HL Arledge

18 definitions that can make you a better leader

When I first took this job, I started jotted down notes, regarding different ways to interpret words. I've come to believe that real leaders have a slightly different dictionary than managers, bosses, dictators, and elected officials.

Here are my top 10 definitions used by real leaders...

Attitude–A state of mind, an emotional and intellectual inclination and predisposition to actions based on what you convince yourself is the truth.

Communication–Refers to anything, verbal or nonverbal, that imparts information, thoughts, or feelings. It is a vehicle than enables leaders and followers to connect with each other and to learn about their respective worlds.

Defensive Culture–A world in which people are more concerned with their image than they are with solving problems.

Desires–Unexpected bonuses or other pleasant surprises. The items that complete a staff member's statement that begins with, "It sure would be nice if..."

Expectations—Refers to perceived entitlements, any deliverable or treatment staff considers essential to happily performing their jobs.

Fertile Workplace Culture—An environment that encourages individuals to grow, learn, and be as good as they can as employees and as people.

Meanwhile, in a country called Scrum...

In the country of Scrum, there is a backlog of bills to be addressed, and there is an impediment list of problems to be solved.

These lists are ordered by the Product Owner—and the Vice Product Owner if the Product Owner is assassinated.

The country of Scrum has two teams. Each team has a Scrum Master, who coordinates meetings to ensure that everyone does what is best for the team and the country.The Product Owner is available to answer any questions and provide any support the teams require.

The Product Owner(s) never interfere with the daily workings of the teams.

The goals of individual team members are rarely considered.

After both teams have delivered on their commitments, they come together, adapting and improving their processes, ultimately delivering a country that all stakeholders are proud of—and one that other country's envy.

I once lived in the country of Scrum, but during some quiet coo, I believe that my country was overthrown by the kingdom of Greed.

Truth, Trust, Transparency, and Toy Story

For years, I have touted that management through truth, trust, and transparency is the fastest way to succeed. In an article in this month's Harvard Business Review, the founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull, says I am dead on.

"Talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe to tell the truth. And we must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture."

We've proven this works in just a few short years at Decade Software. Pixar has been following this credo for nearly 10 years.

Pixar is the only movie studio in history to rollout consecutive blockbusters and nothing else.

Axosoft OnTime adopts Scrum in a big way!

I have made much noise over the past year related to Axosoft OnTime's advertised support for Scrum and the product's shortcomings in this area. I have also explained how Decade Software has found ways to work around those shortcomings—but soon you will not have to.

Hamid Shojaee made this announcement today...

"OnTime is an extremely effective tool for managing Scrum projects, but I think we can do a far better job in future versions of OnTime. To make sure we fully embrace Scrum for future releases of OnTime, I had our entire team learn about Scrum. I also made sure we had multiple team members attend a two-day workshop with Ken Schwaber to become certified Scrum Masters.

Axosoft has embraced Scrum in a big way and we have made Scrum one of the main focuses of the next major release of OnTime. More generally, OnTime 2009’s focus will be on Project Visibility, which will help every single OnTime customer, not just those using Scrum. But for Scrum teams in particular, especially those hungry for some burn down charts and other visualization tools, you won’t be disappointed."

To be clear, I love OnTime. It has increased transparency throughout our company. My goal all along was merely to hold Axosoft accountable for their advertising promises and help them make OnTime even better.

It looks like that has happened.

Thank you, Axosoft. I am overjoyed at the news, and I am standing by to beta test if you need me.

21 tips for delivering killer presentations

As you know, I worked in radio for 15 years, and I've been speaking publicly since Jimmy Carter was president.

In fact, this month I will be speaking to developers at the Fresno County Office of Education on Scrum.

At the office this week, everyone's getting excited about our user conference, and most are beginning to prepare their training sessions. To assist, I've put together my top 21 tips for public presentations.

