Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 5) Dream impossible dreams

Jan 6, 2011 by Adrian Cho

This is the fifth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 4) Demonstrate distrust.

To dream the impossible dream (cue music) is to set lofty goals with absolutely no chance of attaining them. It’s great to set such goals but they must be balanced with reality. Unfortunately teams do sometimes fail because they are living in a fantasy world. One interesting aspect of this is the concept of positive-thinking and books such as Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich that point out the problems of living in a sunny world where it never rains. Maintaining a positive disposition has clear benefits but this alone won’t ensure your success. If you really, really, really believe you can fly and you jump out of a window on the tenth floor and flap your arms…well good luck to you! As I wrote in the recently published article, Diversity Breeds Success, one way to have a balanced view is to ensure a distribution of perspectives across a team. Some folks may dream big while others may be devilish advocates. Their collective viewpoints may be balanced enough to allow the team to both aim high and hit that mark.

Even as an individual you can try to temper a wild fantasy with a dose of reality by self-critiquing but there is always the issue of cognitive biases. For example, confirmation bias which is the tendency to look towards information that confirms our preconceptions. The opposite of this is disconfirmation bias in which we avoid or discount information that contradicts our perspective. That’s why it is usually best to have someone else provide the opposing view.

There is one school of thought that says we should repeatedly reach for the sky and if we fail then try and try again. I touched on this in a previous post about the importance of screwing up. The problem is that there usually a cost for such misses and it needs to be taken into account. One of the benefits of failing should be that we don’t just fail but learn. In other words we might start out dreaming impossible dreams but in time as we learn to apply pragmatism while improving various skills and gaining experience, our aim should get better and we should miss less and hit our targets more often.

A good practice in dog training is to always end a training session on a positive note with something the dog can do and get praised for as opposed to something that they will likely fail at. When leaders repeatedly dream impossible dreams, leading teams repeatedly down the road to failure, people can become disillusioned, frustrated and tired. They may even begin to believe that they are not capable of achieving anything, saying “What’s the point of trying? We clearly suck!” Even if they believe in their own capabilities, they might say “We’re jinxed.” When goals are actually attainable people build confidence. Sometimes leaders need to exit their fantasy world especially when people in the trenches are telling them that a plan simply can’t be achieved. This is why the best strategies are those that are created collaboratively with input from everyone and not just senior management.

Think big but attainable by dreaming nearly-impossible dreams.

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 4) Demonstrate distrust

Jan 1, 2011 by Adrian Cho

This is the fourth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 3) Exploit efforts to the extreme.

Organizations have lots of rules. These rules are encoded in various processes and procedures, methodologies and ways of working. They are necessary to avoid chaos that can result when people don’t know what they are doing, perhaps because they lack experience or proficiency. Most teams are under constant fire, overworked and stretched to the limit. This is even more true in our current recession where cutbacks have reduced human resources and the people that are left must do even more. In these situations, rules can ensure that the right things get done.

You can relax rules if you have good people. By this I mean that you may be able to drop the enforcement of a rule, make it optional or just forget about it completely. Good people know what to do and if they don’t know what to do they will figure it out. The possibility of relaxing rules is based on trust. When you can trust Joe to post the press releases without checking with his manager or when Ann can take the project plan updates to the XYZ committee instead of the much larger and slower ABC committee, you can reduce friction, increase speed and reduce costs. Of course you don’t want to end up with a Barings on your hands. There are many good reasons for having rules in place. However here’s the thing:

As individuals get better, more experienced and more proficient, and teams get better, leveraging the combined efforts of the individuals, processes needs to change too. When organizations fail to do this they limit the performance of teams. Even worse, they frustrate high-performing individuals who will interpret the continued enforcement of unnecessary rules as micromanagement and a lack of trust in their abilities. In a jazz ensemble, capable musicians need to have the freedom to let loose and express themselves. This begins with music that allows for opportunities to improvise. Even when someone is not actively soloing, they want the same opportunities because there is constant improvisation by all musicians in small jazz group. The pianist may want to reharmonize some of the chord changes or the bassist might feel inclined to change the groove. This freedom is not only an issue in jazz. A great cellist playing entirely from a written part may want to write her own cadenza, change the bowings or introduce new dynamic contrasts that are not written in the music. Such things might be the catalyst for a truly unique performance. An incessant maestro who insists he knows everything may do more harm than good. Sure there are stylistic or other considerations but the point is that when you have good people you don’t box them in. You don’t impose the same set of rules on someone with a lot of experience as you would on a novice. At the very least leaders should be open to the possibilities because they can’t know everything. Unfortunately way too many think that they are the only font of knowledge.

