Category: leading geeks

On Flex Time: Making it Successful

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I blogged a bit about flex time in my post On Insomnia, but I’ve been thinking about what makes flex time successful (or not!), and I thought I’d post my thoughts here. This post is about what to do to help make flex time successful (my next will be on what might cause flex time to fail).

  1. Bilateral flexibility. Both the employer and the employee must be flexible. I had an employee once who worked a 4-day 32-hour work week, and did not work on Fridays (when daycare was closed). However, if I ever needed her to come in on a Friday for a large project or emergency, she put her son in back-up care or called on a relative and was there. Likewise, if she ever wanted to trade a Tuesday (or other day) for a Friday, I let her do so as long as the work allowed it. The bilateral flexibility made this arrangement a resounding success.
  2. Core hours. In order to facilitate teamwork (and I’m not sure there are many modern work environments that don’t need teamwork!), core hours are vital. Team members need to know when they can find each other for questions, brainstorming, etc. I held core hours for my last department to 9:30-4:00, which were hours when everyone’s work schedule overlapped. If I were working in a software company, I might set those hours to 11:00-3:00 in order to handle both my night owl programmers and the crazy early birds who need to pick their kids up from school.
  3. Don’t give flex time if the job isn’t flexible. While it’s admirable for all companies to want to grant flex time, sometimes it just isn’t happening. Nursing shifts have to start and end at specific times. Utility trucks have to all roll out at a certain hour. The help desk has to be covered from 8:00 AM-8:00 PM.
  4. Be honest during the recruiting process. If the job isn’t flexible, don’t tell a great candidate that he or she might be able to negotiate it later. Be up-front about expectations during the initial interview in order to recruit and keep great employees (this goes for much more than just flex time).
  5. Don’t only grant flex time to your favorites. If someone in a certain job has flex time, you have to be prepared for everyone else in the same role to ask for it. If you only granted it to one person due to special circumstances, be honest and communicate the circumstances (within reason–don’t disclose private HR issues) to that person’s co-workers.

Stay tuned for my next flex time post on mistakes I’ve seen (not just the flip side of the five best practices above–honest!). I figure it’ll come out next week…

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 Managing Expectations

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My apologies to my faithful readers who expected a post yesterday. Somehow that whole week starting on Tuesday thing really threw me off, and I’m swamped this week, with something due for the BU course for which I’m adjunct faculty and the Simmons course I’m taking right now.

Being late for this post got me thinking about how I manage expectations whenever I lead geek projects (and, having no PMO at any of my last organizations, I managed projects for a HUGE percentage of my time).

Here are my top five ways to manage customer and team expectations:

  1. As I mentioned in my post On Scheduling, first build as accurate a time line and due date as possible. Build in all known issues and be up-front about warnings or traded priorities (this last very important for internal customers).
  2. Communicate!!! Your geeks MUST know relevant due dates in order to prioritize and schedule themselves. Your customers MUST know if you’re likely going to miss the agreed-upon date, and they should know as soon as possible in order to plan. Likewise, geeks and customers must know and agree on specifications, requirements, and deliverables.
  3. Make nice with your geeks. If a geek has to give up weekends or family time in order to hit the deadline and specifications, do something nice in return. I mention in my post On Trading that I once traded a bottle of vodka for a sacrificed vacation day during a crisis.
  4. Make nice with your customers. When I was a customer and a vendor had to miss a scheduled due date, I’d occasionally get taken out to lunch or receive a box of cookies for my staff as a thanks for my patience. Obviously, follow your company’s rules and regulations for things like this.
  5. One of my favorite things to do while managing deadline expectations was to estimate a new deadline and then beat it. It’s all about managing perception–if I haven’t communicated with you and we come in a week late, you’re really annoyed. If I tell you we’ll be two weeks late, send you a bottle of wine in thanks for your patience, and then come in only one week late, you’re pleasantly surprised.

Perception counts. Manage it well by communicating and playing nice.

