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.

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.

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

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.

Leaders of tomorrow

As the world evolves and younger generations enter the workforce, leaders also need to stay relevant if they aim to inspire and attract the best talent.

It’s amazing to see today’s leaders starting to bring diversity to the table and start to apply different facets of what it means to be a leader.

When we think of the leadership in the past it you can almost stereotype it:

• White male in his 50’s, drinks whiskey, likes to play golf and smoke cigars
• It was all about power and power circles
• Controls the team by fear and authoritarianism
• They know best / arrogant
• Workaholic
• Loves micromanagement

I’m not saying they were not good examples of leadership in the past, there were. But, the world has moved on quite a lot, and if you have any hope to attract talent, authority alone won’t do. New generations care about the vision, what they are contributing for, and they need to feel they are trusted and their voice matters.

So let’s jump in into what I think are the most important skills of today’s / tomorrow’s leaders.

Agile

Yes I know I love agile, and I really do. But more than just a tool for project management I see it as a mindset. As a leader you need to adapt really fast and be ready to repivot again your ideas. Fail fast, learn even faster! And it’s not even just about failure, you might be doing well right now, but you need to think about what will work tomorrow, and sometimes you might need to take 1 step back to be able to move 3 steps forward. Like parents with young children, what worked today might not work tomorrow. You can’t ever be stuck into ways of working. I’m sorry Mandalorian, but there is “no way”. The way is many ways that you don’t even know are there. You have to be willing to try and see what works.

Communication

Not only you need to have a vision of where you want to be (yourself as a leader and how you see the team / company), but you need to be able to communicate it. I just can’t see how a leader with a good vision can be a great leader if he’s unable to communicate it down the chain. It’s the troops on the ground that will make it or break it unless you’re a company of one. I see so many great ideas dying at the beach because they can’t be articulated in a way that everyone understands what it means for them. It might be obvious to the C-suite, but is it clear what it means to every single employee? As I’ve said, younger generations need to buy into the vision, if they don’t, they will jump out to where they will. (I wrote about it here).

Empathy

I’ve said it again and again and I will say it once more. Empathy is key. For the time being at least, we are dealing with humans, people with lives outside work (yes I know, it’s possible), and unless you have the ability to walk in someone’s shoes and try to understand what your employees might be feeling or how they might perceive your ideas, you won’t go far. The “just do as I say because I say so” era is gone. Yes gone. You need to show to them you are human if you want them to follow you and help you with your vision. (I wrote about it here)

Seeks diversity

In the past the “boss” had to be perceived as the most clever person in the room, and they would unconsciously surround themselves of people who thought like them and said yes to every idea – without any challenge. This was linked to the leading by fear, so there was no incentive of calling out a bad idea. Nether less to say this will jeopardize any ideas of growth. You want to surround yourself of people who are smarter than you and bring a completely different angle to the table, a different idea. You also want do avoid any “yes-sir”. You want to seek different views to then measure them up and understand what could work. Also, you want the surrounding people to challenge you if your idea has any flaws. If there are better ways of doing things, you want to have people around you that will point you in the right direction. If everyone thinks like you, you will just get ideas that you can reach on your own.

Active listeners

For some reason there is the perception that leaders have to be extrovert and talk a lot. But if coms are important, being active listeners is even more so. You need to be aware of what’s going on around you, at all levels of the organization. But unless you’re an Alexa, you can’t be everywhere and know everything, so you need to be able to listen to those you interact with. Not just being able to listen to what they are saying, but on why they are saying and what’s between the lines. The ability to pause and actively listening is one of the most powerful tools a leader can possess, for only then he will be able to have a wider view on anything impacting the company both internally and externally. Don’t forget, it’s the troops on the ground that ultimately interact with clients, that see what’s working and what’s a total failure. Only by listening and observing without judgment you’ll be able to gather insights on any steps that need to be taken next and re-pivot as per my point 1.

