Communication - Key To Your Success!

I’m a big B-52s fan. Lately I’ve been thinking about communication and thought about lines from one of their songs:

The B-52s: Communicate (Lyrics)

Boy you better communicate

Before it's too late

You better start talking

You better talk

Let loose

Before it causes problems

I look back at the days where I was pounding out code on a daily basis to where I sit today, leading a very talented team of architects, tech leads, development engineers, quality assurance analysts, test automation engineers and certification experts. Along the way, I’ve seen all kinds of challenges.

Here’s a good one from my early days …

I had recently taken a role within the company that I was working for to manage the technology within a specific department, this included not only overseeing the custom code used to manage the operations of the department, but also included purchasing millions of dollars of hardware on an annual basis to handle the growth of the department. Today, everyone takes conference calling for granted, but back then, this was relatively new technology and the company I worked for was providing teleconferencing capabilities for governmental agencies and many large corporations. I was buying conferencing bridges as fast as I could and continuing to customize our conference reservation and management systems. It actually was a pretty fun gig.

So about a year into the job, I get a new boss – a VP that flew into town every couple of weeks. The company I worked for felt that every 6-12 months they needed to shuffle the VPs around to give them exposure across different operational areas within the organization. I had already gone thru 2 different bosses at this point, so getting a 3rd one really didn’t faze me. Up until he arrived.

He walked into my office and said the following: ‘I don’t know what it is you do, I don’t want to know. If you need something, tell me who I need to talk to and what I need to say.’ With that, he walked out of my office back to his office, walked into his office and closed the door. I didn’t see him for the rest of the week and then he flew out of town, not to be seen for another couple of weeks.

Yikes! For about 7 months, I worked for someone that I rarely saw and with whom I rarely ever had a conversation. When he did fly in, he walked thru to his office and closed the door behind him. I was spending money that wasn’t budgeted, but he never even questioned me – granted, we were growing way faster than projected and even with the money I was spending, we were still way ahead on revenue. Still, you would have thought at some point, someone, especially my boss would have questioned the money that was being spent. Conference bridges weren’t cheap and the money needed to be spent to keep up with the call volume growth, but not a single question.

I left that job for a couple of reasons – first, he eventually came to me and told me that he wanted to move me out to the East Coast. I had no warning of this conversation. He just dropped it on me and expected me to jump thru hoops to make it happen. Uhm, no. He had never spent any time with me to understand what my goals where, what was happening in my personal life and where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. He had never taken time to talk with me about what his goals were for me, where he saw me going and how I fit into the overall picture of where he was headed, what the team was headed and the expectations of the company. Second, I had already been looking at joining up with a couple of friends to begin our own consulting firm. My old boss and his boss. Well, the way he approached me on the move, sealed the deal. Within a month, I was gone and the 3 of us began building a successful consulting firm.

I don’t know if the cards would have been played differently if he had spent more time with me during those 7 months. If I had gotten to know him better and he had sold me on his vision, the overall company vision, I might have reacted differently and ended up out on the East Coast. Hindsight being 20/20, I’m ultimately glad that I stayed in Iowa. I often wonder how many other people this guy lost because he didn’t know how to build relationships and connect with the people who worked for him. I have also never been able to figure out how he managed to become a VP.

Our willingness and ability to communicate can solve the challenges we face on a daily basis. I’m constantly telling people, get out of your chair, go find the person you need and have a discussion. Don’t wait! If they’re not in the same building, ping them via our IM tool or video conference them in for a conversation. Take 15 minutes today, will save us hours/days/weeks down the road vs letting something get thru and then having to back up and do a total redesign.

If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile

Bosses - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest!

Bosses can be interesting people – I say that tongue in cheek knowing that this is a role I’ve now played for the vast majority of my career. Some bosses teach you what to do, other bosses teach you what not to do. This memory is going to reflect on things I learned not to do after one particularly interesting boss.

