Christmas Manager

Oh, it’s again that time of the year: the holidays season. The time when it usually snows just a bit, in spite of big expectations related  to white Christmas and skiing and drinking mulled wine and calling parents, friends and relatives to ask how’s been their life lately.

Back to work, this year my team spoiled me: first off I got a nice gift with hand-made glasswork from Pakistan; then a good brand of Chinese wine, of that sort that you may find in LCBO but only if you live in a Chinese impregnated area in the city, like Markham for instance; then I got a vase with a gilded mask made in Changdu, a known province in China… Also a gift can be considered the set of warm endorsements I got from  one of my senior developers on LinkedIn, plus a recommendation on the same site written in high terms, like “best manager ever”, “excellent professional”, etc., by another developer in my team.

Of course, I’m not used to this kind of attentions and for a short while after I received them I felt bad, like being the subject of a corrupting plot. The nepotism in action. Be careful with your boss to be safe and get a hefty bonus. But then I thought that after all it’s Christmas time, and I had left on their desks a small gift a week back, more like a token of appreciation, ‘tis the season of love spread around and with no discrimination. The season of “oh, I love you, humanity!”

When Helen gave me that nice vase adorned with the gilded mask, she mentioned that she has got that during a meeting when she was still back in China, and I said: “Wow! Thank you, Helen, but you shouldn’t have!”, to which she replied: “No, I wanted to thank you for being such a good and supportive manager!” Some other guys told me the same thing, using different words of course.

Then I thought: actually I didn’t do anything else but the right thing while managing this team. I always chose the common sense solution, without trying to be a good manager on purpose, let alone get an advantage out of it. The work environment we have is like most of the others I know: the pressure gets so intense that sometimes you expect to see the ceiling blown up, high in the sky, and thick clouds of brainy steam getting lose in the atmosphere. It is how the people work nowadays, like workhorses, using more the brute power of their mental muscles to pull the heavy cart of their stumbling company than the subtleties of their creative skills that would give them the satisfaction of feeling happy with whom they are. In this hefty work driven environment I got hired and am getting paid to use my common sense, and be fair in any situation that requires the intervention of a manager. Apparently this is all it takes to be a good manager, in a world where good managers are becoming like rara avis, which is the Latin combo for “rare birds.” The whole story was reminiscent of a get-together my wife and I had with a group of friends, in summer. We were in our backyard around the fire pit, drinking wine and going quickly through all kind of topics with the lack of structure or consistency which a free chat between friends displays. Everything was unstructured, sounding rather silly, the ideas were bouncing around like billiard balls chucked by an untrained hand, without any apparent direction or strategy, till one of us, perhaps without even wanting it, brought the group’s attention to our day of work. The question that popped up instantly was “Do you feel cool at work?” Nobody said they were fine with work. Every single person in that group – and I’m talking here about eight people, not including the children, who’d perhaps complained about their nannies had they had the right -,had only bad words to say about their bosses. The general idea was that regardless of where you work, your business environment shares a common set of traits: assholes perked up in positions of command, tyrant bosses with a mountain of an ego, poor communication skills, easily affrontable and arrogant people who take everything personally after someone is trying to suggest that someone else may have discovered the theory of relativity, vengeful personalities with a nonchalant lack of vision and attachment to any cause. Poor managers. Low quality professionals. And that in a world that boasts shamefully that it is built on a foundation of unique professionalism.

At some point one of us said that “the world goes clearly through a managerial crisis” and some other one (perhaps me because I always like to challenge the established norm) said “because these assholes are chosen from ambitious people with certifications and no talent or call for leadership, let alone common sense for common situations that involve people.”

And what happened during this X-mas time can only prove this assumption. I definitely am not a talented manager, or have a special call for being a leader (I still feel uncomfortable in those big executive rooms, with people who have no clue about what their teams are doing but crack jokes at light speed and display both a joie de vivre and a confidence required only by a presidential candidate). But what I think I have is the common sense. And also the need to be somewhere else than in front of a team, becoming responsible for its wellbeing. When I say to my boss that I believe this is the first and last time for me in a managerial position, I’m not kidding, in spite of the doubt I see in his eyes (“yeah, sure, and I am Willy Wonka”). I really believe it. And because of this, I don’t even think about career advancement, making a difference or crap like that. I think about using the common sense to facilitate the success of my team while I temporarily lead them.

Nothing big about this. Why then everybody else has a bit of an issue with this approach. Why everything degenerated into a managerial crisis? 

Techie in the Businessland

A week ago, at the official beginning of the Fall season, I had the chance to attend a managers' meeting called by our VP, a charming and funny individual with a strong business acumen, a deep sense of humour and a ton of ideas that do not let him sleep well. After he presented us the quarterly results (which, as usual, are good but could be better), asked us to be part of a team exercise. 

To be more precise, he split us in four working groups, business and IT managers mingled together, and asked us to do a bit of brainstorming and accommodate a simple request: Provide three ideas to make the business grow in this highly competitive market of media and advertisement.

