This Friday I’m going to climb a mountain. Well, I’m probably going to climb a mountain. It’s a small mountain called “Baldy.” Its summit is about 8500 feet above sea level. That might not sound like a little mountain if you are living in Seattle, or LA, or New Orleans. You know, places actually at sea level. But, I live in Pleasant Grove, UT. My house is about 5000 above sea level. So, the hike will be about 3500 vertical feet and 12 miles over two days.
We take the scouts on this hike every year. We are hiking with 12-13 year old boys. This is a hard hike. It’s been decades since I was a 12-13 year old scout, and it’s a tough hike for me. We had the hike planned for either this weekend or next weekend. . .depending on weather.
Hiking the Rockie Mountains in May is a chancy outing. We are expecting snow above 8000 feet this week. We are thinking it will clear off by the times we leave on Friday. In past years, we’ve hiked in freezing rain, and brilliant sunshine. There are been years it was all we could do to get up and down the canyons with no thought of the summit. Other years, the weather has been perfect.
This year we hedged our bets with the two weekends. It was only later that we realized that next weekend is a major holiday in the United States and next Friday is the last day of school. You know, school for those 12-13 year old boys. So, we are happy that the weather appears to be cooperating.
We recently welcomed a new grandchild to our family last Friday. We are thrilled, as you can imagine. Mother and baby are doing great. In the past we’ve grieved with some of our children as they’ve dealt with tragedy around their kids, so we take nothing for granted. The baby almost came the previous Friday. My daughter was at the end of her pregnancy and if the baby didn’t come on it’s own, the doctors decided to induce her. Originally, it was scheduled for May 5th. As the date got closer, the doctors decided to put it off a week.
I have a huge project going on at work. It will involve switching a large portion of our architecture to a new platform. I have four locations across the United States and the change will require me to spend two weeks at each location. Originally, we scheduled the transition to start in June. My summer was going to be very, very busy.
As we got closer to the due date, it became obvious that pieces of the project plan were not coming together as quickly as we needed them to. We made the decision to push off our transition to October. My summer freed up a little and my winter just got busy.
Despite being a technology guy, I am a firm believer in tangible tools. I have a pocket watch, I write letters and I keep a physical paper calendar. If it’s not written in that calendar, it’s possibly not going to happen. I write down just about everything; project dates, vacations and kids birthdays. And I end writing all of them in pencil.
You never know what will come up.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians, than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men.
– Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror
You’ve no use for it, right? All that office politics. Just ignore it, do your job and let the rest of them play their silly reindeer games. Right?
Wrong.
I’m no fan of office politics. I most enjoy working with people who eschew hidden agendas and turf wars. When managing teams, I try to be as transparent as possible. It doesn’t mean I won’t attempt to influence my team. I once offered free soda to my employees. As much as they wanted. We stocked it in the refridgerator in the break room.
Was I doing it to be nice? Not at all. I just knew that if I stocked Diet Coke, my lead programmer would give me an extra 30 minutes of work per day. Rather than walk to the corner store for his caffeine fix, he’d get it and go back to work. The thing is, I told him exactly why I was providing the free soda.
Rodney, you’re the only manager I’ve ever had that didn’t just manipulate me, but ADMITTED to it, and I STILL let him!
You would think I’d complete reject office politics. I would like to, but unless you work for yourself and have only yourself as a client, you cannot avoid it. If the rest of the company is playing politics and you refuse, I can predict what will happen. Within a very short amount of time, you will be manuevered out of your position and probably the company.
So, “if you can’t beat them, join them”? Give yourself totally over the petty politics?
No. You need to find a middle ground. In that middle ground, you have to make sure you defend your position, take credit for your successes, don’t let other teams or managers harm your team. At the same time, you need to do everything you can to create an environment where the cancer of the gossiping and backbiting cannot get a foothold. Be accountable. Own your mistakes. Be as transparent as possible. Give credit where it’s due. Especially, if it’s due to the office-politics player. Give him credit when he’s earned it. It actually helps protect your team from him taking credit that isn’t his.
In one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, four members of the Enterprise crew get swapped into a mirror universe. Except in the mirror universe, it’s everyone for themselves. You get promoted by killing your superior. We watch our heroes try to navigate a universe where the rules are kill or be killed. Eventually, they manage to switch back. Spock, who remained in the normal universe, informs the captain that he immediately locked the “mirror universe” crew as soon as they appeared. Kirk wants to know how he managed to identify them so quickly.
