My Leadership Manifesto (2014)

My Leadership Manifesto

This is my view on the world. This is not meant to be a declaration, but rather an exercise in self-reflection during a time of turbulence that could move into minor chaos (and beyond that who knows). We’re going through a tremendous shift in how we work that’s hitting a critical mass now… we have dozens of teams going through transition all at once, and people are starting to feel the stress. We’re at a tipping point.

The purpose of this self-reflection exercise is to try and develop an anchor, and hopefully a compass to guide me. I can feel myself starting to get impacted by the turbulence, and sometimes I end the day wondering what happened and why I acted the way I did. All I can come up with is that I got swept up in something that doesn’t truly matter. In an effort to make sure I limit this in the upcoming chaos I’m trying to develop my view on leadership. What’s important to me? Why does it matter? How do I think I should operate?

In the absence of clarity there is chaos. At least with this I should be clear about what’s important to me. Below are the things I think are most important as a leader… it is my leadership manifesto.

Invest in people constantly, and it will fuel everything else – Spend time networking and developing people whenever you can. Sometimes it definitely feels like you’re just too busy, but once you start to invest in people it’s a cycle that fuels itself. Every time you try to get something done it’s much easier because you have people to lean on. Everything you get asked to do gets done faster, and easier. Then you take any of that extra time, and reinvest in the same people or new people. It can become a giant snowball.

Develop a compass and follow it – Do not spend time worrying about what someone else would want you to do. Spend time worrying about what you believe is right. Some leader somewhere may not agree with you, but you can use that later to calibrate whether or not you were actually right. Over time you will calibrate and recalibrate your compass. It’s ok to be wrong. Once you buy in you can live in the moment, and not worry about what a leader may think. You can focus on what’s truly right instead of perceived perception.

This is all made up. You can challenge anything – business was invented, not discovered. Someone somewhere before you decided this is the right way to organize and the right way to get work done. That person may or may not be smarter than you. This means you can challenge anything, or just ignore it if it doesn’t make sense. This is especially important when dealing with the dreaded “red tape” or with politics (artificial org constraints). Both are manmade inventions that can be uninvented, and don’t require a special occasion to do so… any random day of the week will do.

Ownership only works if it’s real – you don’t kind of own your house or your car. You either own your house or you rent. You either own your car or you lease. Ownership cannot be half in. If someone owns something they must be given the freedom to make decisions someone else wouldn’t necessarily make. Ownership is in name only doesn’t work. It makes things confusing, and doesn’t help people grow. If you truly own something it means you can fail, and that promotes growth and clarity.

Open always in all ways – lean into being open, and just do it. If someone asks your opinion just say what you really think (see compass section above). If you think something doesn’t make sense then say it. If something isn’t working say it. Do not turn red scorecards yellow because you don’t want that message going upwards… it’s either red or it’s not. This only works if you’re all-in. If you do this all the time people will respect it. If you pick and choose when you do this you’ll look like you’re being political… person A gets the truth, but person B gets something modified.

Do the work and then represent it. Don’t present – instead of worrying about presentations and how you prepare you need to focus on doing the work all day every day. Then filter the message at the end for the audience. If you do this your presentations will be a breeze. You’ll also stop wasting time on silly things like formatting, and getting approvals for your message… it’s already approved because you’re doing the work already.

What does a leadership culture look like and how do we get there?

What is represented above is all about individual leadership, but what about a culture of leadership? What does that look like? How does that become real?

What it looks like:

Flexible Clarity – we can be flexible in accountability while still remaining clear by defining clear owners for things, and sharing the accountability for distinct projects. We don’t need to have 1 go-to for some kind of topic, and we don’t have to lead by committee. Leaders also need to be flexible in taking on new projects. They cannot stay inside their defined box all day every day. This requires 2 things: trust and boundaries.

Trust – I need to trust you and you need to trust me… not just on paper, but for real. If you need something critical from me to do your job you need to trust me to the point you let me do it without interfering and checking in.

