Especially when on the surface they’re technically hitting all the checkboxes, but your management spidey-sense is telling you something doesn’t fit, and analytically you try to prove it yourself that they are; that spidey-sense is coming from your intuition, which isn’t something you want to ignore.

And when you do find a candidate that’s the right fit, it’s clear as day.

On a separate note however, sometimes you stumble across *amazingly* talented people, and although they may not be the right fit for the particular role you’re hiring for, in that situation you either modify the role or create a new one.

Do everything in your power to find and attract talented people!

I recently read an interesting article on this topic in the Dec 2019 Harvard Business Review, which is about teaching managers to be less task masters and more masters of coaching.

The general premise is as an individual contributor you excelled in your area, you had all the answers, got promoted into management, and knowing what needed to be done, tasked others with how to do it. But in this era of rapid evolution, what worked in the past is highly unlikely to be a blueprint for success in the future.

The article describes four styles of coaching:

1. Directive: Telling people what to do. Requires high energy input, and you don’t get much in the way of energy output.

2. Laissez-faire: Let the team figure it out on their own (somewhat akin to Scrum based self-organizing teams). Low energy input, don’t get much energy output either.

3. Non-directive: Asking a lot of questions, and doing a lot of listening as well. Ultimately guiding individuals to solve problems on their own without you explicitly telling them the answer. Fairly low energy input, but you get high energy output as individuals feel a sense of autonomy and freedom to solve problems on their own.

4. Situation: The ideal dimension, walking the line between the directive and non-directive styles.

Coaching may not come naturally, especially to new managers, so the articles cite a few basic steps:

1. Assess the situation

2. Listen

3. Ask open-ended questions

4. Practice non-directive coaching

This is just to wet your appetite, the article is very in depth with a clear framework and guide with how to take your coaching to the next level. If you’re interested, you can pick up the Nov/Dec 2019 issue here:

https://store.hbr.org/product/harvard-business-review-november-december-2019/BR1906

• Team plans for 50pts in the Sprint.

• A new priority comes to the team, team agrees to take it on, say it’s another 5 pts believing they can do that plus everything else that was planned.

• The team completes the original 50pts, plus the extra 5.

• At the end of the Sprint, what’s the % delivered? 55 Completed / 50 Planned = 110%?

Answer:

When the team is evaluating additional working flying into the team, it’s a collective decision to take it on, and because we want predictability and potentially shippable Sprints, we don’t want to take on more work if it’ll compromise not completing others.

Thus, if the team does decide to take on another 5 points, they’re increasing the commitment to 55 (in this case). Therefore at the end, if they complete all 55, their % delivered is 100%.

The shift that we’re making is to adjust the Iteration Paths to be less about the project, and more about the (Scrum) team(s).

1. Iteration Paths are meant purely for planning (it answers: when, i.e. time).

   1. What work did we do in the past.

   2. What work are we doing now.

   3. What work are we planning to do next.

   4. For an Agile team, it’s just a list of Sprints.

   5. A team could be working on a multitude of products and features on any given Sprint.

      1. To add to that, there are multiple active releases in various different stages of their life cycle.

   6. Additionally

      1. It’s hugely valuable for all teams to adopt a standard convention for team centric iteration pathing so that we can automate the calculation & visualization of KPIs.

      2. Likewise, we want to continue to build the culture around long-lasting-persistent-teams (vs. transient project centric teams).

         1. A key clarification is that the team isn’t name after the project, that would make it transient. The team names last in perpetuity (I’ll admit that word has stuck with me from Kevin O’Leary using it so often on Shark Tank), giving them a sense of identity and unity.

      3. Thus, the following iteration path model is what we’ve gravitated towards:

         1. Team A\

            1. Sprint 1

            2. Sprint 2

            3. Sprint 3

         2. Team B\

            1. Sprint 1

            2. Sprint 2

            3. Sprint 3

         3. Etc…

2. Areas Paths (it answers what)

   1. What product.

   2. What feature.

   3. What component.

   4. What project.

   5. Etc…

3. Target Version (a custom field)

   1. Because of point 1.5 above, we can differentiate the total scope of the project vs. the way a release is measured via the Target Version.

   2. It’s the simplest way to derive what are all the things that add up to the Release, allowing us to burn down all the scope that makes up a Release, and forecast its completion.

