Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Is your best performer a leader?


 Is your best performer a leader?


Do you have a great performer? Pillar like performer?

Do you have a leader who can take us all there? To the right place?!



Is your best performer a leader?



If left to themselves for 3 months how do they perform? Can you visualize it?

If you don’t feel good, certainly haven’t coached them. Possibly their performance is driven by your instructions not lead by understanding they gained and leadership they attended.



If you have to tell them how to do it, still they are being trained in skills and not been able to figure out what they need to do as ground work.

The moment they don’t need any instructions after “what” is communicated, they are doing well.

Still you have to coach them as they are still managers.



They shall be able to find “what” needs to be done now. They shall decide that “what” and review with you on what even better way to validate their growth. This can only be attained if they have the understanding of the purpose, the “why” part.



It is you to bring this purpose to them.



You have a leader if they are driven by why they are doing something.

They will work out everything, including “what”, “when”, “who”, “how” with all constraints applicable. They will formulate great combinations, will draw multiple alternate plans, will consider risks, everything.



You are failure if you cannot groom leaders at every level.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Bosses make productivity go down


My early learning on the jobs was, "Bosses make productivity go down".

When boss is on leave the productivity goes up by double.

Surprisingly, but Bosses do interrupt tooo often to know something that they are in disconnect with, as not involved directly and can get into dis-comfortable situation if things fail, they have no much control over you if they do not disturb you to know what is happening, a dozen times in a day.


Bosses are afraid and doers are disturbed.
Bosses seek control for to be in charge of their fate, and Doers seek the  empowerment to let them do the things.

We are busy doing things and bosses are busy worrying what are we doing.

To cut their worry they must interrupt us while we are doing the things, and worry what pace we are on to.

Oh god how am I supposed to do anything if you break my flow that frequently.

It is not you don’t trust me, but you have feared that I will not tell you early enough if things are heading towards an uncontrollable mess progressively.

Why will I, I am busy doing, hell, I need to "do it" to stop it heading towards the mess. Please stop resetting my flow so often.

Dear boss, more information gives you sense of in control, but are you really in control?

I know things, little less than you, may be, but I am the first person to deal with real things than someone like you who is fed with secondary or tertiary information status from so many, sucked so often.

Bosses got to let people find out the "How" part if they have decided and communicated the "What" part.

And sometimes let decide the What part also.

When boss is absent, the productivity of the day is super duper!

My dear boss if you want good results, please pretend to be on leave, I don't mind if you feel bad about you are not doing anything worth for your paycheck,...but things will be delivered better and... faster!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Paralysis by Perfection


Perfection is terrible issue as it kills "time to market->test->change->test again" cycle.

Problem is,
we don't know "what will work". No body knows either.

Our only hope towards progress is,
set aside perfection and embrace evolution method which will help us spot "what works now" with our customers.

Most people are scared of delivering incomplete. Why?
Mental blocker, "need to be perfect".

Fear of failure and fear of public dismay, leaves most people locked very long in their nest, busy practicing flights of the sky by just sitting there.

"Paralysis by Perfection" is what I will call it.

This is a state of "very strong internal perfection microscope and a poor visionary telescope".

There are dimensions to this Perfection Syndrome.
1) Perfection to be complete,
2) Perfection to be logically correct or faultless.


Not giving any chance to fail, stems from the "fear". The deep fear of public dismay.

"Every aspect" need to be "faultless" makes perfectionist work at every microscopic level, long enough to be lost by loosing the relevance to the time.

So if you are imperfect, be happy.
As you attempt, you know what to correct on the next attempt.

Most chances are, you the imperfect, will win by producing something available. And make lead and money  now, to eventually move towards perfection to create entry barrier to others by building competence.

It is easy to beat perfectionist as they strive hungry.


I know what you are thinking.
Remembering the "pixel perfect man" of Apple inc.

His deliveries were perfected.
The process was never to "attend perfection in first go" type, rather it was systematic, multiple proposals and competitive selection practice which still required market research and understanding customer and most importantly attempting improvements in multiple rounds.



Something to read if you still think perfection is the way!
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/perfectionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_(psychology)


Monday, March 11, 2013

Plague about software and its Development Process

Plague about software and its Development Process



There is a common plague about development process.


Software is fast in the beginning, and becomes slow progressively.
Development is fast in early days and becomes very slow progressively.


Software does best at user, but adding new features takes long time.
Any changes to existing software makes it break at many places.



There is single reason for this phenomenon.
With wrong choices of technology, changes and ambitious features, internal state of software becomes "complex" beyond manageable.


There is simple fix to this,
Simplify software everyday through continuous refactoring.
Being agile is to maintain internal state of the software to "simple" things.