Boundaries – we need clear boundaries. They don’t have to be handed down from leadership, but they need to be established and maintained. Sometimes you need something from me, but part of your role is to help define the technical architecture for me in context of many other things. Sometimes that is not your role. We need to know what the boundaries are, or we will get into a situation where things are unclear.

Talk about “how” and not just “what” – instead of just talking about the project at hand, or the next thing, we spend as much time talking about the “how”. How are we organizing? How are we getting work done? How are we enabling people? Is the right work in the right place? This seems like a waste of time at first, but if we figure out the “how” at the leadership level then the rest of the org will work better and handle the “what” for us. If we focus only on the “what” leaders will always have to own the what, and can never move on or be flexible.

Partnerships look like friendships – you treat your org partners like you treat your friends… you text when appropriate instead of just sending an email. You pick up the phone for important things. You talk to them about the good and the bad. You have hard conversations. You get annoyed with each other, and then you just forget about it. You bounce ideas that aren’t fully thought through off of them. You win and lose together. When partnerships look like friendships organizations will work together better, and start to exhibit similar behavior. This is not to be confused with being actual friends… you don’t need to go out to dinner or bowling with key stakeholders to make it work (although I find it helps).

Strength in the middle – a strong leadership culture certainly requires strong leadership at the top, but the people in the middle will always far outnumber the people at the top. Therefore they represent a much larger potential impact. With a leadership culture your true strength is in the middle. The people who manage dozens, and not hundreds, are strong and we constantly foster their growth. We focus on enabling them. We reward and recognize them. Here’s the kicker… they are the TRUE OWNERS. They make decisions and drive work. They do not simply exist to be the execution limbs of the leaders above them.

How do we get there?

Buy-in at the top – every large org change requires leadership buy-in, and some level of top down push. Someone signs the paychecks and rates performance. If that person isn’t aligned to the direction no one that works for them can be expected to really change.

What’s holding back the middle? – Once we have buy-in we need to figure out what’s holding back the middle. Is it lack of boundaries or trust? We need to understand why their world doesn’t look like the leadership culture we described (assuming we agree with it). In this conversation we need to stay away from the “what” and focus on the “how”, and there is nothing out of bounds. If there is a tedious process or bad tool it counts. If someone has to spend all day writing status reports they won’t have time to talk about “how” or treat their partner like a friend. All they will have time to do is the tedious thing they’re being asked

Assign actions to leadership – if you’re not yet in the right culture you cannot expect the people who gave you the feedback to take up the actions on their own. If you are then I guess you can stop reading. Once you know what is broken you need to fix it with the leaders. They need to take on the actions, and report back to you (the change agent) on what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. It is likely these people are very good at delivering something already so the closer you can make this cadence look to their norm the better. This may mean project plans and weekly status, but whatever gets them moving.

It’s a trap!!! – be careful to avoid the typical trap when you get to this point: leadership assigns the actions right back to their team who gave the feedback. This is normal, but needs to be quickly stopped. The leadership team needs to take the action personally. They need to move things forward without assigning it back to their team. It is likely the only way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to personally get into the details with them, or to monitor at their team level. This isn’t fun, but it is necessary.

Coach, coach, coach – during this process you must invest in coaches and coaching. Investment doesn’t have to be 3rd party consultants, but it does need to be real (time/energy/etc). There should be multiple layers of this ranging from specific 1:1 coaching of your trouble areas to online training. Everything in between is fair game. We need to invest in people, and raising the overall level of leadership.

Wash, rinse, repeat – this isn’t going to happen in 1 big movement. This needs to happen over and over for areas you think need focus. Ideally the entire org doesn’t need this, or you’re in big trouble. Some people foster this kind of org on their own. However, be prepared to repeat this same process over and over. Don’t be surprised if some people require multiple cycles before they get it.

What is “Organizational Transformation”?

A lot of groups want to transform, but most people don’t know what “transformation” means and what it takes. At most when things seem to reach a tipping point someone will be appointed as a “transformation lead” and then create a “formal effort” to transform.

For the purposes of this section we need to assume that the commitment to transform is enough that it warrants someone dedicated. If this isn’t the case than you have 3 possible things going on 1) you don’t need to transform 2) you aren’t willing to do what it takes to transform 3) you found someone who isn’t fully dedicated, but clearly wasn’t that busy to take up the large effort to move an entire organization. #3 is really just a way you’re fooling yourself into thinking you didn’t dedicate someone.

