When Leadership Matters

I do exist, I am still here, I am juggling bowling balls, chain saws, and small nuclear devices...

Not honestly, no, but there are a few things which I need to sit on and not say anything about for a while, because, well, it will affect my financial future.  So I am still working, and I'm working to keep working.

Which is to say that something occurred to me the other day.  And it was one of those "oh, hey, remember when that..."  happened sort of moment.  When you get to be my age, that can happen a lot.  A small event or an occurrence reminds you of a past time where something happened and you ... well, reminisce.

In my particular case I stumbled across some old records.  Not the flat vinyl things, but some information I had.  I learned a fairly long time ago that computers are, generally, reliable until they aren't.  That is, you may be using a tool for a rather long period of time, when all of a sudden it stops.  And then you think about things like backups.  

I was working on a problem, and the problem that occurred reminded me of a long, long time ago.  Several of the organizations I was working with then exist in some form, but they have changed an awful lot and are no longer of the same name.  But as some of their people may still be around and might upon occasion google their old names, pulling this up, I'll obfuscate.

I was a fellow who had been responsible for some years for installing software that people used to insure paychecks were accurate for employees.  And this typically meant in the early days of the job heading out to the client's office, plugging a few disks into a computer, connecting a few wires, and insuring things worked.  

The process we had evolved consisted of my employer sending people out to sell the software.  It was during this time that I discovered the single most dangerous tool in the world was someone with a little bit of knowledge, having entirely too much confidence in their technical staff.  One of my coworkers, a great guy, had assured a potential client we could run our system on his computer.  This was back in the day when Windows was a piece of software you purchased, if you were interested in it, and used it at home, or in an office that didn't need a whole lot of things from the computer.

And the gentleman who said "sure, we can run on anything with a screen" was just a wee bit off, in that the "screen" needed to be connected to a computer, not to a typewriter.  Some typewriters of the time were being sold as "dedicated word processors".  That is, it was a typewriter on which you could store a document.  If you needed to print the document again, you would put in the special disk it was stored on, then print the document.  Every document was stored on a different disk.

Now, anyone who has been around computers for 30 years or so recognizes that sort of environment and system.  And while many of our clients were at or slightly above that level, we were in the process of growing into the sort of company that started encountering companies that had dedicated staff who were wholly responsible for computers.  That is, the birth of the IT department.

Yes, kids, gather around gramps...  But seriously.  Anyone who was around computers at that time found that their knowledge was hard-won, and done so with an awful lot of reading.  Mind you, the internet, back in those days, was a thing we all thought was pretty interesting, but it was an awful lot like a knife sharpener.  Some folks had absolutely no use at all for it.  Others might have had an idea that possibly this could be a good thing.  Some folks could see the future, and where they wanted to go, but the folks who figured it was hulking over in the corner there waiting to change the world on so many levels were very far between.  As were the folks who had, needed, understood how to use it, and used their knife sharpeners well.  

Inevitably, there were a fair few number of organizations we encountered that were, frankly, very very well versed in their environments, knowing very well how things worked together, what was needed to get things done, and what they could do to help us.  A slightly larger number of organizations were interested in reaching that level, but were aware that they simply did not possess the proper people or desire to become that adept, and they therefore brought in outside people who were their adepts.  Sometimes these were technical people who wore sport coats, ties, hid pocket protectors in those suit coats, and inevitably loosened the tie and hung the sport coat on the back of a chair while they were crawling around on the floor trying to make sense of the mass of cables.  Other times these were people who came from organizations with storied pedigrees, wore professionally tailored suits, carried expensive leather binders, and rained TLAs (that's the technical term for Three Letter Abbreviations - that which most computer processes required to obfuscate the basic idea so the average business manager was allowed to remain befuddled while nodding sagely, pretending they understood, while the only thing going on was that the fellow in the nice suit had no clue what was happening, but knew the key to keeping the contract for billable hours, he needed to sound knowledgeable). 

The truly frightening part was when larger organizations began to rely on these consultants to provide expert advice to organizations that quite simply was the technical equivalent of a Thelma & Louise drive off the cliff.  In one rather notable experience of my career, with five years under my belt working with all manner of clients, I had assured the management who were leading the project to implement the software we installed that a daily routine should be established for using the software.  We designated several levels of involvement, but due to the size of their organization, there were three levels of people we had defined that needed to interact with the software.  

The first level was the "average manager" - that is, this was an individual who was responsible for the proper operation of the business.  They would supervise a group of people, and their job description involved very few specific duties with the product they produced, but rather contained phrases like "insure continued, proper operation of" and "insure that all procedures are followed to produce a quality" thing.  You know what I mean.  A someone who didn't make the thing, but made sure the people who did had the tools, raw materials, and training to do the job, and made sure that anything that affected the output of their part of the process maintained the company's overall ability to make money.