1. Know your 15-word summary. Can you summarize your presentation in fifteen words? If not, rewrite it and try again. Speaking is an inefficient medium for communicating information, so know what the important fifteen words are and repeat them often.
2. Develop rapport with the audience. Presentations should be entertaining and informative. The audience expects some appeal to their emotions. Reciting dry facts without passion or humor bores your audience, as does repetitious or unnecessary words. Keep the audience engaged. Interesting talks fly by. Boring ones last forever.
3. Tell stories. If your presentation is lengthy, explain your points using short stories or anecdotes. Great speakers know how to paint mental pictures for the audience, creating emotional connections between ideas.
4. Tell the truth. If someone asks you a question and you do not know the answer, tell them so, but offer to help them find the answers after the presentation, and when you are wrong, say you are wrong.
5. Hold questions until the end. To keep the presentation moving, ask the audience to hold questions until the end. If they have questions not specific to the presentation, ask them to meet with you after the session.
6. Repeat questions. When accepting questions, have the person asking state their name and where they are from. Repeat these details and the question for your audience.
7. Prepare and adapt. Speak to your audience, listen to questions, respond to reactions—adjust and adapt. In case your material is not getting across, be prepared to change strategy. Know what you can (and cannot) omit, and brace yourself for the unexpected.
8. Distribute handouts. Ensure that the audience focuses on your presentation, instead of taking notes. Distribute most prior to the arrival of the audience, and hold additional handouts for late arrivals.
9. Make eye contact with everyone in the room. Sincere eye contact makes everyone in your audience feel involved. Exchange eye contact with many people in the audience for 3 seconds each, and routinely glance at the crowd while speaking.
10. Remember the slide rules. Show no more than 10 slides per 20 minutes with each slide containing no font smaller than 30-point. Using any audio or visual aids, “going large” avoids interruption by making everything easily understandable from the back of the room. Highlight main points within the first few slides, and throughout the presentation, use more words than those on the slides. Also, remember to number your slides (or script pages) in case you lose your place.
11. Never read slides or notes verbatim. Use words as reminders, and spend most of your time making eye contact. Knowing your material makes you more competent and confident—and assures your audience that you are an expert on your subject.
12. Speak with conviction and enthusiasm. With a little practice, you can inject your passion for a subject into your presentations, and enthusiasm is contagious. Structure presentations using logical progressions from introduction (Thesis statement) to body (strong supporting arguments, accurate and up-to-date information) to conclusion (re-state thesis, summary, and logical conclusion).
13. Breathe. Feeling the urge to use presentation killers like ‘um,’ ‘ah,’ or ‘you know’? Replace those with a pause, taking a short breath—in—not out. Allow everyone time to reflect and think. Racing through will leave everyone out of breath.
14. Slow down. Nervous speakers tend to talk fast. Consciously slow your speech down and add pauses for emphasis. Use statements like, “that’s a good question,” or “I’m glad you asked me that,” to buy time and organize responses. Astute guests will know, but it still smoother than “ums” and “ahs”.
15. Never plan gestures. Any gestures you use should be an extension of your message and the real emotions that message conveys. Planned gestures always look phony, because they do not match other involuntary body cues.
16. Arrive early. Never fumble with software or equipment while people are waiting. Scope the room early, run through your slide show, and identify any potential problems. Verify early that all electrical outlets and devices are functioning properly.
17. Practice your speaking skills. Practice instills competence and confidence. If possible, practice with the microphone. Some require that you speak from one angle. Other microphones absorb sound from different directions, but are prone to feedback.
18. Project your voice. Do not yell. Stand up straight and let your voice resonate on the air from your lungs rather than your throat, and you will produce a louder and clearer sound. Vary the tone of your voice and dramatize if necessary. If a microphone is available, adjust and adapt your voice accordingly.
19. Know when to apologize. Apologize only when you have done something wrong. Never apologize for nervousness or a lack of preparation time. Most audiences will not detect your anxiety, unless you draw attention to it. Apologize when you are late or shown to be incorrect. Confidence will promote audience trust, but arrogance will erode it.
20. Be the Audience. When preparing your presentation, think from the audience’s perspective. What might they not understand? What might seem boring? As an audience member, “What’s in it for me?”
21. Know when to stop talking. Conclude your presentation by summarizing your main points. Follow with an interesting remark or an appropriate punch line. Leave your audience with a positive impression and a sense of completion. Do not belabor your closing remarks. If there is time remaining, take questions, thank your audience and sit down.

Let me know if you have any to add!

Lead, Follow, or Get Fired!

After a few false starts, I still have not been motivated to get my podcast up and running, and I am beginning to think I need a co-host. With a team in place, perhaps we can push each other forward.

Afterall, that's what the phrase Lead, Follow, or Get Fired is all about.

Teams must be perpetual—where each member is a moving part pushing the other moving parts forward. When one of those parts stops working, that part must be replaced.

I know that sounds harsh, but it is a reality.