   3. Noting that a project may be released across multiple Releases (that would be ideal actually – that way you can start getting some early feedback). So although you may have an Area Path for the product/project/feature, the Target Version makes it easy to discern what’s targeted for which Release.

      1. Other teams might approach this via Release X\Sprint Y iteration path conventions, which we’ve tried, but doesn’t work because of point 1.5 above.

Stick with your convictions and take risks

Back in those days (mid 1990s) it was the tail end of the era where you go about finding a stable job, work your way up the ranks, and retire with a pension. Which is a completely alien concept by today’s standards.

However I recognized that the Internet explosion was around the corner, so my friends and I took a stab at two startup ideas.

Idea 1: Autobank – an online used car listing

I had this idea when looking for my first used car. I found it incredibly time consuming to go through a newspaper to look at car listings and filter for what I wanted. I felt there’s a need to create a web site where people/dealerships could post their cars for a nominal fee, and users could filter and search.

We teamed up with a business partner whose family owned a number of car dealerships, so that gave us the industry expertise we needed. However the Web was so new, and dealerships were so antiquated and conditioned to spending tens of thousands of dollars in radio, tv, and print ads that the idea of spending a buck a month per car online seemed like a scam to them.

They actually said that the Web/Internet is either a scam (because how could it possibly be so cheap), or a fad and that it won’t last. I eventually gave up not being able to achieve any traction.

Of course, a few years later autotrader.com, cars.com, and other such sites came out.

Idea 2: Spyder Web Hosting

At this point in time the non-techie early adopters of the Internet were signing up with their dial-up modem ISPs. The ISPs would give them an email address and 5 MB of space for a personal http://www.yourisp.com/~username website.

I felt this was unprofessional as a business from a marketing and branding perspective, and teamed up with some friends to create a Web Hosting company.

With our T1 into a friend’s basement powered by a Sun Sparc server (both of which were extremely expensive back then) we began to hustle and market.

We ran into a similar problem – businesses felt that the free 5 MB ~username was good enough for their business site. Whereas I was proposing that we help register their yourcompany.com domain and we host it.

I eventually gave up not being able to achieve traction.

Of course, years later you have the godaddy.com’s and all these Web Hosting companies out there along with fierce legal battles over domain names.

Message to Tariq @ 22:

Don’t give up too early. If you have an idea, or really believe your instincts are right don’t give up.

It may seem daunting to give up a nice secure full time job at a stable company, and of course having a real income stream for the first time in your life is amazing and something that you feel would be crazy to give up.

But trust me, the opportunity and ability to take risks goes down over time as it’s proportional to your debt load (mortgage, car loans) and the responsibilities you have (family).

Not that it ever goes away, but the stakes get higher over time.So take calculated risks now.

1. Try out your ideas, don’t give up on them until you’ve completely exhausted all possibilities.

2. However your time is valuable. Don’t foolishly waste it chasing something that will not manifest. You have to balance your emotions (passion, ambition, persistence) with logic (critical thinking & data driven decisions) in order to be analytical enough to determine when it’s time to move on.

3. Iterate over as many ideas as you can.

4. Take career advancing job opportunities in other parts of the country and even overseas. Moving isn’t permanent, you can always move back.

Recognize time and value

When you’re young it feels like you have unlimited time. You do not. Time is finite.

20 years ago I felt most things were equally important. Think long and hard about every action you take throughout the day, and ask yourself if that activity generates value.

Value could be personal value, and it can be value at work. Focusing your time on the most valuable activities is what will allow you to achieve maximum progression throughout your life and career. When you’re working, just ask yourself if what you’re doing at any given time is really the most valuable use of your time?

Find ways to achieve the same end result in as little time as possible. E.g. a face to face or phone conversation, as outdated as it’s becoming, is often faster than writing a long articulate Email.

Stay focused

Along the lines of value and time is the need to stay focused.

Focused means saying no. Saying no to distractions, saying no to low value activities, saying no to activity instead of productivity. As humans it’s gratifying to want to tackle easy things in order to get a sense of accomplishment.

However the things worth doing often aren’t easy and thus we tend to procrastinate on them. Push yourself to get the real things done. Done is value. The more you increase your value, that’s what your raises and promotions will be premised on.

