Managermind

I just wanna tell a story from a life.  The story is about luck in the understanding of the importance of tools by self-confident managers.

Knowledge Management

Several month ago I was in a meeting, where some managers and some consultants where discussing about some IT topics. One of the question that is always present on such meeting (these meetings happens usually every week) is how we can distribute the knowledge of specialists over all team member and keep it up to date.

It is clear that such niche wisdom e.g. some technical guidance must be written down otherwise it is lost. So the next question that should appear is where to write it down. However I was very stunned how airy all team members answers that question inner or loud.

The typical and “simplest” solution is sending mail. “Just send me mail with that link and password” or “I’ll send you the path to my presentation on the network drive Z“. Such solution system can exist over several month till the information lost is grows so much till nobody definitely know where the particular and actual information is, who responsible for what and s. o. But that was good scenario. In the worst case such mail routing can be established forever!

I such mail brokerage scenario some people start to organize the information on their own, they build up diagrams directories structures and other documents on their local machines. That result in redundancy and inconsistency in between such privates archives.

But sometimes there are some better managers at work, at some points a smart manager begin to think about optimisation and improvement of knowledge management that is usually results in the “invention” of centralization of information. And that’s all. At this stage the solution for the problem is clear “we just need central storage and every body has to write his part of the knowledge down there“.

The centralization is in fact is high improvement a t this point. It eliminates inconsistency and redundancy, it clarifies the responsibilities for the parts of the content and everybody know where to search.

Unfortunately management has not think just a half step further. So some centralization tool was taken which one of them has known by name. My doubts wasn’t taken serious because I was new in team.  Responsible person rejects with: ” I don’t wanna have any tooling discussion“.

However the documentation is still incomplete. In the central storage we have many incomplete places and information that is there, is mostly relative sparse and just some kind of copy paste of some presentations or personal notices. Not really the wisdom of the team ;).  There is a luck of trust and acceptance for that tool, because it’s not modern and it’s presents the information as one big list.

So why just don’t take a simple Wiki which is designed to order some fuzzy information which is edited by many users. Just because You know nothing about it? Then liston to competent people in your team!

P.S. For some days I found I my calender the invitation to “Tooling discussion” meeting. What a surprise.

There is a ton of theoretical articles about employee motivation. So if someone talks to you about motivation possibly you first think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and this is OK. I just want to present one interesting and very personal point of motivation - your chef.

Surprised? Let me explain why your boss is a very important part of your personal motivation and how one good supervisor should look like to my eyes.

At first, I think every direct supervisor is some kind of person you subliminal see as someone who is professionally better than you. At least at the beginning every supervisor is. If this fealing of professional advantage and respect to boss holds on you stay motivated employee.

How bosses looses respect and demotivate

Many supervisors shows sometimes that they did not understand what their team do. Some of them goes further they show even that they are not good in doing their own things. In worst case, such boss is so underdeveloped in his methodologies, that with his doing or not doing he slows down or relatives the work of his team. Such boss looses respect in hours and is frustrating for all.
If such situation occurs, no further achievement can be awaited from the stuff. All office parties, and Christmas presents are senseless. They can’t motivate. Even such things like further education can not motivate for more achievements, employee would see it as a chance to live that office or department.

Top 6 properties of motivating boss

So the message is, everyone needs professional boss. I just notice some of them in following:

• Good supervisor should never forget what he has assured to his employee, because employee does not forget it too
• Good supervisor has also not to forget important work relevant things, like planed holidays of his employees, or meetings with them - never.
• Good supervisor has to organise things in his department well. He should organise his own tasks first and task of his team, that employee has not to worry about things that are not in his direct or even indirect duties. Being engaged in things which are were not intended at the moment of application for employment is very frustrating. Doing things for other is frustrating even for own boss
  • Every boss is interested that new employees begin with their work as soon as possible . The are companies, in that processes of employment and introduction to work environment are not clearly defined. This is an example field, where the boss can gain much respect at least in the eyes of new employees.
  • Good boss defines processes in his department by himself and not just follows some randomly originated workflows.
• Good motivating chef has to be better than you. I mean he has to be better by doing something job related. In good situation your boss is good in organisation, motivation, and knows at least something what you do at work :). Your lucky when your can ask your boss even professional or technical question. That must be a dream boss in that case.
• Motivating chef has always more information from above and from bottom, he is open-minded and communicative person. He can organize his information input and what is much important, he is internally interested to be involved in things that are happened around him.
• Finely only motivated person, can motivate others.

As I already mentioned before it is important for every project to define whole business process early. Better say the main process of you new business has to be in your head (coarse-grained of course) before you begin with implementation of something. But when you begin with realisation, it is not bad idea to implement the whole process in its full length e.g. from the shipper to the customer. In most cases (of cause with exceptions, but which are not subject of this post) it is better not to try to make that process perfect form beginning on. Just make the prove of concept, get feedback. It makes easier the discovering of reasonable improvement potentials and detection of bottlenecks step by step. It is impossible to make huge process perfect out of the box. Many real world projects (in my oppinion also e.g. “cargolifter”) fail not least because such principles were not considered.

Interesting example of step by step improvements is given by Martin Fowler, the RollerSkateImplementation

If people start new projects, and we are talking about software projects (e.g. you can imagine some Internet start-up), the final result and even success of one of such projects is often only hardly predictable or even not predictable at all. It means your project can satisfy you very soon or it can brings you only much headache. To avoid any headache it es very important to be clear abut the goals of you project in every stage.

I maybe appears as nothing new for you eyes, cause every project seems to have goals naturally. But is it so? I often meet people who say: “Let’s to this, or let’s do that”! But only few of them can clearly define the benefits and the goals they await from their ideas. Many people (including myself in the past) starts some project, but are not really sure about the goals of their projects. Such projects are often end with headache. That it the experience of humanity not only my.

From basics of business studies we know that goals should always be defined properly. Even more I say that every project manager or better every member of project, has to be concerned with goals of the project in every stage of that project. Than goals begin to serve us as references of project status. Every time you see what is already works fine, what part of project are good and which of parts have to be done next.

The are several kind of goals. The main goal of a project is often synonym for benefit. But people starting the project are often have only fussy idea about benefit they will have. Start every project with definition of the overall goal for project. You should like this goal. Having clear goal in mind provides long-range motivation!

As one big project has his sub-project and sub-tasks, so it is of course necessary to define clear goals of every sub-project and every sub-task. And if one project should be implemented by a team, it is very important that the whole team knows the goals at every stage! And even more, the team at it self should be able to define goals of sub-tasks, like every member of project have to define his personal goals by working on sub-tasks.

Also don’t forget that time is more than money! Time is life! So don’t waste your time and make sure that every goal definition has a time constraint! Ever!

But the most important thing on goals is, the ability to change them! Don’t cling to Goals you’re defined month ago. If after some progress you see new opportunities or impasses which makes the goals of yesterday looks silly. So don’t be like the average manager in a big company feel free to accommodate the goals for successes of tomorrow!

Here are some further reading on:

Feel free to comment!

This project was born physically two days ago by setting up the blog-engine and today i write my first post here. The idea of this blog was born earlier in my mind, already some week ago. The time span form the initial idea till the first result is also relatively short. OK, it could be even much shorter, but it is not bad if i consider the amount of things i have to deal with in current months.

Nevertheless the mentioned time span is very important, then so many projects often exists only in our minds and never leave it. They have an endless time span till thair begin or they even never get finished. One of my good friends (I maybe introduce him later) always says: “do it incremental”. I agree with him and think, that every (software) project should have short tame from idea to first results. Do prototypes, create even some first rudimentary results if dealing with big projects.

Seeing first results is very important, it gives you very much feedback, and feedback is what you always need. Feedback allows you to evolve your initial idea and vision rapidly. So maybe yo can earlier see the pitfalls and changes i could not see just having the project in your head. Also it disengages your mind so you don’t have to carry all that things, that are not ready yet with you. But many people do it contrariwise, they try to create an perfect thing out of the box so say in one step! I believe only perfect people can take a liberty doing so, but unfortunately no one is perfect.

So this is first what to say in this blog and I’m far not ready with all improvements this blog and I’m unsure about the style theme i will use for this blog. But you and i can see first results and get first feedback out of this, so that things could only get better. Reading this you maybe already understood the intention of this blog. Yes, we will deal with personal and of course with corporate management. How it will look like we precisely will see as it evolves, the is no five-year plan for this blog :).