From http://quietandstrong.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/introverted-leader.jpg

Always learning, always thinking

My final point is about keeping an open mind and constantly be willing to learn. This is achieved by listening to others, by seeking formal training in any new technology / processes or by reading books. But in order to consolidate all these insights and knowledge, I would say it’s critical to have some thinking time. Not because you did something wrong like we tell the kids, but because the brain needs time to consolidate all the information. Blocking time to just sit down and absorb all the information you’ve collected on a daily basis is fundamental. It’s very easy to just get stuck on the busy-wheel, but you must carve out time to think and define what you need to learn next.

Accountability

Ok, I lied, there’s one more point. Accountability. It’s very easy to take accountability for success, but it’s crucial to take accountability for any failure. Great leaders will recognize what went wrong – as opposed to blame someone else or some other team – and will learn from it. Everyone should incorporate accountability in their ways of working, as it is a powerful tool to build trust. In fact, it was accountability that made me start this blog all these years ago (the one to be blamed), so couldn’t finish the list without it.

Are you still relevant tomorrow?

When we were growing up, most of us wanted to have known jobs like doctor, lawyer, fireman, vet, you name it. But then as we grew up and started to work (and pay taxes), quite a lot of us found it difficult to explain to our parents what we do. I can’t explain to the kids nor my parents what I do. I think my daughter would define it as “my mum works on her computer.”

Even from when I started working until now there’s a lot of new roles that have popped up, namely in AI, data scientists, etc. I even have a friend who works with drones, not for playing (and those are fun too), but that’s his job and a few others that do “social media content”.

This week my husband called the insurance company and it took them a while to figure out which of the options allowed would describe his job.

The roles are moving faster than we do, we might need things we didn’t even know we needed – mobile phone and Alexa I’m looking at you – but now we can’t live without them.

So how do you stay relevant?

• Always learning – There’s no way around it, you have to keep an open mind and continuous learning. If in the past it was all about continuous improvement (and that remains relevant), continuous learning is even more relevant. You need to think not just on the skills required for your role and how to develop in your role, but any skills you might need tomorrow. How to find what’s relevant for you? Well look around to the new hires, which skills are they bringing? What do you think it’s missing in your company, in your industry? Allow time to dedicate to learning and it can be anything from getting a certification from just reading a book or shadowing a colleague that does a different role than yours
• Skills, Skills, Skills – As I wrote here in this space, it’s all about skills. Forget job titles and see yourself as a walking basket of skills. Some you already have and might be an expert at it, others you need to improve (part of the learning bucket), others you might want to drop because they might not be as relevant anymore or you simply might not like them at all. You need to continuously assess what’s relevant for you and which skills you should develop. With the relevant skills you can flex around what’s next for you role wise. The more skills you have, the more flexible you can be. It will always be a dancing game of being an expert at something – which in some specific areas you really need to be – versus being very flexible.

• Be open minded – I have worked with people in the past that believe just because they have more experience they know it all. If you are not willing to listen to those around you and accept new ideas, no matter how radical they seem – you won’t evolve and stay relevant. A new grad will give you a brand new perspective on the world, same as someone from a completely different industry than yours. Be open to different views.
• Surround yourself with people that inspire you – Most people think that they have to search for really senior people because they will help them grow in their careers. Whereas that might indeed work, I would say it’s even more relevant to surround yourself of people that inspire you for whatever reason, could be the receptionist that is an amazing painter in her free time, to someone who is really good at seeing patterns in data, anything that pushes your boundaries and inspires you to think differently and improve yourself. Diversity is the key to it all. If you only mingle with those that think the same way you do, you will never learn anything new.
• Be authentic – In a world full of automation and where most people end up trying to be the same as someone who is successful, are to be authentic and bring your true self in everything that you do.

Some relevant articles

• Careers of the future
• Cool future jobs
• Jobs on the rise
• Forbes: How automation will impact future job markets

Let’s throw bodies at a problem

Ah my beloved management falacy: let’s throw bodies at a problem.

Let’s face it, nobody likes problems even small ones and if they are bigger even worst. The bigger or the more complex the problem the harder it is to find an obvious solution. If you’re lucky you’ll get the team members to work together to brainstorm some ideas that can work and resolve it and apply “trial and error”, which might or might not work as per desired timelines.

So what’s the “easiest” way out?

Let’s throw bodies at a problem.

