Lets talk micromanagement

I HATE IT!

Seriously, I hate micromanagement with all my heart. I hate micromanaging because I just hate for that to be done to me. Over the years I have been lucky to be trusted and not being micromanaged. If there’s a toxic trait that leads to burnout it has to be micromanagement. It’s even worse than a 5 year old asking when the snacks are coming every 1 second.

What is micromanagement?

Most of us will be familiar with it already and have faced it at some stage or another.

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines micromanagement as “manage[ment] especially with excessive control or attention to details”.

In essence, you are being controlled all the time and have no space to even utilise your skills. Over time being micromanaged will lead to burnout. Even kids hate being micromanaged, why do you think they throw tantrums? When you feel you have no control over what you do, your brain just goes crazy and wants to throw everything on the floor and call it quits. Whereas as a kid you can do it, as a professional you end up bottling it up until you either quit or burnout.

Where does micromanagement come from?

It comes from lack of trust. You don’t trust your team so you are on them all the time. Mostly this comes to the fact that you don’t trust yourself, so you pass that mistrust onto others. In order to confirm you still have power, you need to FEEL in control and be on top of others all the time. It feels good for a micromanager to show that he/she has power.

Lets dig deeper:

• Impostor syndrome – If you don’t believe you deserve where you are, you will be more obsessed with control, hence you will try to control every step your team does leading to micromanagement.
• Seeking power – By controlling your team you are telling them you are the one in control, in power, and that feels good. If there are other situations in your life you don’t have control (e.g. your family situation for instance) it will feel like at least you can control something: your team.
• You don’t trust yourself – If deep inside you don’t trust yourself, how can you expect to trust others?
• Perfeccionists – These struggle to delegate, so you end up being on top of every task you delegated to your team.
• Fear of losing control – You want to be seen by those above you that you are in control, so you feel the need to control every move of your team and be in copy of every single email. Again here also comes from a trust perspective.
• You are being micromanaged yourself – Micromanagement promotes more micromanagement. If your own boss is being micromanagements, the odds are that “style” will be cascaded down.

Impact on the team

Micromanagement leads to a toxic environment where no one trusts one another. By just following orders the team will shut down their own thinking – there’s no incentive to be creative, to bring ideas to the table because they know they won’t be heard. Micromanagement promotes a culture of “shut-down”, you don’t want to be in the fire line and do just the bare minimum without ever suggesting anything different. You just do what you are told.

Eventually the environment will be so toxic that people will either burn out or leave.

Some people actually need “some” micromanagement

Something I can’t comprehend, but some people have been so  ingrained in being told what to do, they can’t cope with the freedom of articulating how to deliver a given piece of work and they expect all the tasks to be spoon fed. I have had people in the team that operate like that. It’s just very time consuming and not the way I like to operate.

What can you do instead?

If you are resorting to micromanagement to manage your team I would step back and try to assess where that is coming from. If you don’t trust them, then you shouldn’t work with them. If you don’t trust yourself then try to understand why and where is that coming from.

I know a lot of managers struggle with this, just because you have amazing productivity working by yourself, doesn’t mean you will have all the required skills to be a leader. Some people are just amazing SME’s or decision makers but not necessarily good at managing people – well I would go as far as they shouldn’t even be in a position where they have to manage people.

Let me tell you a secret: if your team shines, you shine stronger. Empower your team and they will raise you up too! (this is what micromanagers believe they are doing but end up getting the exact opposite).

In order to be a true leader you need to:

• Trust your team – If they are there it’s because they are meant to be experts in their areas. Listen to them, you might develop yourself. You don’t need to know every single step they are doing, this is why they are there. You just need to ensure they have the right guidance from you in terms of what the goals are and you help them remove any roadblocks they might face along the way.
• Empower them – Once you shared the goals with them, listen to what they have to say and their ideas to meet those goals or even augment them. If you give them the right tools you will be surprised on how far they go. Let them shine as you will shine brighter yourself too.
• Have their backs – And they will have yours. People will tend to go above and beyond when they feel they are protected and their manager is there for them. Don’t believe me? Give it and go and see for yourself.
• Guide them – Help them reach the answers they seek, propose other people they could go and speak to and in essence let them grow. How amazing is it to work for a team that looks up for you and wants to deliver the very best for you?

If there’s someone that despite all the above doesn’t work, then have the right discussions and either that person would be better off working on another team or just leaving altogether.

At the end of the day, whereas work is just work, having the right manager will be the one thing that makes or breaks. If you empower others, they will be the very best and trust you to share bad news because they know together you will find solutions and move on. Everyone will want to work with you and they will help you go where you want to go and that is where great work gets done.

The power of saying No

Ah No! That little word we learn around when we are 2 years old and are told by our parents that we are just a terrible 2.

Yet it’s such a powerful word despite having negative connotations and one we need to re-learn how to use all over again. Go in front of the mirror and practice with me: No. Not a but, not a maybe, just a No.

But why is it so hard to say no?

