Let’s Do Lunch…..Leadership and Career Growth in Silicon Valley

Leadership is a double edged sword.  On the one hand, leaders who are too controlling make their people feel uncomfortable making decisions.  On the other hand, leaders who don’t provide enough guidance create a culture that fosters inconsistency and lacks goals.  Both extremes cause passive aggressive behaviors that break down corporate culture and damage trust.  Leaders need to establish the “guide rails” for their teams to operate within but allow enough flexibility for them to make decisions.  They also have to trust their people to make good choices.  This also applies between organizations.  Teams have to trust one another to meet clearly defined expectations and must follow up to hold one another accountable.  This balancing act is why leadership is so tough.  You have to know that organizational goals are being met but people have to be able to help define their destiny.

A Silicon Valley company that I worked in had a unique approach to inter-organizational collaboration.  Groups would write policy documents and load them into the document control system.  They would then start referring to the documents as if they were long established and agreed upon rules.  There was no socialization of these policies before they were enforced. People soon realized that processes and policies had no force of governance and that there was no authority for these roles so they were ignored.  The general belief around the company was that “processes” were arbitrary and that policies in general were mere guidelines that could be ignored.  This created further distrust across organizations.

One dangerous symptom of corporate passive aggression is that decisions don’t get made at all.  Meet after meeting is scheduled to “discuss” what needs to be done but nobody is empowered to make policy or operational changes.  They either fear making a decision counter to the overbearing leader or afraid that they’re on their own in the decision and will be blamed if it goes wrong.  Either way, the product is usually a Powerpoint slide deck that is created and people are encouraged to follow the “recommendation”.  Often there is no leader expressing ownership or driving the outcome.

Passive aggressive cultures are frustrating and demoralizing.  Leaders have to understand what type of culture that their style creates and manage it closely.  Breaking passive aggressive habits are difficult but not impossible.  You have to step back and clearly define expectations; what do you need from others and what do you deliver and to whom.  From there responsibility will grow.  It takes patience to change organizational culture, more than most people will allow for, and don’t let detractors tell you otherwise.  There’s no magic button you can press, it takes perseverance and hard work.

I watch several blogs because they provide outstanding insights.  All of them post with sporadic frequency but I was concerned when Ed Batista stopped posting for over a month on his blog “Executive Coaching and Change Management”.  I started to worry about his health or was afraid that he’d lost interest.  Many blog entries  I’ve read emphasized the importance of frequent postings to ensure readership.  I figured this was kind of a rule for blogs so something must have happened to Ed.  I sent him an email and he was kind enough to respond.  He said that he was fine and that he had given himself permission to take a break.  He also gave me a link to an article providing a very different view of blog value.  This posting really changed the way that I looked at Blogging.

I started this blog almost on a dare.  I was eating dinner with a couple buddies and they were telling me how Web 2.0 has changed the face of the internet.  They enthusiastically rhapsodized about all web denizens being content contributors and that people were making fortunes from their blogs. My skepticism was scoffed at and they authoritatively quoted “Wikinomics”.   I told them that I would try an experiment by creating a blog and using it as almost a diary of issues that I run into in my work life to see if I can develop a community and product some income.  I committed to one article a week and was on my way.  The thing that I noticed was that, despite some significant traffic, I have only had about 30 comments in 7 months (and almost no income from the AdSense and the Amazon affiliate program).  You may have noticed that I’ve asked for input in several articles but they haven’t generated many public comments (yes, I know, you’ve emailed, which I have appreciated, but that doesn’t count).  After reading the article that Ed sent to me I realized that my whole mindset towards blogging was “oh, so Web 1.0″.

