Double Journey

I was having a conversation with someone today about being a manager.  Being a manager is one of those things that everybody thinks is really easy but in reality is never as easy as you really think it is.  There are a lot of challenges most people just can’t deal with.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that if you have the right attitude and mindset it can be a relatively easy job.  You see, managers don’t really do anything.  There, I’ve said it.  In the end, they are responsible for the work of others and generally don’t produce anything concrete themselves.  Now that may sound nice and easy, but it has its own very difficult challenges.   The hardest part is dealing with the people themselves.

In a perfect world, people would just do what you tell them to do, do it well, and do it without complaint.  But the world is never perfect.   In fact, more often then not people are going to fall short in one of those three areas and you are going to have to deal with it.  Now here is the hard part, how do you deal with it?  If you are like most people, you want to be liked.  Humans have this desire to be liked by other people.  However, all good managers at some point have to be an ass.  Either someone is going to screw up, and you are going to have to tell them they screwed up, or you are going to have to tell someone something they don’t want to hear.  Perhaps they are behind schedule on a key project or you can’t give them the promotion or the position they want.  Whatever the case may be, most people do not want to be the bearer of bad news.

I’ve learned to deal with it in a relatively easy way.  I’ve just accepted that work is not a popularity contest, it’s work.   If people decide they don’t like me because I had to tell them something they didn’t want to hear or make them do something that they didn’t want to do so be it.  I’ve made plenty of friends in my life and a few people not liking me is OK.  That doesn’t mean I’m a jerk at work, I hate those guys as well, but at work, I do what I have to do to get the job done.   Most people accept that and even respect that.  In fact, I have found that most people hate those managers who go to the other extreme, try to please everybody.  In the end, when you try to please everybody you please nobody.  So long as you are consistent in your message, and people know you are working toward the good of the company or the team, things seem to just work themselves out

I got a new boss a few weeks ago.  It has been something that has been in the making for a while but it became official in the last couple of weeks.  I’m working in a completely different organization, and it looks at first glance like the scope of my job has greatly increased, but in reality I don’t see it that way.

It’s true, that my scope went from my particular division to company-wide.  My boss, who is the CTO, is much higher on the org chart than my previous boss.  But in reality, I don’t see much of a difference.  Sure, my co-workers probably do.   It certainly seems like I have more influence and scope, but that is mostly perception.  Here is the thing.  I just do my job.  I’m not overly concerned who my boss is and what my reporting structure looks like.  I’m here to do what is best for the company not necessarily what is best for my team or division.  This is especially true when you have a job as ambiguous as mine is, Program Management.  My main responsibility is to make sure we ship the right thing in the right time, and it doesn’t really matter who I report to because that function doesn’t change.

To be fair, my personal situation has gotten better.  I think my new boss understands my role better than my old one and is giving me more support.  But that is not to say that I’m going to do anything differently than I was before.  Having the interest of the company above and beyond most other things has always served me well.  It has kept be focus on the bottom line and had made sure that I make the right trade offs.   Not sure why I would do anything different just because the person I do my 1 on 1 with every week has changed.

The comic for Dilbert yesterday was fantastic and it actually covers a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about. I’ve done a lot of thinking about how reviews work in corporate America and how they fail miserably at achieving what they are set out to achieve. Reviews should be set up to give honest feedback to someone about their job performance, set clear goals going forward, and to motivate an employee to reach their full potential.

Everywhere I’ve worked, there has always been a mantra that “Our people are our most important asset”. This is particularly true in the tech world because your business is based on information and knowledge which must be created by smart and creative people. So, on the surface, there is at least some recognition that for a business to succeed in this space, they must have great people.

But almost every employer bases their review system on a bell curve. Now think about that. A bell curve represents a normal distribution. It is supposed to represent a nice AVERAGE population. For every “great” person you have, you must have someone who is not so great. The majority of the people will be “average”.

Now, I’m all for differentiation. I believe people need to be ranked within an organization and under-performers need to be pruned. But to go into a review with the expectation that your employee pool must come out “average” is laughable. If you are a knowledge based business, and you have average people, you are going to get average results. It’s a simple equation.

But differentiation does not mean that there needs to be winners and losers. I think the only incidence that I have heard of someone getting this right is Netflix. Netflix has a policy of keeping only the best. There are no “average” reviews. Getting an “average” review means you will be shown out the door. They openly advertise that they pay more than market rates. And I agree. If you want great people, you need to pay for it. Great people know they are very hard to replace. You may pay these people 15% more, but you will get 100% more work.

It reminds me of a controversy at Princeton when I was there. Grade inflation was a big topic there and at other Ivy League schools. It seemed that too many students were getting A’s and B’s. At the time, I agreed. I thought more people needed to get lower grades. But now being removed from the situation, I kind of see how ridiculous that is. Almost every single person at an Ivy League school was a top performer in their high school. Giving someone an ‘F’ because someone got an ‘A’ would be ludicrous. Someone else’s success should not diminish yours. Certainly, their success needs to be recognized and appreciated. They should get better rewards. But the notion that the only way to succeed is to make sure your peers fail is a very dangerous path to go down. But it is something that corporate America hasn’t seemed to figure out yet.