Geeks Archives - BrightHill Group

Amazing Secrets of Great Geek Leaders

You became a highly technical expert. You found that your expertise was critical to your success. The geekier you got, the more you got paid.

And then it happened.

One day your boss came to you and said

“You’ve been doing a great job. I need you to be the technical lead over these young geeks.“

You replied:

“Wait – we have a deal – I get smarter about my chosen field, and you pay me more! Don’t go changing the rules now!”

But it was too late. Now what? You’re supposed to figure out the people stuff?

It turns out that leading people is VERY different from technical expertise. Neil DeGrasse Tyson said

When human behavior enters the equation, things go nonlinear. That’s why physics is easy and sociology is hard.

And he’s exactly right. But there is hope. I started my career as a geek – a hands on technologist who bought my fist computer with money I saved up on my paper route. I worked in startups and in Fortune 500 companies – and I learned the secrets to being able to lead people – as a geek, leading geeks.

You can learn it, too.

Here are the four levels of thinking you need to develop in order to become a great geek leader:

Individual
Perspective: I perform with excellence
I need more than great geek skills to succeed. I need to lead myself – would I follow me? In addition to my technical talent, I know that I need to learn about business, and about how to work with others.
Team Member
Perspective: The team performs with excellence
One is too small a number to achieve greatness. I need team members to want to help me so that together we can deliver bigger, more important work than I could do by myself. My influence comes from relationships, not formal power.
Team Leader
Perspective: I grow a team of great performers
As “the boss” of a team, I need to help my team members grow in their ability to lead so that our team can create even more capacity – and further increase our impact as a team. We perform together, and I become a better leader as they become good followers. My influence is from permission, not position.
Team Builder
Perspective: I think about succession – developing other leaders
As a leader, I need to equip the leaders who work for me to build their own teams – to become team leaders who develop other team leaders – moving from creating followers to creating other leaders. My influence is from investment in others, not from title or role.

What level is your thinking today?

What level do you need to reach tomorrow?

Want to grow? Check out my Podcast

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Three Things NASCAR Pit Crews Can Teach You About Geek Work

Living in the heart of NASCAR country even for just a couple of years I’ve already had great opportunities to study and learn from people in the motor sports industry.

The more I pick up the more I realize how much I still have to learn!

I recently had the opportunity to take a tour of the Stewart Haas racing facility in Kannapolis North Carolina. It is astonishing to understand just how much technology and complexity goes into these 200 mph cars.

NASCAR teams recruit and maintain some of the most talented people in the world to be able to make their cars go just a little faster than the other guy around the track.

Races are won or lost in the pit!

One area of the campus that really stuck out to me was the investment they made in their pit crew training facilities.

I have heard it said that races are won or lost in the pit. That could well be true. Just this season, I have seen a race decided by 1/100 of a second! Successful pit stops depend on fast, flawless, complex choreographed execution.

In 12 seconds (or less) a NASCAR pit crew hits 40 lug nuts, changes four tires, makes suspension adjustments, fills up the gas tank with fuel, clears the windshield, makes airflow adjustments and sends the driver on his way.

Because of the speed, agility, strength, and precision required to complete a successful pit stop NASCAR teams recruit top athletes from major college sports programs and from other professional sports.

So what do NASCAR pit athletes have to do with geeks?

Three things pit crews can teach you about geek work

It takes more than your part of the work.
Teamwork is just as important as technical skill (and more fragile)
Training is the work

1. It takes more than your part of the work.

tony stewart 2009 coca cola 600- flickr tequilamike cc license - 3568402361_d3ed87cdf3_b — Courtesy Flickr/TequilaMike https://www.flickr.com/photos/hyttinen/

Time is short, and the job is so complex that there’s just not any room for mistakes.
Whether you are the driver, the fuel man, the Jack man, for changing tires, everything you do impacts everyone else on the team. Everything they do impacts you. You have to support each other – and that means knowing a lot of THEIR job, too.

The only way that complex, fast moving systems can work is if the experts know more than just their silo.

This means that you need to invest in learning about what other people do. Not just the technical stuff, but also the business stuff.
What are you studying in addition to your area of expertise?

2. Teamwork is just as important as technical skill (and more fragile)

NASCAR pit crews have to work perfectly.

It’s really like an orchestra. Success completely depends on each player playing their part well and perfectly coordinated with the other team members.

This means that they have to train together. They train

in the specific task of servicing a car in the pits, and also
in the weight room,
on the track running, and
even in downtime getting to know each other as people.

When you can perform at an elite level, often times the difference between winning and losing is actually in mindset, emotions, and teamwork.

Team trust takes a long time to build, and even just one sideways comment from a teammate can take it off track.

Your ability to deliver great solutions depends on teamwork. What are you doing to build it in your team?

3. Training is the work

One of the things that I hear fairly regularly is that technology teams would like to improve their execution when it comes to technology projects for the business, but they “just can’t find the time” to pull people away from the real work to think about things like soft skills and business insights.

Pit crews know that training doesn’t take you away from the real work. Multi-disciplinary training is the work. These guys study their own job backward, forward and inside out. They practice their moves over and over and over again. Training in their area of expertise is their job and training with the team is their job.

“When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare”

Pit crews don’t think that they’ll stop working and THEN start training. Pit crews know that training is the work.

Your ability to achieve does depend on your technical expertise. It also depends on your ability to work with other people, and your understanding of the business drivers that make people hire you for the work.

What are you doing today to make training a part of the work you do each week? Each month? This year?

Wrap up

Based on what you have read, what will you do to prepare for your work the same way that a NASCAR pit crew repairs?

Will it be in growing people skills,
business knowledge,
teamwork, or
even just recognizing that training is the work?

Let me know! Email me at coach@BrightHillGroup.com

Google Maps & Live Traffic for your next flight? How SmartSky’s tech may change air travel.

Keeping up with tech

As you know, I like to keep my hand in current developments in technology and software. This week I geeked out on some of the technical bits I learned and want to share some thoughts from the April CRTEC meeting (Charlotte Regional Technology Executives Council) about a Charlotte tech startup that is on the path to being something big.

At SmartSky Networks, President Ryan Stone educated us about the complexities of creating a new cellular data network which can support mobile clients who are moving at 1,000 miles per hour.

How’s the Weather Up There?

I also learned that our national weather forecasts largely depend on manual launches of 200 weather balloons, and that there’s currently no automated way to collect air turbulence data and report it in real time. Most up to date data about turbulence comes from “PieReps” – Pilot Reports like “a little choppy at 15,000 feet. Requesting a higher altitude”

Once the ground and air portions are in place, the bidirectional high speed internet will allow better access to electronically collected weather data to be sent immediately to weather forecasters. Panasonic Weather Solutions already has the data collection equipment in a lot of planes, and needs higher speed Internet to take it to the next level.

Here’s a weather forecast visualization from Panasonic based on data collected from their aircraft mounted TAMDAR weather sensors.

Image courtesy Panasonic Weather Solutions

Google Maps For Your Pilot

What this can mean for you is less turbulence on your next flight as well as more efficient airline operations. Think Google Maps with Live Traffic – but for your airline pilot!
It’s amazing to think about how cool whizbang nerdiness with radios and networking make it possible to solve problems that seem unrelated – providing passenger Internet access can make better weather forecasts available.

How inflight Wifi Works Today

Most currently available in flight Internet service is either

Satellite based (high latency and asynch – higher download than upload speed) or
3G cellular-based, which is low latency but limited in data transmission rates.

SmartSky’s network, apparently, will be a game changer. They have figured out how to provide nationwide, high speed bidirectional, low latency Internet service to aircraft.

SmartSky is currently building a national cellular network with hundreds of towers and Internet connections to support simultaneous high speed service for thousands of planes and passengers. They are doing this using custom designed beam forming phased array antennas, virtual Internet gateways and airline cellular web cookies, over a modified 4G LTE network stack that supports high speed handoffs. Pretty cool stuff.

Of course, the ground network alone isn’t enough. They have to have subscribers, too. SmartSky is already working with aircraft maintenance companies and avionics installers to equip private jets and commercial aircraft with the radios needed to access their networks. Their launch plan is to have the network operational for commercial clients later this year or early in 2017.

Where Intellectual Property (the other IP) Comes In

Image Courtesy https://www.flickr.com/photos/businesssarah/

Oh – one other point – Ryan pointed out that the “patent wars” we hear about between tech giants happen because investors want to make sure that there are assets that will have residual value if the startup fails.

He talked about the importance of having a great IP lawyer help protect your inventions (and how they were really helped by acquiring a previous patent application from someone who had not followed through to actually get their patent approved.)