Let’s face it, we are people pleasers. We evolved by being next to others, having each others backs against predators or other enemies. Belonging to a community was part of our survival, it’s wired in our brains. So it’s not easy. Worst of them all is to say no when everyone around you says yes.

Say you get a request on a friday night to work over the weekend, if the first person of the team says yes, that’s it, the rest of you will feel cornered into pulling one for the team. You don’t want to be the one saying no, unless it’s something really major like a family funeral or your kids birthday. All of you will be upset about it, because who loves being called last minute to work when you were planning to rest? Even if you had no plans at all, well there’s one you didn’t had: work!

We avoid hard conversations – and that includes saying no – because we don’t like conflict. It’s not comfortable and we want to belong. Many of us all assume – with some evidence – that if you say no you are limiting yourself in your career growth. What if it’s not quite like that? What if you might end up being respected for it?

Establishing boundaries

The first step is to recognize what your boundaries are. What are your non compromisable slots / actions? Is it that you want to take the kids to school or want to start your day with some exercise? Or rather that after 17h30 you really need to spend time with your family, cook dinner and eventually unwind yourself? Just identify what those are and a) add them in your calendar and b) communicate to those that could impact them what they are.

The more specific you are the better, e.g. every weekday I want to run from 07h to 08h and that includes any prep time before / after running. Or maybe it’s not every day and just tuesdays and thursdays.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Trust me, you cannot rely on common sense for people to know what your boundaries are. I guess whereas everyone can accept that being called at 03a.m, 07a.m might be ok for some but not for others. So the key here is to communicate. Be as clear and assertive as you can regarding your boundaries. This is valid with your family, friends and at work too.

Work wise, this would be a really good topic for your 1 on 1 with your line manager. If you don’t have them, then start to schedule them. If you receive requests which you don’t like, the fault is not only on the requestor but also on you for not making it clear what’s acceptable and what’s not. Most companies will have a code of conduct, and in some countries even specific laws (like in France, where it’s against the law to call employees after hours (here) – we seriously have a lot to learn from them). But as we are all unique, so our boundaries. So if you want to avoid disappointment and high levels of stress I would make them all clear.

I would go as far as also share them with your colleagues, in the coffee break you can say how taking your kids to school really makes you happy and it’s a non compromisable slot for you, or playing football with your friends thursday night. If you are willing to share them, you will find others will too, in turn making it easier for you guys to protect each other. Ah I won’t book that call with Steve as it’s thursday and he’s going to football, lets do friday morning instead.

Don’t be afraid to say No

For every yes you say, it’s a sequence of No’s you are saying. If you stay late in the office you will miss dinner with your family and your rest. Is it something you are willing to “sacrifice”? Yes it’s nice to say yes to people, it feels good as just discussed but how bad does it feel when you compromise your boundaries and over time, might end up with burnout due to saying yeses to everyone but to yourself?

So don’t be afraid to say no.

Say No is one of the best tools for self-care. Is it against one of your boundaries? Then say No. If you’ve invested the time in communicating what is not compromisable, then saying no should be a lot easier. Yes there might be the odd exception when you might end up saying yes, but it can’t be the rule.

Someone who has the courage to say no will be respected, because we ALL struggle with it after all. Your line manager has the same problem too, believe me. We all do. So if you say no and it’s clear you are doing so to protect your boundaries, you will be respected. If they still argue that you have to do x, y and z and don’t respect you, then it’s really time for you to find some other place. Most people though, would understand and be able to find a compromise somewhere.

I have to admit I’m really with Gen Z on this one. We just keep on saying yes again and again, and in turn we are boiling like our friend the frog in the pan. It’s hard, it’s itchy but if you don’t protect yourself no one will. There will always more work, more to do’s that demand your time and attention. How much are you willing to sacrifice from your mental health just so you don’t have to say no?

I do believe in the power of every single no. It will protect you and others will be encourage to do the same. Maybe it will shift organizations to understand that we are not robots and if they expect excellence and delivery they have to respect the employees too. If you are exhausted and in burnout you cannot give your best self nor resolve problems. You might break to the point of no return and might not even get a thank you back. So yes give your best, feel proud of your achievements every day but don’t forget to take care of yourself, even if that means using a good old fashioned: NO.

Great Expectations

How great expectations are leading to great disappointment and it’s all our fault.

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with the book from Charles Dickens (or maybe it does).

Let’s face it, we live in a world with unprecedently great expectations. Everyone expects something out of you, you expect a great deal of those around you and on yourself as well. With all the technology around us, we just expect more more and more.

You are expected to be a great parent, the best employee your company can have, the best partner at home and be extremely fit – both physically and mentally. Although we always had expectations – it’s part of being human after all – the imbalance started to come when suddendly work expectations just kept on growing as if not even the sky is a limit.

In a post-covid world, companies got hooked to the long hours we were doing when working from home while at the same time they started to demand all employees to be back at the office, some the full 5 days others some kind of hybrid in between.

The concept is a lot older really, but did indeed accelerate with technology and the rise of the smart phones. You can have emails and internal messaging 24/7 so you are expected to pick up on those email and messages all the time. Bit by bit we started to do so. We wake up in the morning and check emails and work messages (not just instangrams and tik-toks). In the evening, while you are doing dinner, you end up checking emails too and after dinner might even be back to your desk – now that we all know we can work from home – and continue just to catch up on a few things.

Then weekend comes and because the week was so crazy we end up doing some work over the week too. What was meant to be just a quick scroll through the emails and to dos, easily becomes a few hours which are not eating from your personal and rest time. Little by little we do more and more.

This keeps getting encouraged when celebrating success at your organisation. How many individual or team awards will contain something in the lines of: “This team or individual worked weekends and really long hours to get this work done! Amazing, well done!”. I can’t but roll my eyes at this as I know it keeps on fueling the expectation that we need to carry on to do more.

If you see your whole team logging late and sending emails over the weekend you will end up – unconsciously – feeling guilty and also wanting to be there for the team. But the more everyone does, the more management expects you to do.

The reward for good work is always more work.

Now breaking news, it’s all our fault as well.

Gen Z has a point here (Good summary from Deloitte on Gen Z here). All other generations believe they are lazy, spoiled and don’t want to commit to anything. But what if they have a point? They want to do meaningful work and want to feel connected and don’t seem to be willing to accept workism. I say they do have a point and we should try to see the world from their point of view.

If we all continue to fueling the constant rising expectations how can we expect they will become realistic? It’s everyone’s role to bring them down to earth.

Protect your boundaries

We all have the same 24h, but if you want to avoid burnout or end up consumed by work (workism) then you have to protect your boundaries. Yes there will be cases where indeed you have to do more work. There are major milestones and it’s really critical you are there. But then you need to be able to step down when it’s no longer critical.

A lot of the work that comes late – including requests to work late evenings and weekends – comes down to bad planning. If we don’t challenge those asks, the people responsible for articulate the plans will never step back and revisit what they are doing, they will just continue to use your personal time (and all your team’s time) as contigency to get work done.

Always start by asking: is this really critical? Is someone dying? Will the organization go down or could this result in a major reputational risk? Or does it come down to someone doing bad planning and now you don’t want to say no to the leadership team? If it’s the latter, I’m afraid to say it, but step up to your mistakes. A lot comes due to missing communications between those responsible for planning and the team actually doing the work.

I would never expect someone to be able to plan everything in isolation, you need the experts to tell you how long it takes. With experience, the ones responsible for planning can judge if the estimates are being conservative or not, but that dialogue needs to exist. Just don’t come and ask for your team to work every weekend (or quite a big number of them).

Don’t be afraid to challenge the asks by having a constructive dialogue with your line manager, you might find both learn quite a lot along the way.

As for the organisation’s point of view – as I’ve written quite often – a well rested brain is more efficient at resolving difficult situations and bringing up creative to either resolve big problems or keep on adding more value to clients and stakeholders alike.

Killing flexible working?

Swipe back or get fired

The fight has become real and it’s definitely not a stress free one. These are the news we have seen over the last few months

So it seems we have to surrender to the wishes of the big companies and all return to pre-pandemic and be back in the office.

But why are companies demanding employees to be back?

They mostly cite that in-person collaboration is invaluable and it fosters innovation. The reality is, there is probably a political aspect of local governments pushing bigger companies to bring their employees back as it hurts the economic centers and the businesses around them if people work from home.

In my mind there is an aspect of trust too. Let’s face it, for a lot of people they don’t trust what they don’t see and they believe if employees are home they are slacking and not being as productive, even though again and again there are studies that comfirm otherwise.

The impact for the employees

While there are indeed very good reasons to be in the office as a team, to brainstorm together and foster more personal relationships or welcome new joiners into the team, companies have failed to really articulate where it really improves performance.

Working from home ended up blurring the lines between rest and work with many employees struggling to switch off and working much longer hours. Yet it is interesting that despite all of this, the reality is they still prefer to maintain such arrangements. After all flexibility is the key. Being able to make a choice and adapt to the circumstances can be quite invaluable.

However, what they are being told is that if they don’t swipe your card they could be fired (said no motivational speed ever). This adds a lot of unwanted stress, unless you a) prefer to be in the office and b) you actually believe the reasons the company is sharing with you to return.

Sourced from: https://www.usemultiplier.com/blog/empower-employees-to-fight-return-to-office-stresses

The fight back

The reality if employees are not convinced of the ask so they are fighting back. A good summary can be found in this BBC article here

Not even the looming recession or mass layoffs which have been seen in the news the last few months are stopping “the fight”. If you know something works why would you give up on it?

The fight is not new, has just escalated since covid. For years many working parents have tried to get some flexibility to be able to support their families, but it was a long lost battle in which one of the couple (mostly the mum) would give up working to be able to support the kids while the other half would put on all the long hours in the office.

Will be interesting to see how the fight continues and to which extend employees will get united (beyond specific areas where union exists – anyone living in the UK will know of all the strikes we’ve had for more than 1 year). Will they go to the office as asked but then stop adding all those extra hours in the evenings and consequently reducing productivity? Or will they quit and search for places where the flexibility is being offered?

