Lead Techie

Developing Developers into Leaders

What’s your talent stack?

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“A talent stack is the overall value or sum of an individual’s skills and talents.” (Ben Ford)

Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) hinted at this in an older blog post. Being the best at the world at one single thing is almost impossible. Becoming good at (e.g. top 25%) at two things can be more valuable and also far easier. This can be extended further to additional skills. Even going from bad to mediocre in a skill may be extremely beneficial. It’s the combination that matters.

I love learning new things. I love trying out new things. I recently decided to try and learn to draw. At first this was just disappointing. My first efforts were awful. Here’s my first attempt at a plane, a bagel and a house!

Lots of people think you should just stick to what you’re good at. Eg Seth Godin “focus on doing things you are truly good at” or Desmond Courtney “Focus on what you’re good at and forget the rest.” That seemed excellent advice after seeing the first results of my drawing. I really should have stopped the drawing immediately. I’m no artist. I’ll never be. I should stick to development and management tasks.

I stuck with the drawing for a while though. With just 30 days and this book I tried again. Here’s my “take 2” of a plane, bagel and house. (Plus a few extras I learned.)

I’ll never have my work on display in the Louvre. But it was great to get the basic understanding and learn a new skill.

In a more recent post Scott Adams highlighted the benefits of having “a collection of good-but-not-special skills that sum up to something powerful.” The combined result is far more than the sum of the parts.

I think you should always double down and try and become truly excellent at a few skills. But this shows it’s also worth investing time in other non related skills. Good enough with the right combination can be extremely powerful.

The questions you need to answer are:

  • What are the specialist core skills that you want to truly excel at?
  • What other skill would it be worth investing in in order to make your skill stack extra valuable?
  • Now you have the list what are you going to do to learn them?

If you’re not sure what skills to look into next then you may want to look at this list from Jason Calacanis.

30 hours invested in drawing has made a massive difference to me. It makes running workshops and meetings a lot easier. I can jump up and draw things on a white board. I can sketch out presentation outlines more easily. It has given me far more confidence. It was definitely a good investment for my talent stack!

TEDx Frankfurt 2016 Review

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The buzz of the conference is over. The excitement and energy have faded. A few questions remain. What did I learn? How will it help me? How will it help others? What will I now do differently?

Well first of all. TEDxFrankfurt was a great success. A great opening from Simon Anholt. An outlandish demo from Greg Gage (even if it was verging on animal cruelty). A perfect ending from Benita Matofska.

It was refreshing to see Simon ask “What happens when the whole world votes?” Well, you can find the answer on the Global Vote website. With a globalised economy we are interdependent. Now more than ever before. Our decisions affect others and their decisions us. So why do we still use a voting system which is optimised for an us vs them attitude.

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The real question is “Are you looking inwards and backwards?” Unfortunately probably too many people are. That’s likely because they find comfort there. The better alternative is the challenge “Are you looking outwards and forwards?”

MarieMarie serenaded us at the break, the subtle tones of the harp in sharp contrast to the shrieks from Greg’s talk. It really was needed to calm the nerves. Greg was there with his do it yourself kit to get kids interested in neuroscience. If you’re interested in what he did then look at his previous TED talk here or his experiment here.

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The event closed with the “Secret of the Sharing Economy” Benita delivered her plea for us to share more. She listed the benefits both financially and environmentally. Check out more here. But she took it a step further to the emotional level:

“When you trust someone, something wonderful can happen”

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So, how do I look outwards and forwards? How do I trust someone so that something wonderful can happen?

These are very interesting questions to ponder. Especially as I was fortunate enough to be watching the event live. There seemed to be a certain amount of irony. World class speakers wanting to change the world. But the audience in a comfortable bubble, a 5 star hotel.

These events are inspirational, but they need to inspire real action. The energy in the room was great. But will we as the audience remain passive. We shouldn’t attend such talks just to sit back and relax.

So, what about outwards and forwards, what about making something wonderful happen for someone else?

Well, I thought about it and found an answer. It’s time I shared some of my money. Time to trust a budding entrepreneur who needs some support. So I made some more loans on Kiva. It’s not a donation, it’s loan, it’s a massive enabler. It’s helping to kick start something special.

https://www.kiva.org/lender/leadtechie

“When you trust someone, something wonderful can happen” I hope in a few months these businesses will be starting up. They will be giving meaningful work to the entrepreneur. They will be helping their local communities.

Thank you Simon and Benita. For the inspiration. For reminding me to look outwards and forwards and to trust someone.

Trendwatching 2017

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David Mattin’s company Trendwatching does the research so that you can enjoy a perfectly sculpted story and overview of the trends that are currently taking place. His slides are available here.

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One of his top trends is Motivated Mindlessness. “Consumers, accustomed to AI-fueled assistance, seek to outsource the will power, planning and coaching needed to self-improve”

I think this makes it sounds a little negative, almost like people are getting lazier. I’d like to think of this more positively. There are now a whole host of scientifically proven tricks, which have been turned into consumer products and services, that help people improve themselves.

Are you supercharging yourself? Compared to the past this is now a lot easier to do.

I think I’d rather call it “Supported Mindfulness” Lot’s of people have great ideas on how they can improve themselves. The trouble is that there’s always something that’s getting in the way. Google has joined the trend and launched features to help you. If you look at the massive growth of other focussed start-ups like coach.me you can see that this trend is well and truly underway.

You should check the video of his talk out to see the rest of the trends.

The future of Work is Chaos

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Claire Burge did two talks. How AI will transform the way we work and The future of work is chaos.

They had overlapping themes, my main takeaways are:

Humans are good at Critical Thinking and Creativity. Anything else can be automated and will be done by AI. Why fight it, embrace it. Can you optimise and plan meetings for multiple teams and departments? It may take you time now but it’s really a waste of time, delegate it to the future AI bot that will soon be supporting you. You should be concentrating on the important stuff.

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There is one image that sticks in my head, and that’s the analogy regarding playgrounds. As a father of two kids it sits well with me. I always thought of playgrounds as a place for kids to go crazy, somewhere where they can be out of control, somewhere were they can let their energy out.

Claire’s view, which I now see, is that they are extremely controlled environments. They generally have fences to stop the kids escaping. They have multiple and very different specific areas. Swings to swing on, slides to climb up (yes, because sliding down would be boring) and a climbing frame to climb on etc. The question today is “What are we doing to setup the equivalent environments in our workplaces?”

“You don’t need to tell a child to go and play – the space tells them that. But the controls all exists in the design of the space. Apply that to AI and it gets really, really powerful.”

Claire also talked about major change projects. She split them into three areas:

  • Leadership
  • Processes
  • People

Most mistakes are made by focussing only on the processes. Unless the leadership and people are involved then you’re never going to reach more than 30% of the impact that’s possible. This means don’t jump straight into processes. You need to make sure that the leadership deeply understands the what, why and how regarding the changes.

I’d like to end it with Claire’s advice:

“Do we tame the chaos? No. We embrace it. That’s the challenge.”

See also:

The NEXT16 Conference Review

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How many conferences open with a techno marching band? As far as I know there’s only one. And that’s the Next Conference, it’s part of the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg.

I’m reviewing some of the keynotes and feeling inspired by the amazing lineup of speakers which were complemented with a splattering of soul touching music.

For shear stage presence I’d give the award to Steve Blame. He appeared 3 times a day to promote a band. Letting some music intersperse and add some perspective to the depth of technical and digital trends that were being talked about. He walked onto the stage in a relaxed and calm manner, giving entertaining anecdotes while the acts setup their instruments. If you want to see how you to introduce a band then look no further.

The Next Conference’s tag line is “Celebrating Digital Life” It’s the perfect stepping stone for developers who want to take a step back and view things from a different perspective. There are no coding sessions. Instead it’s a view of how technology trends are affecting the world. We’re talking big picture. It helps put things in context.

Apart from the music my favourite talks were by David Mattin and Claire Burge.

Here’s my take on their talks:

I hope to see you at next year at NEXT17

Are you on Auto-Pilot?