Appointing someone is actually a really good start, but what does transformation look like? Where do we focus? How do we get there? Here are the areas that actually transform, and consequently they are the areas you need to focus on.

Areas That Must Change

Day to day life of everyone must change: at the end of the day if you haven’t impacted what people do and how they do it you haven’t transformed anything except maybe titles/structures/names. The critical part here is the word “everyone”. Senior leadership is not an exception. The transformation usually starts in the form of org level goals, vision, or expectations at first. However, if senior leaders don’t change the way they act day to day ultimately everyone will fall back to the old way of working. This leads to a natural fit of a top down approach. The people toward the top of the org, and yes there always is a top, wield more influence so it’s most critical they change first. A deliberate org transformation really needs to start at the top, and those folks need to change first and most dramatically.

Work feels different: If everyone changes what they do, but the culture around them feels the same the org hasn’t transformed… you’ve simply changed processes. Work needs to feel different. This is the culture piece, but I don’t like that word because it’s loaded and means something different to everyone. The way people interact with each other needs to change. The typical questions asked during meetings to change. The way other organizations interact with this org needs to change… there is no way to truly quantify this, but the best output markers are 1) external perception 2) typical conversations during standard meetings. #2 can be easy to track if you choose to. You can simply pick a standard meeting and write down the most common questions or discussion points over a period of time and watch them change.

People change: In order for a transformation to work it needs to be sustained. What chance do you have of sustaining a transformation if people don’t change? None. Before we discuss this more we should level set on several kinds of people changes.

1. Growth – people can grow and change. No one was born with the knowledge/ability to do the job they do. At some point they grew into it, and they can grow out of it.
2. Replacement – some people will not fit in the new world. It is best to move them out as quickly as possible. This is the one people simply ignore because it’s uncomfortable.
3. New Role – some people can move to a new role that makes sense in the new world. This is very healthy, but you can get trapped. A lot of times people don’t want to make tough decisions (#2), and try hard to justify this type of change. Be careful with this category.

Going into a true transformation you should expect some kind of even split for your people across these 3 buckets. Most of the “doers” will fit into #1/#2. If we redefine the expectations of developers each person will either fit and grow or need to be replaced. There isn’t a new role for them to move into.

Leadership will likely be spread evenly across all 3 of these. With the right direction and coaching (requiring a lot of time) many leaders can go into #1. However, most of the time the investment in time isn’t there from the ultimate leader of the org. Replacing a leader can be very scary. Often times this is the single most difficult hard decision in a transformation because you can’t simply replace a leader. You have to let them go, and then try to quickly get the right person to backfill them. This leaves gaps, and finding leaders has a lot of pitfalls. Moving a leader in the org to a new role is often a good option. However, be careful that you aren’t putting off the inevitable replacement.

Let’s face it we’re in this situation now because a set of people got us to the point you needed to transform. You cannot expect those same people to magically dig you out of your current situation.

How do we transform?

Now that we’ve framed up what transformation looks like we can talk about how to get there. Below are some steps you can take to start your transformation. Ultimately it’s a journey and the goals can evolve. However, if you are successful in building momentum you will be successful in continuing it as long as you want to.

Getting Started – the hardest part

Develop your direction – it’s important to get aligned on the direction of your transformation before trying to transform.

NOTE: I believe this exercise is 100% necessary for a transformation. However, it can be easily used in a situation where an org needs to mature either slowly or rapidly. Transformation is painful and fast. It’s not right for every situation, but this is applicable in any situation where an org needs to change.

