Trust but verify

Derek Sivers on the management technique of "Trust but verify".

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Trust but verify: "

a few devastating times, I found out that I had tried too hard not to micro-manage. I hadn’t managed at all. I had said something once, thought it was understood and agreed, and assumed the best.
But things had gone horribly wrong. Months of orders had not been processed. Money had disappeared from the bank. Projects I thought were underway had never been started.
In all of the cases, a simple one-minute verification along the way would have prevented everything.
I could get mad at them, but really it was my fault for not building that verification step into the plan.
Not micro-managing, it can be as simple as:

• asking them to email you when done with each step
• or a “dashboard” style monitor showing the progress of projects
• or a simple note-to-self system to check in with someone a few days after you’ve assigned them something, to make sure it’s going OK
• or anything! - but don't ignore it.

So here I am sharing one of my hardest delegation lessons learned, in hindsight.

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Trust but verify.

"

The "Dashboard" style project monitor, or a progress bar that shows actual against projected - good ideas.

Very nice comment, here:

comment - Kamran Salehi (2009-11-24)

To take this concept one step further: Delegate the verification !

This is a method I resorted to as my teams were growing. Name the effort a project and assign a project manager to it. This can be a rotating role. So at the same time “Jim” can be the project manager for one project where “Julie” has tasks, and “Julie” can be the project manager of another project in which “Jim” has tasks. You still need to check with your project managers periodically. But it gets you even one more step away from doing everything yourself and micromanaging.

Very smart! Good one. -- Derek

Very interesting idea - a rotating job of "verifying" project manager.

Managers and manager-speak: This struck a nerve...

This post hit too close to home, and struck a nerve - about vapid manager-speak, like:

• "At the end of the day"
• "actionable"
• "teaching opportunity"

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and every managers favorite parable - "A Message to Garcia" by Elbert Hubbard [see http://www.birdsnest.com/garcia.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia ] Very snarky list of Management Speak and translation into plain English:

Management Speak Compilation - InfoWorld's Bob Lewis http://seto.org/infoworl.htm

I have been prone to "manager-speak", I am ashamed to say. I just had to take the opportunity to defend my shabby behavior in comment...

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Managers and manager-speak: what is a "manager," anyway? - Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: "

...whether knowing that someone uses management jargon in their speech gives you information on how likely they are to be a manager...

Why? Because...

1) In paternalistic cultures, leaders are expected to project confidence, and lack of understanding is rarely punished. So rattling off canned phrases is effective for managers, because it is very unlikely to get called on it.

2) Without whips or waterboards, managers are expected, with only their voices, to do the impossible - motivate another person to do something that is against that person's instinct and habit. Against futility, they can only run off their mouths. Again, canned phrases help.

A manager that didn't avail himself to canned phrases would be such an eerie, uncanny creature it would likely be fired or chased down an alleyway with pitchforks or torches. It would creep out upper management and employees alike.

This is my excuse, and I am sticking with it. Manager speak is a good tool to dazzle people with bullshit, just long enough to make a quick get-away to a place where you can hide from the problem.

Ten Habits of Incompetent Managers

Very well written and perceptive article by Margaret Heffernan ( via http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/career/?p=1068 via Google Reader Rajneesh Garg )

fastcompany.com heffernan 10-signs-incompetent-managers

Quoting Toni Bowers:

I came across a great piece about traits that incompetent managers share. Written by Margaret Heffernan for FastCompany.com, this no-nonsense piece cuts to the chase and is about as true a list as I’ve ever seen.

Read the whole piece. Here are the ten:

1. Image via Wikipedia

   Bias against action
2. Secrecy
3. Over-sensitivity
4. Love of procedure
5. Preference for weak candidates
6. Focus on small tasks
7. Inability to hire former employees
8. Allergy to deadlines
9. Addiction to consultants
10. Long hours

Network of Executive Women Online, speaking about Margaret Heffernan's book The Naked Truth:

For those women who think "you can have it all," comes this contrarian view from business journalist and former technology CEO Margaret Heffernan. Heffernan interviewed more than fifty mostly female executives for this book and it delivers, as the title promises, some hard truths about the work and lives of women executives. Some women think even less of their own capabilities than their male counterparts do and often aim low from the very beginning. Many male executives continue to stereotype women ("geisha," "bitch") and try to hold them down. Toxic bosses and hostile work environments still abound. Sexual harassment, pay discrimination and hostility to the "mommy track" are not everywhere a thing of the past. But Heffernan and her interview subjects (many identified only by pseudonyms) aren't just doom and gloom. They offer real solutions to the challenges women executives face on and off the job. How to increase confidence, build relationships and reputation, create alliances and networks, mentor and be mentored, and avoid the familiar trap, "I'll do it myself."

Compensation, Management, Motivation (Again)

You are Paid, Managed, Motivated by:

• Results
• Future Results

Obviously, nobody has a perfect handle on future results. Mistakes will be made. The principal is:

• Salary
• Other forms of compensation and motivation - all you have is Trust and Commitment - the watchwords are "Avoid Violating Trust and Commitment" - so under-promise and over-deliver.

If you risk losing people because you under-promise, then raise the salary, or raise the committed monies to make sure the commitment is delivered. Because if you have a Violation of Trust and Commitment, then you wipe away all the good will built up before, and you will have to deliver double in the future to get half of the good will. People are very slow to forget a Violation of Trust and Commitment. OK, lets go over this list again - these are the components of Compensation, Management, and Motivation:

1. Results - Historical evidence of meeting objectives: like bookings of a salesman
2. Data on activities that have a "causal" relationship to the desired objectives: like number of meetings and follow-up activities with decision makers
3. Data on activities that have a presumed, perhaps tenuous causal relationship to the desired objectives: like hours spent researching a possible new product offering. There is a significant chance of complete failure with a new product offering - that is why the causal relationship to the desired objectives is tenuous.
4. "Positive" human factors: I sometimes eat at a cafeteria salad restaurant. The cafeteria trays are handed out by a handicapped man. Part of his salary is due to the restaurant living its stated values. (But it isn't all "altruism", he brings value, he is the voice of the restaurant's handicapped patrons). Note - What isn't a "positive" human factor - keeping someone in a job because you feel sorry for them is not a "positive" human factor - it has everything to do with a manager who finds it easy to be generous with other peoples' money, who cannot deal with the anxiety of terminating someone for cause, and who would not hesitate to terminate that person during an economic downturn, which is the exact time they would find it hardest to find a new job.
5. "Negative" human factors: the percentage of salary that is based on kissing up, is another example.
6. Market Forces: if the work is directly or closely aligned with pricing in an economic market, a component of compensation/management should be based on the market price: like a "free-agent" in baseball, or upper management in a publicly traded company, some component of compensation/management has to be based on the market price
7. Relevant Sub-Categories of Market: "inter-market based compensation" - If the whole market sub-category goes down, but inside that sub-category, market share and profitability goes up, the compensation should reflect that. You will be in a good position when the sub-category reverses the downward turn, compensation, today, should reflect that, or you risk losing good people.

What are the paths to be developed?

Management; Business; Personal Effectiveness; Information Automation; Effectiveness Modeling; Teaching Personal Effectiveness OK, got Day Zero, what would be Day One? Business: singular, consistent source of increasing value, at lower total cost; or else, race to the bottom Management: if considering a group of more than one person, either Value the Differences, or Continually Fight the Differences, until 100% of the effort, attention, focus is spent fighting the differences, and nothing of value gets done

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Personal Effectiveness: Everything you do satisfies a need, or desire, or impulse. There is a hierarchy of needs and desires (impulses are on the very bottom) Information Automation: The chair has ??? (many) legs --

• Throughput
• Latency
• Sustain Increasing Bandwidth
• Integrity and Correctness
• Respects Rules of Trust Relationships
• Respects Rules of Security
• Reliability
• Availability and Accessibility
• Scalability (and Distribution of Working Instances)
• Economic use of Limited Resources
• Timely Implementation with Available Resources
• Satisfying Human Value
• Not Violating Human Sensibilities (including Regulatory requirements)
• Iterative Development
• Ability to be Sustained by Attracting enough developer hours
• Distributed Development

(Why the heck so many? The absence of any one is a failure mode that is almost always fatal, if we consider projects in competition for developer hours.) Kick out one of these legs, the chair falls down. Sorry. Wish it was different, but it is not. (I got to think about this more.) (Oh wait, contemplating projects in competition for developer hours is the real Day One) Effectiveness Modeling: We consider, as a fundamental pair, the distribution and a measure of certainty. In competition, respectful of the Violation Criteria, several sources yield distributions and measures of certainty, as pairs. (LIAR: this is several days packed together, day one is -- We assume the existence of at least one Violation Criteria) Teaching Personal Effectiveness: Possess something that might be mistaken for Success, and document the method by which it was obtained. (Might be mistaken for Success, only from a great distance, and through fog, but somewhat resembles Success, none the less.)

Components of Compensation and Management

Thinking more last night about components of compensation and management (and motivation). There is Intrinsic and External motivation. You need a mixture of both. Men are judged by their salary compared to their brother-in-law, but, also, money alone cannot effectively motivate. A healthy percentage of motivation has to be intrinsic (the problem with intrinsic motivation is that it can be irreparably damaged by a violation of trust (I will write more about this some other time). (How the heck does Intrinsic and External motivation relate to below? Beat me. Still puzzling it out.) Anyway, I remembered that I should add "Market Forces" to the compensation and management factors. Exact components of compensation and management you would desire.

1. Historical evidence of meeting objectives: like bookings of a salesman
2. Data on activities that have a "causal" relationship to the desired objectives: like number of meetings and follow-up activities with decision makers
3. Data on activities that have a presumed, perhaps tenuous causal relationship to the desired objectives: like hours spent researching a possible new product offering. There is a significant chance of complete failure with a new product offering - that is why the causal relationship to the desired objectives is tenuous.
4. "Positive" human factors: I sometimes eat at a cafeteria salad restaurant. The cafeteria trays are handed out by a handicapped man. Part of his salary is due to the restaurant living its stated values. (But it isn't all "altruism", he brings value, he is the voice of the restaurant's handicapped patrons). Note - What isn't a "positive" human factor - keeping someone in a job because you feel sorry for them is not a "positive" human factor - it has everything to do with a manager who finds it easy to be generous with other peoples' money, who cannot deal with the anxiety of terminating someone for cause, and who would not hesitate to terminate that person during an economic downturn, which is the exact time they would find it hardest to find a new job.
5. "Negative" human factors: the percentage of salary that is based on kissing up, is another example.
6. Market Forces: if the work is directly or closely aligned with pricing in an economic market, a component of compensation/management should be based on the market price: like a "free-agent" in baseball, or upper management in a publicly traded company, some component of compensation/management has to be based on the market price