After all, right now we have globalization and the world can be your oyster.

Be careful with what you wish for

As we have seen in several studies, productivity had increased with flexible working and remote working. On average, companies have benefited from increased performance and productivity as the days have become a lot longer even if employees need to do breaks middle of the day (go to the doctor, get the kids from school).

If employees are doing something to tick a box, it won’t certainly make them any more collaborative or innovative, on the contrary. Instead, they will use their commute to search for companies which still offer the flexibility they value. And they will jump out when the opportunity comes.

The companies that will succeed long term, are those that are willing to embrace new ways of working, thinking and collaborating together and are not bound by the rules of the past. Adapt or die.

Further reading

• Time here
• Forbes here
• Multiplier here

Other articles I wrote on the topic

• Leaders of tomorrow
• The great resignation
• Return to the office
• You can’t have it both ways
• I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you
• The future of the office

You can’t have it both ways

It’s really interesting to realize that the “new world ” we were expecting – a world post covid – looks more and more like old world.

There is a major difference though…. we’ve seen how it could be!

Before covid

Most of us were in the office Mon – Friday with a clear separation of home and office modes. We would leave the office and call it a day.

Some of us had worked the odd Friday from home and it felt amazing, but it was more an exception rather than a rule.

You were expected to be in the office every working day no matter what and going to doctor was something you had to plan months in advance, it felt almost has hard as if you were asking if you could be naked in there.

We didn’t know any other reality

During covid

We suddenly had to work from home full time, from our kitchens, from our sofas, from our beds. We missed our daily commute where we could listen to podcasts, music, catch up with your favourite series or just sleep. It all blurred up.

The number of emails increased like a never ending tsunami.

New joiners would come and leave without meeting anyone in the flesh.

The instant chat was bipping like a disco.

Meetings became the modos operandis. If you need something, book a meeting.

As a consequence, most of us ended up working longer and longer hours. The time spent on cummuting went into working, with the flexibility to take / get the kids to school, take them to their after school clubs or even a change to say hi to the neighbours.

Post Covid Year 1

As covid rules started to ease, it was the age of hybrid working. At the beginning there was quite a lot of freedom. People were encouraged to try to return to the office and for many of us it was pleasent to return back a few days to interact with the colleagues. The coffee chit chat was back, it felt refreshing but also less productive.

Where we stand now

Bit by bit, we are being asked to be there full time. Why? I don’t quite know. The only thing I can think of is because the ones making the decisions don’t know any other way. I struggle to compreenhed why companies can’t embrace flexibility. It works both ways!

You can’t expect your workes to do the same hours they were doing from home AND return more often to the office.

An article from guardian (here) says that more than a third of the workers would quite if they were asked to return full time.

Give me an article that shows that being in the office increases productivity

Yeah I’m waiting…..

No?

Here’s some that shows remote working does:

• Business news daily https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15259-working-from-home-more-productive.html
• And another here

There’s really good reasons teams should get together in the office – at least once in a while:

• To establish relationships
• To welcome a new joiner – and here I would suggest different team members rotate the days so that the new joiners gets to interact with everyone in the team, get to ask questions and as a consequence learn from different people.
• As I wrote in the future of the office here the office should be it’s own experience, with a valid reason why it makes sense to go. Celebrate success together, team lunch, team brainstorming, you name it.
• I tell you what is not a good reason: To tick a box and because the ones on the top making a decision can’t embrace new ways of thinking.

Why are people reticent to embrace being back in the office more often:

• Because it’s expensive – yeah my friends, it’s expensive to go to work even if you bring your own breakfast, lunch and snacks
• Transport is totally unreliable – As I type, I just discovered there is another train strike next week in the UK with only 1 train an hour in my area. There is no way I would be able to drop / pick the kids from school.
• Because we don’t see the value in it. When I go to the office I want to chit chat to my colleagues, which is the point of going right? But this means I am less productive or sometimes I don’t even get the chance given I’m in the office while in back to back meetings with a remote team all over the world.
• It’s exhausting – the time spending in commuting is no small ask. On a good day it’s a good 2h20 per day lost, which I could have used to sleep and / or work a bit more while having the chance to be more present with my own family.
• No infrastructure – Where do we leave the kids? Let’s face it, costs are going up everywhere, we can’t just simple fund enough after care hours. It’s also not fair on the kids to leave them in after school care until 19h because the parents don’t have a choice. The way I see it, we should embrace decentralization and having smaller centers close to schools and embrace community life.

I’m pretty sure this list could be augumented a lot.

I am curious to see what will happen to the talent pool once they send more applications to companies offering flexibility. I do believe we have the power to strike back and change the paradigm of work. We can work differently, there are other ways, not just the old way.

We need to embrace the leadership skills of tomorrow and not be afraid to do different. We need different, we need better!

@champagnecruze

*Pulls up Linkedin – Which one are you? 😂 #generations #corporate #workhumor #workfromhome #relateable

♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey

How to enter the corporate world

In the current competitive world, you can’t wait until you are out of uni or school to think about the labour market. The reality is you need to get in there before you consider applying for your first corporate job (I’m not even calling the 9h to 17h because I don’t think that even exists anymore).