Demonstrate enough distrust towards high performers and you will lose them.

The importance of screwing up

Dec 15, 2010 by Adrian Cho

I screw up all the time. Yes that’s right. Sometimes my mistakes go unnoticed and sometimes, hopefully not too often, they are big screw-ups that affect others.

As we are near the end of 2010, the mind invariably turns to a retrospective of the year. In any aspect of our life, whether it be work, recreation, family, friendships, volunteering, faith, or anything else, we can ask ourselves what went well and what didn’t go well? More specifically, what worked well in order to achieve success, and what led to failure or results that didn’t meet expectations?

I am very interested in the study of screwing up. In the Jazz Process book, I wrote about various aspects of making and recovering from mistakes but there are many books that provide more detailed coverage of the topic. I recently finished reading Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan. I was delighted to find that Hallinan begins by covering many of the same things I raised in my book such as the importance of awareness and the need to understand one’s own biases. Hallinan’s book is very well researched. He quotes many fascinating studies that provide ample evidence of the multitude of ways in which we can misstep and misjudge without intention. It’s well worth a read.

I’m now reading another book on the subject, Bozo Sapiens co-authored by Michael Kaplan and his mother, Ellen Kaplan. The Kaplans’s book is not as academic as Hallinan’s work and it focuses more on why making mistakes is a human trait. However it’s just as fascinating and informative as Hallinan’s book and you may find it an easier read.

Understanding why we make mistakes is important to avoid repeating them or even making them in the first place. However it’s also important to understand that to err is human and mistakes don’t always have to be fatal. On the other hand we shouldn’t discount the cost of mistakes in certain situations. Clearly, we want to avoid mistakes that lead to the loss of life. The tolerance for mistakes varies and this is where the notion of quality comes in. Is 99.9 percent good enough? If 100 musicians in a symphony orchestra each play 1000 notes in a performance then 99.9% means they still play 100 bad notes and even just one of those might just ruin an otherwise perfect performance or recording take. The United States Postal Service delivered 667 million pieces of mail each day in 2008. 99.9% means they would have lost 667,000 packages each day.

Yet in many fields, mistakes are more tolerable. It’s great to strive for perfection, but not at the cost of all else. Many software products are released with known defects. Some defects are tolerable because their impact is negligible or can be worked around while others are critically serious. Zero defects is a meaningful target, but it is far more important for a missile guidance system than for a word processor. Mistakes in sports are common, but defeating your opponent is usually more important than simply playing an error-free game. In many fields, including improvised jazz, it’s not so much making mistakes that is the issue but rather how you recover from them. If you listen to the classic Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue, you can hear many “mistakes.” However these are simply incorporated into the performance and the musicians used these unexpected events as jumping-off points to further evolve the music. Every piece but one on the Kind of Blue album was the first take. Even when they had the opportunity, the musicians (or at least Miles) didn’t feel the need to redo the takes despite the “mistakes.”

It’s easy to avoid making mistakes. Simply don’t do anything where you just might possibly screw up. The problem is that the cost of doing nothing or doing only safe things can be greater than the cost of not trying and potentially failing. Many organizations aspire to innovate yet their culture does not permit the possibility of failing. This has the effect of stifling innovation. Google’s culture of innovation accepts mistakes as a normal part of the research and development process. According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and CEO, “The way you say this is: ‘Please fail very quickly—so that you can try again.’” Larry Page, president and co-founder of Products, said to one employee upon hearing from her that she had cost the company several million dollars, “I’m so glad you made this mistake. Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.” In the book Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos that she co-authored with Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Professor of Strategy and Organization at Stanford University, Google’s Senior Vice-President of Business Operations, Shona Brown, known as the company’s “Chief Chaos Officer,” wrote: “Mistakes occur because systems at the edge of chaos often slip off the edge. But there is also quick recovery and, like jazz musicians who play the wrong note, there is the chance to turn mistakes into advantages.”