On Appearance

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Stereotypically, geeks just aren’t the prettiest people around. (I like to think of myself as a notable exception, of course.) They’ve usually relied on the brain parts of their heads rather than the face parts to get ahead in the world, and many of them have the preconceived notion that the better the face part looks, the poorer the brain part works. Really, though, you don’t have to be pretty to do a job, and that’s not what this post is about. This post is about how to talk to geeks when their general appearance crosses to the other side of the “acceptability” line.

Many geeks simply aren’t very aware of outward appearances. They grab whatever they find in the closet (or the (hopefully) clean laundry pile) in the morning, and head out the door. That threadbare Baldur’s Gate t-shirt and ancient black faded jeans combination might look a little odd to the CFO when she swings by the cube farm, however. Or maybe you have a geek who wears skirts that would be more appropriate to bar-hopping than to crawling under desks to plug in cables. Sure, the Marketing guy might like it, but it’s not going to help her career.

What do you, as the geek leader, do in these situations? Well, first ascertain that the way the geek looks (or smells) actually is inappropriate for the environment. My husband wears jeans to work every day and would look odd in a pair of slacks, but the same thing wouldn’t fly in a law firm’s IT department. If the way the geek is dressing is actually appropriate, it’s time for you to suck it up and deal with it, even if you personally dislike it.

If the dress is actually inappropriate, it’s time for a closed-door conversation. Dropping hints just won’t cut it–if your geek were observant enough to pick up on subtlety, you wouldn’t be in this situation. Gently tell your geek that he or she should consider eliminating certain pieces from his or her wardrobe, replacing them with slacks/longer skirts/whatever might be appropriate. Don’t give the geek explicit appearance tips (“You’d look much better if you…”), but keep your suggestions consistent with company dress code and standardized company dress “norms”.

This isn’t ever an easy conversation, but it’s essential for both the geek’s career and your team’s general reputation with your company.

On Insomnia

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Whether it’s due to playing World of Warcraft or the Moose Lodge throwing a party until all hours (don’t laugh–it happens to me), sometimes, just like everyone else, geeks don’t get enough sleep. And, just like everyone else, this often adversely affects their clarity of thinking and judgment.

Unfortunately, as a leader, this often adversely affects the quality of your team’s product or service in turn. How a good leader addresses this issue depends on the circumstances.

When time and situation permit, I’ve been known to send a geek or two home to sleep or get over an illness. I’d always get rather annoyed at anyone who felt the need to come to work sick (unless it was a firm emergency), because the illness would invariably pass to someone else, causing a fun cascade of absences or coughing fits. If the issue is a one-time lack of sleep, I would send the geek home because whatever work he or she would produce would probably have to be re-done the next day, anyhow.

Chronic lack of sleep, however, calls for a different approach. While I was careful to allow my geeks privacy in their personal lives, I always addressed any chronic exhaustion issues. For stress-induced insomnia, I would pressure the geek to take more vacation time or chase him or her out the door after 8 hours of work. I would also examine the geek’s workload to see if I could re-balance tasks or activities in order to ease the stress a bit. For World of Warcraft-type insomnia, a lifestyle-balancing conversation would have to take place. (“I know that this is your hobby, but it is unfortunately affecting your work…”)

For some geeks, however, starting the business day at 8 or 9 in the morning will just be difficult. This is when allowing flex time can help you get the highest quality work out of your geeks. If your company (and project) allows it, allow your geek to shift his or her day by two or three hours–say from starting at 9 to starting at 11, and ending at 7 or 8. If you have team projects to do, establish a 3 or 4 hour block when everyone has to be there (from 11-3 or so) in order to foster teamwork.

Flex time overall leads to happier and more alert geeks who work better and make fewer mistakes. Have I ever told you all about that time when I was working 100-hour weeks and took down the network backbone at noon…?

On Scheduling

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One of the most unfortunate business practices I’ve seen is management’s failure to consult geeks before committing to deadlines. I’ve experienced this personally (“We’re moving in two months and need all new technology! We haven’t signed any contracts or bought any hardware! Have fun!”), and have inflicted various forms of it on my geeks (“We had a flood in the server room. We have to be up and running yesterday.”). In any form, however, it’s sub-optimal at best.