1. Define what transformation means – I offer my view above. However, that may not be right for everyone. It is a good start for anyone though.
   1. I didn’t do this well until I was a few months into my major transformation effort, and I wish I had. We defined it in 3 pillars: People, Execution, and Culture. These buckets guided us in where we were putting effort. However, they grew after considerable effort instead of being a deliberate conversation up front. Even if you change your definition of transformation having one to start will expedite everything else.
2. Learn from history – a lot of people want to immediately look forward to change. We’ve all heard the saying “if we don’t learn from history we’re doomed to repeat it”. It’s as true here as anywhere else. 1 CRITICAL point about learning the history is that some of what you want to transform will not be novel. They may be things that have come up for years and dozens of times. People will not be as willing to dive in and help when they’ve already gone through the same exercise.
   1. While it is important to understand history it is not important to carry it forward. As you learn if you get no specific relevant reasons for doing something you can (and likely should) change it immediately. Knowing the history does not mean you have to do things that way. You’re entering a new world that you are shaping, and what made sense back then may not make sense now.
   2. Understanding history also means appreciating it. Often times you’re going to change a lot of things that a lot of people put time/energy into. If you are transforming an org in total chaos it may not matter, but most groups have some semblance of order. That order was likely created and implemented by the people you are trying to transform. They care about it and are often proud of it. You don’t want to start off insulting people by pointing out all the things that are wrong with something they led a year or 2 ago
   3. Baselining on “where we were” is critical in understanding the overall picture. More to come on this in the upcoming sections…
3. Understand where you are – this seems natural. However, it is likely you are bringing in some kind of change agent, or asking someone to play the role that has been in the team for a while. It’s important to spend time on external and internal perceptions. Oftentimes they are not aligned.
   1. Pay specific attention to anything documented… a process/goals/status/etc. These are often the things that are well understood and universal in the group. Each leader will have their own flavor, but if everyone is using the same documented goals that is what will drive the biggest impact. These things also become tools later on when you want to start changing things.
   2. A big part of this is understanding your boundaries within the transformation. There really are very few 100% open ended opportunities to transform something. A typical easy boundary to understand is: we cannot miss current commitments. However, that boundary is different than: we cannot build transformational items into future estimates. Changing things going forward is a great way to keep commitments, and to move the needle when the effort is too large. You should seek to understand your constraints across all dimensions. However, understanding people and org constraints are critical. Can you bring in new people? Can you move out some existing people? Can you change goals, and at what level? Can you change the org structure? These will set the tone for how you tackle some of the harder questions later on.
   3. This is where you build out a view of “where we are”. Now you know where you were and where you are… that’s a pretty powerful thing to understand.
4. Define where you want to be – this may be handed to you, or maybe it’s pretty open. However, it is likely this piece needs more senior leadership involvement. You can understand where you are and where you were without tremendous leadership support by asking good questions. Here you need to make sure you’re aligned with overall strategy. This MUST align with your definition in #1. If it does not you should go back and redefine transformation or you’ll be off track.
   1. Take a lot of input – this cannot be 3 people in a room deciding where to go. It requires a lot of input from people inside and outside the org transforming. It’s important to get many perspectives even if you don’t ultimately go the direction suggested. This is critical for getting buy in as well. 3 people in a room create marching orders. They don’t create a future vision hundreds will buy into (unless they get lucky). Getting input from the people that are being transformed allows them to be part of the movement instead of getting new orders.
   2. Review with leadership and partners – if you get early buy in you’ll be able to lean on them later. You will be faced with some tough decisions at some point, and having leadership and partnership buy-in will be critical during those periods.
5. Put it all together – create a view of your world that shows “where we were” “where we are” and “where we want to be”. Share it and reshare it. Make it your cornerstone. Then update it every few months to see if you’ve moved the needle.
   1. Brevity is key – if you can’t fit it on a single page you can print out and hand to someone you haven’t really digested this yourself. Also, by being brief you can only write down a few things… this helps you naturally weed out less important things, and doing a few things well is better than barely doing a lot of things.
   2. Group things across all 3 states – you should see parallels across all 3 time horizons. If you can’t group things it’s likely you are not focusing on the right things. It’s ok if “where we are” has none of what we want. Just put down that we don’t do this specific thing.
   3. Shareable at all levels – this is your compass, and it needs to be everyone else’s. That means you should not put sensitive material in here. It’s ok if you have some small modifications between an internal and external version. However, they cannot be completely different documents/directions. If you can’t share it then it was a good exercise for you, but won’t help broadly.
   4. Be brutally honest – the final product may say things that people won’t like, but it’s important you are brutally honest. “Where we were” and “where we are” will likely not paint the org in a good light, but remember the end goal is to change things. If you don’t know where you are you don’t know how to get where you’re going. If it’s really honest even people who don’t like it will eventually come around because they know what you’re saying is true.
   5. Employ a concentric circle approach for sharing – don’t send this out in a blast email right away. Share it with a small group that is likely to be constructive, and has the right idea about this transformation already. Then continue to share it with larger audiences moving outward from the core team. Hopefully you identified key people in the org who are influences in the “where we are” phase. If not you may want to find them and bring them on early. The same principle applies to those who you think will be the most resistant. Include them early.