Speed vs. Velocity

Recognize the difference between speed and velocity.

Speed is just rate of change/movement. Velocity is speed in a given direction.

You can turn your steering wheel in your car to the left, floor the gas pedal and hit 60 mph. You’ll be moving fast, but you won’t be going anywhere.

In your career you want to be moving somewhere. Make sure your activities, projects, and learning have direction.

To use a technology centric example, number of Agile points completed in a sprint, or count of tickets resolved, is just speed. However if those efforts are iterating towards a path or goal, it has direction.

Don’t just create solutions, solve problems

As a young technologist I often viewed technology as isolated and distinct from business activity. Even mature companies today view I.T as such.

Whether you’re into technology, finance, marketing, or anything else – don’t just create solutions for the sake of creating solutions. Solve problems using your skills. This generates value out of your work (and thus increases your value).

The key however, is to define the problem. When working with others make sure this defined problem is published and clearly understood amongst teammates and stakeholders. The problem I’ve found is that when it is not published everyone has a different perspective on what the problem is, and thus efforts are fragmented and folks are solving different problems.

Develop and maintain your professional networks

You’ll meet many people in your professional journey. Starting fresh in your career your peers will all be at the same entry level that you are now. However as all of you grow, the value of your network will compound.

The biggest mistake you make is lose touch with all the people you meet along the way.

Create alumni user groups email lists, LinkedIn Groups, and of course stay connected through LinkedIn and other forms of social media.

Recognize your strengths and weaknesses

This is hard.

It can take years to develop a strong sense of what makes you distinct and unique. Weaknesses are directly related to strengths, as they’re often two sides of the same coin.

Someone who may be ultra-versatile and adaptive probably isn’t going to be an extreme specialist. Nor will an extreme specialist be versatile. A deep methodical analytical long range thinker may not be adept at making rapid high risk decisions.

Knowing what you bring to the table will help you position your career to best leverage your distinctive attributes in the companies you work for.

As you grow even further, recognize the distinct characteristics in others and then learn how the combinations of certain groupings of skills create a whole that is more valuable than the skills individually. This is the value of a team, and you’ll make far more progress creating and working with the right combinations of people than working individually.

Never stop learning

Graduating doesn’t mean the learning is done. The learning never ends. Always keep learning and improving your knowledge. Learn things directly related to your core job function, as well as things that would help complement your skill-set. Learn things that advance your strengths and minimize weaknesses.

In this day and age where everything moves so fast you run a huge risk of becoming antiquated quickly.

1. Attend trade shows and conferences

2. Take classes with industry training professionals

3. Attend webinars

4. Join local usergroups

5. Participate in trade related discussion forums

6. Subscribe to magazines, and read books

7. Present a conference or usergroup any topic – it’ll force you to learn as much as you can about it

Failing is learning

Don’t be afraid to fail. Failing is the process of learning.

No one rides a bike for the first time and just goes. You have to take the risk, fall, and develop the balance in order to move forward.

Failing is only failing if you don’t learn from it. So when you fail at something, evaluate what went wrong and what you would do differently if you could go back in time and do it again.

Therefore failing is an investment in your development.

In Summary

Your career is a journey, and your profession is a craft. Continue to pave the path in front of your career so that your journey continues to flow, while cultivating your craft.

And lastly if there’s anything to remember, remember this. A Roman philosopher by the name of Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Or as I like to say, “luck is being prepared for an opportunity.”

Good luck!

Topic: Managing Disruption & Change

I.T sits in the middle as a cost center, profit center, growth center, and investment center. How you spend your time will be between the implementation dimensions (cost & profit) vs. innovation (investment and growth).

Back in the old days, I.T was considered a function of X. X being the CFO, COO, or CMO.

Now — every business is a digital business.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling donuts or making some new whizz bang social app. But to remain competitive you have to constantly be comparing your competitive advantage (what are you strong at, what value add you have to you offer) vs. the competition — particularly disruptors. And thus all CxO’s have a stake in it.

More importantly, what is your core competency today isn’t necessarily what it needs to be tomorrow.

Companies that focus on viewing IT as cost centers (reducing I.T costs through automation, cloud, etc…) and profit centers (maximizing existing core offerings) create a Core Competency gap between what they’re doing now vs what they should be preparing for (aka innovating) in the future.

