Random Thoughts from a CTO

As you can tell, I haven't contributed to this blog since early October.   If you are visiting this blog for the first time, or getting this post through your favorite RSS reader, I have some great news.   

Though I don't have immediately plans to continue with this blog (though I won't say never), I have started a new blog called Leaning towards agility.   Take a look at the introduction and it should give you the information you need.   I hope you find the new blog interesting and can't wait to start the conversation!

To my readers,

Thanks for these last 20 months as you have listened to my Random Thoughts every week. You have helped me confirm that my thoughts aren't alone in the universe, and for that I am grateful. I hope that in some way I have made a difference in your lives, at least make you think about things in a new light. For me, that is reward enough.

Over the last few months, I haven't been able to put the quality time that I needed to with this blog because of other priorities in my life that needed my attention. In addition, I feel that I have covered most areas that I believe would be an interest in others. Therefore, I have decided to take a "sabbatical" from blogging for an indefinitely amount of time. I am not sure if I will come back to this blog later on, stop blogging completely, redesign the site, or start something entirely different. What I do know is that I need to take a break from this and figure it all out.

I have made many friends along the way because I started this blog. To each of you, I will treasure those relationships and by no means will this be the last you hear from me. To everybody else, the number of quality blogs to read in the areas of management, leadership, self-improvement, organizational development and technology have multiplied over this time. I am sure there will be plenty of excellent posts to keep you busy and thinking for some time to come. I know that I will continue to read them and may respond every now and then.

Til' we meet again,

Skip

Traditionally, process improvement has come down from management.  It's expected that this is part of management's job, to keep check on the status quo and determine when things aren't working and fix them.   Management assumes that as well, and is always trying to find ways to improve without having impact to others in the organization.  Even if individuals who are "feeling the pain" with the inefficiency are discourgaged to help, and told to "focus on their jobs" and leave it up to management to improve.  Management ends up taking on the entire burden of improving the orgranization on their own.   As a result, because they don't have the bandwidth to improve everything they end up choosing areas of most pain.   The danger is that they aren't looking at the whole picture, and may be treating the symptom and not the cause.   At best, this only helps things temporarily, as the cause is still out there and will eventually hit a new threshold to cause other symptoms.   For those areas that they are able to attend to, it still impacts others in the organization as they have to react to the changes and aren't prepared when they happen.   Also, despite what managers think, they aren't directly "on the battlefield" and don't always understand what is really happening.  Especially, if they don't ask.

I think the model needs to change.  Improvement should be part of every employee's list of responsibilities.   Management's job is to help others understand what goals are most important to the organization and why, and how to measure success of these goals.  If they can do that and people truly comprehend it, then anybody can determine what improvement initiatives need to happen at their particular level.  It's then up to management to make sure that the initiatives are in alignment throughout the organization and depending on the priority and timeframes, make sure that people given ample attention and time to implement them.   Where possible, to reduce the impact to the organization, things should be done parallel to existing processes as part of a "pilot" project and then rolled out when proven successful.  By spreading both the burden and the work across the organization, this will allow more things to happen.  Management is then focused on the "big picture" instead of the "details", which helps reduce the risk that you are treating the problem and not the symptom.  Lastly, by involving people at all levels of the organization, you are assured that the improved solutions are going to work better because the people expected to implement have been involved throughout the process.  Not only do they have more ownership, they are more proactive in their approach.

Improvement isn't (or shouldn't be) just a "management thing", it should be everybody's business! 

I have learned a long time ago that as a manager (or a parent for that matter) you can be overprotective and micromanage trying to ensure that the people you work with don't make mistakes.  Especially those mistakes that you have experienced in your lifetime.   However, all of your hard work cannot keep mistakes from happening.  It is inevitable.  By being overprotective and micromanaging you are robbing people of the very thing that keeps mistakes from happening in the future - by learning from your mistakes.

If you are going to help people not make mistakes, they need to understand what they did wrong and try to figure out how they will avoid the mistake in the future.   They can only truly understand and want to make correction if they experience it firsthand.   They may understand that the stove is hot and can hurt you, but to truly value that advice they may need to touch the stove to find out.   Despite your best intentions on keeping them away from the stove, they may test your judgment by touching when your back is turned.  Then they will know never to do that again.   Others may take your advice and never try to touch the stove, but they will always be questioning your judgment.

The same goes with management.   As a manager, you have learned that there are certain processes and policies that are exist because of past mistakes either learned by yourself or others. These processes and policies were put in place to avoid those mistakes in the future.  By how do you know that they are stay relevant over time?  Compliance to processes and policies isn’t enough.  Just like the stove, the underlying assumptions and judgments that were made need to be challenged.

When you learned to ride a bike, somebody helped you get the skills down as well as learning how to balance by holding the bike along side of you.   That gave you confidence initially.   Then the person let go.  At first, you failed miserably and perhaps even skinned up a knee.  The person can back and gave you some tips and held some more.  Then the person let go again.  This time you made a little more progress.  Eventually, the person helping had to stop helping and let you learn how to ride your bike.  Otherwise, if they kept holding the bicycle for you, you would end up relying on them for a long time and it would take you much longer to venture on your own.  Both you and the person helping you would be much more frustrated.

As a manager, it is important that mistakes are not made so that quality and efficiency are at its peak.  However, this can't be accomplished if you are "protecting the stove" too much.  Instead, you need to provide the guidance and flexibility to help people "ride the bike".   Let them make some mistakes, and then teach them to learn from them.  In the end, their skills and appreciation of processes and procedures that are in place will be valued.   Those processes and procedures will also be tested to ensure that they are relevant today as they were when they were put into place. 

Ok, that's not really the name of it but Rosa Say over at Talking Story has had her annual event regarding learning.  This year her community of AWESOME people (who in their own right have awesome blogs) focused on the value of learning.  This has been going on throughout the month of September and in today's post she provided links to every post with commentary.  She also threw in some outside posts that she discovered during the month on the topic. 

There is a wealth of information here to keep you busy for some time.  Thanks Rosa, and keep doing what you are doing!

Here's the main link.