On Flex Time: How to Fail

·

In my last post about making flex time successful, I talked about some best practices that I find make flex time a beautiful thing for everyone involved. Now I’ll chat about how to completely fail with flex time.

  1. Be grouchy about it. Your employees aren’t stupid, and they know when you’re unhappy about something. If you resent employees who have flex time, you’ll damage their morale, and give other employees good reason to be grumpy about their co-workers’ arrangements.
  2. Don’t listen to complaints. Let’s say you have an employee who works weekends and takes off Thursdays and Fridays to take care of the kids. This arrangement seems fine, and then you have a huge roll-out that is scheduled to go live on a Thursday. This employee, a vital engineer on the project, might not think that he needs to be there on that Thursday. People complain, and you just shrug. The roll-out is harder, morale suffers, and people start resenting the flex person. This is sub-optimal for teamwork, to say the least.
  3. Don’t plan for it. Make sure you remember that someone has a four-day week when you’re planning projects and schedules. You cannot always depend on that person to show up on every Friday to make up for your poor planning–wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of flex time?

I’m sure there are many other creative ways to fail at flex time, but I’m hoping that these two entries will help you avoid them.

On Flex Time: Making it Successful

·

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

·

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…

The Grammar Geek: Over Their!

·

I completely forgot my weekly “Leading Geeks” post, but since I actually get more hits on this blog for the Grammar Geek posts, I figured I’d write this one.

Most of you know about the classic there/their/they’re confusion:

  • There: is a pronoun that refers to a place that’s not here :).
  • Their: possessive pronoun meaning something belonging to them (whoever they are).
  • They’re: a contraction of “they are”.

And yet people mix them up all the time. My theory? Carelessness. I’ve actually caught my fingers typing the wrong one randomly (Fingers? Meet brain. Brain? Fingers.). If I don’t re-read my work, I sometimes find that I’ve sent an email using the wrong form!! The horror!

If you never really knew the difference, now you do. If you’re wondering why your fingers and brain occasionally disconnect, I can’t help you, but let me know if you ever figure it out (I have a theory it has something to do with habit). Just re-read before hitting send, print, or publish, and you’ll catch most of your mistakes.

The Grammar Geek: Death Throws

·

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of posts that start, “We’ve been in the throws of an upgrade to Exchange 2007…” or something like that. They keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.

What they really mean to say is, “We’ve been in the throes…”

Yes, throes.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary, here’s the deal:

  • Throws means a lot of things. From pitching a ball to intentionally losing a game to hitting someone. While upgrading to Exchange 2007 might feel a lot like being on the receiving end of all of these, this isn’t quite the word to use.
  • Throes only has two definitions: either a pang or spasm, or a hard or painful struggle. Sound a bit more like being in the midst of an upgrade?

Glad you all understand now. Please stop making me twitch.

On Managing Expectations

·

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.

The Grammar Geek: Cousin It

·

My husband asked me to write about dangling prepositions, but I read some posts today on various groups and sites that had its/it’s confusion, so I’m going to get on my soapbox about that instead.

The word, “it”, can be problematic when made possessive. See, it doesn’t have an apostrophe in its possessive form (see? Just like that.). It’s just one of those things you have to memorize.

Wait, what was that? Oh, I just used “it’s” to mean “it is”. “It’s” can also mean “it has”. It’s a contraction (read: It is a contraction.).

To make things more difficult, my last job was in an Information Technology department, abbreviated “IT”. Unlike the pronoun, “it”, “IT” follows normal proper noun rules. If a telephone belongs to the IT Department, it is “IT’s telephone”. If IT is going out drinking the email subject reads, “IT’s going drinking!”

To recap:

  • its telephone = the telephone belonging to it
  • it’s a telephone = it is a telephone
  • IT’s telephone = the telephone belonging to Information Technology
  • IT’s a telephone = the Information Technology department is at the bar, letting voice mail pick up all the calls.

Okay, so technically, IT should be abbreviated “I.T.” to eliminate confusion, but that’s WAY more annoying to type…

On Appearance

·

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.

The Grammar Geek: Oxford Commas

·

From what I’ve seen, most folks, while writing lists in sentences, write them as “x, y and z”. I, however, write them as “x, y, and z”. The difference is that last comma before the “and” in those lists. (Yes, I know that I committed my favorite error in those examples above.)

That last comma is usually called an Oxford comma or serial comma. Wikipedia says it can also be called a Harvard comma, but, as an MIT alum, I think Harvard is quite obnoxious enough already without a comma named after the place.

Overall, I’m a big fan of writing (a) as I speak, and (b) as clearly as possible. When I am verbally using a list, I pause for the same amount of time between saying “x”, “y”, and “and z”. So my brain says that I should use the Oxford comma when I write the list. I also find that, in most cases, using the Oxford comma makes a list easier to read–it reads clearly as a list to my eyes.

The Wikipedia entry has all sorts of fun ambiguity examples that I’ll refrain from duplicating here. I have to say that, despite my love of this comma, I no longer correct it when I proofread documents from authors who don’t use it. I barely twitch, even. Does this mean I’m gaining maturity?

On Insomnia

·

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…?