Classic poster children of companies that created this gap: Blockbuster, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, etc… All companies that focused only on core competencies.

Where does value come from?

What you think is now obvious may not have been so obvious back then. When Netscape IPO’d with a billion dollar market cap with an open source/free product, it caused a total rethinking of: where does value come from?

Who would have thought Google with a simple search form page would become $250B mkt cap company?

Disruption is now easier than ever

It’s now easier than ever for a company to come in and completely disrupt the market place.

E.g. the TV industry works by vetting a single pilot on TV and measures the initial response from there. House of Cards wanted an entire season to develop the characters, etc… and NetFlix believed in it, and bet big…. and won. They put the entire first season available in one go (vs. what traditionally networks have done).

People could watch it all in one day, space it apart, etc… their philosophy: people want to watch when they want to watch it, and if at a reasonable price, will pay for it.

Kevin Spacey talking about how House of Cards disrupted the market place and how they used data to make an intelligent decision:

Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form that they want it in, at a reasonable price and they’ll most likely pay for it rather than steal it. — Kevin Spacey

It’s all about data

It wasn’t a blind bet for Netflix. They have a lot of data to know what their customers like, what their customers behaviors are, what devices they watch on, when they watch, etc… TV Networks have nowhere near this kind of telemetry.

So it’s all about data. Facebook isn’t about users, it’s about the volume of data created by those users and thus monetizing that data. In the day 1,000 person study would be considered a good sample count, and 10K would be landmark. Facebook did a divorce study based on tens of millions of users. They’re currently developing a network of drones to supply free internet, however they get to monitor everything that you do (aka more data).

The explosion of data

Cars are becoming IP enabled (Ford Sync, GM OnStar, Audi Apple), every GE component will send real time data, proximity marketing sensors that know where you are in a store, Google Glass, etc… is all leading to this explosion of big data.

Be a disruptor or defend against disruptive forces

The ability to be a disruptor, or defend against disruptive forces will rely on how well you can leverage and connect data.

When Google Glass first was announced, many people thought it was just a novelty idea.

JPL: When the technicians are working on an jet engine the spaces can be tight so to look at even an iPad is hard. But using Google Glass they can see the schematics overlaid with what they’re looking at.
KFC: Prototyping putting the food prep instructions on Google Glass so that training is easier and to reduce error.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

But the Product Owner (or Product Manager in traditional terms) is the key person who’s accountable for the results. They prioritize the projects and features, define desired outcomes, ensure profitability, and accept/reject results.

In the real world many people may have a stake in projects as they are either sponsoring the project, supporting the project, or are affected by the project. So as a Product Owner you will have to interface with stakeholders and sponsors to get their feedback, issues, goals, etc…

Likewise, a Project Manager/ScrumMaster might encounter similar situations where they are trying to garner consensus and agreement.

The problem however is that large committees rarely are capable of making decisions.

Once you’ve got 7 people in a decision-making group, each additional member reduces decision effectiveness by 10%, according to Marcia W. Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, and Paul Rogers, authors of Decide & Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization. Thus, a group of 17 or more rarely makes any decisions.

Tips:

• Hold a series of smaller sessions (e.g. instead of one 10 person meeting, have two separate 5 person meetings).

• Pre-meet in advance with individuals to gather their feedback, stance, concerns, requirements to that you can factor that in and further prepare for the main meeting.

• Instead of starting with a blank slate and trying to work with the committee to collaborative decide/plan/prioritize/etc… gather initial data and create a good starting point – e.g. a draft plan, and then let people argue/discuss over it.

• Always make sure your management supports where you want to go so that they back you up behind the scenes.

Vision

The source of the problem stems from lack of vision, and the corporate objectives that come as a result.

To get a grip on priorities you have to start with having a vision — even if it’s just a simple one line statement of where you’re aiming at; it’s the step to narrowing a blurry view into a focused one by getting everyone pointed in the same direction.

In essence all a vision is, is a statement of where you aim to be. Without one, there is no direction — you can move fast, but moving fast in a circle results in moving no where.

Objectives

From that vision, define your corporate objectives or goals. These are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound (aka S.M.A.R.T goals).

For example:

• Increase delivery time of widgets by 10% over the next 12 months.

• Decrease customer complaints by 5% over the next quarter.