In one of my roles I ended up working for a great team. I really mean this, I loved the people and spent a lot of time with them outside of work. Anything from getting together for drinks, to grilling out to playing on rec sports teams. We all enjoyed being around each other. We celebrated life’s successes with each other and we were there for each other in the difficult moments of life. These were great people, they really did care and they weren’t afraid to show it.

Due to nature of our personal relationships, it made work a lot easier. We were all comfortable with each other and it allowed us to not only get a lot of work done together, but to have fun while we were doing it. Practical jokes were played in and out of the office, nothing disruptive, but enough to let the target know that they had been had! I got stung more than once by these friends, and we still laugh about it to this day. I don’t really recall there being a lot of formality in the office, you could approach anyone with an issue and count on them to help you push thru it and find an answer. There are many times I’ve thought about being back with that group of friends/team mates. Everyone, except ‘The boss’.

‘The boss’ wasn’t my official boss, but effectively ran the place. The owner lived out of town and ‘The boss’ had official free reign across the entire organization. ‘The boss’ was also disruptive! Promises were made to customers without ever checking internally to see if it could be done or when it could be done. Decisions were made without any input and without any reason, sometimes reversing the decisions that were made the prior week. ‘The boss’ would play people in the office off against each other. While I was not an official direct report of ‘The boss’, I ended up in many meetings to discuss customer issues, project issues and what was being done to resolve said issues.

These meetings typically devolved into shouting matches, with the end result being who could yell the loudest, the longest and wear the other side down. Or ‘The boss’ would make demeaning statements about your ability to do your job’ To say it was stressful would be an understatement. You would walk out of some of those meetings completely mentally and physically worn out. You never knew when these meetings would occur, your day could be going well and boom – you get called into a meeting with ‘The boss’. There goes the day!

You always knew when ‘The boss’ was back in the office, suddenly office doors closed and the attitudes of everyone changed to sullen and silent. This was no way live and work.

After a couple of years of this insanity, I decided that it was time to move on, working in that environment was not how I wanted to live my life. While I loved the people, ‘The boss’ made it untenable. It was weird, I was on a business trip with a peer taking phone interviews and trying to figure out how to ‘hide it’ so that he wouldn’t know what I was doing. It was toward the end of the trip when we both figured out that each of us were doing the same thing.

While I was glad to get out of that experience, I also look back and realize what I gained out of the experience. I learned a lot of things that I tucked away as examples of how not to treat people:

1. It is not ok to yell at people in the work place.
2. It is not ok to promise customers stuff when you haven’t reviewed with your internal teams and have no clue what you are promising.
3. It is not ok to schedule multi-hour meetings with the express purpose of just using the meeting to wear your opponents down just because you can.
4. It is not ok to jerk your team around with ping-pong decisions that can’t be explained.
5. It is not ok to belittle people in front of their peers.

I probably learned a lot more during that experience than I’m remembering at this moment in time. I left because it was the right thing for me to do. I miss the daily interaction with the friends I made, but do not miss the insanity of the situation.

I will forever remember the day I got word that I was selected for one of the jobs I’d been applying and interviewing for, that finally would allow me to get out of the situation – I had been in a meeting that lasted the entire day. ‘The boss’ was in fine form and it was a true death match between development and ‘The boss’. I didn’t say much the entire day as the head of development took the brunt of the heat that washed across the room. That said, the end of the day hit and I was completely spent. I drove home wondering how much more I was going to be able to take.

When I arrived home, my wife asked me what was going on and I started to describe the day – in brutal detail. Part way thru the conversation, the phone rang, I looked at my wife and told her that it was probably ‘The boss’ and to tell her I wasn’t home. My wife answered the phone and told me that I needed to take the call as it was one of the companies I’d been interviewing with. I sat on the phone as the job was offered to me and didn’t hesitate to say yes when asked if I wanted the job. The funny thing, when I handed in my resignation, ‘The boss’ tried to get me to stay. Didn’t happen!

