Listen now!

In this episode:

• What can you do when your boss will only communicate with you through angry text messages?
• How can you leverage meeting minutes to get more from the meetings you attend?  And should you?
• What will it take to improve your intuition?

Listen now!

Resources:

Transcript:

Tom: Now, your boss is embarrassed because, A, he looked stupid in front of a client, and, B, he looked stupid in front of his boss. Nobody wants that, so his natural reaction is to try and find a way to get out of that situation. So what do you do? Well, first thing I’m gonna do is find a thousand reasons that it’s not my fault, right? And before you go and make that list of the thousand reasons your boss is absolutely, undeniably, unquestionably wrong, if you’ve already done that, don’t email that to the CEO and your boss. It’s not gonna help you. Seriously.

Male: [00:00:38] “Becoming a Geek Leader,” season 3, episode 10.

Tom: [00:00:44]

Sponsored by BrightHill Group’s Team Leadership Services

Dysfunctional teams are painful and cost you time and money. They also suck the life out of you and take the fun out of work. How about your team? Is it time for a tuneup? How prepared is your team for the challenges ahead? I can help create a simple development process for your team members, something easy for you to use, not another project for you to manage. Growth doesn’t happen by accident. Whether it’s through a leadership assessment or helping you plan a leadership retreat, give me a call to talk about how to set up an affordable program to improve your team’s teamwork and help your team members perform like a well-oiled machine. Check out brighthillgroup.com/geektraining. That’s brighthillgroup.com/geektraining for quick videos on my team building and leadership retreats. Then give me a call at 240-668-4799. That’s 240-668-4799.

Introduction

[00:01:49] Welcome to the “Becoming a Geek Leader” podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the “Becoming a Geek Leader” podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

[00:02:11] In today’s episode, I’m talking about a tool that can help your projects be significantly more productive. I’ll teach you the five steps that are gonna let you multiply your project results. I’m also addressing a question from Giovita [SP] about a boss who’s managing by text messages, and I’m also sharing John Maxwell’s law of intuition. And we’ve got a lot of stuff to cover. Let’s get started.

Mentoring segment.

Male: [00:02:35] In the “Mentoring” segment, Tom tackles tough issues based on his years of experience.

Tom: [00:02:45] Okay, in the “Mentoring” segment today, I’m talking about meeting minutes. Now, I know that that sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry, but I’m telling you there’s a lot of value here. Leveraging meeting minutes is something you’re gonna be able to tackle when you’re at level 2 of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

Male: [00:03:03] Level 2, team member. Level 2 is where you work well with others, and together, you all succeed.

Tom: [00:03:13] And I know when it comes to meeting minutes, an awful lot of people think this is like watching paint dry or some other mind numbing thing, but I will tell you that I’m actually passionate about it. Why in the world would I be passionate about something as boring as being a meeting secretary? Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned while being a part of a formal meeting setting it is that decision-making is rare, and capturing decisions made is critical. Whoever writes the meeting minutes is the one writing history. Whoever writes the history controls the record.

[00:03:47] Now, as I’m getting started here, I wanna say something very clearly and very directly. If you’re responsible for keeping meeting minutes, do not lie. Never lie. Lying is a sure path to destroying your reputation, and you just shouldn’t do it, period. Don’t lie. Now, with that out of the way, being truthful doesn’t mean that you can’t choose to document things in a way that suits your interests. Now, let’s say you’re in a meeting where a lot of things are discussed and not very many decisions are actually being made. You got into a ton of rabbit trails and off-topic discussions. There was even a rant by one person on their favorite complaint that had absolutely nothing to do with the meeting, and you walk out of the room and you think, “Man, what a complete waste of time. We only talked about two of the seven things that I wanted to talk about.”

[00:04:35] Now, does that sound familiar? We can address meeting management in a future podcast, but let’s talk about what did happen during that meeting. So for item 1, let’s say you had unanimous agreement about next steps. Everybody kind of nodded their head, “Yup, we should definitely do that.” For item 2, there were two objections raised, and both, you know, can be fixed. But you didn’t get complete agreement. Everybody but two people agreed. Then you got to item 3 on your agenda, and that’s when you brought up the topic that just destroyed the meeting. Nobody could agree. And not only that, but people got fired up. People got angry and upset and frustrated. And after that, there was no agreement on anything, and the agenda was completely destroyed in the process.

[00:05:18] What do you do if you’re responsible for your meeting minutes for that kind of meeting? Well, first, you need to write the meeting minutes. You got to write them up. And you got agreement on one item, write that first item you got agreement on, and that needs to be documented. For item 2, you were able to document that while there were issues raised by Lisa and Julio, there was a general agreement about the direction that you needed to move, and you note that you’ve taken action item to follow up with Lisa and Julio individually to see if you can get their buy-in. It’s as simple as that.