Decide where to focus – now that everyone is well established in where we want to go, and what we want our organization to look like after we’re done it’s important to take action to get there.

1. Create a big list and categorize – no idea is a bad idea at this point. It’s as simple as it sounds… create a list of what you want to do to move these things forward. Each item on the list can come from anywhere.
2. Filter and prioritize the list – step 1 is easy. Put ideas on paper. We do it all the time. This is the unique part to transformation though. We need to prioritize, but we need to use different criteria. We need to figure out what items will drive human behavior the way we want it to go the fastest. This isn’t very intuitive for typical technology areas so this might be a good place to phone a friend. However, here are some simple steps you can take to try and get the list where you need it to be
   1. Categorize everything against 1 of your focus areas from your 1 slider – throw away anything that doesn’t fit into those categories (assuming they are correct)
   2. Short list items that are concrete – a lot of things may appear like “create a vision”. While this can be impactful it isn’t as immediate as changing some process people participate in everyday. Short list those items that have tangible deliverables, and some sense of timeline to get them done.
   3. Identify the heavy hitters – some items may not be concrete, but have huge impact when completed. These are things like “raise the bar on technical skills”. This is not easy, but is likely worth going after in the short term.
   4. Select 1-3 by category – since you were constrained to a single page for your direction it’s likely not possible you have more than 4 categories. If you do this may not work. Pick 1-3 of the short listed items from the list. You should have a very tactical tangible list of items you can work on to get momentum. On top of that, or instead of some of a couple items, you should pick some heavy hitters to start.
   5. Deep dive into heavy hitters – don’t let these sit on a shelf like a punch line. You need to take time to figure out what you can do within these larger areas. Similar to the overall transformation you need to dive in and create discrete actions to go after.

Drive progress – now that you have a list you’re at the part that might feel more comfortable. You need to drive progress against the work. I don’t need to add much here since it’s like this is business as usual.

Slight aside- what drives human behavior?

Changing behavior is the name of the transformation game. You aren’t moving code. You are moving humans. It’s important to understand some of the basics of what drives human behavior.

This is a complex topic, and I am certainly not an expert in it. The 1 universal truth I’ve seen/heard over and over again is incentive. This does not mean $$. This means people follow what they are rewarded for following. Even in the case that people want autonomy, mastery, and purpose these things can be looked at as the incentive itself. If you demonstrate that you’ve really internalized this transformation and the changes we want to make leadership will provide opportunity to do this. It may be splitting hairs a bit, but it is very real and very powerful. Incentives matter.

What this means when you pick your list is that you may want to prioritize things that are already part of the incentive structure. Org and individual goals can be very powerful when they align with your effort and how a person will be rated (assuming you rate people). These things are easily rewritten… someone somewhere made them up and put them in a system. We can do the same. Look for these early on.

One incentive that gets over utilized and rarely talked about is negative consequence. I am specifically talking about the style of negative consequence when a presentation doesn’t go well as opposed to direct actions aimed at a person. This is also very powerful. Looking at this it becomes easy to find some normal processes (meetings/reports/etc) and to change them to focus on what you want them to. If you have a goal of people becoming more technical you can add a design conversation section to status reports. This will drive an ongoing technical dialogue, and a need for people to increase their technical skills so that piece of the conversation goes well. This is an example of a short term action you can take on a heavy hitter item that will change behavior over time.