It’s possible for a civilized man to act barbaric if necessary. The opposite is impossible.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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We have different names for it: Office Politics, Reindeer Games. Whatever you call it, every business has to deal with it. Sometimes it seems that those who are best at it, do the best in the workplace.
When I worked for Microsoft, I had a manager that I really struggled to connect with. He was a former English teacher and nothing that anyone on his team wrote was ever good enough. We’d get back emails printed out and marked in red pen. That was only the least of his aggravating management practices.
It became obvious that I needed to find another team. The only question was whether I would find something before he decided to fire me. During one particularly tense 1:1 “coaching” meeting, in frustration I said,
You should really be more careful about who you go to lunch with.
What do you mean?
Nothing. Sorry I brought it up.
No, I really want to know. What do you mean I should be more careful?
The manager only occasionally went to lunch with members of his team and whenhet did, it was always with the same woman. And always at her invitation. He was single, she was married, but there was no hint of scandal. It was the fact that the woman wasn’t particularly good at her job, but she consistently was ranked at #1 for the team stack ranking. This was a ranking that was done by the manager and was supposed to be confidential.
At Microsoft the stack rank was important because it was not uncommon for upper management to force a team to cull, or fire those on the bottom of the stack rank. In addition, those ranked higher received bigger bonuses and larger raises, they were also first in line for promotions. Stack rankings were also supposed to be confidential.
Not only did this woman get stack ranked #1, the manager told her she was #1 and she in turn told the rest of us. And not in a nice way.
My manager was genuinely surprised when I told him that he only ever went to lunch with one member of the team. It never occured to him that he was showing favoritism. He was getting played. And my coworker was doing it so well that he never noticed.
Smart, right? I mean, that’s how you play the game isn’t it? Where was the downside?
No, this was not smart. The downside wasn’t with this one clueless manager. The downside is that none of us work in a vacuum. Her team knew that she was not the #1 person on the team. We all could see what was going on and it affected our working relationship with her. We were careful to not share with her too much information about what we were doing. She might take the credit. We were less inclined to help her on a project. She was definitely going to take the credit. Basically, she sucked up to the boss and alienated her entire team. And now, even 20 years later, we remember.
At Microsoft, like many companies, teams shift and get rearranged. And “who you know” becomes important if the person you know happens to also know of a cool opening on a new team. Those relationships are important. And you cannot be successful long term without them. Even today, if she were to apply to work on a team I was connected with, I’d have to say no.
“Winning” at the office politics game can be a losing decision.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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You really should be brushing twice a day
We’ve all been there, right? The dental hygienist always tells you to brush twice per day. This was my second cleaning in four months. The hygienist four months ago was pretty rude in her “suggestion” that I brush more frequently. I don’t eat candy anymore. I rarely drink soda and other than an occasional cake or ice cream, I don’t put a lot of sugar into my mouth.
But, at yesterday’s appointment the hygienist completely convinced me to start brushing twice per day. And it only took her 2 minutes.
Rodney, for the typical person, it takes slightly longer than 24 hours for the bacteria in food to start to form that hard plague buildup. For most people, brushing once per day takes care of it. But, occasionally, there are people who have superfast bateria. In their case, the bateria starts to form plague in less than 24 hours. You are one of those people. It’s not about when you eat, you can choose to brush right after dinner and then eat a snack later. It’s really about breaking up that bacteria in less than 24 hours.
It made perfect sense. And convinced me to brush twice a day.
As a project manager I’ve often had to work with people that needed to do a particular process a specific way. When I just tell them, “This is how it is” I get resentment. If I take the time (sometimes, just a couple of minutes) to explain the why of what I’m asking, they not only are willing to do what I ask, they want to do it. They feel engaged and gain a sense of ownership.
I’m not brushing my teeth twice a day because a woman in a dental coat told me to. I’m doing it because I don’t want my teeth cleaning to be exercises in creative rock chip repair.
When it comes to brushing my teeth, two minutes made all the difference.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place. And I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, if you let it. You, me or nobody, is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.
– Rocky Balboa
I love this quote. At their best, the Rocky movies were about the victory we gain when we overcome ourselves. They embodied the idea that it really is not about whether you win or lose. It’s about how you play the game. Coach Norm Dale knew that,
And most important, don’t get caught up thinking about winning or losing this game. If you put your effort and conentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I dont care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game. In my book, we’re gonna be winners!