To believe anything else is to fool yourself and damage the morale—and the throughput—of your team.

This is not to say that a part cannot be repaired. The team itself should work to oil and adjust its parts to keep them from failing, and the mechanic—the manager—shouldn't be called until such repairs are beyond the abilities of the team.

Successful teams lead themselves, and within each team, there are strong members that will push for improvements.

However, those leaders must not be allowed to dominate, as one persons improvement is often another persons impediment.

You must have strong leaders that counter other strong leaders, ensuring the team is always moving forward and weighing options based on everyone's input, in order to find the optimal solutions to all problems.

Any who sees a problem with current processes should lead the team to improve it, just as they would any other problem.

If a member cannot identify a problem with current processes, it is that member's responsibility to support those processes—continuing to move forward and to push other members to move forward.

Those old tried-and-true words of Thomas Paine are still alive and well today: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" of those who are trying to improve and/or support the team.

Yea, I know what you are thinking—and you are wrong.

There is nothing negative about this perspective for two simple reasons:

• REASON ONE: The process is a fair one. Everyone has the opportunity to support the team as is or help change the team and its processes for the better. Finding a team where you are a better fit is truly a last resort.
• REASON TWO: The process has proven time and time again that it works!

So, about my podcast: I need to get a partner who can lead me, follow me, or fire me. This has gone on long enough.

Any takers?

15 Scrum facts that can make or break your team

If you follow Scrum, it can work miracles in your organization, but I've explained many times before that it is far from being a silver bullet. Without making the effort to built and maintain a solid team, Scrum is completely useless.

Scrum is a tool. 

Use it properly, and it will accomplish what is was designed to accomplish.

Abuse it, and you will fail.

To confirm that this is not news to anyone, I offer Scrum Founder Ken Schwaber's text on the subject:

Scrum is Hard and Disruptive!

1. Scrum is a framework for iterative, incremental development using cross-functional, self-managing teams. It is built on industry best practices, lean thinking, and empirical process control.

2. Scrum is optimized for high yield product management and product development. Scrum is particularly appropriate for high risk, complex, large projects and can be used when other parts of the endeavor are hardware or even waterfall development.

3. If waterfall suits current needs, continue using it.

4. An enterprise can use Scrum as a tool to become the best product development and management organization in its market. Scrum will highlight every deficiency and impediment that the enterprise has so the enterprise can fix them and change into such an organization.

A doctor's call on finding new blood for your healthy team

When your organization moves from a command and control environment to a network of self-managed teams, productivity will increase dramatically—as can turnover.

"There’s good fit – like a glove – or there’s bad fit – like socks on a rooster. In terms of an organization, fit has more to do with adapting to, and embracing an organization’s culture."

In a post regarding hiring for a medical team, Dr.Carol Westfal not only defines the problem, but the solution.

"Different personalities can help you define the cultural orientation of your organization. Becoming aware of the importance and value your organization places on these characteristics will help your interview team identify and define its own culture and make it easier to discover the candidate’s relative fit."

Here are some traits Carol says defines an organization’s culture:

Scrum Teams: weighing Individual Performance Appraisals

According to a recent Wall Street Journal headline...

“Teams have become commonplace in U.S. Companies.”

Of course, that is common knowledge to readers of this blog.

It is also descriptive of a problem that I am trying to solve this week.

As I've noted before, most performance appraisal techniques are formulated with individuals in mind—they measure and rate the performance of the individual employee. Therefore, with the number of teams increasing in the organizations, it becomes difficult to measure and appraise the performance of the team.

The problem is in defining how to separate the performance of the team from the performance of the employees.

One solution being adopted by many companies involves measuring both individual and team performance. Sometimes, team based objectives are also included in the individual performance plans.

From a software development perspective, I am pondering how this can be applied to a Scrum team.

I would love to hear any ideas you may have.

Only 12% of all software companies leverage Scrum

You might recall my complaints regarding Axosoft OnTime's advertised support for Scrum and its short-comings.

This week, Axosoft conducted a survey and determined that I was right.

"...Scrum is one of the top methodologies getting adopted by teams. At Axosoft, we’ve been very intrigued with Scrum and the philosophy behind it. Scrum is very much inline with our own development philosophy, and we hope to improve OnTime even more so it addresses the needs of Scrum teams even better in the future."

They also discovered that most software companies are not using Scrum.

Now, you understand why Decade Software is surpassing our competition like never before.