I hope you’ll learn from the mistakes you made in 2010 but I also hope that you’ll leave room to make more (although perhaps different ones) in 2011 in the interest of achieving great things.

Reflections on writing a book

Nov 27, 2010 by Adrian Cho

It’s now been about five months since the book has been out and it has been interesting for me to reflect on the entire process of writing, publishing, promoting and waiting for reviews. One of the claims I made in the book is that people can often benefit by thinking about their work as a series of performances. For me, writing the book was just another avenue of performance like many others in my life including speaking and playing music. A lot of the ideas in the book are about improvisation. In many respects the book was improvised. The writing was a very organic process. While I knew there were certain ideas I wanted to express, I didn’t know precisely how the ideas would be realized in words nor precisely which examples and other supporting material I would provide. In most cases I just began in a certain direction and the path revealed itself with further research and writing. I had to trust that this process would produce a desirable final product. Along the way I had constant visions of being unsatisfied with the published book once we got to the point where I could no longer make any changes. In fact I expected that I would not want to read it at all since I would find myself critiquing it and wanting to change things after the fact.

One of the toughest times for any performer is having to deal with reviews. It’s not just the critical feedback that may be hard to deal with but the disappointment that can come from pouring your heart and soul into one aspect of a performance, only to have that completely overlooked in favor of something that you thought of as inconsequential. Worst still is when some people totally misinterpret an aspect of the performance or just don’t get it, according to your own expectations. Most mature people, and not just those who are artistic performers, know that you have to accept the limitations of your ability to appeal to everyone. You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. Fans of one performance may pan your next one. Additionally, you cannot expect that all feedback will be authentic. Friends, family and colleagues might say they liked your performance when they really hated it while those in a competitive position might pan it while secretly admiring it and taking inspiration. As they say, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

So five months on, what is the state of the book?

I am actually not sure how many copies the book has sold although it wouldn’t take me much effort to find out. I received a report at the end of June when the book had only been out for two weeks and I had sold several hundred copies by that stage. I will receive another report in January. I am somewhat encouraged that the book appears to be ranked number seven on an Amazon list of most wished for books in software design tools and techniques. For a book that’s been out for such a short time, that actually seems to be pretty impressive. I guess we’ll see whether it translates to sales.

There have been a number of very positive reviews and one review that found the book did not live up to expectations. I’m most satisfied by the reviewers that appreciate some of the unique content such as the discussions about feedback loops and hunting, diversity, and the caution that I gave to those that blindly or over-zealously apply the book’s ideas, or for that matter, any other ideas that are given out as advice. Generally, people seem to find the concepts appealing and recognize that there is a lot of content in the book – possibly even too much. Some reviews complained that the book is too academic or too long and I can understand why they might feel that way. I had always intended that the book have a lot of detail and that all sources would be cited. Generally I find that too many books nowadays do not list sources. I personally that a real disappointment as well as somewhat disrespectful of other authors. In terms of the depth and breadth, one of the reasons I wrote the book is that I had found all previous discussions about jazz and business have been too lightweight, espousing a lot of the less tangible connections but not giving much detail about the specifics of execution.

One thing I’ve had to fight from before the time before the book was published is the notion that the concepts described in the book are only applicable to software development. Early on, the publisher made a mistake in releasing an unapproved edition of the back cover blurb that implied that the book was only applicable to software. This was subsequently fixed but copies of that blurb are still floating around on the Internet. In its published form, the back cover of the book recommends that it be categorized under Innovation / Collaboration / Management and the only reference to software is the fact that I work at IBM. Either that or the bogus blurb or perhaps simply the content is enough for many online and brick and mortar bookstores to list the book only in the software section. There is certainly a good share of software development stories in the book but I like to think it is well-balanced with the other content.