Be ready to think outside the box and rethink how you see yourself and any role you might apply to.

Just having an education isn’t enough, not even if it’s the cream of the cream, the top of the top.

Enter the world of skills. Whereas most generations still perceive a role mostly as a title and experience that comes with it, think of it as the unique skillset you will be building up and that makes you, well you!

If you don’t have any corporate experience yet, how can you grow yourself? Think about any part time or summer jobs you could do. Embrace your inner barista or run the finances for your local football club.

Do you have any hobbie you could monetize? Then go for it.

By the time it comes to send your first cv you need to be able to tell the story of who you are and what you can offer. Think about all of the skillsets you can aquire and will make the difference in an infinite list of cvs.

Focus on the soft skills and adaptability. The skills needed today won’t be the skills needed tomorrow. AI could replace a lot of the known jobs today. The ability to reinvent yourself will bring you the competitive edge that could save your butt tomorrow.

Let’s break this down with some examples

Any public facing role – And I’ll continue using the example of the local barista

You will be learning customer service. Your are dealing with people and having to prioritize work & dealing with pressure: do you clean those dirty tables or do you deal with all the orders right now. Don’t underestimate the bliding need for a coffee on a Monday morning. You need to get as many coffees out as possible. For this to happen, you will have looked into the end to end process of making your favourite brew from order until it’s ready. What can you prepare in advance to ensure the flow goes as smooth as possible and with the less steps needed. This would be process optimization. Handling all the many requests: (1 flat white, 2 sugars, oat milk, followed by a cortado no sugar to a capuccino with steaming hot milk and a customer that is afraid to miss the train while keeping a smile on your face, is dealing with pressure and acing it.

These are skills you will need anywhere you go.

Organizing a local event

This could well be, organizing a celebration for your local club, getting the community together. You will be dealing with many suppliers, negotiating prices (most likely you will be cost sensitive), and ensuring all the different components of the event come together on the day of the event. Drinks are served, people attending are happy, you rented the place, positioned all the bins in place so rubbish collection end of the event is as smooth as it can be.

Running the finances for your local club

You can even do this in a basic spreedsheet, by keeping note of all money coming in and coming out. You will need to be organized and ensuring every cash flow is kept on record so you think ahead of what the club might need – more sponsors? more events so you get further revenue coming in?

Creating a website or a small plugin

Are you good with programing? You can create apps, plugins and websites for other people and already monetize your work. When it comes to sending cvs later you will be able to showcase your portfolio.

These are just a few examples, I’m sure you already have other skills you don’t even realize you can have. Don’t worry about not having done something in a specific role. You will be holding a skillset that is unique to you and could add value on any given role.

Which skills will be key? Well, this is my own view:

• Emotional inteligence – In a world where everything can be replaced, automatized emotional inteligence will continue to be one of the most important skills you can have. If you are able to maintain a cold head and think though any given problem without letting your monkey mind run wild and loose the plot, you will be a step further than most. This is not something – unfortunately – that schools even will teach out and most of the parents won’t be focusing on this either. They both focus on what they can measure, and that will be school grades. Emotional inteligence takes time and patience. It’s keeping those foundational rocks that will eventually become part of who you are. You also need to be aware of the emotions others around you are holding and how certain words could trigger a chain reaction to those around you. (You can read more about it here). It’s one of the core leadership skills for a reason and I would say one which most “leaders” lack.
• Organization – You would be amazed to know how so many people completely lack basic organizational skills. Be it in terms of organizing your own agenda, your shopping list, your life, your calendar, whatever it might be. If you are unable to keep a clear track of what you need to do and where to find what you might need for a given task, you will lose valuable time finding it later. Your mind needs to know where to go instantely for any topic. If you find you are lacking, invest time to get there. Be it organizing your own 1 per 1 lego pieces by colours – so you can find the colour you need when you need it – to keep a diary of the things you are doing and where you are spending your time. Organization has never been at the highest as in recent years. You will be surprised how even home organization is such a thing now with the rise of Marie Kondo.
• Empathy – I wrote about it so many times, so I will keep it short. Those who lack empathy and are unable to read other’s emotions won’t go far. Empathy and emotional inteligence go hand in hand and are really powerful tools. If you want to read what I wrote before check here.
• Ability to learn & focus – This might seem obvious, but you need to have the foundational skills on how to learn anything. Most of us have the attention span of a fish and can’t focus on more than a few seconds on any given task without being distracted (yeah blame it on tik tok). If you are able to focus on your mind on something new and allocate time to keep on getting better and better means you will be able to learn anything. And you really need the ability to repivot and learn anything as new skills will keep on coming all the time. If you want to continue to be relevant, you can’t just rely on the fact you might be really good and some given skills. I do recommend a digital detox once in a while and you will find that you have tons more time than you thought you had to allocate to learning something new. Whatever rocks your boat. The what is even less relevant than the how or the why.

So no matter your age and where you are with life, just focus on the skills of tomorrow and bagging as many relevant one as you can.