– Coach Norm Dale “Hoosiers”
This isn’t really a post about winning or losing. I’m sure I could fill a months worth of posts listing the great inspirational quotes. My point is simple and it’s about life itself. Just being alive is cause for celebration. So many didn’t make it. We did. You did. I did. We’re here. My friend Marty Hill, who died of cancer last year taught me that “Today is a good day. Any day you are upright is a good day.”
No, life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. . .but some of it is. Look for those parts.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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You might think this post is simply an excuse to post pictures of my kids and brag on them. . .Uh. . .I’ll get back to you on that.
Prom happened for my kids’ high school last week. Some of my kids date a lot, some hardly at all. How I respond to them will have a large impact in the future.
How is your team doing? Are they green and inexperienced? Are you trying to fill some important holes? Is your team completely up-to-speed and performing at a high level?
I worked on a team where the manager did everything she could to attract quality people, and then did everything she could to prevent those people from leaving. It was the corporate equivalent of a honey pot. Now, you might think that’s a good strategy. After all, who wants their employees to leave?
You should.
It’s tempting to think of your team being made up of individual employees. That’s the wrong way to look at it. Instead, think of the individuals that you work with make up a team. If you think those two statements are equivalent, go back and read them again.
You, as a manager are responsible for managing a group of individuals, not a team. A team isn’t even a thing. Not in the sense of a thing that can act or do anything. It’s a group of individuals. “The Seattle Mariners” baseball team can’t win a single game. Don’t believe me? How many games did the Seattle Sonics basketball team win last season? In case, you are not a sports fan, I’ll tell you: none. The team is just a name with some records, a World Championship from 1979 and that’s it. The players all went to Oklahoma a few years ago and joined the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The players on a team can win and lose games. Your team is made up of players. If you try to manage them as a team instead of individuals, you will make your high performers frustrated and you will give your weaker members a place to hide.
Realize that you have a group of individuals, and as such, you should promote them. You should be their biggest cheerleader. You should coach them when needed, and stay out of their way the rest of the time. But, ultimately, you should recognize and praise them.
And if that recognition and praise leads to them getting promoted, or poached by another team or company? That’s great. If your team becomes known as a place that high performers get recognized and promoted, you won’t have to worry about recruiting. People will be coming to you and trying to get on your team. You’ll literally have your pick.
But, if you attract those high performers and then you limit their opportunities for growth, or you take credit for their work? No one will want to come to work for you. The woman that I know who tried that found that although she was responsible for some exciting projects, it was almost impossible for her to attract quality people. They stayed away in droves because they didn’t want to restrict their career.
So, what’s all this have to do with my kids?
Easy, when prom comes around, every one of my sons is the handsomest guy there. Each of my daughters is the most beautiful girl.
I only say it because it’s true. . .(And maybe I want to brag just a little.)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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What about ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’? Have you heard of that one?
Sorry, no.
I was in Sacramento this week meeting with one of our IT partners. Matt, the engineer we were meeting with, completely missed my reference. Jake, the guy I was travelling with tried to help,
I’ll bet you’ve heard some of the references. You just don’t recognize them. “Bring out your dead”?
Yeah, I’ve heard of that, I just don’t know what it’s from?
“The killer bunny”?
Yeah.
Those are from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
IT guys have their own weird sense of humor. When I was starting out in the world of computers 30 years ago, a good grasp of the dialogue for Holy Grail was essential. Star Trek and Star Wars references are a must, of course. We were slightly distrustful of someone who couldn’t explain why Darth Vader could never fight Captain Kirk. (Star Wars is set “long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Star Trek is set in this galaxy in the future.) We were equally suspicious of anyone who didn’t have an opinion on who would win in a fight between Captains Kirk and Picard. (Obviously the former since Picard would say, “Let’s talk about this” and then Kirk would shoot him.)
These are references that anyone might understand. IT guys also will delve into their own language to laugh at one another. I was introduced to IT humor really early in my career. I was a TA for Computer Science 404: Computer Ethics. As a TA, I was afforded a cubicle with the rest of the TA’s. But, the professor had a lab on the third floor with a locked door that he made available to me. I never sat in the cubicle in the basement. About a month into the semester I found myself in the basement to meet with another TA. There written on the whiteboard by “my” cubicle were the words:
CS 404: TA NOT FOUND ON THIS SERVER
If you don’t understand why that’s funny, ask your IT guy.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I knew he was lying. I’m pretty sure he knew I knew he was lying. What I couldn’t figure out was exactly why he was lying.