Take a look at Eric Kintz’s article “Why Blogging Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore”.  There are a couple of important messages in this article that differentiate a blog from a magazine.  First, its about the content.  Bloggers need to write when the muse hits them, not because they have a schedule.  There is no real money in blogging that I can see.  Speaking for myself, the real value is that it has become a public therapy session and I’ve received some interesting emails (notice I say emails and not comments).  Web 2.0 aficionados use RSS feeds that notify them of any updates (There are many, if you’re not using any I might recommend netvibe.com because of simplicity).  The net is now about the right information at the right time with immediate and personal contact.  That might be why I get the emails instead of comments.

The experience with a fellow blogger really helped me understand the evolution of the net as a social and communication tool.  Web 2.0 is clearly about immediate and direct access to people and information.  But, more importantly, content creators must establish a level of credibility.  They have to define their goals for communication and stay true to those goals.  Its easy to get caught up in the old paradigms of scheduled delivery, but on the net (for no revenue) the tools notify readers of new material so they don’t have to keep checking.  The flip side of the right information at the right time is also a benefit to content producers.  Users are notified when our thoughts are available and they can look at only what interests them.  I just wish that people felt more free with their ideas in return.  I would love the comments section of my articles to be more of an exchange of ideas.  Alas, as I predicted at that fateful dinner, 99% of those on the net are lurkers.  Lurk on, at least I get a note now and then.

I was asking a friend for advice about situations at work and he asked me if I journal-ed (as if it were a verb!)  I told him I’d tried a few times to put things down on paper but that I’d never really been able to maintain the habit.  He asked me what time of day I had set aside for this activity.  “Evening, right before I went home from work,” was my response.  He said, “so, the only thing standing between you and scotch was an optional task that you hadn’t established was important.  How did that work for you?”  Obviously it didn’t.  He recommended that I try to journal every morning as the first thing I do when I get to the office.  My friend said that if I would take the time to write out my thoughts, it would be a creative way to work through ideas and that the understanding of my business and personal life would be much clearer.  Sounded like hokum to me but I gave it a try and what a difference it has made in my ability to handle both tactical and strategic issues.  He suggested that I use my blog subjects as a place to start to provide goals.

I have advocated in many blog posts and personal coaching that if you don’t write it down it doesn’t exist.  I figured that I’d better walk the walk.  First thing in the morning when I get to work I spend 10 to 15 minutes just typing.  I virtually “vomit” on paper.  I write whatever comes to mind.  Its been 4 months and I’ve only missed a couple of days.  The real value that I find in this activity is that my professional conversations are crisper.  The act of writing down (and through) my thoughts, I organize what I’m thinking into a story that fits together and can be understood more clearly.

Shortly after I began to write a daily journal, Ed Batista posted on the concept of journaling (there it is, a verb again.  For shame).  He says that “journaling 1) compels us to access our memories of an experience, 2) creates another, more recent memory of that experience, and 3) creates a physical record of those memories to which we can return in the future.”  I think these are valid, but for me its just the act of taking the time to systemically think through issues and put them into words.  I find that after I write out situations I have a better grasp of what I need to know and what I already understand.  Give it a try.  make sure that you have some “alone time” to just write (or type) whatever is in your head for a few minutes each day.  Make sure that you’re fresh and that this is the first, not the last thing that you do.  You’ll be amazed at how much you come to rely on this as a tool.

Yesterday I sat down and started to write out the different job functions I hear about in my company and in others.  We give complicated and impressive sounding titles to people but descriptions often create more confusion than value.  Sure, the titles sound impressive, until someone has to figure out what they actually do. The most commonly coined title includes the word “operations”.  People place that title on a function because it is somewhat ambiguous and makes it easy to make false assumptions about actual deliverables.  Eventually the role has to be defined or it cheats people of distinct goals and confuses those that might expect specific outcomes based upon the title.  Clarity is very important in the business world for efficiency as well as consistency.

Words count.  People need to understand very clearly what a business leader means and expects.  Without this crispness, expectations are misunderstood and not met.  A leader’s primary role is to help understand what the company and the customer’s expect of an organization and to accurately communicate that definition so customers and internal colleagues know what to expect from people. It also provides those in the organization an understanding of what they must accomplish.

