HL Arledge

Hiking to Success at Decade Software

My wife and I took a few vacation days and hiked to the Hollywood Sign, but even the hot sun and aching muscles couldn’t keep my mind off the office.

We’ve got so much going on: business is booming, our biggest release ever is just around the conference, we’re hiring in every department, and our training conference is two months away. Decade Software is truly a company on the brink of jumping from good to great.

That said, I ask myself how we got here.

We got here, the same way a middle-aged overweight man made it to the top of the Hollywood Sign. We navigated the obstacles, the heat, the pitfalls with pure adrenalin and a little something called teamwork.

Decade Software has conquered it’s Hollywood Sign. Now, we’re ready to tackle El Capitan.

Collaborate, support teamwork, or go home!

In an interview this week with John Chambers, CEO of CISCO, they asked him what has changed in business in the last few years. His answer was dead on…

“Big time, the importance of collaboration. Big time, people who have teamwork skills, and their use of technology.

Today’s world requires a different leadership style — more collaboration and teamwork, including using Web 2.0 technologies. If you had told me I’d be video blogging and blogging, I would have said, no way. And yet our 20-somethings in the company really pushed me to use that more.

If they’re not collaborative, if they aren’t naturally inclined toward collaboration and teamwork, if they are uncomfortable with using technology to make that happen both within our company and in their own life, they’re probably not going to fit in here.”

That is exactly how I feel about my team.

Customer design or Too Many Cooks Sink Ships

When designers attempt to please everyone, someone always ends up angry. The key to good design is bringing all interested parties together in order to balance interests and find solutions that work for everyone.

In the early days of EnvisionConnect, customer advocates on staff shouted:

“Our users know what they need better than anyone else. Let them design the software and force the developers to deliver exactly as they define.”

Who could argue with that philosophy? The customer knows best, right?

Let’s return to the mixed metaphor of “Too many cooks sink ships,” and let me tell you a story…

There once was a shipbuilder who hired the best engineers, but he sold ships to the government and was forced by contract to design the ship according to specs put together by a government committee.

The shipbuilder ordered the designers to build every gadget and widget the government committee could dream up, and the ship that evolved from the process was beautiful!

On this ship, you didn’t have to take the stairs to go from deck to deck. Everything in the ship was put on one easily accessible deck. And all of the gadgets, widgets, bells, and whistles glistened. It was the most spectacular-looking ship the government committee had ever seen.

When war broke, the government ordered the ship launched. It would sail to the other side of the globe and squash the evil doers.

Unfortunately, the ship was too heavy. It moved too slow. By the time the ship reached the enemy, the war was over. That’s not all that bad really. If every country followed this design model, the world would be a more peaceful place.

The moral of the story is that all interested parties have to be involved in design.

Luckily for us, the world of Agile software design doesn’t work like ship building.

We do insist that users of the software design by committee on the first pass (in industry jargon, the first iteration) but then it’s up to the engineers to weigh the needs of the many against the wants of the few and refine (industry jargon again, refactor) the product into that happy medium that makes everyone happy.

This year, our customers will notice that we’re changing the way we collect customer feedback—finding ways to extract information faster without wasting customer time, and our developers are defining “the how” and restricting customers to defining “the what”. And when some “what” is ultimately detrimental to a more important “what”, it’s our job to help customers understand the trade-off they are asking to make.

Now, you know why it’s taking a while to christen EnvisionConnect 4.0.

EnvisionConnect 4.0 as she stands today is the most beautiful and the most powerful ship in the fleet, but Envision outruns her. As goals go, our next BIG target is making EnvisionConnect faster, even if it means dropping a few bells and whistles overboard.

Watch this space to see how we do.

Now, that’s a real team!

Friday night, Joey, one of the leaders on my team got married.

Mike, another on our team played guitar, and Dave, a friend of ours, conducted the ceremony. My wife, Janna, said it was a beautiful reception, but men only attend such events for the reception—so I’ll skip ahead.

Mike, Janna, and I sat at a table with folks from Joey’s father-in-law’s old neighborhood. They still keep in touch, meeting annually for a combination golf tournament and old neighborhood reunion.

We were the only ones at the table not from the old neighborhood. We didn’t mean to crash their party, but all of the other seats were taken. More people had shown than had originally RSVPed.

“Who are you?” One of them asked.

“I work with Joey.” I replied.

“What does HL stand for?”

“Hard Luck.”

“Really? That should be my name.”

And this conversation repeated every time another from the old neighborhood joined us. However, over the music, one of the wives missed my introduction, and asked Mike, “Who is he?”

“He’s mine and Joey’s manager.” Mike said.

Her husband heard and said—loud enough for the whole table to hear, “Hey! HL is Joey’s boss. He said he just worked with the guy.”

And someone else said, “Now, that’s a real team.”

Indeed, it is.

Building a better Vulcan

Outside of the office, I love nostalgia, but inside, I am the first to promote change. Keep the things that work. Build on those things, and throw out the bad.

However, when Paramount Pictures took this approach with Star Trek, I was afraid of the change. I did not trust that JJ Abrams would be able to handle the job.

This was because I was not Paramount’s Product Owner, and their team did not ask me for buy-in, when they gathered requirements to fix something that I didn’t think was broken.

I was wrong. The movie was great, and I learned a lesson I have been preaching to others for years…

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

–Mr. Spock, Wrath of Khan”

This became clear today, as I was reading new words of wisdom this week from Joel “on software” Spolsky…

Beware the Wizard of Oz

Sometimes you’ll find team members or leaders pushing for something really hard—something that you struggle to understand why, because they have trouble articulating why it is important to them.