I had four call centers across the United States. One in Salt Lake City and three other ones in various time zones. Our offices were on the fourth floor of our Salt Lake City center. “Us” included me, the other members of my team, my manager and his manager. The other members of my team were assigned to different accounts. Those accounts also had call centers across the US and around the world. However, other than the fourth floor, everyone else in our building worked on my account. Even half the fourth floor was devoted to my account managers, schedulers and the Vice President responsible for my account.
They announced that our team was going to be moving to a new building across town. We would be joining the executives for our company in a building in South Salt Lake. In many ways, this new building was an improvement for me. It was closer by about 20 minutes to my house in Pleasant Grove. Also, it was within walking distance of the train station, so I could skip taking my car.
But, despite the advantages, the drawbacks were even bigger. After the move was announced, I requested that I get to remain in our old building.
Why would you want to do that?
Well, all of my agents are here.
Not all of them, right? You have three other call centers too. You can’t be onsite at those other three, so I don’t see how you need to be onsite here.
His comment made no sense. “You can’t be everywhere, so we won’t let you be anywhere.” Huh? I, enlisted the lobbying efforts of the client, who wanted me within walking distance of the production floor if there was an outage. I talked to senior management that was staying in building. He didn’t want to interfere with the decisions of his team managers, a position I certainly respect, but he did offer me a desk for the times I would be back in the building.
I thought I had a winning argument when I talked to the account managers.
As the IT representative, they rely on me to resolve IT issues in the building.
Well, you need to teach them to go directly to the engineering teams themeselves. They shouldn’t be relying on you to be that interface.
Even though I’m the designated IT interface?
Uh. . .yeah.
It made no sense. Eventually, I quit trying to figure out the logic of it. There was none. Certain people didn’t want me in my production building and they didn’t want to tell me why they didn’t want me in the building. So, I moved. And once or twice per week, instead of taking the train to our new building in south Salt Lake, I drove to the old building. As the weeks and months wore on, it became increasingly challenging to keep that schedule. Every trip was scrutinized. Every decision to go North instead of South had to be justified. Eventually, I was told I would have to start submitting an agenda in advance describing the goals I hoped to accomplish and then submit a follow up report explaining who I’d met with and what was discussed while in the old building.
Clearly, it was a stalling tactic. An extra task to make it more onerous for me to decide to work in our production building. The truth eventually came out.
What do I tell the account managers when they ask me why I’m in South Salt Lake?
What do you mean?
I mean, how do I answer the question, “Why is it more productive here? Why shouldn’t I be working in the old building?”
Maybe he’d gotten frustrated too. Maybe he was tired of the months long tug-of-war. Whatever the reason, he blurted out in a fit of honesty,
Tell them that I don’t feel you can be trusted to put in a full day’s work if no one is paying attention.
Well, there it was. I’d suspected that was the suspicion. And it was laughable. I regularly worked nights, weekends and 8-12 hour days. Finally knowing the true objection, I was able to address it. In fact, my job situation improved dramatically just by knowing that I was no longer being lied to.
Soon, I was back in our old building fulltime working more hours than ever. By naming the issue we could build a plan around resolving concerns.
It’s a bad idea to lie to your employees. But, if you are going to lie to them, make sure you either lie well, or hire employees stupid enough to fall for the bad lies.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Rodney? This is Jerry in the Salem call center.
Yeah, Jerry, what’s up?
I just thought I’d let you know that we have a fire alarm going off and they are evacuating the building.
Are you still at your desk?
Yeah.
Hang up! Hang up right now. Call me from your cell phone when you get to the parking lot.
Jerry is part of our mission control group. His job is to keep the call floor running smoothly. If there is an issue that impacts our ability to take calls, Jerry calls me. In fact, I’m the first person he calls. We don’t open a ticket until I’ve had a chance to talk to Jerry and his other mission control analysts.
In fact, if there’s an outage and Jerry doesn’t call me, I’ll follow up with him. I work very closely with his team. And I wanted nothing more than for him to get off the phone. Our call centers are large buildings with hundreds of agents. They normally run at better than 99.95% uptime. But, like any computer system, occasionally we have outages. We’ve even had to evacuate one of our five centers due to fire.