I was asked to lead an organization that had a poor reputation and no clear direction.  The first thing that we did was to define our corporate function and the deliverables that define the value of the organization.  We made it very simple, narrowing it down to 4 specific deliverables that were crisply defined.  It was difficult to measure all 4 deliverables but 2 were clear cut and we felt our way through the other 2 until it became more clear.  Once we started to communicate this unambiguous role and supporting deliverables other organizations began to understand the role and it was much easier to communicate what we do and don’t do.  The organization’s reputation improved fairly quickly.

Larger companies are notorious for using, what I refer to as, “grown up” words to label job titles or organizations.  Oh, they sound sophisticated but what do they mean?  “Corporate Quality” exists in most large engineering companies but few companies have a definition for what “quality” is (Robert Pirsig would be shocked!).

I would love to get some examples from you and your company.  What individual or corporate titles have you seen that are either ambiguous or just plain pompous and what were they supposed to do?

My company has changed a great deal over the years.  We have gone from an energetic start up with a fantastic idea to a large organizationally stratified high tech corporation.  When I first started with the company in 1996, people didn’t care about titles and if someone had a great idea they were given the freedom to pursue it, even if it wasn’t their domain expertise.  Managers, directors and vice presidents came from engineering backgrounds and the corporate uniform was Levi’s, sandals, and company T-shirts.  Over the years we traded that casual approach for slacks and an upward focus.  There are people in the company that refuse to make decisions with others that are “below their level”. Engagement models are focused around the “right level of decision”.  My populist nature rebukes this culture but when I really think about it, the companies growth requires us to specialize.  When companies get to a certain size, leadership can no longer come from the grass roots as it once did.  Sure, ideas must come from all levels, but someone has to exercise their 51% vote now.

The other day I went to lunch with one of my better friends at the company and a consultant.  My friend is a distinguished engineer that had been around for longer than I have and embodies the enablement mentality of our earlier culture.  The 3 of us chatted for about 30 minutes and the consultant said, “You 2 are less like the company culture than anyone I’ve met.”  We were shocked.  We were both attracted to the creativity and freedom in the company and thought that we were good representatives of that openness.  The consultant explained that most people at the company focused on structure and appearance while we were so informal and results oriented.  The consultant also mentioned that there were many people now that managed their careers rather than the business.  This made me a little sad but it really made me think about how companies grow and change.

The symptoms of growth that I’ve seen have been that people are often afraid to make a decision or they are unwilling to speak up when they disagree.  This risk aversion makes everything take much longer than it used to.  We make decisions by committee and those committees meet regularly for months without taking action.  Frequently, the committee members will feel out the “highest ranking” person in the room and try to align with their opinion to curry favor.  The most common activity of this approach is to “get the data”, as if data will tell us exactly what to do.  Ultimately, activity will cease and the committee will declare victory.  Unfortunately, there will be no measurable results.

Fortunately, real stars do always stand out.  They are the ones that are willing to take risks and express their ideas.  These risk takers are not afraid to fail, in fact its part of their learning process and these are the people who become leaders that drive the company’s growth.  These leaders must be mindful of “corporate saboteurs” who fight change and cling to things that no longer work.  “Friendly fire” just comes with the territory.  Creativity and empowerment doesn’t die as companies grow, but its sometimes harder to see.  Look for the people who focus on customer needs first, rather than company convenience.  They are the people that bring more value to those that give you money and ultimately drive growth.

Web 2.0 has certainly changed the way many people interact.  It has created communities, provided a vehicle for customized interaction, and has been a platform for collaboration.  The communications aspects of Web 2.0 are breakthrough technology for marketing and delivery of new products and services.  We can overlay new methods on existing business functions, such as order placement and customer service but it does not change the way we relate to customers.  For the real value of Web 2.0 functionality to play a part in our companies we have to leverage the disruptive nature of the cultural changes that it brings.  We have to embrace this disruptive nature but be flexible enough to change our businesses to accommodate the cultural shifts.

Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, and other social networking platforms have created communities of people that share common interests or situations.  Some of these focus on social connection which allow for people to share their interests and ideas.  This interaction makes people feel like they’re a part of something and that what they have to say is important.  This “connectedness” is what is driving the movement.

Entertainers have adopted the social networking sites to communicate to and expand their fan base.  Rock bands and actors have made people feel that their fans are close to them and that they have a direct link.  Its great marketing as long as the fans believe that it is a real link to their heros.

Companies are using wikis and blogs to communicate with their customers.  Microsoft has forums that are driven by the user community and not by Microsoft employees. They even reward their top contributors with all expense payed trips to user conventions.  This makes the customer feel valued and the recognition can be a career boost.  Other companies have not been so successful because they try to control what is posted, often removing negative comments.  This is viewed by the community as a sell out.

BMW recently used YouTube to publish a “Mockumentary” (Rampenfest) as a strategy for their launch of the BMW 1 Series.  It was inexpensive to produce and created a buzz because it gently poked fun at stereotypes of Germans.  Other companies were not so successful at using the new media types.  Walmart created a fictional couple that blogged about traveling across the U.S. by staying in Walmart parking lots.  The public felt betrayed by the fiction and the company’s reputation suffered.

Web 2.0 provides great marketing vehicles but creates a level of risk too.  “You can’t hide anything anymore,” says coauthor of “The Naked Corporation” Don Tapscott.  Companies have to understand that if their corporate culture is one of control, the disruption created by this new media will backfire. All you have to do is type in a company name and the word “sucks” to understand how easily reputations can be tarnished.  The real disruption caused by Web 2.0 is the need for corporate cultures to adopt an openness and to always treat customers, suppliers, and employees properly because everything becomes public knowledge with these new tools.  “Viral marketing” can work both for and against you.

Web 2.0 is all about making personal connections directly and immediately. More and more I hear about how blogs, wikis, and social networking sites are changing the way we live and play. Clearly teens and above have started to use sites like Facebook and MySpace in ways that have changed social interaction but I’m not so certain the new technologies have made us more productive in the workplace. Sure, Linkedin has allowed people to manage their professional contact list and have insight into a larger personal network, but has Web 2.0 delivered the productivity gains that collaboration promises? The Web is supposed to be a new environment that not only makes it easier for people to connect with others with mutual interests but will provide a vehicle for open public dialog. How is this applicable in the workplace?

What attracts consumers to Web 2.0 implementations is the immediate and direct communications. We’ve gotten fed up with long telephone hold messages and automatic call routing systems that demand we “press 1 if you want to connect to place an order.” We want contact with a real person, and the right person. Websites now boast features that allow customers “live chat with an agent”. This type of feature clearly provides the business benefits worth investing in. But, what about corporate blogs? The new technologies have set an expectation for unvarnished communications directly with specific people, not just corporate talking heads. Response to comments or content is expected quickly and from the right person, not their staff. Readership of these blogs are voluntary, even internal corporate blogs, so the content better be fresh, honest, and compelling.

At an organizational offsite I attended, I started to count the number of times I heard suggestions to implement a new wiki. I stopped at 30. People talked about how this direct online collaboration will encourage greater participation across geographies. They were genuinely excited about drawing people into projects that they believed needed to participate. The one thing that kept sticking in the back of my mind was, why weren’t those people contributing today? With our inexpensive telephone systems, email, and videoconferences, people weren’t engaging on projects so there had to be something more. The medium for interaction will not compel participation, it must be the goals or ideas. What the folks at the offsite were missing is that they hadn’t found a way to communicate the importance of their projects. Even in the corporate world, many project participants are self selected.