Beware the Wizard of Oz.

Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

In most cases like these, the person making the case doesn’t have all of the facts, because they are just acting as mouth-piece for another team member or members.

The person talking can’t convince you of the importance of the issue, because they may not personally have a stake in it themselves. Their objective is simply to not let those down who coerced them into speaking on their behalf.

Dig deeper, and you will uncover the Wizard of Oz—and maybe even a flying monkey or two.

Happy Teams will weather the crisis storms

Alex Kjerulf calls himself a CHO—Chief Happiness Officer, and he is one of my favorite bloggers.

He has a new book in the works that explores the economic crisis and it’s effect on happy teams.

The book has three central claims:

1: Most of what companies traditionally do in a crisis doesn’t work.
The way many organizations typically handle crises is by cutting back on all expenses and doing mass layoffs. While this can be necessary, studies actually show companies who choose this approach recover more slowly.

2: It is possible to be happy at work even in a workplace in trouble.
Of course it’s easier to be happy when everything is going swimmingly, but people can still be happy at work in a crisis. It takes determination and focus, but it can be done. Surprisingly, a crisis can make people happy at work, provided that it becomes a reason for people to focus and pull together—rather than an excuse to give up.

3: Happy workplaces get out of a crisis faster.
Especially in a crisis, an organization needs to get the best out of its people—and when we’re happy at work we are more motivated, creative and productive.

I can’t wait until the book comes out. I predict it will be a worthy read.

I never “assign” work to anyone

Although I am very good at delegating work, I never assign a task to anyone.

Day to day, I prioritize my workload, and then ask myself…

“Okay, which tasks can be delegated and which am I uniquely qualified to tackle?”

This daily decision is the key to being a good manager.

If you are doing too much, you are saying to your team: I don’t trust you to do as good a job as I will do.

On the other hand, assigning work is a command and control vessel. To “assign work to someone” is to say that their current tasks are unimportant.

Instead, explain why you believe the team member is suited for the task, and then ask them to accept the task, weighing and prioritizing the task against their current workload.

By asking someone to commit to a task, you are building teamwork and proving that you trust that teammate’s skills and judgment.

When you say that you are assigning work, you are essentially saying what you parents told you as a child…

“Do it, because I said so. I am the boss.”

Whether you realize it or not, a simple word like “assign” will lower morale and hurt your team(s) and the culture of your organization.

Shine the Light or "John Travolta versus Perry Como"

Regular readers of this blog—and those who attend my public presentations—know that I was shouting the virtues of transparency long before the recession made the term a household word.

What you may not know is that my first insights into the subject began much earlier—with one of my seventh grade teachers.

In the 1970s, Carolyn Higginbotham was a guidance counselor and teacher at the only school in Holden, Louisiana.

"Ms. Carolyn" was considered somewhat of a radical among the traditional southern teachers of the day. In fact, the blue-haired disciplinarians with their combination rulers and seat warmers thought she was a little nuts.

In her classroom, she and the students designated 25% of the room as a combination library and student lounge by carpeting the floor. Students were led to work together, and when their teams completed tasks on time, they could relax in the makeshift lounge.

This strategy dramatically increased team morale and individual self-esteem by spotlighting both group and individual accomplishments.

[If Ms. Carolyn is reading this, she has crossed out at least half of the words in the preceding paragraphs with a red Sharpie, but I am not embarrassed. One of the first tenets she taught me about writing was that you can break the rules, as long as you know a rule and have chosen to ignore it as a matter of style.]

My class had conducted a fund raiser, and with the money collected, we were directed to purchase something for our student lounge—something that would serve generations of junior high students to come.

As a lesson in democracy, Ms. Carolyn tasked us with campaigning and voting for our vision of that ideal purchase. After hours of debate, the majority vote was in favor of the new Saturday Night Fever record album, featuring an up and coming actor named John Travolta.

Ms. Carolyn thought our idea was unwise—I would have said "stupid" but she hated that word with a passion—but she wanted the class to discover the error of our ways on our own. To assist, she began what she later called "shining the light" on the absurdity of the situation.

Today, I think of the approach as "exaggerating transparency".

It works like this: If your colleagues in a debate do not possess the sense of urgency you know they should have, you can cut through the noise quickly by exaggerating an option that mirrors the one gaining the popular vote.

In the middle of our debate, the teacher raised her hand.

Customers get bug-free software

Yesterday, in my entry entitled Angry Customers Tell 3,000 Friends, I explained how I became involved in customer relations at Decade Software. Kevin and I had devised a plan to allow customers to more freely communicate with us and with each other through a new web site.

By increasing transparency, we would bolster a trusting environment where everyone freely helped everyone else become successful using our products.

Our past successes had told us that teamwork using cross-functional teams was the secret to meeting goals, so the first thing I did was form a new team. The Customer Communications Task Force was formed to get clients talking.

We scheduled meetings with customers and began demonstrating our ideas for the web site and our ideas for opening communication between customers—and they loved what we were doing!

The CCTF had picked up speed, and we were soaring to the finish line, and then we turned a corner—and we hit a brick wall.

We discovered quickly that launching a new web site is an action that steps on multiple toes, and in short order, I was accused of invading the territories of Marketing, Client Services, Graphic Design, and Administration.