Tag Archives: Agile Management

Managing self-organizing teams in an Agile Software Development practice is about encouraging and allowing developers to embody values of collaboration, creativity, quality, integrity, and individual initiative in an environment that provides sustainable pace and opportunities for personal development.

From Best To Worst

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Performance GraphManagement structures are often designed to avoid failure. An unintended consequence is undermining top performers.

Marcus Buckingham describes this in First, Break All the Rules based on Gallup Research across a range of professions.

…in numerous job functions the best and the worst performers shared some, but not all, traits. Both the best and the worst salespeople have call reluctance; the mediocre performers did not. Both the best and the worst nurses had a personal connection with their patients; mediocre nurses stayed aloof. What was important is what the top performers did about this strong emotional link; they used it to empower and motivate them. The poor performers used it to shrink from effective action. Those with no emotional attachment lacked the motivation to excel.

Hospitals rotate shifts so that nurses cannot form personal attachments to patients. Prevents poor performing nurses from burning out. Doesn’t impact mediocre nurses who don’t engage anyway. Prevents the best nurses from giving the kind of care that improves patient outcomes.

Compulsory testing and centralized lesson plans are designed to ensure poor teachers raise poor student performance but makes it much harder for great teachers to innovate and personalize instruction and bores precocious students ready to go beyond core instruction.

If the core difference between poor and excellent performers is that the best are motivated and empowered by their emotional engagement to their work, then it follows if you demotivate and disempower your best performers you remove the distinction.

Under a poor leader, the exceptional will under-perform the mediocre.

Free Agency, Teams and Knowledge Sharing

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Paul from Oracle AppsLab has a post on whether viewing all employees as free agents would contribute to better knowledge management within an organization.

So if we found a way to enable people to build their own personal brand through activities we want to incent (like sharing, collaboration, etc), both employees and employers could be substantially better off…

For me the high-concept is less interesting than how a management team would translate it into action.

For me, individuals should be rewarded for group performance allowing peers to recognize the outstanding contributions of individuals.

Knowledge sharing and creation springs from an environment of high trust and fair reward. This is best fostered in an organization composed of self-directed, cross-functional teams that demonstrate progress frequently and visibly against clear priorities. Rewards should be based on both team and organizational performance.

Balkanization

Team rewards motivate individuals to collaborate within their team and the team to raise up each other’s performance or eject members that can’t carry their weight. Individual rewards or advancement should result from a process that solicits input and obtains buy in from peers.

Organizational rewards motivate teams into healthy “bounded cohabitation”, bringing the best new learning to the rest of the organization, rather than dysfunctional “balkanization” where one team’s failure advantages another.

This requires management to take a coaching, facilitating role and senior leadership to set ambitious goals while embodying the values they expect others to embrace.

Marcus Buckingham Thinks Your Boss Has an Attitude Problem

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I’m a fan of The Gallup Organization‘s research and management writing. Marcus Buckingham has a 2001 Fast Company interview on his site.

“There’s a juicy irony here,” says the 35-year-old Cambridge-educated Brit. “You won’t find a CEO who doesn’t talk about a ‘powerful culture’ as a source of competitive advantage. At the same time, you’d be hard-pressed to find a CEO who has much of a clue about the strength of that culture. The corporate world is appallingly bad at capitalizing on the strengths of its people.”

He lists “five attitude adjustments that redefine the essence of leadership in business.” To senior executives, he says:

  1. Measure what really matters… Averages hide the fact that within any company are some of the most-engaged work groups and some of the least-engaged work groups. But this range is what is most revealing.
  2. Stop trying to change people. Start trying to help them become more of who they already are.
  3. You’re not the most important person in the company. (T)he single most important determinant of individual performance is a person’s relationship with his or her immediate manager.
  4. Stop looking to the outside for help. The solutions to your problems exist inside your company.
  5. Don’t assume that everyone wants your job — or that great people want to be promoted out of what they do best.

He provides some good detail and the conclusions are supported with methodical quantitative research.

Steve Morgan

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Cute Chucky by ibtrav

Today was my boss’ last day at the company.

I’ve worked for him seven years.

The road to hell is paved with fools who’ve underestimated him.

He is a shield under which we built an amazing team.

Prosaic but heartfelt praise — Steve Morgan is a good human being.

Why his IT team got him a Chucky doll I’ll never know.

Goodbyes

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Goodbye by mira_photo

The acquisition is done.

We are retained. “(O)ur jobs are unaffected.”

“(We) have a choice.”

To co-workers who’ve left or are soon to go:

I miss learning from you. I miss laughing.

You will create products.

You will build teams.

I look forward to it.