Fortunately, the the fire alarm was a false alarm. Sure, the alarm was real enough, but someone had pulled the alarm, but there wasn’t any fire. Our agents were only away from the call floor for 10 minutes. Jerry called me when he got back in the building.
I appreciate you letting me know, but next time don’t bother to call me. If the alarm goes off, just leave. We’ll get all the details later.
It seemed pretty obvious to me, but I had to admire Jerry’s dedication to duty.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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There’s two types of crazy. The guy who gets naked and howls at the moon and then the guy who does the same thing in my livin room. The first you can ignore, the second you kind of have to deal with.
– Hoosiers
We’ve all had bad managers. Many of us have probably been bad managers. Some of us may actually be bad managers today. But, we’ve cerntainly all had to deal with them at one time or another. Here’s my three step process for dealing with them. The Arbinger Institute (publishers of “Management and Self Deception,” and “Anatomy of Peace”) describes “the box.” When we are in the box we view other people as one of three things: vehicles to help us, irrevelvant, or obstacles that need to be overcome. The Arbinger Institute explains how to get out of the box so that you don’t treat people like objects. However, in this case, these three views of people can give direction on how to work with a bad manager.
Manage
Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from poor judgement.
– Unknown author
No one starts out as an experienced manager. We all were new once. And being new, we made mistakes. The first (and best approach) when working with a bad manager is to “manage up.” The best new managers understand they they are new. My daughter was commissioned a 2LT in the United States Army a couple years ago. As a brand new officer, she outranked every enlisted soldier in the entire army. “If you want to be successful in your army career, listen to your sergeants, especially the career ones.”
My friend Howard Tayler describes it as:
A sergeant in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.
– “70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries” Maxim 2
But, what happens when your have a manager who suffers from the problem of thinking they are “The Smartest Guy In The Room“? First you attempt to manage, but if it becomes obvious that your manager is going to insist on making all of their own mistakes, let them.
Ignore
If you like your job and you’re good at it, just go do it. Figure out how to engage as little as possible with your manager. I had a manager one time who insisted that it was not my role to help out our operations team when they did a data drain every other Saturday. My entire involvment was forwarding an email from the client to our operations desk and then sending the client an email when we were done. It was dead simple and it make the operations team happy if I did it. So, I did.
I just didn’t bring it up with my manager. He understood that I was doing it, and he never did like it. But, it was difficult for him to forbid me to do it. I didn’t make a big deal to Operations about the fact I was defying my manager’s wishes. It only became an issue on those few Saturdays when he needed to cover for me. The funny thing, his insistance on not doing it those days simply made him look uncooperative.
As much as you can, like the assistant coach in Hoosiers said in the quote above, “ignore it if you can.” But, what about when you can no longer ignore it? You move on to step three: Obstacles.
Change
If you ignore your bad manager long enough, one of two things will happen. Either the manager will decide to let you ignore her, or she will decide that she needs to redouble her managing efforts. At some point the job is not worth it. You also have two options, but they are really both the same option: change. You can attempt to get the manager changed, or you can change your own position.
Getting someone removed is really hard to do, and unless you’re related to the company president, you are probably not going to have enough influence to remove a bad manager. You would hope that senior management would realize the problem and make a change, but many bad managers manage “up” well while managing “down” poorly. But, if you love your job, it’s at least worth a shot.
More likely, you will have to move yourself. It’s tempting to go out in a blaze of glory. Don’t do it. My son worked at a fast food place when he was 16. He eventually got fed up and decided to quit. He didn’t give notice. He simply decided he’d had enough of his boss and announced, “That’s it, I QUIT!” and walked out. He felt great. . until he tried to find a new job, and realized that his options were limited. Eventually he went back to the fast food place and asked for his job back.
The need to maintain healthy relationships is even more important in business than it is in a burger flipping job. Twenty-five years ago I worked for WordPerfect. I tried to quit and go to work for Microsoft and they made my life hell for about six months. Evan was the director, and was the only one who treated me like a person and not a traitor. I was moving states and switching companies. I didn’t need to leave on a good note. Besides, WordPerfect went out of business a few years later.
Fast forward to last year and our company hired a new project manager. It was Evan. Even though it had been 25 years, I was really happy I hadn’t stormed out in a huff.
So, if you do need leave, don’t advertise it. Just go find another job and make the change. Shake everyone’s hand on the way out the door and wish your (bad) manager the best of luck.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved