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

Who ya gonna call?

You dial 411 when you need information. You dial 911 when you need help. But what if you don't need either of those things? What if all you really need is sympathy? After all, sometimes you just need to bitch about stuff. There should be something in between 411 and 911. I imagine the call would go like this:

Operator: "Hello, this is the operator."

You: "My life sucks. Nothing is working right."

Operator: "Oh, you poor dear..."

All joking aside, there is great value to this kind of service and, as a manager, you should provide it to your team. If for no other reason, it will help keep all the complaining in-house. But it will do more than keep your team out of trouble, it gives them a place to be heard. People like to be heard. The competent ones don't need you to do anything; they just need to get something off their chest.

Any given day, a team member will come into my office and just launch into something. I will interrupt them, tell them the hotline joke, and then ask them what kind of call are they making. Most times, they don't even realize that is ok to just complain. 

It also helps clarify, when they are only providing information (411) and don't need me to do anything just yet (911). Often, the sympathy call will point out a problem that hasn't gone critical, yet. I know to keep an eye on it, and use the time to work a solution.

This, of course, can be abused - so be sure to set boundaries. Some team members can be olympic-level complainers.

When I first thought of this sympathy call joke, I used 811 as the number that you would dial. It turns out a couple years ago, the Department of Transportation set it up as part of a public safety campaign, a national digger's hotline of sorts. (If you are curious: www.call811.com)

I almost changed the number I used in the joke, but I liked the idea that 811 was setup for your own protection and safety. So now, I work that little fact into the discussion to reinforce that complaining is ok, so long as you make the right call.

© Aron Ruthe, 2014

Blame the 23rd

The next time you fail, blame the twenty-third chromosome pair. If you have one less, you're a rabbit; one more and you're a potato. It is the twenty-third that makes you human. 

Or, at least, on a short list of life that includes humans. But even that short list can be quickly whittled down because most on it can't, or don't, live everywhere - or (more importantly) recover less well from the mistakes they make. And by recover, I mean you recover. The others need whole generations to adapt before they thrive.

You are human. You can live everywhere. You can because you adapt, within your lifetime.

You are supposed to make mistakes. You learn and change what you do because you can understand what your mistakes mean. Embrace your mistakes. You are the only earthling that can embrace them, to change, and prosper without waiting for another generation to figure it out. You can move on where the others would simply suffer or perish.

Analyzing staff, Part 3

In part 2 of this series, we looked at the Hammerstein Window, but that is not the only kind of window analysis out there and not the only one that can be used for analyzing staff.

Another useful window analysis is mapping staff where productivity of the employee is compared to the maintenance the employee requires from management. You can think of maintenance as the amount of management time needed for the employee or the amount of attention the employee demands. Productivity is the desired output of the employee measured as quantity, quality, or both. With window analysis, these factors are measured with a simple relative high or low metric. Together they represent a classic cost-benefit analysis, or CBA window, but applied to your staff. The cost is maintenance, the benefit is productivity.

In the low maintenance/high productivity window pane is the dream employee. They are likely the same core staff described in the Hammerstein window - but not necessarily. Hammerstein speaks to work-ethic - an inherent trait in the employee - but here, maintenance is measured as effort supplied by you, the supervisor.

The high maintenance/low productivity pane describes the employee that needs to be drummed out of you organization or are on the path of self destruction. You need to make book on their behavior early, or better yet, use what little productivity they have to get them to self-document their problems. When it comes time to drop the axe, you simply print out their file and present it to human resources.

The low/low's are your morale killers; never making enough of a problem to get taken out and barely doing anything at all. This group gets nothing but simple routine assignments. Your dream employees can help you break the work down into the smaller tasks that you will assign to this grumbling mass.

The high/high's are the "Dirty Harry's". They walk a thin line, often cross it, and are constantly getting into trouble. They are hard to control and very effective, but - wow, do they leave a mess behind! When possible, give some of the clean up work to the self-destructor. It will likely set them off into another round of self-documenting their awful performance.

Some say you should team your dream employees with your morale killers - hoping that these low productivity types will be inspired by the higher productivity stars. I think that is a good way to drag down your dream employees and turn your morale killers into the higher maintenance version of their low productivity selves. Let your dream employees run free of such hindrances. In fact, rarely is it a good idea to team any of these groups. It is best to keep them compartmentalized until you can reform them one-by-one and let them join the ranks of the dream team, move on, blow up, or fade away.

Whether it is productivity, skill level, maintenance, or willingness being analyzed - your job as a supervisor depends on your power to obtain a high performing team. Your ability to attract and retain good people will require more than staffing analysis. You need the tools to motivate and coach the staff you have, as well as the resources and support to make changes when motivation and coaching are not enough.

Window analysis can provide valuable insights with their analytical mashups. What key attributes, in a window analysis, illuminate your core challenges?

-AR

© Aron Ruthe, 2014