Failure to consult geeks before making hard deadline commitments to clients, however, is one of the more horrifying forms of scheduling nightmares. While this obviously happens more often in software companies, any company with a geek-driven client-facing product or service has probably run into this problem.

As much as I’d like to portray geeks as the poor, unfortunate victims of this hideous management practice, I cannot. To some extent, geeks (and their direct leaders) bring this on themselves. How? Well, how many times have you had or heard this conversation:

Geek Leader: We need to do [project]. By when can you get it done?

Geek: That depends.

GL: On what?

G: Well, I’d have to investigate to find out.

GL: Can you give me anything? Ballpark? Something? I need to tell the client by today so that we can get the contract signed.

G: Uh, I guess it could take anywhere from three weeks to three months.

GL: @#$%^&*()!!!

The geek has undoubtedly given the geek leader accurate responses. Unfortunately, the responses are completely useless to the geek leader. And the contract has to be signed, because the business needs the money. The geek leader will probably make something up based on previous projects and have the client sign off on it. The geek leader will then inform the geek, who will be absolutely flabbergasted at the miracle that she must pull off–doesn’t the geek leader understand ANYthing???

The very nature of geek products and services prevent accurate estimates of time. However, the geek and geek leader might have a little more luck by following these steps in trying to form a deadline:

  1. Compare the project with previous similar projects.
  2. Identify the macroscopic ways in which this project is different from said previous projects.
  3. Take the time for the previous projects and add or subtract time based on estimates for those differences.
  4. Inflate the time to allow for at least one disaster.
  5. Negotiate with the client from there.

Will it be perfect? Of course not. Will it lead to better estimates and fewer necessary miracles? Probably. This process can be initiated by either the geek or the geek leader. It might take a little time, but will lead to happier geeks (and clients–after all, you’ll probably blow fewer deadlines!).

On Feet

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Did that title get your attention? Good. The title will become clear…

Geek leaders (and the geeks who follow them) are often frustrated by the business folk in their company. We present upper management with a brilliant solution to some obvious problem, only to be shot down. “Morons!” We think. “How can they not see that my solution will be the panacea that this company needs???”

Lather, rinse, repeat. After a few cycles, the geeks or geek leaders come to the blindingly obvious conclusion that the company is being run by a bunch of idiots.

Okay; maybe the business folk aren’t the whiz kids that the geeks always have been, but they probably have more active brain cells than geeks think. So where’s the disconnect? Why don’t the business folk see the obvious solutions? Why can’t the geeks and geek leaders convince them?

It’s a foot issue. Anyone tends to lead with their most-used foot. Unfortunately, it’s not the same foot that the business folk receive well (the metaphor breaks here, but I figure you’ll forgive me). The business folk expect to see the business foot come first, and when they see the geek foot, many of them tune out instantly and never hear the geek leader’s (valid) arguments–either business or technical.

Think of it as a marching band. All of the members had to learn to lead with the same foot to begin, or else–chaos. In business, geeks and geek leaders have to learn to lead with the business foot (to business folks, who are also leading with their business foot), or else–chaos.

Are the technical arguments stronger than the business case? Probably. But the point isn’t to lead with what you think are the strongest arguments–it’s to get your proposed solution approved. While leading with the business foot feels awkward and wrong, it’s the foot that will get through to the business folk. And then, when they actually listen and approve your solution? Maybe you’ll discover that they’re not quite as dumb as you thought…

On Humor

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While checking my previous entries before titling this post, I was shocked to discover that I have not yet written on humor. This shocked me because one of the first things that many people notice about me is (and I quote), “You have a sense of humor!” To which I always respond, “Yes; I’ve been accused of that before.” Someday, I’ll think of something funnier to say. But onward and upward, here, to what humor has to do with leadership.

I’ve mentioned before, in my posts On Morale and On Complementary Strengths, that laughter and having fun can build better teams, but I’ve never explicitly talked about humor and leadership. I believe that having a sense of humor has really helped me to be a much better leader.

