people who knew me and were out in the industry crowd. I recommended that he could contact one of them and perhaps learn what he needed to know. He instead brought one to the followup meeting and watched me talk to him. (sigh).

I've used the example of the typical vendor capabilities brief, but this is true of your teammates, employees, and your leadership too. If you know what they care about it is easier to motivate them. 

If you can master this, you are one step closer to the secret to getting things done in government.  

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2015