Today SmartSky has something like 17 patents on inventions they have come up with. These are patents on business methods, not on specific technical implementations. An interesting approach. I’ll leave the question of whether business methods *should* be patentable for another time. Suffice to say that intellectual property law is a strategy they are fully committed to.

Ryan talked about culture, values and leadership too. All good stuff for a future post.

I’m glad that CRTEC is one way I can stay connected with what’s happening in Tech.

Thanks to Ryan for filling us in, too! – http://smartskynetworks.com

Want more? Check out this short video with Ryan – courtesy of CRTEC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZxm0Pstf4&feature=youtu.be

Geeks: How to get credit for your great work

Fellow geeks:

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve been given too little time, a tiny budget, insufficient tools and you’ve managed to turn out something really cool in spite of that?

Has it ever happened that you leveraged your creativity and talent to deliver something amazing and had your customer not even notice? You didn’t even get credit?

I just watched that happen this week. I’ll tell you what happened, and how you can make sure that you get credit (and support for future projects) when you’ve done a great job.

Google Fiber is coming to my town!

A few months ago I was thrilled to learn that Google had chosen Charlotte as one of the next cities where they will roll out Google fiber. Even though I live outside the city, and there’s zero chance that Google fiber will provide service, I was still excited.

One of the benefits of competition is that it shakes up the marketplace and challenges the status quo. Given the fact that internet service providers in the US are consistently rated the lowest in customer satisfaction, shaking up the status quo is a good thing.

Almost immediately after Google announced that it would be launching a residential 1Gbps service at $75/month, AT&T and Time Warner responded with promises of improved speeds.

Having worked in the telecom industry, one thing that I know about cable and phone companies is that they are VERY technology driven.

There are a large number of very smart geeks working there whose job it is to combine an ever-changing set of technologies into product offerings that support their customer needs. They frequently do it with short deadlines, insufficient funding and little organizational support.

Which brings me to today’s story:

After months of having my Time Warner internet service run without maintenance or attention, I was having some challenges. I restarted my router. I restarted my cable modem, and all was working. A few days later, the problem recurred. At this point I decided it was worth some investigation.

When I signed up for service, the sales people and I went back and forth over “bundles” and “features” and “options” and of course prices. We settled on a 30Mbps download/5Mbps upload service. They offered speeds as high as 50Mbps, but we settled on 30.

When I began to troubleshoot my issues with my cable connection, I ran a speed test and discovered that I was getting almost 120Mbps! I figured something was wrong with their bandwidth throttle, and it would get fixed soon.

A few days later I checked again, and was still getting that kind of speed. I decided to call tech support. I said “I appreciate higher speeds, but I think that your throttling algorithm is not working properly. I don’t want to pay more, so I thought I’d let you know.

The tech told me “Oh yeah. We upgraded everyone in your area. You now get 200Mbps download, 20Mbps upload.”

Wait. What?

Here’s the thing. Cable providers are consistently low scoring in customer satisfaction.

In the 2015 ACSI survey, Time Warner Cable had a score of 51 out of 100. (The average company surveyed was around 75.)

In this case, they upgraded my speed – giving me almost 7x the performance AT THE SAME PRICE – but didn’t even tell me about it.

What might happen to their customer satisfaction score if they advertise the fact that they are giving me more and not raising the price?

These geeks did something great. Something that I’m really happy about. something I might have been willing to pay more for. (I did go buy a faster cable modem today because my old one could only deliver 100Mbps, and they have provisioned DOUBLE that.)

Why didn’t they TELL ME ABOUT IT?

All marketers are liars

At least that’s what Seth Godin said in the book of the same name.

Now I know that “marketing” and “sales” are dirty words when it comes to most geeks. There’s a geek joke that goes “How can you tell when a technology sales person is lying? When their lips are moving.” Too many times geeks have been burned by promises made in the sales process that never materialized in the implementation process.

As a result, we tend to be skeptics and to disregard the “sales-y” stuff we read.

What if the TWC geeks had done something different? They have my physical and email address. They know exactly what equipment I have provisioned at the house. All of that geeky data is in a database they already have.

What if they had taken the time to identify all of the affected customers and send a series of emails like:

“Something cool is about to happen, and it won’t cost you a thing.“
“We’ve noticed that your cable modem can handle more speed, but if you want the MOST speed let’s help you get upgraded to a faster one.” Here’s a guide. (Or, call our specialists to help schedule a tech to come install a new one for only $175 plus rental fee.)
“Here’s a list of stuff you can do with 200Mbps that you COULDN’T do before.“
“Great news: we’ve gone live. Your internet connection is blazing fast!”

Let’s learn a lesson from Time Warner.

Take some time to think about how to tell customers about the cool stuff you’re doing.
Think about what matters to them.
Think about the words that they would use.

Then say it out loud.

Remember Steve Jobs? Back when the iPod launched, all of the competing MP3 players were marketed by storage capacity: 64MB, 128MB, etc.

Steve Jobs came out in his black turtleneck and bluejeans, slid a sleek white and chrome box out of his pocket and said “1,000 songs in your pocket.“

Craft a few messages. Yes, it takes a little time, but if your customers understand and appreciate the cool stuff you’re doing for them, you’ll get the tools, resources, budget and team to do even more great work.

I wish that TWC had thought of this. And I’m enjoying my higher internet speed.

Oh – and to the geeks at TWC who made my faster internet connection possible: THANK YOU!

Priorities – How to Get Your Most Important Work Done

Are You Working On The Most Important Stuff This Week?

Stephen Covey said in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” that we experience stress when our “circle of concern” is BIGGER than our “circle of influence.”

Ever Get Frustrated By All The Problems At Work?

Many years ago I worked as a hands-on technologist and frankly I was pretty frustrated. I could see lots of things that were “broken” around me, and I wanted to fix them. Unfortunately I didn’t have the formal power or budget to tackle them, and I found myself blocked at every turn from REALLY making a difference at work. That bugged me. A lot.

Joe’s Story

I was reminded of my experience as I sat down with a client this week.

Joe is in his early thirties, has done some solid work in his career, and now finds himself in charge of a team of geeks.

On top of the typical day-to-day challenges in his job, Joe sees that there are fundamental disconnects between what the organization SAYS it wants, and how it behaves.

Joe is struggling with how to really make a difference.
He’s passionate.
He’s hardworking.
He cares about the company.
And Joe’s on the road to burnout.

Joe’s Big Challenge

Joe sees problems that he does not have the budget, staff or political support to tackle.
Joe feels overwhelmed by the fact that he wants to fix ALL the problems.
On his own he simply can’t make it happen.
Joe’s been losing sleep over the frustrations, pain and failed projects.

Joe’s circle of concern is FAR larger than his circle of influence. In some ways, that’s good – he wants to help the company win, not just himself or even his department.

Concern is a good thing.

What Can Joe Do?

Should Joe stop caring? NO!

Joe needs to adjust his circle of concern to be closer – FAR closer – to his circle of influence.

I advised him to sit down with his boss and pick 2 or 3 areas (no more than 3) where he and his team can commit to REALLY moving the needle in the next 90 days.

When he’s picking which things to work on, Joe and his team will heavily prioritize these projects over the other areas.

When management refuses to fund (or see) a problem area, Joe will keep a log of issues.

Once he’s put it in his log – or mentioned it once – he will have to stop thinking about it. That’s someone else’s problem – and Joe needs to let it be that way.

What Happens If Your Circles Don’t Match?

I used to work with Steven. Steven is a very smart guy who knew Windows XP inside and out. He was passionate, hard working, and committed to excellence in his engineering work.

Steven filed more bug reports that subsequently became Microsoft KB articles than anyone else I’ve ever heard of.

The problem? The company didn’t really care about having a perfect desktop OS.

Steven’s circle of concern was big enough to include all of the users whose machines might not wake up when they went to sleep, or machines that might blue screen when they plugged in a new device.

Steven didn’t want HIS name on any helpdesk tickets caused because he didn’t find the problem before the customer.

Because the company didn’t care, it refused to hire a team large enough to do the level of work that Steven demanded of himself.

Steven worked long hours – he skipped vacation. He worked weekends to make sure that the system was as good as he could make it. In spite of this, he missed things.

Customers complained of problems. Steven took their complaints personally. He vowed to work harder. He was burning out.

Steven’s Performance Review

When it came time for Steven’s annual review, the company gave him an average raise. AVERAGE?!?!?!?!? he roared? Average? Didn’t they know how hard he had worked? Didn’t they see all he had sacrificed? Didn’t they appreciate what he had done for the company? For the customers?

Actually, no. They hadn’t noticed. They were not measuring that. It was not personal – it was that they had other priorities, other investments.

His bosses thought it was good that Steven did good work, but his “above and beyond” effort had zero effect on his compensation.

What Happened to Steven?

Steven became frustrated and bitter.
He worked hard, but was harder to work with because of his latent anger. Promotions? Not for the grumpy guy.
Who wants to work with an angry person?
Who wants to listen to someone who takes every opportunity to vent about how the company is stupid and makes bad decisions?

I felt bad for him. The last contact I had with Steven was about 8 years ago. I just looked him up on LinkedIn. He’s doing the same job today that he was doing then. I’d bet he’s still unhappy.

Action Point

What can you do right now to “right size” your circles of concern and influence? How can you set priorities that matter to your boss and to your company?

What 2-3 things can you and your team deliver over the next 90 days?

What’s your plan to under-promise and then over deliver on all of them?

Getting important things done will make you and your boss a LOT happier.

It happened again this morning. Don’t let it happen to you!

It happened again. Just this morning.

A colleague had a defection of sorts.

Two key tech employees independently gave their two weeks’ notice.

I’m close enough to have some insight into what happened in this particular case.

This is a growing, vibrant technology firm. The leaders are smart, nice, hard working people. They want to do the right thing for their clients, and for their team members.

Each employee decided to leave the company. Why? One key factor: senior leadership.

Project Oxygen- 8 keys to being a great boss - google — Click here to download our FREE Infographic – Google’s 8 Keys to Leading Technical Team Members

One of the “defectors” was an up and coming leader himself. His key frustration is that his boss was unwilling, or perhaps unable to let him lead.

Think about this: you have a smart, hard-working, emerging leader on your staff. Your vision is for this team member to grow and become a future leader of your company.

You look for opportunities to help them grow.

But:

because you are overwhelmed,
because you are incredibly busy,
because it’s not a crisis for you,

YOU just simply have not made the time to grow your leadership skills.

Your lack of leadership skill is a key factor holding you back, and holding back your team from growing.

Your People Skills Matter More Than Technical Skills

business success 87 percent people knowledge 13 percent product knowledge stanford

The research is clear that our success is tied to our “people knowledge” but time and again, we invest our energy in product knowledge!

I wrote about this a few months ago – the demand for tech talent in Charlotte is high – and unless you set yourself apart, your best folks are going to leave. Period.

The Cost of Turnover

What does this turnover cost you?

For this colleague, some of the impacts that they are dealing with right now are:

Knowledge transfer.
Customer relationships.
Developing a plan to deal with all of this transition.
Follow through on delivery of promises made to current customers.
Reassuring customers that the company can continue to meet their needs during this transition.
Finding time to keep up with all of the commitments that were made to other customers.
Opportunity cost: what deals are lost because leaders are distracted by all of these activities right now?

And none of these costs are related to actually replacing that staff member!

You still have to invest time in:

Updating job descriptions.
Advertising the position on job boards.
Reaching out to recruiting firms to try to identify good candidates.
Scheduling interviews with potential candidates.
Assessing the skills of potential recruits.
And on and on.

This turns out to be a pretty expensive exercise, doesn’t it?

Again, let me emphasize that this is a good company. The owners of the company are decent, hard-working, nice people. They are smart. They care about their team members. They want their team members to grow. And yet they’ve suffered this loss.

What Went Wrong?

mind the gap doormat flickr daveblogs007 cc_license_8488204426_218f1c0a41_o_with_attribution_cropped

1. They didn’t “Mind the Gap” between their intent to grow, and their ACTION to grow.

They talked about personal growth. They talked about a staff development program, but by the time they actually started working on that, the emerging leader had lost hope.

The delay between the company leaders intending to do something and ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING was just too long.

2. Neglecting personal development. The owners of the company were “too busy” to work on their leadership skills.

What Can You Do Now?

There’s a huge gulf between your intent and your action.

Make a plan to grow your leadership skills and then
Take Action!

person jumping across a gap - pixabay public domain leap-456100_1920_cropped_resized_edited

Think you don’t have the time or money? Neither did this colleague.

In this market you can’t afford NOT to invest in your people and your people skills.

Just ask my colleague.

Want help? Give me a call. 240-668-4799