The list price of the book is a little high, in my opinion, although I did manage to get list price lowered once before publication. I don’t think it is unreasonable given the unique content in the book and its depth and breadth but I would prefer to try and get more readers, even if it means less money in my pocket.  I think the list price on Amazon is great. In Canada, I believe most people are buying it from Amazon because Chapters, the largest Canadian book chain, sells it at the Canadian list price with only a membership discount. I also found out that Chapters won’t carry the book in the stores (although it’s listed on their computers) because the publisher’s margin is apparently too high. No reply from the publisher on what the deal is there.

Despite my prediction that I would not want to read the book after its publication, I have in fact read it a number of times. I have been surprised to find myself happy with the content. I was at first amazed that I could not find any mistakes but have since found enough to maintain a list of erratum.

If you’re interested in selling lots of books, writing is only half of the task. Promotion is other half and I’ve found little time to give to that and need to do more. I’ve been writing a series of related articles and just started the third in a series of articles for InformIT and have another to write for another site/publication. Of course I am trying to push the book in talks here and there but it’s hard to do so without feeling like a salesman!

The main reason I wrote the book is that I wanted to collect all my ideas and opinions about working and put them in one place. I have often joked that it’s my manifesto. Yet more than anything, I wanted to inspire people to think about some of the ideas. In the preface to the book I wrote “This book is an artistic expression that captures some of my personal thoughts about the world in which we work and play.” I believe that art should prompt a response in senses, emotion or intellect. In this respect, it was great to see one reviewer write: “You may not agree with everything, but it will make you think.” Knowing that the book evoked that reaction gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 3) Exploit efforts to the extreme

Oct 2, 2010 by Adrian Cho

This is the third in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 2) Inhibit individuality.

There are many ways to extract a greater level of performance from a team. The most obvious method, and the one that is all too often employed, is to ask everyone to work harder. More often than not this means that people must work more hours. People who are passionate about their job do not usually mind putting in extra effort. They’ll go the extra mile on their own initiative. They enjoy what they do and derive personal satisfaction from delivering great results. Similarly, they are unhappy if their team doesn’t meet or exceeds its goals. Yet these high performers can become understandably frustrated when they must put in extra effort simply because their team or organization is unable to fix problems that are compromising the team’s ability to operate effectively. In many organizations, these problems are deeply rooted into corporate culture and changing them can be difficult or perhaps even impossible. This inevitably means that organizations with these afflictions will need to call upon people to work beyond their limits time and time again while the problems continue to fester. That’s a sure way to kill productivity and passion and ultimately it’s a great way to lose your best people.

What are these problems? We can easily derive one set of examples by translating the fourteen principles of the Jazz Process into related problems that limit team performance:

When a team is affected by these kinds of problems, it’s like a race car with broken or worn out parts that is unable to operate at its peak performance level. To compete with the other cars you have to push your vehicle beyond its limits. If you keep doing that, sooner or later something bad will happen and you’ll end up on the side of the road, assuming you’re fortunate enough to avoid crashing and burning. If you lead a team suffering from these or other serious problems, fix them first before constantly demanding that your people compensate with extra effort. You may not be able fix such problems overnight but if you can at least acknowledge and understand the problems and make progress towards fixing them, people will be more inclined to give you their all with the knowledge that the team is on the road to recovery.

Hampton University’s Jam Session

Sep 23, 2010 by Adrian Cho

I haven’t posted in a while as I’ve been completely overwhelmed with work on the Jazz projects at IBM. One recent development is a note I received a couple of months ago from staff at the Hampton University School of Engineering and Technology. They’ve been reading the Jazz Process book and are planning to incorporate it into an interesting project they’ve just launched. The project is called Jam Session and it’s a collaboration between the University’s School of Engineering and Technology and the Hampton University Museum, with support from the Motorola Foundation.

The idea behind this five-month project is to teach students how jazz performance concepts can be incorporated into engineering practices. Competing teams of undergraduate engineering, business, and art students will adapt jazz styles and techniques to conceive, develop, design and construct a vehicle, electronic device or appliance. I’m excited to be involved and look forward to working with the staff and students.

Check out the Jam Session web site.