Why? Because I have to be able to to the following:

  1. Laugh at myself. I am not always right (contrary to my wishes), and sometimes I can be glaringly, blindingly, amusingly, and hilariously wrong. By laughing at myself in front of and with my geeks, I made it easier for them to call me whenever I was wrong about something. I also made it easier for me to call myself whenever I was wrong.
  2. Laugh in difficult situations. You know those situations where you either have to laugh or cry? Creating an environment where people laugh in those situations alleviates most of the tension that makes people miserable. Did you geek just field the stupidest user question ever? Better to laugh, right?
  3. Have fun at work. My favorite geek team memories usually involve laughing until tears roll down my face. We had one team member on my last staff who would say many things before speaking, causing us to completely lose it regularly. Guess who was our favorite team member?

But having a sense of humor at work–especially as the boss–means that you have to be careful as well:

  1. Watch for off-color humor. Not to say that you must always speak acceptably for the Queen of England, but (especially as the boss) you must never cross the line from a legal perspective. Yes; that means leave your risqué humor at home. Especially in a mixed-gender team.
  2. Don’t hurt people’s feelings. That team member who opened her mouth before engaging her brain? We couldn’t always laugh at her foibles, because sometimes she was a bit more sensitive about being wrong. You won’t always be perfect, so learn to apologize.
  3. Don’t laugh at the expense of getting things done. It’s always more fun to stand around and make each other laugh than re-wire all the switches. But you should learn to laugh while getting the job done (most of the time, anyhow). After all, unless you’re a comedian, you’re not being paid to make people laugh.

Overall, humor is incredibly important while you’re leading geeks. But, as with all things, responsibility and balance are key components to making humor work in a business environment.

On Grammar

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Most geeks I’ve encountered in the technology world aren’t exactly well-rounded. Many of them excelled at math or science (or simply computers), but ignored English class. As a result, they are absolutely brilliant at their technical jobs, but act like it’s the end of the world if they have to write a business memo.

As a geek leader, however, you cannot afford the same luxury. Your department or group must be able to present a business-like face to your company or the outside world–especially in printed memoranda or publications. Due to your geeks’ probable dislike of writing, this duty will fall in your lap.

I was fortunate enough to be an English geek in school, and therefore understood and was able to teach my geeks the basic rules of grammar (not that I am always perfect, as you can see by reading this blog). Well, I could at least teach them about my pet peeves. However, no matter how many rules they eventually learned, I eventually learned that I had to proofread most communications that they sent outside the department. Not usually for message, but always for grammar. I also sent out fairly regular “grammar Nazi” emails to my department–usually the cause for some hilarity.

If you are a leader of geeks and don’t feel comfortable with your writing or your grammar, I would strongly suggest reading books on business writing. You can even Google things about which you are unsure. Your geeks might not seem to appreciate your efforts, but your boss will.

On Morale

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Happy people are more fun to work with. Many people have no idea how to make geeks happy, however. I have a few “rules” that I follow that have historically kept my geeks upbeat:

  1. NEVER treat them like idiots. They’re often the smartest people in the room and might have a clearer picture of your management challenges than you do.
  2. Let them be creative. Never demand that they do a project according to strict rules, because doing so likely produces weaker product. (Note: strict REQUIREMENTS or specs are necessary, but those aren’t “how-to” rules.)
  3. Encourage laughter. If your company will tolerate it, encourage practical joking. My staff once toilet-papered my office when I made mention that they might do it in a column I once wrote.
  4. Institute non-mandatory “monotony breaks.” I often sent my staff fun (and work-appropriate) online quizzes, “questions of the day,” or Dilbert cartoons in order to allow them to blow off steam. Anyone very busy could ignore them, but they appreciated the change in routing and the chance to blow off steam.
  5. Let them bond. Take them out to lunch in appropriate groups. Encourage post-work gatherings. Let them chat at work. As I mentioned in my post, On Geek Socialization, this bonding will help them relate and keep their tempers during emergencies.

Overall, I treat geeks as I want to be treated. Helping them build morale leads to happier geeks, a stronger team, and better work product.