I’ve lost count as to how many times different levels in the organization come up with let’s get more people, because more people the faster it is to resolve something right?

No!

Just because you get 9 mothers it doesn’t mean you’ll get the baby delivered in a month. Would be good, but that’s not how it works.

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-throwing-money-business-cartoon-people-problem-image71736617

Every time I hear this answer to any given problem this song plays straight into my head

It’s very easy to believe that the more people you get the more problems / tasks they can achieve. The problem which is easily forgotten is that the more people you need the stronger the communication needs to be to be able to split a big piece of work in smaller parts, distribute the workload and all still fit together. The more people, the more management and if they happen to not have the right skillset for the problem it might end up having the undesired impact.

When you have a problem to tackle you need different ideas. Having 1 or 2 people from outside helping to brainstorm on how it can be tackled can indeed be quite helpful, but ultimately you need to be able to know how to distribute the work among all the “new joiners”. You’ll also have to spend some time explaining what the problem statement is so the additional resources can help to tackle it. I suppose if you have a big problem in the hands of a given team, the last thing the team will want is to have to do knowledge transfer to someone new. You’ll easily end up with a spaghetti monster of communication when no one knows who needs to do what.

Good article here

So what can you do instead?

Well, I’m a firm believer in the power of small teams. Hence, if you have a big problem to tackle, whereas you might benefit from some specific help (1 or 2 people), I would say it needs to come down to priority. What can be dropped from the team’s plate to tackle “the problem”. Get the team to brainstorm what could be done, split the work and let them try to achieve it.

Add into the backlog all the other items which are being paused, in priority item so they can start to be addressed as the resources become free from tackling the bigger issue.

Define quick wins that will booste the morale of the team and ensure they can indeed resolve this massive problem in front of them.

Empower them to make the right decisions within the team, which will reduce the time required to get all the buy in from the different stakeholders and let them present their findings and progress.

Time out

No, I’m not talking about the magazine nor what we tell the kids when they are naughty. I’m referring to time out work (or whatever is stressing you out).

For some reason we live in an environment where we are expected to work at full capacity (or more), all the time and always be smiley and perfect. We can’t deal with negative emotions at all and we just tend to avoid them or hide them far far away so they can never be found.

Bad news is, we are human after all. We can’t be perfect – by nature we are imperfect – we can’t climb the tree (organizational tree), be perfect husbands / wifes, be perfect parents, perfect friends, perfects whatevers. Something has got to give, as blunty as that.

We all know this right? But why can’t we speak about it? I bet it’s way easier to speak about other tabu-like topics such as sex than it is to ackoledge sometimes we just need time out. I’m yet to see someone asking for time-out before they reach burn-out.

Well know I have: me! Yap, no shames, no guilty, no nothing. I was not feeling myself nor in a good place mentally so I had to ask for the unthinkable, and I’ve asked for time out.

• Do I feel a weaker or ashamed I’ve asked for time-out? No!
• Do I feel this will jeopardise my value as an employee? No!
• Do I worry what my colleagues will think of me? No! (and I’ve told my team I was taking a day off because I was not feeling mentally great)
• Do I think in fact I feel stronger after having the courage to just voice it? Yes!
• Do I feel I did the right thing? Absolutely

I know I am priviledged that I work in a place where I can ask for time-out. But why is this a priviledge though? It shouldn’t be! We accept we need time off if we are sick (at least most places do). But why do we still struggle so much at discussing more openly about mental health?

Some places are discussing about it, yet there’s rarely an emples from the top about recognizing our falibility: we are just human! It’s ok not to be ok, it’s ok to feel overwhelmed, it’s ok to feel tired. What is not ok is not to stop to recognize you just need some time out to reset and clear your mind. If you believe asking for time-out will have such negative impacts in your company I would urge you to consider to find another job (as soon as the opportunity arrives).

So just take a moment to reflect where you are right not and what do you need. If you feel overwhelmed, tired, too stress to cope with what you have on your plate, just ask for time out. Take a day off and go for a walk, binge on netflix, whatever you need to clear your mind and relax.

Other articles:

• How to speak with your boss about anxiety (here)
• Another one here
• When you’re boss is secretely thinking about quitting (here)