Quiet quitting

After the last 1 year ish of great resignation, we are reaching the phase of quiet quitting.

What is quiet quitting?

Well in few words is doing just the bare minimum expected of your role to keep afloat. No more chasing the carrot and no putting of extra hours.

sourced from: https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/slang/what-does-quiet-quitting-mean

Is quiet quitting good or bad?

Well, as everything in life depends on the perspective.

From the employee angle

Again depends on the perspective. What is the reason behind it? Is it to search a more balanced life and be able to focus on other important milestones outside work? I don’t think this would be a bad thing. In fact I do believe we should all search for a more balanced life. In the last few years most of us were unable to really turn off from work as work and home merged together as under the same roof. We tended to work much longer hours and reach a special burnout, where we felt overwhelmed by the whole circunstances, not knowing when it would be allowed or safe to have “normal life” again, plus ending up longer meetings, longer hours. Is it bad to reassess that maybe enough is enough and establish some boundaries? I personally don’t think so.

However, if this is coming from an angle of disappointment in one’s role or career, well not so good. The reality is we need motivation to pack those hours, even the expected 8h. For most of us, there is a really high insecurity about the next few years ahead and don’t even attempt to look into your energy bill. For those that didn’t took advantage of the great resignation now it’s starts to become too late. Too late to risk to go into a new role when security is all that matters: can I pay my mortagage? Can I afford to warm up my house? Can I buy the food we need for the family? In the balance of it all, people will be more willing to face another Monday (or dragging through it) than risk becoming unemployed.

From the companies point of view

Why is your team quiet quitting? Why don’t they feel energized to come to work? Are you giving them opportunities for development and growth? Do you actually care if they succeed? The reality is while there were a lot of people moving about, it’s quite expensive to train new people and get them up to speed. If your existing team on the ground is just ticking the boxes just to go by another day, you will soon enough face a loss in terms of creativity and new ideas which you will need to face upcoming times of uncertainty. The cost of not doing anything will be much higher than try to fix the problems at the source. You might not win the first battle, but you might be able to win the war.

Food for thought

Ultimately I’m a firm believes that most companies would benefit of a good “Marie Kondo” round of decluttering. There are processes and technologies which could be improved, meetings that could be cut. With people returning to the office – at least on a hybrid basis – there is also opportunity to foster those energizing opportunities and get them to think about ways to improve the team’s performance. Leave them room to think and raise their ideas.

Also revisit how accomplishments are being done at your company. Raise your hand if there’s always an element of: “these team was amazing because they worked every single weekend to get this done.”

Why did they had to work on the weekend to get it done? What’s failing? Those are the pressing questions to be asked. It should be: “this team did an amazing job and they managed to logoff at 17h00 to be with their families.”

Whereas some positive stress is needed I think we’ve passed beyond all of that. There is quite something quiet quitting is telling us, and that is perhaps is time to think once and for all how we work together. As leaders you are responsible to ensure you have a healthy team that feels energized to contribute their best ideas for the company to continue to develop. After all, companies are nothing more than a collective of employees, if all of them start to quiet quit there will be no bonus for anyone either. Long term we’re all dead.

Here’s a good article: https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/working-less-more-productive

Agile continues

The previous post was agile on it’s own. It was too big so had to split into smaller pieces.

Today we continue around the overal “cerimonies”.

Like all good stories, it always starts with planning. If you have a big list of wishlist items – which you’ve already agreed with your PO that they form part of the MVP. The first step is to have a backlog meeting.

Backlog meeting

Consider this as the house cleaning. You need to clean on a regular basis to ensure there’s no weird dust that went below the carpet. The backlog meeting aims to check what’s on the list, check what needs to be done in 1 or 2 sprints ahead and be sure all the depencies are understood. It aims to ensure you know what the team will be doing next and ensure by the time the new sprint starts you have enough stories “ready” to keep the team going and not loose momentum. Ideally the backlog meeting should happen mid sprint so there’s enough time to clear any dependencies and even for the team members to try to quantity how big the next stories will be and break them down further.

Sprint planning

This is where you look into what you’ve agreed to do and then ensure all the tasks are added so each team member knows what their priorities are. This is an opportunity to look into the work for that given sprint and measure criticality of stories between one and the other. Are there any high value quick wins (big points and low effort)? Then do those first. They will bost the moralle of the troops. It’s about every day improving 1%.

Daily scrum

I wrote about it in the previous post and this is where the magic happens. The daily scrum should happen with or without the scrum master there (at least in my view), it’s about team members to align and discuss any dependencies or blockers among them which can then be raised to the scrum master. If there are multiple scrums / workstreams, then you might need a Scrum of Scrums, so any resource dependencies between workstreams can be discussed and overall priorities assessed.

I really love love love this episode. It explains it a lot better than I did 😀

Retrospective

I know in a lot of places this is about getting the metrics. And yes indeed they are quite important, but even more so it’s to get the team together and look into what went well, discuss if the sprint goal was achieved, what didn’t went so well and what’s the one improvement everyone commits to implement. It doesn’t matter how small it is. Could be as simple as no mettings without an agenda, or that an additional SME is needed for the next few scrums. Whatever the team agrees.

What agile is not

No, it’s not a means of cutting documentation or cutting corners. The shift changes from the PM telling people what to work on or spending a lifetime writing the perfect documentation – be it a requirements document or a design document – to start by doing. Applying marginal gains and moving one step forward and documenting. It’s about a continuous assessment of what’s working well and what’s not and allow the experts in the team to propose where things can improve. As the functionality / product is build so is the documentation (incrementally).

Agile is not about cutting planning, in fact it’s about a new way of planning. One that relies on working closely with the product owner and the team members.

It’s not unstructured. It’s structured diferently around smaller workstreams with a brand new framework.

For further reading check here

Sourced from: https://wiki.cantara.no/display/dev/About+failing+agile+projects

What’s in it for me?

But aren’t you a convert already?

It doesn’t even matter if your team does any software development or not. It’s the whole mindset of breaking something bigger into smaller achievable pieces. It’s about having the priorities clear and cutting the crap. It’s about empowering the team to make decisions around the how to deliver something based on their expertise as well as to measure how big a piece of work is. It’s about understanding any dependencies upfront before commiting to something.

It changes the shift from spending months or years doing something that went presented back to the “requestors” – be it another team in the organisation or your clients – is miles away from what’s needed or you’ve spent so long in development the product / service is no longer relevant.

It’s about spending the minimum time possible from prototype to output and figure out (fast) if something could work or not. Put it up there, in front of a small user base to smash it to pieces and confirm it you are going in the right direction or you need to go back to the drawing board.

Don’t believe this can work for you and your team? Then try it and let me know!

For the agile manifesto check here

Sourced from here: https://sander-dur.medium.com/10-agile-memes-to-lighten-up-your-day-7f577ffbfe89

Let’s talk agile

Agile has been quite a buzzword for the last few years. Initially something you would link to a fancy fast moving startup, but now it’s all around you. Well if it isn’t it should!

Typically agile is linked as a new way of project management especially in the area of software development but I would say it’s way more agile than that (yap I wrote that).

It’s not just about delivering a piece of software but it’s a whole new mindset in which any team, and I mean any team can operate.

Let’s start with some definitions – and again this is just my own simplified view.

The team

Size matters

In this case, a smaller size is the best. An agile team should be composed ideally by 3 to 9 team members, if it’s bigger than that then it should be subdivided in smaller groups with a “scrum of scrums” to check for any conflicts and dependencies between them.

Product owner

Ideally there should be a product owner per scrum to avoid clashes of opinion across them, or even worse, no product owner. If there’s no product owner I would advise to stop there and don’t even bother to start. It can only lead to doom. Yap. The role of the product owner is to define their wish list and articulate it in a way the team understands. Then they also need to drive criticality: What’s more important for them? What’s nice to have and could be done later?

Scrum Master

See this role as a kind of a PM whose main focus is to resolve dependencies, either internal or external to the scrum. Also it should drive the sprint ceremonies (I’ll get to them shortly). I also see the role of the scrum master as an internal coach who raised the right question to both the PO (aka product owner) and team members. Where a lot of people struggle with agile is that it’s no longer the role of the “PM” to tell people what to do and how long it takes.

Team members

It’s the role of the team members to define their tasks – how to deliver what the product owner. This is very important as it’s with the feedback of the team members that a “story” can be defined or even broken down into smaller pieces if it’s too big to achieve in the space of say 2 weeks. It’s also the role of the team members to raise any dependencies that a particular delivery requires before it can be completed. If it’s blocked there’s no point in starting until the dependency has been cleared. It puts team members on the spot (but I would say in a good way) as they own their tasks.

What are we doing?

The PO has a big wishlist, it’s the role of PO, Team members and scrum master to get together and define what are the really critical functionality and which features are nice to have. The concept of what’s critical forms the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Everyone needs to understand the “what is” in the team.

How do we get there?

Now that we know this big thing that needs to be achieved, how do we get there? Well, chop it into pieces. Agile is about breaking down smaller and smaller so it seems you have something that you individually can achieve and contribute on any given day. That is encouraging!

First we divide into “features”, big functionality pieces that are to be delivered. From features then we move into stories. A story needs to be achieved in a sprint (whatever that sprint is, 2 or 3 weeks). A lot of people struggle with the concept of “story” because they get stuck into the features. I have described this before as building a house. The house is your MVP. Things like the garden or the shed can be seen as nice to haves (for most people at least). Once you have the first MVP completed you can tackle those. Then you can think of each division of the house a “feature”. It’s the builder that can then articulate how you build the foundation of the house and then each division. A story in this context could be: prepare the land – to start building. This is a dependency that needs to be cleared before anything else can start. Then you can get the baseline building, then you can get multiple stories in parallel for the building of each room. Then another story to add the plumbing and electricals and so on.