Web 2.0 tools are fantastic communication methods that can help accelerate collaboration. However, tools do not replace ideas. People’s interests are captured when exciting ideas or relevant problems are identified. When people are compelled by something they enthusiastically engage to work through problems. The real priority for productivity is to crisply articulate problems, goals, and relevancy. Web 2.0 tools aren’t a goal unto themselves, but a vehicle for communication. Don’t ever forget that we’re payed money to either increase revenue or decrease costs. If the tools don’t helps us do those then we’re doing something wrong.

Every 2 years or so, I get invited to participate in a “Software Quality” Initiative. Our company cares very deeply about the customer’s experience and we’re constantly trying to improve, so when someone has a conversation with a customer who has had a difficult problem, we try to find solutions that the whole company can improve from. Unfortunately, the approach is usually the same. People gather all the data that is currently collected and find a way to use it. The same people are pulled into the project every time and the same metrics are discussed…but little really changes.

There’s a lot of work in the industry and in academia to measure software quality but our team of experts doesn’t seem to take advantage of this progress. Instead of defining what quality is they focus on lists of bugs that they assume is what customers are concerned about. What’s worse is people consistently say that there is no way to measure software quality so they focus on what can be easily identified, which is bug information.

I was asked to join this initiative and thought, “How can I think about this problem differently?” I chatted with a statistician friend of mine who referred me to someone that specialized in software quality and he referred me to an industry expert. This person insisted that the software quality was a definable thing and that it can be measured. He recommended a couple of books on the subject and once I read them we had several conversations. It quickly became clear that software quality wasn’t as elusive as my colleagues claim, but it isn’t easy to define and measure.

There is one key element to software quality that most companies don’t want to come to grips with. The customers define quality, and that means that you have to define specifically who your customers are. Why this is important is because the first, and most important, aspect of the definition of quality is that your product meets the expectations of customers. So, it doesn’t matter what kind of bugs do or don’t exist if the product doesn’t do what the customer needs and/or expects.

After the customer’s and their respective expectations are defined, bugs then become important. What matters is the defect severity in relation to a customer’s business continuity and the probability that the defect will be encountered in production. In other words, what is the likelihood that a customer will be affected by the defect and how bad is it?

I would like to invite readers to share their experiences and approaches to software quality. This is a struggle for all companies and I would love to learn from your experiences. I haven’t seen any systemic approaches to measure product feature definition success. The measurements that I’m accustomed to hearing discussed are: Mean Time Between Failure (which is an adaptation of a hardware measurement that doesn’t seem to fit well), Mean Time to Resolution (for bugs), Time To Adoption (for customer’s acceptance of code into production), and Defects Per Lines of Code. While these metrics might be useful, they don’t really help me understand how well the customers can run their businesses with our products. Have you seen any approaches that have been effective in measuring Software Quality? Is there a better way to think about it?

If you don’t want your comments public but are willing to share your experience, don’t hesitate to email me at Email

I was in a series of leadership offsites this week and had some interesting observations about communication. All the leaders around me were the best that I have ever worked with. They understand business and how to lead. Each leader has their own style and strengths which create their own organizational culture. Some would ask probing questions that showed they were genuinely interested in you and your success, looking for ways they could help support their own business and their colleagues’. Others would take the approach of making observational statements and providing suggestions. I started to think about how these two approaches made me feel about working with them and their organizations. The former approach made me believe the person was dedicated to our mutual success and that they would be supportive and open. The latter approach made me somewhat frustrated that they either assuming they understood situations without enough information or that they were making recommendations that were already in place. I began to think about the importance of “how” a question is asked and the implications they have on working relationships.

My focus on this subject began towards the end of the week. I was sitting in what must have been my millionth PowerPoint presentation. One leader observed that the same type of project was highlighted in 3 different presentations and that he strongly recommends they work together on a single project. I felt a little irritated because that was already happening. After my flash of frustration I started to think, “Why does this bother me?” There were 2 reasons for my reaction: 1) All 3 presentations didn’t communicate that it was the same project, and 2) The comment was directive rather than questioning. I figured the first issue was a simple lesson learned and I focused on the second. Why was it so discouraging that he observed 3 projects were similar and that they should work together? It was the directive approach which didn’t allow the people working on the project to explain their thoroughness. It was more like “dad lecturing” rather than seeking information and coaching.

My team was preparing an agenda for a manager’s offsite and presented to me their ideas. They incorporated all the ideas that we had discussed but the subject order didn’t seem to flow for me. I suggested that we talk through the flow because I didn’t understand how each item would build on one another and wanted to make sure of our success. I then stopped myself and reflected on the directive approach I witnessed relating to the 3 projects and realized that I wasn’t allowing them to show their good work and help me to understand their thought process. When they explained their approach it was clear that they were thinking about not only what we needed to accomplish but also about some internal issues I wasn’t considering which required the order they had suggested. It reinforced to me that I had the right people in the right jobs and that I need to trust them.

One of the primary roles of a leader is communication. Leaders must create and communicate a future vision in simple terms, they must help people understand the importance and urgency of goals, and they must create a supportive environment that focuses on those goals. Tactically, leaders need to help people remove emotional and personal issues from discussions and help keep people’s eyes on what is important. Our job as leaders is to help people understand their importance and help them to grow. What we need to understand is that our words can build peoples confidence in themselves and in us or they can create productivity killing frustration and discouragement. We need to show our confidence in people, giving them the opportunity to take risks, and coaching them without making decisions for them. That’s how we grow future leaders.

One of the biggest traps that we fall into in technical companies is we assume we know what customers want or need. Silicon Valley companies grew up building engineering products for engineers. This means that we started by making products for ourselves and assumed that customers needed the same stuff too. Fortunately, we were right about that for over a decade. We’ve gotten into the bad habit of assuming we know what customers want and need. What happens in this situation is that companies evolve and the engineers no longer resemble customers. A major challenge for High Tech companies is to shift the organizational culture from assuming we know what customers want because its what we need to one which actively listens to customers talk about their businesses and understand what they’re trying to accomplish and why.

I was called late one afternoon and asked if I could attend a “very important meeting” the next day. I could hear the urgency in the woman’s voice. She explained a common technical problem that might be an issue so I agreed to move my schedule around and attend. The meeting the next morning started with a brainstorming session to identify the target audience for an education program around our “problem.” After 30 minutes or so, I asked which customers we were going to validate our assumptions with, and suggested that we need to know if the customers believe there is a problem, because we have no evidence of one. I was met by blank stares. I volunteered to broach the subject with the CIO of a large manufacturing customer and get his thoughts on the issue. Nobody else had any intention of talking with customers.

My friend works for a large internet provider and was working on a product team defining the companies offerings. At the time, I was shopping around for a service provider to host my blog and had established criteria for what I needed. His company did not give me options for different software and would force me to use their commerce tools without options. He brought this perspective to the product team with specific recommendations and explained my approach. The team did not take his recommendations because they said that this wasn’t how people make “real” decisions. They didn’t ask questions about my goals or my background, the team just assumed they new better. Like my situation, they used the “ivory tower” approach.

Markets are changing for High Technology companies as technical sophistication becomes mainstream. There will always be the need for breakthrough products but there has to be a cultural shift that includes partnership with customers defining some of that innovation. Product Marketing in Silicon Valley used to provide recommendations for product tweaks and modifications to what engineering had already developed. The real transition will be for technology firms to understand their customer’s businesses, not just their IT needs. We need to know how they make money, what their operational expenses are, what obstacles they encounter, and how they measure success. Companies that become trusted advisors to their customers because of this genuine concern for the business will grow because of this partnership. Innovation will be much more targeted to the customers needs and this will reduce the difficulties of technology adoption and accelerate its benefits.