What have you learned from your bosses along the way?

If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile

Reaching Out ... It's Your Job!

What are you doing to help someone find their way?

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend our local school board meeting and to be part of a presentation for a program titled: Tech Journey. This presentation was to inform our local board of actions that the district had taken over the summer to provide students with the opportunity to explore, in a hands on environment, careers related to technology. This effort was focused on letting 8th grade students have experiences that could impact their education choices and potentially open up opportunities for them to explore career choices. Better yet, the program was focused on providing these opportunities to students who typically don't have a lot of resources available to them on regular basis.

I commend the district administrative staff, the instructors and their technology team for leaning in on this effort and making it happen. Tech Journey was originally envisioned by a team of people in the Des Moines School District, and the Johnston School District was able to work with the original Tech Journey team to construct a similar opportunity for kids within our local district. A win for everyone involved!

So how do I fit into the picture and why was I at the board meeting? Well, for years, I have been working with several of the local high schools. I go in and talk to the students about what it's like to work in technology fields, I work to find volunteers to help the students in programming/security competitions and I work with the administration in helping to define programs that give students an opportunity to explore technology opportunities. I also do this with some of the local colleges and across both high school and college students, I provide internship opportunities when their is a good match between a students experience and opportunities that I have in my teams. Yes, most of these internships go to 2 or 4 year college students, but when the right high school student comes along, we work to see if there is a 'right' fit. My job last night was to support the district staff in the presentation and show the commitment to this particular private/public partnership to help students.

Early this spring, I was contacted by the administration team planning the Tech Journey event and asked to review the curriculum and then to see if I could find the necessary volunteers to work with the students. Working with the team, we refined the standard Tech Journey schedule and curriculum. I was then able to find volunteers within my team to work with the students and explore the following:

1. 3D Modeling using SketchUp
2. Programming using Scratch

Next year, the district hopes to expand the program to include basic HTML and CSS concepts.
For the 3D modeling, the students all got to use a tool called SketchUp to create Lego like blocks. This took the better part of the morning as they took measurements and then learned how to use SketchUp to create the actual 3D model. The technology team from the district, had setup 3D printers and over the lunch hour then printed each students block. The final test, would the blocks fit together? Why, yes, they did!

The afternoon, was split into 2 different sessions. First the students got to experience Scratch - programming for beginners. They had a lot of fun working to create a game, guided by some of the volunteers, Students were able to work in a casual manner with 1-on-1 interaction with the volunteers. The 2nd part of the afternoon was a Virtual Reality experience.

I can only hope that these young minds walked away from the day with the knowledge that they have the capability to do this type of work. That it is not intimidating.

I know that my team had a lot of fun working with the students that day. Between the different sessions we had Sphero competitions between the students and the volunteers and at the end of the day, everyone was able to partake in a Virtual Reality experience. I gotta say, the technology available to students these days is impressive! My team is now asking to get VR equipment - not sure how I justify that!

So, why am I writing about this? A couple of reasons come to mind. 

First, all of us have a responsibility to find a way to help the next generation take their first steps. I'm truly passionate about working with students across middle school, high school and college to show them what opportunities exist and why they should be interested in pursuing careers in technology. I want to share my experiences, as a way to show to others that there is not a large investment of time, and that the rewards far outweigh the time spent volunteering.

Second, I want to encourage my peers to find a way to help students explore these careers. We all know there is a shortage of talented team members in the technology field - I don't care which field, there is a shortage and it is going to get worse before it gets better. We need to find ways to let young women and young men know that they can succeed in this field. If only one of you reads this article and then finds a way to volunteer to help a group of students or an individual student explore technology as a career choice, then I'll call it a success.

Maybe it's your own student, maybe you find a day to volunteer at your local school, maybe you help a group of students compete in a technology challenge. Only you know what you're capable of and what time you have available to help these students. Find a way! Be a part of something bigger than the day to day grind!

If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile