HL Arledge

One of those is mine...can you guess which one?

My friend, Lisa Haneberg, is releasing a second edition of my favorite book by her, High Impact Middle Management.

The publisher is having a contest to select a new cover design, and Lisa—knowing that I dabble in art—asked me to participate.

Take a look, and let me know which one you think will win—and which one you think is mine.

They may or may not be one and the same.

A BEHAG is not a Big Hairy Asked Guess?

[Part 3 of 5 tips for empowering your organization to grow]

Although an organization has empowered all teams to do what must be done to meet stated goals, the organization still cannot grow unless the goals are aligned—one team's goals are supporting the other teams' goals from the smallest team to the largest. At the top, the goals should be set by the executive leadership team, based on the vision of those who control or started the company.

This "vision" usually begins by defining what some call a BHAG.

The acronym was proposed by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in a 1996 article entitled Building Your Company's Vision. It is a form of the vision statement defined as "...an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future."

From the article...

"A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines."

Collins and Porras used this concept again in their popular book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. In the book, the dissected 18 visionary companies, comparing them to 18 not-so-visionary companies. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you do.

Patrick Lencioni tackles the reasons you hate your job

It's Labor Day, and I think I am the only one laboring today. Thus far, I am the only Decadian not out warming up the barbeque. Instead, I am in the office, warming up to a Harvard Business Review interview with one of my favorite business authors, Patrick Lencioni. Pat is making the rounds, promoting his new book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job—a business fable that shows managers how to let employees know how important they are in day to day operations—and why that is important to any organization.

The Three reasons Pat says employees hate their jobs...

Why did Japanese companies deliver better, faster?

Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” is Chinese in origin, however it would be nearly impossible to find a Japanese company that is not driven by it's teachings. The book offers many lessons on leadership and people management, and some believe that it was adopting the strategies in this book that enabled the quality of American products to finally rival that of the Japanese.

Think about it: if you can create a situation where people are willing to follow you into battle and die for you, there must be valuable motivation and leadership practices in place.

Following Sun Tzu's teachings, Japanese businesses are group-oriented and make decisions on that basis, but for years American companies made decisions solely based on the opinions of upper management.

Eventually, American corporations realized that—although decisions were made much faster in the states—their Japanese competition was delivering at an equal or better pace—and with better quality. This was due to staff compliance, goal-commitment, high morale, and the company's avoidance of unproductive conflict—a problem that was rampant in American business culture for years.

It wasn't until American business leaders realized that employee "buy-in" was worth more than employee dissension that we started besting our Asian counter-parts, and—ironically—we may owe it all to a non-business study of military strategy written in the 6th century BC.

Homage from my fellow Scrum Masters

I'm getting notes from all over the Scrum community regarding recent Scrum posts. I thought I should share a couple with you.

Kane Mar—who was the Scrum trainer who ordained me a Scrum Master—wrote from his travels abroad to say...

"I love your articles, especially the flying pig story! I'll have to find a way to use it in my future training courses. I'm also glad to hear that your team is on schedule and doing well—congratulations!"

Kane's a great guy—a little stubborn at times—but a great guy. I highly recommend that everyone read his two-part series on Technical Debt. It may open your eyes to some things you hadn't thought of before.

In Canada—where Decade Software has a sister company—Developer Mark Levison writes...

"Instead of just talking, HL Arledge is building a real product. He has a number of interesting posts. Here are two: Pigs fly everyday at Decade Software Company and Dev Team burning down Decade Software in June. HL just picked up another subscriber in me."

Of course, it should read: "HL Arledge and his team are building a real product." A Scrum Master without a solid team will drown faster than a sailor without a ship.

Mark has some thought-provoking articles at Notes from a Tool User. One I enjoyed recently touched on retrospectives in the software industry.

And last but not—you know the drill—my friend, Joel "on Software" Spolsky says that he is looking to hire a web designer. Don't fall for it! He needs a guinea pig to test the theories in his new book, Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent.

Someone should remind Joel that the time to test is before you deploy.