• Decrease network outages to less than 5 minutes by 06/01/13.

Nested Objectives

As a corporation you only need 2 to 5 of these; each organization underneath you will have nested objectives that support your top level goals. And now that these have been defined, you have the various projects that support each of these objectives.

Alignment of Projects

So go back to your endless laundry list of requests, priorities, enhancements, and projects and first determine which ones are supportive of the goals in your organization. If they do not support the goals, then you have to simply put them aside — even if they’re good ideas.

Executive Sponsorship

What’s left requires evaluating if projects have an executive sponsor. If a project is unsupported, you’re taking a huge risk by investing any effort in such a thing. There may be ROI, and it may support the goals, but without executive sponsorship the chances that the project will be successful is highly doubtful. This is because the project will then hinge it’s success purely on the ability for all the teams involved to function by consensus; and of course all serious projects come to serious forks in the road where differences in opinion will deadlock the project — an executive sponsor can make those tough decisions.

Another reason why executive sponsorship is needed is because if each team involved doesn’t have their portions of the project as deliverables as part of their performance plan, there’s no incentive for them to put in the effort. In fact, putting in any time, takes away from projects they are on the hook for.

Lastly, if an executive finds out you spent a large amount of money and it didn’t pay off, now you’re in deep water with no one to support you.

ROI

Ok, now you have a list of projects that are aligned to the goals of the corporation, and have the executive sponsor to back it. You still will have a list of projects that require more resources than you have, the next step is to evaluate the potential Return On Investment (ROI).

ROI comes in the simple and tangible form of quantitative, and the difficult to measure qualitative. Projects that have more quantitative ROI are the ones you want to go after, as they’re easier to measure the actual results (increased revenues, cost savings, etc…). Versus the qualitative ROI which is almost impossible to measure, and even more difficult to actualize.

Of the quantitative ones you want to evaluate the actual potential ROI, how easy it is to actualize that ROI, and how you’re going to actualize the ROI (projects that don’t require anything to actualize are the best, e.g. switching to a lower cost vendor).

Here are some things to think about. If you reduce the time it takes to do something, what’s the return? From a financial and quantitative perspective the answer is none.

The return is when you see the impact to the bottom line — now saving time definitely has qualitative benefits, but the point here is as high as an ROI is, you need to assess how capable your management organization is at being able to actualize the ROI.

E.g. does it entail reducing overhead, reducing headcount, restructuring the organization, etc… Say that project can save $50M, but costs $100M — your ROI 50% in one year. Compare that to a project that costs $100, and saves you $100/yr, this has a 100% ROI.

So keep a relative perspective in mind as well; smaller projects may not have the huge total numbers of bigger projects, but their ROI is much easier to actualize and therefore lower risk.

The bottom line is you need to rank projects by ROI- giving extra points to projects with more quantitative than qualitative, giving extra points to the ROI ratio, and extra points to ease of ROI actualization.

You can only calculate ROI if you have the (I)nvestment portion, so you pick off the top x projects until all your resources are booked for whatever time frame you’re working with.

Conclusion

Using this formula will help you get a grip on priorities and get your organization executing on a path that will allow the organization to achieve its goals.

The biggest factor is the value you bring to the table, and creating new value that results in the progression. You may get mediocre cost-of-living adjustments by merely doing your current job, with the current level of responsibilities, at the current level of output. But big raises and significant career progression only occurs AFTER you’ve increased your value FIRST.

Here’s a list of ways you can increase your value:

1. Increased responsibility

2. Increased ownership

3. Increased knowledge (of the systems, of the business, subject matter expertise, technologies, etc…)

4. Going above and beyond (working extra hours to meet a deadline, taking it upon oneself to fix an issue ailing the team, etc…)

5. Increased quality of work

6. Increased reliability (e.g. can be counted on to deliver something as promised, etc…)

7. Increased speed (what used to take 2 days you can now get done in 4hrs, faster turn around time, etc…)

8. Increased commitment

9. Increased dependability, predictability, availability, etc…

10. Increased ability to rapidly solve complex issues/problems

11. Increased output/results (e.g. # of tickets/user stories resolved)

12. Increased sharing of knowledge (documents, knowledge base articles, presentations to the team)

13. Increased savings to the company.

14. Increased profits to the company.

It’s all about new value!

Here are some takeaways:

Keeping your burn rate extremely low gives the company the probability of getting lucky.

1. The luck from a low burn rate comes from having the cash to experiment with various ideas until you find the right model/combination/technique/strategy. Whereas with a high burn rate, it’s all or nothing.

2. Once you find that right idea/model, you can then hone in on it and maximize it’s usage, which then drives more of what’s working (cash flow, sales leads, profits, etc…). With a now working business model, the profits come in, and you now have the ability to grow and take on more opportunities.

$1M should last you a year.

1. Starting with a team of 3 people, growing up to maybe 5 or 6 people.

2. Companies are the most productive when they’re less than 10 people. When you grow beyond 10, productivity goes down.

3. So that first $1M is a team that’s lean and mean, and each individual contributes an enormous amount of productivity.

Have a Product Development Strategy and a Customer Development Strategy.

1. Most Silicon Valley start-ups describe an engineering project: Alpha, Beta, Limited Availability, General Availability, etc…

2. Author Steve Blank wrote a book called “Four Steps to the Epiphany“, the thesis of which is companies should have customer development milestones in parallel to the product development milestones such as customer discovery validation, creation, and scaling.

Discover the business before you scale the business

1. The companies that pursue the path of low burn experimentation dramatically add probabilities in their favor.

2. With off-shore labor, low/no cost open source technology stacks, and search engine marketing, companies easily have the opportunity to conduct low cost experimentation.

3. Use a business strategy of low cost experimentation done a lot to find out the winning answers, discard the losing answers, and don’t scale until you’ve figured out your business model.

• A Sprint, and all its stories have completed all development, testing, acceptance, sign-off, product owner acceptance, etc…

• One Story in the Sprint cannot be released with the Release — because there’s a dependency on the business to have completed end-user training, which the business needs a few more weeks to do.

So how would you handle this?

Approach 1: Story does not meet the definition of done.

• The training item should have been a task for the story in order to satisfy the goal of potentially shippable.

• Since a dependency/condition to being shippable was not met, it’s not done.

• Thus the Story would be pulled out of the Sprint and moved back into the backlog or into the next Sprint if it still has value and released on the next Release.

• It would cause a dip in points and artificially drop the velocity for that Sprint (all the work by the team was satisfied, there’s no more work to do), but that dip is ok as it points out an issue that prevented value from being delivered.

Approach 2: Business issues should not affect velocity.

• The team completed all work needed to create releasable code — the velocity should be recognized.

• If you keep the Story in the Sprint, it would delay the Release… for weeks. Which is the prerogative of the business. However it’s not a few days of delay, it would bump up against the timing of the subsequent release which goes against the mantra of continuous value… value is not created until you release it.

• Alternatively, you could ‘complete’ the story to record the velocity, but create a placeholder in another Sprint to recognize it actually being released. Or replace a faux/filler story just for velocity tracking purposes, and move the real story into the real Sprint/Release that it’ll get released in.

Taking a step back from terminology and thinking just pure process wise — if a Story can’t move forward for whatever reason, to keep it simple, it gets pulled from the Sprint.

It will cause a dip. Which on one hand is artificial in that the team did actually produce those points. However POs & SMs will want to know & track these hiccups, understand why it occurred, and work to minimize these impediments to releasing value.

We’d still know the real velocity from a planning perspective. But one of the strengths of Scrum is that it flushes out issues quickly and clearly. This is good because the only way for issues to get resolved is to get them out on the table, which is far more important than masking issues in order to make a burndown look the way you want.

One of the challenges we face in this information overloaded work culture of ours is that the sheer volume of information requires constant grooming, categorization, and prioritization.

Consider that your manager is probably getting about 5X-10X more email than you as they’re cc’d on every discussion, decision, and meeting minutes pertaining to the team. Consider that his/her manager is yet another order of magnitude as the scope broadens, and continues to get worse as you go up each management level.

At the executive level you’re going to employ techniques that help you stay on top of what’s going on with the business by prioritizing where your time needs to be spent. Which means they’re going to assess within 2–5 seconds how important an email is and either act on it right away, read and absorb in detail, delete it as non-actionable, or file away for further reading (which they’ll never get around to).

We live in the detail

The problem with people in the technical industry (developers, analysts, project managers), is that our lives revolve around detail. Detailed plans, specifications, unit tests, coding standards, acceptance criteria, etc… it’s all low level detail — and thus our brains are optimized to think at that level.

Executives however operate at a higher, broader, bigger picture perspective. They swoop down to lower level gears when they need to roll up their sleeves, but for the most part they’re focused on where the business is headed.

Follow these tips

Thus the style of communication that works for people who work with low level detail isn’t optimal for executives, so here are some tips to maximize your communication delivery and impact with executives:

Don’t use narratives

I had always felt that the application could run faster, so I was looking into server performance and by running a number of queries through a query analyzer and I determined that performance could benefit by adding a number of indices (see initial results below). So I took it upon myself to add a number of non-clustered compound indices that my research has shown to be used in the commonly used join statement, and…

• Narratives are that story telling style of explaining things, where you end up with paragraph after paragraph only to get to the point at the very end.

• They’re time consuming to produce because you’re going to be meticulous considering the audience, and even worse they’ll just quickly scan through it.

• Or if they do want to read the detail, they’ll put it in the read-later category when they have more time, which they rarely do have more time.

Strategically title your subject

• Don’t use one or two word subject titles, e.g. “performance”. It’s too generic and not actionable.

• The goal is to try engaging them into reading your email.

• If you have good news or are trying to pitch an idea that can really help the company — then try to pitch that in the subject line. Many execs deal with a lot of issues, so it’s nice to have an email come in that won’t cause your blood pressure to rise if you read it.

• Tag your subject with the content type, e.g. [idea], [kudos], [proposal], etc…

Start with your conclusion/proposal/point first

• The technical/analyst/PM thing to do is build up a case leading to a conclusion. Stating observations, criteria, supporting data, assumptions, etc… Execs don’t have time for this. Get to the point first.

• Make the rest of your email support that point.

• This opening statement has to be very brief! No more than two sentences. It has to capture the essence and be written in such a way that it can be absorbed at a glance.

Good news, we’re able to improve application performance by 30%.

Structure your content

• The reason why resumes are easy to digest is that they employ a predictable and repeatable pattern.

• Resumes are also very (or should be) very succinct and to the point.

• Dump long winded narrative/story telling paragraphs and break sections apart, delineated by a section title with a distinct color. Within each section, use bullet points where you try to avoid wrapping as much as possible.

• If the executive has an extra couple of seconds to scan through your email, the goal is that they’ll be able to absorb most of the content, as its structure is optimized for scanning.

Our company HR/Finance Exec had heard about the Agile transformation we’re currently undergoing, and tomorrow we’re doing a company BBQ – so jokingly she asked:

Does agile mean we will release the food as it is cooked?

So I thought I’d take a lighthearted stab at explaining the Agile/Scrum approach if it were to be applied to a BBQ. To keep it digestible to someone who is unfamiliar with s/w development I kept is simple by omitting things like the various meetings (planning, retrospective, and scrum meetings), various roles, that the Sprints are equal length, that you probably wouldn’t map out in detail that many Sprints, etc…

The core theme was the prioritization aspect of it, and that the Product Owner has a goal or desired outcome with each Sprint.

Response:

The team that’s committing to the work agrees to what they’ll deliver in fixed time increments.

Product Vision: For everyone to gather together, socialize while eating BBQ’d burgers and hot dogs, and feel a heighted sense of unity.

Release 1: 06/14/11. Release goal: to eat hot dogs and burgers

Sprint 1: (the day prior) 5pm – 8pm

• Priority 1: Get meat

• Priority 2: Get buns

• Priority 3: Get salad

• Priority 4: Get snacks

• Priority 5: Get drinks

Sprint 2: 11:00am – 11:30am

• Priority 1: Burger Stuff – Chop up tomatoes, lettuce, onions

• Priority 2: Marinade anything that needs marinating

• Priority 3: Prep salad

Sprint 3: 11:30am – 12:00pm

• Priority 1: Light BBQ

• Priority 2: Begin cooking meat

• Priority 3: Set up tables

• Priority 4: Deploy salad

• Priority 5: Deploy snacks

• Priority 6: Deploy drinks

Sprint 4: 12:00pm – 01:00pm

• Priority 1: Serve food

• Priority 2: Consume food

Sprint 5: 01:00pm – 01:30pm

• Priority 1: Clean up BBQ grill

• Priority 2: Dispose of trash

• Priority 3: Put everything away

• Priority 4: Lie down on floor from feeling too full

Each Sprint focuses on the next bucket of the most valuable priorities, in that if they’re not done, the lower priority items aren’t of much value (e.g. in sprint 1, there’s no point in getting drinks if there’s not going to be any meat because that’s a stated objective in the vision).

The person deciding the priorities is the Product Owner. After each Sprint, they’d be re-prioritizing what goes into the next Sprint based on the throughput data they gathered in the prior Sprint. Anything that didn’t get done, could go back into an unprioritized bucket, or moved into the next Sprint if that’s one of the next most valuable things.

Scenario: At the end of Sprint 2, prepping the salad priority didn’t complete for whatever reason.

Example reprioritization decision 1:

• The Product Owner can decide that we have to keep moving forward as cooked meat directly supports the product vision, not salad. Salad’s a lower nice-to-have priority. Burgers and Hotdogs deliver maximum value so we can’t compromise that user experience.

Example reprioritization decision 2:

• The Product Owner could decide that you can’t have a BBQ without a salad. So going into Sprint 3, the Product Owner may re-prioritize by moving the prepping of the salad into there, and pulling out snacks and drinks (salad = healthy, healthy customers are better for profitability).

The Product Owner is empowered with enough authority to make these priority decisions, however they’d be accountable to the business for the results.

So after the release is complete, the Product Owner would measure if they achieved the heightened sense of unity and use that to strategize on Release #2 (the next company BBQ).

What saved me is the Kinesis Advantage — a concave design that minimizes finger travel, while also repositioning a few keys for improved load balancing. It takes a while to learn this keyboard, but once you do, the CTS is virtually eliminated. And with the minimal finger travel and optimized key layout, you’re able to achieve incredible typing speed.

Advantage360 ergonomic keyboard by Kinesis

Being a mechanical keyboard, it is loud (though I do see the modern version of the keyboard has a silent variant). So while at New Relic, a Mac based shop, switched to the Apple Magic keyboard, in order to type while on calls.

Having move back to a PC based shop here at GTreasury, I decided to give the Logitech K860 Ergo keyboard a try, and am quite happy with it. Very comfortable to use, with low strain, however would prefer the springs to be a tad lighter.

So if you’re looking for maximum ergonomics, where price is no option, check out the Kinesis. Otherwise, the K860 is a great choice!

Logitech ERGO K860 Wireless Split Keyboard

I'm an usually light sleeper.

The sounds of things like trains, barking dogs, birds, cars starting up, road noise, HVAC systems, and airplanes will all keep me awake. This is especially true when traveling (e.g. I avoid hotels near highways).

Although there are amazing active noise cancelling (ANC) earbuds out there (Apple Airpods and Bose QuietComfort in particular), you can't sleep on the side with them.

There are a number of passive noise-masking and noise-generating (whitenoise) options out there, but what I need is total silence. As far as I've been able to find, there is only one ANC option out there: the QuietOn earbuds.

These things have been a total life saver, improving the stretches of uninterrupted sleep, and total duration.

They are are pricey, but if you're like me, it's worth every penny!

Since I'm in video calls all day long, along with recording presentations and what not, I decided to invest in a good microphone earlier this year.

I landed on the Deity VO-7U, and what has been most surprising are the reactions to it; particularly with customer and partner calls, where inevitably someone will add, "btw, your sound is incredible, what are you using?"

Although I'm in a fairly controlled sound environment, I went with a dynamic microphone, which is less sensitive (meaning you have to be within 2-4" of it, and speaking directly to it) and more directional in order to not pick up the keyboard clicks as I typically, and feverishly, take notes in my calls.

In watching many reviews, the majority focus on just the sound quality, whereas unwanted sound rejection was an equally high priority, and did come across a couple of videos that specifically tested that variable. The Deity really stood out in that department.

I also didn't want to be running any special software, and looking for plug and play. The Deity uses a USB-C (whereas many others use micro USB), and has automatic limiter to prevent audio clipping.

Lastly the price. Although it retails for $170, you'll often find it on sale (B&H and Deity currently have it for $84), and I picked mine up as an open box item on eBay for $50.

Big credit to this video which was very helpful in the decision: