Category: about

On the Blame Game

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I pride myself on not playing the Blame Game. I tend to say, “I don’t really care who caused the problem, I want to know two things: how to fix it, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

A few weeks ago, however, I really wanted to play it.

Why did I want to play the Blame Game? Because I was MAD. I was angry. And I wanted someone to pay for it. I wanted them to know exactly whose actions caused me this pain, and I wanted them to be penalized for it.

Wait, that’s not how I normally work. That is, in fact, antithetical to how I run my department. But this was outside–I wasn’t running the show in this case.

This experience gave me a bit of insight into what I’ve experienced from bosses, users, attorneys, and even my father: when you’re mad, you want someone to pay. As a leader, I have to be on-guard for this from myself, especially with the people that I lead. As the head of an IT Department, I have to realize where the Blame Game is coming from when people either inside or outside the department.

By understanding, I will find it easier to empathize and guide the conversation away from blame and towards a productive solution. By understanding, I can explain to my staff what’s going on outside the department so that they can understand. By understanding, I can guide situations away from blaming and towards fixing.

I guess getting angry and wanting someone to pay for it taught me something. Go figure.

On Communicating Expectations

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I love the suggestions I’ve gotten thus far–keep them coming! However, inspiration struck in the middle of the night, so you’re getting this one instead.

On Tuesday, I returned to work from the ILTA conference to discover that I had misplaced my staff. Or rather, that they had misplaced themselves. I stuck my head into the Help Desk office, only to discover that it had become a storage room. I turned around and located the office, only to discover that it only had one desk (and the corresponding one human) in it. I walked past the spare office, only to discover that the door was now labeled for the other Help Desk person. As you might imagine, I was relieved to discover that my name was still attached to my office, and my key still worked! (Although there was a huge cardboard box on my desk. Lame compared to my last firm, where they toilet papered my office post-conference, but we’ll work on that…)

I was somewhat shocked. After all, the promotions that would give the respective Help Desk folks their new offices haven’t come through yet. The two people working the Help Desk are now in different offices, and I was unsure that would be as effective as sitting six feet from each other.

However, this was exactly the final configuration that I had specified. And the only configuration I had discussed with everyone. Last week was slower than expected, so they executed what they knew to be the plan.

I had to sit down and figure out why I was shocked that they had executed the plan I had communicated. I realized that, while I had communicated the final plan to them, I had failed to communicate that I had expected it to be phased in differently. And that I had expected them to tell me a little more detail about the moves they were making.

They were executing 100% of what they knew to be the plan, and they were doing it faster than we had thought it could be done–there was nothing wrong with that. What was wrong was that I had failed to communicate how I expected them to execute the plan.

Lesson learned: geeks can’t read my mind. Also? My staff executes plans quite efficiently, when motivated. Next step: better define expectations.

Jenn Speaking at ILTA ’08

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For any of you who might be attending, I’ll be speaking at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2008 Conference in Grapevine, Texas next week.

On Monday, August 25th at 10:30 AM, I’ll be a panelist in the “Best Practices in Professional Development in Law Firms” panel. Ruth Halpern, of Halpern & Associates, put together this panel; she’ll be providing the “meat” of the content, while Kathryn McCarthy and I will be telling all sorts of stories.

On Monday, August 25th at 4:00 PM, I’ll be a panelist in the “Business Continuity Technologies that Work for Law Firms of All Sizes and Shapes” panel. This panel should be fun–there are a lot of characters with a wide range of disaster experience. My role is pretty much the poster child for “what not to do.”

If you happen to be a New England ILTAn, I sincerely hope to see you at the Regional Meeting at 5:15 in Austin 1, 2, 3. After all, percentage attendance is one of the events for the Regional Competition!!

On Honesty and Perception (and Humor. Oh, my!)

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Last night, on my way out of class, my prof told me to enjoy my new purchases (I’m starting a new job Monday and needed a bit of wardrobe refreshment). I replied, “Thanks. Now I just have to hide the receipt for the shoes from my husband.”

Her reply was, “Because of the principled leader that you are, of course.”

Now, my MBA program* has this tagline: Educating Women for Power and Principled Leadership. I’ve done my best, through electives, to really emphasize the leadership piece of mine–effectively concentrating in “principled leadership”. I also mention in a few of my posts (like that one On Honesty) that I hold myself and my staff to high standards of principled behavior.

And my husband already knew that I had spent a ridiculously huge amount on this pair of shoes–I called him right after I bought them.

I found myself thinking, “Does she really think that I wouldn’t tell my husband how much I spent on a pair of shoes?” (This coupled with the thought of, “Well, this time is at least better than when I bought that pair of $460 Dior sandals but thought they were $160 until I got the credit card slip thanks to messy handwriting on the label…”)

I think I can take a lesson from this: be careful with my jokes! I know that, at core, I’m a very honest person who would never hide the cost of shoes from her husband, but have I ever made that clear to my prof? Probably not–the class has 40 people in it, and I love cracking jokes and making controversial statements.

How people might perceive me is directly related to what I say. I think I might try to be more cognizant of that in the future.

*With which I’m almost done–one more class, nothing left to turn in! Woohoo! Ahem. That last paper ate last week, hence the blog hiatus…

On Maturity

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Overall, I think that maturity is overrated. That is, if we define maturity as being boring, steady, and un-creative, which is how most “mature” people I’ve met in the business world define it. If we define maturity, however, as being well-balanced, able to have fun, able to be creative, and able to get the job done while enjoying it, then I think we should all be more mature.

I fell into the trap of assuming that I had to be mature (by my first definition) when I first became an IT Director. I stood up straight and suppressed some of the odder aspects of my personality. I probably wasn’t much fun to be around, and I guarantee I wasn’t having much fun–I lost a lot of weight from the stress.

Then I hired a computer training specialist. Who had many years of law firm experience and who had served in the Army Reserves for even more years. He was about 6 years older than I, and really knew how to be professional. He seemed well-adjusted, and the users loved him.

Then he brought in a wooden bear that, when you lifted its head, pooped M&Ms.

My wacky side loved it, but since it was right outside the HR Manager’s office, I held my breath and ignored it. One day, I sheepishly poked my head into her office, and she said she thought it was a hoot.

A hoot?

Turns out I didn’t really know the real meaning of maturity. A truly mature person knows how to have fun at work. Get the job done? Absolutely. But even more important is getting the job done while enjoying being there. You’re happier. Your team is happier. Staff stays longer at their jobs, and you only have one scotch at the end of the day (and that because you actually like scotch).

Okay; so making staffing decisions by allowing them to duel it out with flying monkeys at 10 paces might have been a bit much, but…

On Perceived Pain

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On Wednesday, after being tortured by Attila the Dental Hygienist (who apparently uses “scared straight” tactics to get her patients to floss more), I got to experience stage I of my first crown. I am a huge chicken when it comes to mouth pain, so I approached this whole thing with the attitude of, well, a huge chicken. My teeth aren’t easily numbed, and I’ve had live nerves hit several times, so I had a valid fear of pain during the process.

During the drilling (yes, I will eventually get to how this pertains to leading geeks–have patience), I felt PAIN! So I lifted my left hand and made them stop. I panicked, thinking that THE NOVOCAINE DIDN’T WORK and I would be IN PAIN for the rest of the procedure. I asked them to wait until I could stop hyperventilating, since I didn’t want to inhale bits of filling and tooth. And, after I thought about it for a bit, I realized that the pain wasn’t in the tooth–it was in my jaw. Apparently, my jaw muscles were protesting the vigorous cleaning and the new procedure, so each time the dentist pressed down, I’d get a shooting pain through the joint. Once I realized that it wasn’t a live tooth nerve I was feeling, I could deal with the pain and continue with the procedure.

The reason I panicked was that I felt pain and I perceived that it came from the tooth itself, because that was where it had come from historically.

While I was leading geeks, I discovered a similar phenomenon: geeks would get annoyed by something, and assume the annoyance came from where it had come historically. Geeks would also assume that people who had been wrong in the past (consistently) were wrong in the future.

For example, if something came down from “on high” that the geeks disliked (e.g., we had to wait until 9:00 PM to reboot servers rather than doing it at 6:00 PM), they would assume it came from their least favorite “on high” folks, rather than someone they might like. Sometimes, this could be comical, like when one geek insisted that a ball that I had dropped was dropped by the HR Manager–even after I insisted that I was the one who dropped it!

My geeks would also assume that users who habitually “cried wolf” would never call with a valid problem. Sometimes, it took a bit of work on my part to make them realize that the user really had a problem with which we needed to deal.

As a leader, you must be aware of the perceived pain phenomenon–even in yourself–so that you can recognize it and deal with it. As with many things, the only way to deal with it is to see it and communicate about it.

On Hubris

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Today, I checked myself out of CVS using one of those self-checkout kiosks. I always feel like I’m getting out of the store much faster if I do it myself. As I awaited my bus, I realized that my believing that I was faster at checking out purchases than someone who does it every single day displayed remarkable hubris on my part. After all, every good operations class points out that as people do a task repetitively, they get better and faster at it.

Where does this come from, and what does it have to do with geeks?

Well, I think that geeks and I have this in common: we were much better at certain things than people around us. These certain things likely were related to logical thinking or problem solving, which then translated to the technical world. As such, we all believe that we are naturally just better at things than everyone else.

Although this should not translate to tasks we do not do regularly, it does in our minds. This is why I call this hubris, rather than simple ability or self-confidence (where hubris is defined as excessive self-confidence or arrogance). We/they are not trying to make others feel stupid, we just have an innate assumption that if our brains can grasp the logic behind something, we can do it better.

While leading geeks, it is good to keep this in mind. It means that sometimes they need to be told–gently–that while they might be the smartest people in the room, others occasionally know how to do things.

On Geek Socialization

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One thing that surprised me about geeks was how much they actually do like to socialize.

Yes, socialize.

Maybe they’re not out at martini bars with the beautiful people, but very few of them dislike social interaction altogether. My geeks really enjoyed chatting with each other in-person (although I understand that they did even more chatting electronically), much to my surprise. Also to my surprise was that the chatter didn’t often get out of hand, especially with the amount of time they spent chatting.

By letting this chatter go (i.e., not asking them to stop), I allowed them to bond as a team and hash out problems together. I know that non-geeks can sometimes go overboard with the amount of time they spend chatting, but most geeks–especially introverted ones–should be encouraged to chat with each other.

Why? Because when stressful times and crises occur, it is exactly those interpersonal bonds formed via socialization that will allow the geeks to work well together. If they already know and like or trust each other, they will be more likely to forgive a snippy comment or approach each other when they need help. And as a geek leader, I value that teamwork.

On Decisions

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Making decisions with geeks around can be frustrating sometimes. You ask for their input, make a decision, and then (moments later), they start offering alternatives to the decision.

Hello? Did they not hear what I just said?

Well, they did hear it. But it didn’t stop their minds from working on it. And that’s what you’re experiencing when they start offering alternatives to the decision that you thought you already made.

You might find it frustrating, but, if you cannot go back on the decision, I would suggest trying to simply tell them that you’re done with the decision and can move on. Surprisingly, they usually won’t find that offensive. (That was the part I had to learn.)

You should also consider listening to them, assuming that you can change the decision. Sometimes those post-decision ideas are much better than anything that led to the decision.

On Trading

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Once I traded a bottle of vodka to a geek for a vacation day.

We were in the midst of our second water disaster in five days, and I knew we would need to support sneakernet (where documents were dumped to USB drives and run to local printers) the next day, so I needed all hands. He wasn’t leaving town, and I was perfectly within my rights to simply revoke the day, but I didn’t–I said, “Can I trade you a bottle of vodka for your vacation day tomorrow?” Two weeks after he gave up that day, I showed up with a bottle of Grey Goose, and handed it to him.

Did my company reimburse me for the vodka? No. Did the vodka’s cost in any way resemble the cost to him for the day? No. Neither of those was the point.

The point was to recognize that I was asking him to sacrifice his personal benefit for the good of the company. I knew that he would lose the vacation day, since it was December and he couldn’t carry any over. He knew that I definitely needed his help. The vodka was a tangible recognition that he was doing something explicitly to his cost and for my benefit.

Overall, it was likely more of a “thank you” gift than an overt trade, but it is the most explicit example I have of a small way to make a geek feel appreciated when he goes above and beyond.