M&J

Partners in inspiring people to greatness

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Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.

Earl Nightingale

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Founded on the 8-Step Process, Kotter International equips businesses with the means and method to transform themselves quickly, continuously and with powerful results.

A succinct process for leading great change.

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Conformity prevents one from being influential or making the world a better place

Mickey Kawick

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Relationships matter

As a software developer, I am often faced with the conundrum of finishing a small amount of code or responding to a designer, scrum master, artist, or producer who needs something. In other words, doing real work or chatting.

While this is factual, it is entirely the wrong way to view it. Working with others is essential to getting your work done. While this may seem like a distraction, you have a ton of options to help manage the chaos. But more than anything, building and maintaining that relationship is what matters. Often the most important part of an engineer’s job is simply to smoothe over the fears of the producers or mgmt. This can be time-consuming and a distraction.

I will pick on programmers here, but this applies to almost all people in a creative enterprise. When we tell people that we want to focus on “real work”, we are automatically telling others that they are not valuable to us. This changes our language and the way that they respond to us. Do not say this. But you have many ways to communicate the main idea without devauling your relationship with mgmt.

“We will deliver these features as soon as we have time to work on them.”

“ Our estimates are pretty good, but we need more uninterrupted time to take tasks to completion. Otherwise, all of our estimates will be wrong.“

This highlights the importance of a programmer’s mental state and focus. But it also doesn’t finger-point or lay blame. Programmers are often some of the people most prone to finger pointing because there is constant pressure to perform.

Build relationships, communicate your needs, don’t lay blame. Focus on problems instead and this will engage others to help you accomplish the goals of the team.

[road2dev-blog]

Productivity from candor

The value of candor cannot be overstated. When a group feels good about being honest and open with one another, and not threatened, the group can face real issues together and pride, productivity, and feelings can soar.

The idea behind candor is one of truth seeking and idea sharing, but being sensitive to the feelings of other people. If you can speak to someone about their work openly in all cases, and not accuse the person of being stupid, ill-intentioned, or lazy, then communication begins to grow in effectiveness exponentially. When people can be open, then there is little reason to “protect your job” and then one can focus on one’s work.

Candor is driven from above and a culture of candor must be driven by the highest levels of executives. If they can instill candor without fear, then everyone in the group can feel like s/he is growing and the productivity or the team grows, the number of absenses falls, and retention increases.

[road2dev-blog]

Why Emotional Intelligence is the Most Important Quality of Good Leadership

I've recently had the honor of enrolling in the University of Roehampton's Online MBA Programme. The following is my final project for the first module, Leading and Learning in a Dynamic Era. It's

The grouping of all powerful leadership qualities into the basic term “emotional intelligence” is essentially what this article does. Still, it’s a great synopsis.

[kushandwizdom]

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Success without a plan and significant effort is rare

The old adage goes “preparedness plus opportunity equals success” and this has never been more true than it is today. Far too many people do not have a plan going forward or a nebulous plan. This only leads to success if the opportunity that arrives has people willing to make big sacrifices in order to bring that unprepared person along. This almost never happens. In a similar fashion, waiting for opportunities almost never works either and you must actively seek them, through promotion or resumes or attending conventions.

So, if you are seeking success, how should you proceed?

The first step is to decide what success is and what it might look like. Are you going to be a successful businessman? An artist? What would your life be like when you succeed in this field? How will you feel with the admiration of your peers? How do you measure that success... money, prestige, cars?

Once you have an idea where you are going, you must decide on how important this goal is to you. It’s often a lot more work and a lot harder to achieve anything great without major effort so you have got to want it. If the goal is hard, then you should seek help or if you are working on a team, be sure to enlist the help of your peers... you will need them.

Next, you should formulate a plan. This should be 3-5 bullet points outlining the basics Be very careful to keep it high level and to help define the “why”. Without good reasons, this will just be another project started that you never finish.

Now, you need to research, reformulate the plan, enlist help, and turn all of this into steps on which you can execute. Do not use generic platitudes like “study hard” or “get out of bed earlier” because niether of these are definitive and can be redefined at any time. “I am tired today and if I get up at 9:30, that is still earlier than 10:15 when I used to get up.” This leads to failure. Define specific goals like “get out of bed by 8 AM every morning” and “study for two hours or one full chapter each night”. These very specific goals lead to success.

This step is very active and needed, even if passively done, to tune the plan to reality.

As you work towards success, measure milestones and grant yourself rewards, help others along the way so that your success is shared and so that you learn more, and be patient with yourself. Also be willing to change, but only as a last resort. Changing plans frequently almost always leads to failure.

Be sure to track your success because this is a reinforcer and helps you stay focused.

Lastly, do a follow up and a retrospective... it really matters.

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Those willing to try, to plan, to execute, and to review their results... those willing to be consistent, reliable, and trustworthy will almost invariably succeed.

Mickey Kawick

[benshockley]

Do you think you can? I think you can! #entrepreneur #success #leaders #motivation #leadership (at Calhoun, Louisiana)

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Nice leaders finish first

A typical belief is that to be effective as a leader, a stern and demanding demeanor is required. Often, leaders look to Steve Jobs as the iconic tough boss and effective leader with the sorts of behaviors and drive that push leaders to excel.

But most leaders can’t be Steve Jobs and some argue that Steve Jobs, who had trouble trusting any authority figures, didn’t trust the recommendations of his own doctors leading to his untimely demise. Can you as a leader be nice and still be effective?

The fact is that clear, concise, well-planned communication works for every leader. Steve Jobs had a knack for this but with a little planning ahead, you can do this too. Many people now recognize that Steve Jobs’ style actually worked against his effectiveness and that he could have been a little more effective by being a little more trusting and courteous, being generally acknowledged as one of the hardest people to work for in the software industry.

So, how can you be nice or courteous, and yet still get the job done? Ultimately, it’s about engaging those who work for you to be more effective, trusting them, acknowledging mistakes and turing those into lessons learned, candor, and inspiring people to greatness.

This diagram captures a lot of the basics of effective communication. This misses one important point which is engaging the domain xperts: those who work for you. Your team is much more knowledgable than you, if you have the right team, and for any real world solutions, you should be engaging them in meetings, white-board sessions, quick get-togethers, and email to grab their ideas and turn those into plans. This level of engagement has many side-effects which I detail in other blog entries, but the best are that it pulls the best ideas out of the team and it builds trust.

Candor and acknowledging mistakes means focusing on the mistakes themselves, finding out which steps led to the mistake, and talking through it. Pointing fingers or assigning blame is terrible ineffective, but discussing what lead to the mistake is effective and often leads to suggesting or workflow changes that will fix the mistakes or prevent them. Maye an automated build system might have found the bad check-in earlier. Maybe building a model of the bridge might have identified structural integrity problems earlier. Talk about things and be honest without being accusative.

Inspiring people is a little harder, but focusing on problem solving, listening to the resident experts who work for you, building concensus when possible, and trusing the people who work for you can all be great steps toward inspiring.

About the diagram that I linked, I find that this is a great diagram and comes at the end of all of the communications that have already taken place. Once you have obtained great ideas, developed a plan, communicated that internally, then communicating your plan outwardly is key and this diagram can help.

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'I don't know, but I will find out' may be the most important phrase a leader can use in expressing humility.

Mickey Kawick

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People need commitment from you in order to feel confident about their own work. Explain your commitment to them and to the work, and then show them.

Mickey Kawick

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As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

Marian Anderson

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The team should be your focus. Grow and support the team and your bottom line will take care of itself. If you only grow the bottom line, you will lose the team.

Mickey Kawick

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Most companies fail at getting rid of the past.. and thus never truly succeed

Mickey Kawick

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You can’t lead people you don’t respect. All you can do is boss and railroad.

Michael Hyatt