For a while, that specific group of professionals had been rather derisively named as "middle management".  For some time, a purge had been going on to produce apparent "production efficiencies" in many organizations.  The problem was that you often had one individual responsible to many other people, and that individual rarely had first-hand knowledge of what needed to be done or how to do the jobs their people did.  

The second level of people we had identified that worked with the system were those who were responsible for insuring that the large number of people in the organization who worked there got paid.  That is, if your job involved doing something to get that product further from raw materials and closer to a final product, you were compensated for your time.  

Then there was a third level - the people who were responsible for having purchased this stuff.  They were very, very rarely people who were expected to use it - they were more often the folks who were way up "the food chain" and typically had the responsibility to report directly to people who started the organization, were responsible to the stockholders who had invested in the organization, or whose ultimate paycheck varied, year to year, because it relied on the company being and remaining profitable.

Most folks would think that last group was the most important.  Regrettably, they were not.  They were quite often the people we spent most of our time trying to avoid, because the questions they would ask required an incredible amount of time to answer because it required building an understanding, for most, by starting at the most basic levels explaining processes they were not aware of, had never been responsible for, and likely would never do.

No, that first group was by far the most important.  It was that group that absolutely assured the success or failure of a project because their confidence in the result, or lack thereof, was clearly and quickly communicated to the folks who were doing the job, and if they did not believe in the system, it would inevitably fail.

Most often the key determinant of that success or failure grew out of the old word-of-mouth grapevine.  It has long been known that while the speed of light is an absolutely unbreakable speed limit for things moving from point to point, the speed of rumor is the only thing that exceeds it.  One location I had been responsible for had an employee who did understand his influence and power within the ranks of his coworkers, and had managed to turn an entire location against the use of our system due to one poorly planned prank.

Rumors led to damage which led to me being called on the carpet by the leadership of that organization.  How could things have gone so horribly wrong while working wonderfully elsewhere?  The prank.  To oversimplify and leave out a fair number of details, let's just say that during the use of our software, there were several points at which employees were able to receive feedback insuring they were doing the few required steps correctly.  Due to the processes at this location, certain restrictions prevented us from using tools that had worked very well at other locations.  In fact, we had to rely on a new piece of technology which was looking to be an absolute game changer for us.  It added one step to a daily routine that few people would forget to do, and in doing the step, we were assured our system was updated.

The individual, who was widely known and widely and hugely respected, insisted that this step was something that offended his religious beliefs and he, therefore, could not condone anyone using a tool of the devil.  I was asked to troubleshoot the issue and explain what was happening.  In my research, dealing directly with the affected individual, I realized that a choice made by someone had offended the individual.  A step which provided feedback provided information the affected individual found offensive.  Because they thought it would be funny to alter a random process, they insured that this influential individual would not only be offended by would encourage many others to be offended as well.  

Or, as I learned when I dug deeper, the individual who changed the output of the random process had been concerned that our increased efficiency would lead to them having less work to do.  And while it was often true, the bottom line for this organization was that we were taking jobs that had become necessary, key contributors who always required additional time and other resources to complete their work in a timely fashion, and turning them into jobs that were taking only a reasonable amount of time each week, and becoming processes which, with our assistance, had gone from absolute mysteries to something anyone who had a brain and proper access, could do the job.

Rather than someone taking it upon themselves to listen to the individual's complaint and research it, they tried to "brush it under the rug" assuming that an individual who had become a leader for a key group was embarrassed and made to feel they did not matter.  In the research I had done, I pointed out the opportunity to make a few minor changes would not only deal with the objections, they would show the overall management to be responsive and in-touch with their people.  

In the end everything was corrected and the situation turned out to be a great success for my employer.  In another situation, because the entire organization's leadership structure chose not to follow through on our recommended change in daily routines, the entire project failed.  While that sounds terrible, it was widely acknowledged as we began the process of implementation that while the number of challenges before us appeared huge, a few key compromises on small issues would be all that was needed.

I had the support and assistance from a large number of people in my organization.  Unfortunately, we were up against an organization which, like many, were so deeply entrenched in their ways that they continued to wish to remain unprofitable in key areas rather than upset the status quo to improve.

I faced a number of turning points in the many projects I was involved in, and while overall most were successful, the few failures could be traced back to a simple lack of leadership.  Leadership isn't telling people what to do, but rather, many times it involves supporting the people who are doing the job by listening and providing clear, accurate, timely feedback that encourages the team.

Sure sounds pretty, doesn't it?  But when it fails, you can see the disaster and smell it from afar.  Inevitably, the first observed symptom of this is a little process I used to call NMJ.  Yes, another TLA, this one standing for "Not My Job."  That's right.  How many times have you tried to get something done only to be told "well, I understand what you want, the issue is I can't make that happen."  

When troubleshooting a problem like this, the inevitable process begins with the discovery of an issue and an individual insisting that they cannot be held responsible for it, it's someone else's job.  Which often turns out to be someone else who can summon up that "plausible deniablility" and avoid the thing.

Sometimes it's a simple thing like "can we get a hole drilled right here?" to "can we ask them to check the results daily?" to "can we get the authority to change this?"  One process I had been asked to insure would not be affected by our required changes often resulted in severe, often catastrophic loss of equipment simply because someone was unwilling to direct the people performing the process to conduct the process by following the exact instructions that had been written to permit anyone to do the job.  "We can't ask them to do that, it might cause a substandard result."  Given that the process was done by different people daily, and no one referred to the "job aid" to accomplish the result, it was just "handed-down training" from one person to another that produced the unwanted result.  

And in many cases, the whole "I can't do that, it's too difficult" turns out to be a symptom of rot affecting an entire organization.  Many of the best I have worked with over the many years, there is inevitably an individual who will hear the beginning of a NMJ complaint and shut it down, either by doing it themselves or redefining a role to incorporate the required steps.  Sometimes all it takes is for someone to step up and state "we'll get this done" for things to succeed.  Other times, those four words lose to the Not My Job complaint, and you can see and smell that rot everywhere.

I have always tried, where and when possible, to do the job I've been asked to do, and when and where possible success is not fully within my ability, I ask for help.  A Good Leader doesn't step back and say "look, someone else will fix this."  A Great Leader will find ways to encourage their teams to successfully overcome the obstacle because if the leader simply does it, it does not install in those whom they lead the confidence that the issue can be resolved.  It's a little process that all goes into building your team's confidence in their abilities, which gives them more tools to overcome more problems.  Because the leader can't be there for everything.  

Those who simply step back and let the issue fester may have ulterior motives, not be able to see a solution to get them out of the problem, or they may simply be the sort of person who would rather allow the issue to grow before accumulating additional resources to resolve the issue.  Sometimes as I watched these situations in the past, the rather odd metric of "reportable consultants" would come up.  It had been seen to be a particular mark of responsibility and respect that one supervised and used a larger number of outside consultants.  In my time as an IT person responsible for getting the job done, I relied on consultants to do things that were required to be done and I neither had the experience or the time to gain the experience to successfully resolve the issue.  If I needed a job done and it was something that needed to be done soon, I'd look for an outside assistant who had done it before.

There were times when budget or other considerations prevented that option.  In those cases I relied on my own ability to learn and hopefully produce the desired outcome.  At the very least, I could point to the work I had done to get to that point, and hope that my superiors saw that as sufficient proof that we needed more brains.  As a child, I often heard the phrase "experience is what you get when you wanted something else."  That is, you might set out seeking to climb the mountain, but in reaching the halfway point, a clear understanding not only of your strengths and skills, but the areas in which your weaknesses and inabilities were made clearly, and obviously apparent, you have learned invaluable information on what sort of work needs to be done before you try again.

So I usually relish what ends up being the last line on most of the job descriptions I've had.  "Other duties as assigned/required" is usually how it appears, and those few words have given me the bulk of my experience and taught me more about what I have and can do.  These days, now that my job is no longer responsible for keeping the computers and whatnot we use daily running and doing the job, I've become adept at finding key NMJ admissions which my own supervisors have worked to overcome, when possible.  When impossible, we work to develop work-arounds, and we usually end up keeping track of the extra time I have to waste in my day due to this inability to make something happen.  It is often due to the lack of specific required resources (read time and money), while at some times it's a deliberate choice to avoid any admission of responsibility.

It is what it is.  I can, in nearly all situations, adapt and overcome in some way.  It's not always easy, but it gets the job done.  And one thing I have learned over many years is that while leaders come in all forms, one absolutely critical requirement for leadership is the willingness to follow.  A very small number of us rise to a point where we are not responsible to anyone.  There is an even smaller number who rise to a position where they do not feel that responsibility, they only wish to command.  Those are the target of the phrase "Managers do things right, Leaders do right things."  I've always taken that to mean that a manager can follow direction and respond when a situation bears a close resemblance to things they've seen previously, while a leader will assess the situation and develop a plan to respond and resolve in such a way that, in the future, others can use it and do it right.  

The distinction can be fine - but it's that distinction that does separate managers and leaders.  I'd much rather be known as a follower than a maverick.  I'd rather be known as reliable than revolutionary.  I get it, great art is sometimes made by folks coloring outside the lines.  I'm not an artist.  I'm someone who seeks to leave a legacy of having done things that don't need to be redone, they were done right the first time, and they can serve as examples.  Sometimes that means slowing down and proofing my own work.  Other times that means just getting it done right the first time.  Sometimes I have to admit mistakes - but I do think that, overall, I very rarely make the same mistake twice.  Sometimes it just comes down to communication and noting the outcome so next time, you just don't need to ask how to do it right.

So there's some rumination on leadership and why there's a class of people who claim to be leaders while, in the end, they're simply noisemakers who contribute very little.  Some folks like the smoke and mirrors.  Me, I'd rather just get it done without the ruckus. Efficiency is definitely something to be proud of, as it gets the job done properly and in less time than it could take others.