The group exercise that followed offered me the chance to witness first-hand how the business managers think, i.e. measure and cut. Sometimes in the IT world , we are bound to forget that our fancy state of the art tools and apps are totally useless without people to sell them and people to buy or simply consume them. Deep down in the engines’ room you tend to ignore what it takes for the people on the deck to keep the boat afloat and on the right direction.

I personally had a humbling experience during the group exercise: I realized that it is not an easy task to come up with bright, unique, progressive ideas that could make our business soar. And I'm not even near to accomplish that. It takes a different thinking, special abilities, knowledge of the market behaviours, training, experience, and last but not least, a committed team to become a successful organization and stay the course. 

According to the Expert

According to Barry G., this highly spirited corporate coach who’s missing only a pair of wings to bolt like a military jet around the room during his training sessions, shelling all with bombs of energy, jettisoning one memorable statement after another when the load gets too heavy, the theory is very clear on the subject: oneself cannot change. Your inner personality is a done deal by the time you reach eight months of age, and for the rest of eighty years (only for those lucky bastards, mind you!) you are carrying it with you like a backpack filled in with all you need to make it through the vicissitudes, as well as the feasts of life.
“Don’t even try to change!” declaims Barry in a strong statement, supported by an even stronger stance. “You are perfect the way you are, the best human being that God ever created!” Alleluia, you are tempted to say, raising your arms high up in the air, in a gesture of adoration, but you suddenly realize you’re in the big boardroom during a corporate training session. And then  Barry starts talking about what matters the most to him: the communication.  Barry has a point who he keeps re-emphasizing: if we are unchangeable, because our personality is like an imprint in a piece of stone, how can you negotiate two personalities that are deemed to collide? How can you bring to getting along two employees, colleagues in the same team, who dislike, disregard and even despise each other for a variety of reasons, among them the very fact that one of the them is a “feeler” (and yes, it’s true, this is more of a whiner, and there is nothing wrong with it) while the other is a “thinker” (or a "macho" in the street smarts’ jargon.)  Barry has the secret answer to this conundrum and he pulls it off his sleeve (mind you, adorned with golden cuffs!) with the same theatrical gesture an illusionist materializes the bunny from under his long coat's flap, right in a front of you: “You can not change yourself, but you can change the other!” Let’s take a deep mental breath and think for a minute at this logic that sounds a bit crooked: if you cannot change yourself, it means that you are un-changeable; then how can another person be able to change you? This is a tempting conclusion, if only were true.  Barry hasn't said anything about being un-changeable, has he? He just said that you cannot change you but this doesn’t preclude the other being able to change you. In other words, you can be subject to change, but the agent of change needs to come from outside.

And how can you make this work? Let’s imagine a fictional exchange between two thinkers, two macho geeks who strongly believe that every minute of the game they have all their basis covered, which means they have answers for everything. For the argument sake let’s call them Billy O and Johnny A. Their conversation is about a Microsoft component that could impact the performance if deployed on the Web Server.

Billy O: “My purpose was to find a way to re-direct specific pages to a secure connection, without the need to change the application code. And I found it: it's called URL Rewriter.”
Johnny A: “I don't think that's right, Billy! This component, once deployed in the Global Assembly cache area will impact all other web sites in terms of performance. The response time will get slower...”
Billy O: “No, it won't. This is a Microsoft component after all, they tested it. Plus deployment in Global assembly Cache does not impact performance.”
Johnny A: “Yes, it does. You should read more about it, Billy.”
Billy O: “No, it doesn't. I'm afraid you are the one behind with the reading, Johnny. I've done my part and this is a perfect component”
Etc.etc.

This conversation leads nowhere because both Billy and Johnny are thinkers, which means that they have solutions for everything. You can’t tell them what to do, because their brain already knows what to do. Telling them what to do is an insult. Two thinkers telling each other what to do is a case of war.
Then what’s to be done? One of them needs to know the theory. And the theory says that Billy O should start by saying:

Billy O: “ My purpose was to find a way to re-direct specific pages to a secure connection, without the need to change the application code. And I found it: it's called URL Rewriter.”
Johnny A: “ I don't think that's right, Billy! This component, once deployed in the Global Assembly cache area will impact all other web sites in terms of performance. The response time will get slower... ”
Billy O: “I thought initially exactly like you do, but then I read more about it in the forums, from people who raised similar concerns. And apparently it's safe”
Johnny A: “Really? I wouldn't bet too much on these forums..." 
Billy O: “ That's why I'd need to work with you to see if there are some implications on otehr sites that I may not be able to see at this point. ”
Johnny A: “That's not a bad approach. We can even involve a few testers to vet our assumptions...”
Billy O.: "Yeah, why not? Good idea!"
Etc, etc.

Of course, the real life would present us with a totally different  outcome than the clichés we used. But that outcome wouldn’t be that different from the spirit of the last conversation. The confrontational tone would vanish, a more tolerant air of collaboration, and mutual respect would start drifting through the room. I'd suggest you try it. I tried it many times, and many times it worked.