Starting a book club

About two years ago, some team members and I started to work with a management consultant. The first assignment the consultant gave was to read a book. I posted this assignment on Facebook and got many suggestions from my friends on what I could tell the consultant to do with his book. Fast forward a few years, and I am absorbed with reading – both for business and pleasure – and the line between the two is really becoming blurred. Previously, I averaged reading about one book a year. Now, I am averaging reading one every month. I am almost keeping up with my kids in how much they read.

I had really forgotten how much I loved reading and learning. It’s been a joy of mine for so long and getting caught up in day-to-day grind was really taking its toll. I thought to myself “How can I spread the joy?” Our management team started to trickle off reading and very few of my co-workers had taken the lead from their managers and done any reading. How could I help them? It came to mind to start a club. We could read a book at our own pace, then every couple of months discuss the book. We didn’t have to limit it there. Someone could suggest a YouTube video; do Pecha Kucha (http://www.pechakucha.org/) presentations, or anything else. So, I called it a “Salon,” picked a book (The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford) and asked that everyone in my group let their co-workers know about the Salon, which would be held in 6 weeks.

Every couple of weeks I sent out an e-mail with “hints” my progress in reading the book, reminders, questions, and in general trying to market the book to about 30 people. I hadn’t read the book before and I was really fascinated by how the stories were relevant to our business. I hoped that others were too, though I didn’t get much response. A few days before our Salon I got more information and some people saying that they were buying the book.

Then the day of the Salon came. I had chosen a time after work so that people could relax and have a conversation. Then a few odd things happened. First, only about half the people who showed up had actually read the book. Luckily one of our readers had provided a wonderful synopsis of the book and what he had learned from it. As we went through that, the non-readers were very vocal in their discussion about the book. The readers were correcting them along the way. I’m not sure whether this was good or not, but at least we were all talking about it. Then there was a suggestion that we meet again and give other people time to read the book.

I setup another meeting. This time calling the meeting a “Book Review”.  I did not follow up with people as much, but saw that the co-workers of the non-readers were sending more information to me than the co-workers of the readers. The day of the Book Review came and this time about ¾ of the attendees were non-readers. “Hello people, it’s a Book Review,” I thought to myself. Also, only one of the previous readers attended. The conversation took the same turn and I asked the non-readers, “Why did you attend?” The response was that they wanted to learn about it because they had heard so many good things. Luckily for me one of the readers chuckled, “Me to, so I read the book.”
I have the third meeting scheduled that is still a “Book Review”.  I hope that by the end of the year we’ll have some traction.

P.S.  In parallel, my nine year old daughter has been trying to start a book club with her friends. After a similar experience in her first meeting, her group decided that they would get together and take turns reading chapters aloud.  Fortunately, for them, their teacher took charge. She assigns every one chapter to read and has an oral quiz each week with the club. That might be my next step.

Nag and be nagged

A problem I deal with is making deadlines because I’m an over-committer and want to say “yes” all of the time.  I just hate saying “no.”  When say, “I don’t have enough time for that,” I feel as if I’m not doing my part to manage my time.   I'm not alone in this as there are people who under-deliver or just have problems prioritizing.  We all have problems making our deadlines.  

But we're all members of the same team, so we should help each other, right? How can you help someone who struggles to make deadlines without being a jerk?  The doomsayer type would say, “How come you didn’t get it done?  If you don’t get it done, we’ll miss our commitment and then the other team will miss theirs and then the world will implode!”  A doormat type might say, “You can't get it done? Okay, I’ll do it for you.”

The answer is to nag and agree to be nagged.

“Nag” is a term coined by one of my co-workers who is very good with helping people keep commitments.  She uses the term to nicely say “I’m not saying you’re not working on this, but I want to remind you that there’s a timeline that we’ve committed to. You don’t have to give me an update, just let me know that you hear me.”  Her projects are consistently on-time due to her nagging.  I do take great joy in nagging back after being the “Nag-ee” for many years.

The point with nagging as a workgroup term is that there’s no mean-ness, it’s just a helpful reminder that helps to make sure that timelines are met and workflow is focused.  If you nag, do it nicely. So when your team mate emails you “Just nagging,” you can reply a quick “Yup, on track.”  A nag does not need a detailed update, only comfort.

So, let’s nag and get nagged!

Dilbert Project Info

A Way Not to Nag

Leading with patience

Over the course of my career, I have been blessed with being given different teams to lead. I started with managing more than leading and it took me about ten years to realize the difference. Managers typically make sure that the work assigned to the team is done. Leaders, well, what do they do?  Leading is not all about barking orders and telling people what to do. In fact, doing so really is detrimental to the team’s productivity. Instead the leader should do whatever they can to get the team to get to their goal as effectively as possible. Here’s how I’ve accomplished this.