Each user story needs to have a tangible output at the end of it. Let’s take building the kitchen as an example. Even to add all the internal walls and baseline foundations for the kitchen will take a few days, so this is where the tasks come into play. Every day the team must know what they are doing. The team members, using their expertise must break that output which is the foundation for the kitchen and define the tasks for each day. Ideally a task should be between 1h to 8h, if it’s more than that then it needs to be broken down further. It needs to take into consideration the sequence of events from the start to the final outcome. Ultimately the story is considered “done” when the PO has seen a demo – in this case goes and checks if the sizing is as expected, if there’s space for the windows as per spec and so on. If all is good, the PO will say great job and the team can move into the next story, which could be all about furniture and electricals.

Is the story ready to start?

This is where things fail miserably. Before a piece of work can start, it should be clear to all team members what it is that is to be achieved. If there’s any vagueness in the what, then I would suggest PO and team members to sit down and refine further. Let’s go back to the kitchen, so say the PO only said that he wanted a kitchen. It will be subject to the interpretation of the team members. The kitchen could end up being tiny or not have enough light. It might be that there’s even a user story to define what are the requirements for the kitchen with a series of drawings on paper until everyone understands what’s the ask.

Managing progress – meet the daily scrum

This is where I see agile being applied to anything and any team really. As opposed to having team meetings without a clear purpose, the scrum has one goal, measure the progress of the day in relation to the sprint goal. In each daily scrum, each team member will provide a brief of what was achieved the day before, what they are working on that specific day (e.g. referring to the tasks) and if there are any blockers / impediments they found which the scrum master will need to resolve. It cuts the crap in essence and retains the focus on what’s really important. I have seen “business as usual” teams applying this to their day to day work and it works! If you have access to some agile tools then even better. (I can probably write a post on tools another day).

The beauty of agile

I seriously feel like tattooing this mantra

Fail fast, learn faster

This is what agile is ultimately about. As you try to have an output as part of each sprint and get the product owner to work with the team directly to measure how close we are (or not) to the ultimate goal (the MVP), the team will have the chance to learn what went wrong and change tactics. I will write another post about the scrum ceremonies as a lot can be said in this space.

Return to the office – An update

I guess I wrote back about the return to the office last year before everything went pear shape again with Omicron. So here’s an updated view after returning on a weekly basis.

Disclaimer: I am fortunate enough that I can return at a more smoother pace (e.g. once a week) and don’t have a rule (yet!) that I need to be there X number of days like other areas of the business.

So here’s how a day looks like

Wake up at 05h30 – not used to that anymore. I struggle to open my eyes and comprehend which planet I’m on. I realize it must be Monday and indeed I have to get up (a good 5 or 10m later).

Leave the house at 06h20 for a 20m walk to the station. Fortunately the sunrise is earlier and I feel less afraid to walk in the dark so early in the morning. I rarely see a soul.

The train commute is pretty nice. I manage to read on the train – a part I quite miss from the old days.

I reach the office at around 07h20 (1h after I left home). It is very quiet and I really enjoy that. I have time to eat my breakfast at my desk, reply to a few emails and prepare my day ahead before I go into meetings and more meetings.

At 08h30 I call home so I can speak to my daughter. I feel sad I can’t take her to school. This was quite a big change for all of us, where I can now be part of the daily routines around my daughter and take her or get her from school. I rarely had the chance to do that before given the commute times to / from home.

From 09h onwards it’s meeting crazy but I can say it felt so nice to have the team meetings in person. We were just so happy to see each other in person or having a quick lunch together. We are social “animals” after all. We develop in a pack, by working together. This is at the source of our evolution, so even the most introverts will miss some sort of face to face interactions.

We’ve all agreed that if we could teleport to the office we would go more often.

One item I find myself doing quite badly in the office, is barely drinking any water as the ladies room is too far from my desk and not something you can go quickly and come back while in a meeting. So it’s not uncommon to leave with headache.

At 16h00 I shut down everything to catch the train home so at around 17h10 I’m back home for any final meetings and close any outstanding work. In the past I would leave at 17h30 and that was it, no more working after, but I struggle with that. Also I guess I’m not mentally ready to commute into rush hour. Not yet.

By 21h00 I don’t know again which planet I’m on and I struggle to stay awake.

Future of working

I wrote about it a few times and I will say I have not changed my point of view at all. The future needs to be flexible. I don’t believe there is one size that fits all. We all have our own needs and we all achieve efficiency and productivity in different ways. Some people say they are more efficient in the office because they get less distractions (e.g. chores to do or kids), I am less efficient in the office because I find myself wanting to interact to people and loose more time move round and about plus the commuting back.

The technology is out there, the whole covid situation has shown to the most sceptical of the leaders that teams can work remotely. Yes there is a lot you develop while working physically together. Going to the office needs to be an experience on its own that helps to drive a very specific purpose than the nature of the work done at home.

I do believe that companies that do not embrace flexible working – and come on, flexible working is not the odd day working from home – will fail to attract the best talent or retain those that they have.

Companies that offer flexibility will get flexibility in return and an increase in productivity. Also if people work from different environments, that will encourage diverse ways of tackling new situations and challenges.

So cheers to flexibility, we all need it. If you don’t trust your employees, look yourself in the mirror.