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Just last week an Emirates plane crash landed at Dubai International Airport . The aircraft burst in to flames soon afterwards, amazingly all 300 passengers and crew survived.

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Plane crashes are fortunately rare. This however was an even more unique event. Someone took a video from inside the plane as it was being evacuated.

What I find incredible was how people reacted. I’d expect people to be pushing, fighting and scrambling out of aircraft. Instead passengers were opening overhead bins, grabbing their belongings and trying to find their laptops.

Imagine, it’s a life and death situation. Do you save yourself or waste time collecting worthless belongings? Or even worse endanger other people by blocking their exits with your suitcase.

It’s been suggested that people may have collected their bags because it’s an automatic habit i.e. the plane has landed so that’s just what you do. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad (or even life threatening) we’re creatures of habit, that’s what we do.

This made me think. What else may we be doing just because it’s habit? Something that is not actually helping us? The first thing that came to mind was needlessly checking my phone.

Checking for an interesting update can give you a slight dopamine boost. It’s exciting, or at least it can be. But in reality most of the time, it’s mindless rubbish, adverts or just more work emails with a request for more of our time, an extra burden to an already overloaded schedule.

So what could we do about it:

  • Take notice. Is this also your habit? Every time you pick your phone up, think “Do I really need to check this now?”
  • Turn alerts off.
  • Put your phone in flight mode during meetings. So that you’re not distracted.
  • Take charge. Batch your updates. Check your news, emails, alerts just a few times a day. Do it on your schedule not when someone else interrupts you.
  • Most requests are not time critical. And if they are then email is the wrong way for you to be contacted. People would call if it was really important.

Sometimes it takes an extraordinary event like the plane crash to make you think about the ordinary.

The Magic of One-Click

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Amazon has a patent on One-Click technology. There are often differing views on whether this should be allowed. One view is “that’s so obvious how can you possibly patent that.” The other is that One-Click is such a magic step forward that it does deserve a patent.

Amazon is charging ahead with this principle. It’s old news but you should check out Amazon Dash. They are not the only ones though. My favourite product to follow this design principle is SONOS, with their Play Speakers.

SONOS advertises features such as multi-room setup and control from an app. But for me the killer feature is “One-Click” Play. With other speakers you can easily connect your phone via bluetooth. But just look at the steps when you come back home and want some music.

  • Unlock phone
  • Choose Music App
  • Change speaker to bluetooth
  • Start your music

So, OK, a whole four steps is a real first world problem. But with SONOS, you walk up to the elegantly designed speaker and click the “Play” button and it continues your playlist from where you last left off.

The difference between 2-4 steps and 1 really is magical. So…

  • If you’re designing software, take a step back and analyse the process to see if you can reduce the number of steps for key processes.
  • Review how you use your bookmarks. Adding a mini menu bar reduces a click. Review your top level bookmarks and top level directories. If these are setup you’ll probably be able to switch tasks faster. As you can get your key pages back you can close more tabs and reduce clutter.
  • Review the apps on the homepage of your phone. It’s a simple thing. But again, spend 10 minutes doing it now and you’ll save a lot of time over the week.

One-Click is magical. How can you use this principle to make your daily tasks more productive?

Stop taking the lift up to the gym! Incorporate training into your daily schedule.

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There’s no point in the theory if you never put it into practice. Learning new things is interesting but making use of the new knowledge and turning it into a regular habit is far more important.

Now, I’m not a really a gym person but I recently joined a gym. It happens to be on the 3rd floor, yet the majority of people take the lift up to the gym.

Let’s think about this for a second. These are motivated people who want to get fit. They’re paying money to the gym so they can exercise on machines. Yet even when they’re in their workout gear they ignore the opportunity of a warm up and don’t even walk up the stairs. The irony seems almost too much, this inconsistency seems absurd.

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(This gym is even worse!)

Taking a step back from this made me think about the last conference I went to. I came back inspired with hundreds of good ideas and improvements that I could make. As soon as I got back to the office however I got caught up in the day to day business and didn’t implement any of them.

This is like me taking the lift up to the gym. I’ve made an investment of time, I’ve been actively involved, I have learnt something new. That’s all good, but the important thing is to use this new knowledge and put it into practice in the real world.

The question I’d like to ask you today is: “Does this sound familiar?” Are you investing time studying but not actually putting the new knowledge into practice? Are you reading blogs on new frameworks and technologies but never trying them out? Are you reading about code quality and unit tests but never writing any tests?

“But what should I do?”

  1. Start small. If you’re trying to improve your code quality then write just one unit test.
  2. If you do read an interesting article or attend a seminar on an interesting topic. Make sure you take action that day. Don’t think about it, do it! Before you leave the seminar write down one thing that you can do.
  3. Positive Reinforcement. Celebrate the small wins. If you’ve written a unit test then you’ve made one small step to improving quality. That’s far more important than wishing you had good test coverage but doing nothing about it.

Gyms provide a dedicated and specific place to work out. Yet most gym goers miss simple exercise opportunities like taking the stairs or walking a few blocks. Individually they’re not much but if done continuously through the day and they become a habit and it can have a bigger impact than the gym.
Likewise there are plenty of ways to learn new technology skills from blogs, online courses or conferences. This is your “dedicated” time, make sure that you follow up with regular “mini workouts” that are part of your regular daily routine. The “doing” and putting into practice will actually make a bigger difference.

Freedom, Consistency and Toothbrushes

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Striking the balance between freedom and ensuring consistency is difficult. As a leader you need to be one step ahead of your team in order shape the decision making process.

Take for example these two pictures of toothbrushes. They belong to my sons, but who has the green one?

ToothbrushUpstairsToothbruchDownstairs

We always have trouble getting our boys out of the house in the morning. If they forget to clean their teeth then this means another time wasting trip upstairs. There was an easy solution, a 2nd set of toothbrushes downstairs.

As a way to get them more excited about this, I let them choose the tooth brushes themselves. It was only when we got home later that I realised our older son had a green toothbrush upstairs and a orange one downstairs. And our younger son had a orange one downstairs and green one upstairs.

So the lessons…

  1. Be consistent: Scaling processes inconsistency can lead to more confusion
  2. As a leader you need to look at the bigger picture. Give your team freedom but place constraints on them and ensure consistency is a requirement
  3. Doubling resources or capabilities in certain areas can avoid bottlenecks but don’t forget the extra overhead and maintenance of keeping them running.

Involving your team in the decision making process is critical. Just think carefully before offering them too much freedom which may then lead to inconsistency.

Risk Reviews, Early Escalation and Potty Training

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The early identification of risks can save time and avoid a lot of stress. However, it is often left too late which only leads to more problems. Asking more detailed questions and reserving separate blocks of time for completing reviews can help.

Have you ever been around toddlers or young kids as they are being potty trained? Here are few common scenarios:

  1. Before leaving the house you ask them if they need to go to to the toilet. The usual answer is “no.” Five minutes later when you’re in the car there’s an emergency cry from the back “I need to go pee pee!”
  2. They are so deeply involved in playing that they almost forget. It’s a parental duty to watch out for the jiggling dance and hopefully remind them in time
  3. As they get older they get better. They know themselves but still often wait until the last minute and only then run to the bathroom. This sometimes results in last second failures. They were oh so close but the result is still wet pants, even if they made it to the bathroom.

shutterstock_140270971Here are the direct analogies for you as leader:

  1. Don’t believe the standard answer. Just asking yes-no questions regarding the status and risks for projects often gives you a “no” which can be the wrong answer. Dig deeper and ask for specifics.
  2. Take a step back from what you’re doing. It’s easy to get lost in the daily grind. You need to take a step back and think about the risks. Take a block of time now, review and think about the possible risks. Even if you are busy this will save time with escalations and problems later
  3. Keep asking questions. Even when people know what they’re doing, you still need to check in with them. Junior developers are not as good at seeing risks and problems. Keep up with the detailed questions, it could be it’s going well now but they may only see some problems too late. You want to avoid last minute project explosions.

So, you might not want to tell your team that you are starting their potty training 🙂 But it’s a good analogy to help keep your risks under control.