• Let the team own the goal by coming up with it themselves.
• Ask questions to see what the team comes up with as answers. Say “Do you think we could take on twice the business that we currently have?” Instead of saying, “Everybody needs to be twice as productive.”
• Listen to what the team has to say. Many good ideas should come out of the conversation, don’t pick or focus on one, just let them come up with ideas. One idea may get a bunch more going.
• Help them to choose. Voting is okay. Come up with two or three candidates and start a debate.
• Then ask “why?” Get the team to defend their goal by asking why they think it is a good one. The goal should be SMART, but don’t let the goal be dictated by having a measurement defined beforehand. I tend to focus more on the Attainability and Realistic parts at this point.
• Let the team make mistakes
• Sometimes the temptation is to take over or say “I need to do x.”  While that may help with the particular deadline or completion of a task, it doesn’t help the team to grow. In fact, this type of action will stifle your team. 
• Say, “What do you think?” This is a great way to turn the question around. You may know the answer off the top of your head, but the team member may need a little bit more time. And they may even come up with a better answer.  “What answer are you looking for?” is a great way to get out of a situation when the person is reluctant to give what they think is a bad answer.
• Give permission to fail. I don’t know about you, but when I screw something up I usually know why. Give your team permission to fail as long as they go into a situation with a goal and plan in mind. 
• Force improvement. Running retrospectives is a great tool for this. Many managers will do a “Root Cause Analysis” looking for one reason why the task went wrong. This puts everyone on the defensive and is hugely counter-productive since what you get is a bunch of CYA data that the team has wasted their time on creating. Instead, run a retrospective – what did we do right, where could we improve. Don’t just do this when something goes wrong, do it when things go right and do it on a regular basis. 
• Be positive. People improve and react better to mistakes when the conversation is “Well, what can we learn from what happened?” Rather than, “We need to find out what happened and make sure that it does not happen again!”

Those are my ideas and maybe even secrets to success. I wonder what your secrets are.

Being an agent of change

One of my co-workers described me as “an agent of change.” The funny thing is, I don’t think of myself that way. My DISC (https://www.innermetrix.com/disc-index/) profile says that I am a 99 in Stabilizing, which means that I tend to prefer a controlled, deliberative, and predictable environment. I also, as indicated by my 53 Cautious score, have a preference to adhere to the defined and proven way of doing things. So how could I possibly be an agent of change? I think it came to the point where the way of doing things just didn’t make sense to me. I, for whatever reason, really love improving on existing inventions. I’m not so good at initial ideas but can take the initial idea and make it happen. In fact, I’ve made a pretty decent living doing just that.

So, how did I become an agent of change?

1. Get involved with the team – I don’t think I’ve ever had an original idea. Some of the best change ideas come from the teams themselves. Teams tend to like change if they own the change and if they have input into what is being done. By owning the change and being involved, the team will believe in it. I often start out my change discussions with a “bitch session” or simply with, “Hey, I have an idea and I’d like your feedback.” The more that the team can lash out – hopefully not at me – the more they will have ownership.
2. Start small – Most needs of change come from a management edict like “get more done”. Well, the change is not “get more done”; it’s really about figuring out what could be done better. Plant the idea of “a change might be good” in an abstract way before suggesting your change. Many people have had other jobs so I’ll ask, “Did you do things differently where you were before?” “Was it better?” Then follow up with, “Do you think the same things could work here?” Or, “You seem to know a lot about it, is there something you think might help?”
3. Come up with a plan – Now that you’ve talked to the team and have some ideas, work with a few team members to come up with a plan. Keep the process transparent to the entire team and ask for feedback. Usually there won’t be much feedback, but transparency really helps to minimize resistance when you try to initiate the change.
4. Believe in the change – I really have to believe strongly that the change has many benefits. I hate to see people wasting their time, so as long as the change contributes to that, great. If the team learns something new, I really like it. I have to believe it, but more importantly, the team has to believe it.
5. Marketing – I call it top down and bottoms up. I market to the people who will realize the benefit and those making the change. Once I have a plan, I market that plan to all of the internal customers that the team serves and to the team itself – before I officially suggest the change. It can be, “The dev team really came up with some good ideas on how to do their job better. I’d like your opinion.” Or, “Would it help if…”Then there is the marketing to the team itself. “I’ve gotten some good responses from your customers. I’m excited for the change, are you?”
6. Execution – The hardest part is executing the change. If you have a measurement or KPI (Key Performance Indicator) on the current state, that is great. If not, take a couple of weeks before execution do some measurements. This way you can show how well you did. Market the fact that the change is underway as hard as you marketed the idea for the change. This does two things – it motivates the team to execute the change because they know that everyone is watching and it prevents the customers from being surprised.
7. Recap – I run a retrospective after the change is in place with the team and with the team and customers. This way we can get better next time and people will be comfortable with one another.

I think that’s what I do. I have never really put it to paper before. Maybe I’m doing something other than this. I’d love to hear other people’s ideas too.