[00:05:51] Now, here’s the thing. With item 3, you got that far, and it’s clear the team does not have a go-forward plan today. In fact, item 3 definitely is gonna need a special meeting on its own. It might even be too big. You might have to break item 3 down into multiple pieces in order to get places where you can find agreement from others. So you take an action item to schedule a follow up meeting dedicated to item 3 in the near future. Now, there’s no way to spin it other than to say, “You’ve got work to do after this meeting.” No question. But you documented what did happen and you framed it in a positive way. Now, framing it in a positive way is important. The conqueror Napoleon said leaders are dealers in hope, and you’re a leader here. It’s your job to deal in hope to the team and for your boss as well.

[00:06:41] So just as a quick recap, there are five steps to getting huge value from creating the meeting minutes. First, actually write the minutes. Write them down, and you positively document all the things that can be seen as positive from the meeting. Whatever it is that could be seen as positive, you find a positive way to express it. Two, you document the decisions that were made. So you write the minutes. You document the decisions. Three, you document areas where more work is needed. Fourth, you identify who is gonna take the action and when, if possible, when it’s gonna happen as well. So you write the minutes. You document decisions made. You document areas where more work is needed. You identify who is gonna take action and hopefully when. And then fifth, you send out the meeting minutes.

[00:07:28] Now, when you email the Word document out or the link to the document out, you say, “Here are the minutes from the meeting. Please let me know if I made any mistakes or if I’ve forgotten anything.” Now, I can tell you from experience that you will almost never hear back from anybody, but that’s okay because what’s happened now is if there’s a question about what did we decide during the meeting, you go back to the meeting minutes and that’s the official record. Now, you might think, “I’m not the meeting organizer. There’s no way I can keep the meeting minutes. It’s not my role.” But if you’re not the meeting organizer, you can still take the minutes. All you have to do is offer. You go to the organizer and you say, “I think we’d benefit from having meeting minutes. Would it be okay with you if I acted as scribe and I created them? I’ll be glad to send them to you so you can send them out.” Look, as long as you do a decent job and you’re helping that meeting leader accomplish their goals, they will welcome your help.

[00:08:26] Now, there’s too much for me to cover in a single “Mentoring” segment of the podcast, but if you’re interested in more, you can check out my free lesson on simply effective meetings, where I talk about meeting management, meeting minutes, and more. If you go over to brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, that’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, you can get immediate access to a free course on meetings that includes minutes and strategies to improve participation and templates for meeting agendas and for meeting minutes also. Creating meeting minutes is a powerful way to help you make progress on your projects, and that’s today’s “Mentoring” segment.

Coach’s Mailbox.

Male: [00:09:05] In the “Coach’s Mailbox” segment, Tom answers a direct question from a listener. Want Tom to answer your question? Just send an email to coach@brighthillgroup.com. That’s coach@brighthillgroup.com.

Tom: [00:09:26] What do you do when your boss is not handling things well? Now, this question is something you can deal with when you’re at level 2 of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader. In today’s “Coach’s Mailbox” segment, I’ve got an email from Giovita. Giovita writes, “Tom, I’m hoping you can help me. My boss is making me crazy. He was at an offsite meeting with senior leaders and a client. All of a sudden, he starts sending me angry text messages basically blaming me for a problem. The CEO had called our department out in front of the client for screwing up. As I looked into the problem, I learned that what he was upset about didn’t actually happen at all the way he thought it did. We didn’t screw up, and he was upset about nothing. His angry text messages made me and the team scramble over a complete fire drill waste of time. What can I say to my boss?”

[00:10:19] Well, Giovita, that’s a tough situation. And we don’t know exactly what happened, but I’ve been in your situation before, and I’ve also been at the table for these leadership meetings, too. I can only speculate about what happened with your boss, but I’ve got a pretty good guess about what might have happened. A lot of times, leaders don’t have the details at their fingertips. And sometimes, they carry forward what they thought they heard, and they tell a story they’re pretty sure is right. And one possibility here is that your CEO is afraid of looking bad to the client. And so he thought he heard your department drop the ball. And then in the meeting, he says out loud what he thinks is true, and essentially throws your boss under the bus.

[00:11:04] Now, I’m gonna just take a moment and say it’s important to realize how most of us who ever found ourselves in a leadership position actually got into that leadership position. Most of the time, we were talented individual contributors, and as we established a pattern of getting stuff done, we found ourselves responsible for bigger and bigger stuff, until we’re put in charge of a team. Now, if our team delivered, we get promoted again. So what that means is that people in charge are often more focused on tasks and getting stuff done than they are on leading people. And it also means we may not be aware of what it takes to lead people well. And what’s even worse is the average manager is in position for 10 years before getting any training on people or on leadership.

[00:11:53] And that’s why, many times, bosses are not great at dealing with people. And that’s why your CEO may have chosen to throw your department under the bus. So, let’s take just a minute and put yourself in your boss’ position. He’s found himself, all of a sudden, under a bus. And what’s worse is he doesn’t actually know if the bus belongs on top of him. It’s conceivably possible that you and the team did screw up. He doesn’t know. And this is a situation that as Steven Colbert, the comedian, calls truthiness. It might be true. It also might not be true. And it’s possible that it’s true, and because now someone in authority, the CEO, said it, it’s even truthier than before.

[00:12:38] Here’s the thing. Now, the facts don’t matter because regardless of the actual facts, this became a factoid because it was repeated by the CEO, even if the facts are unquestionably in opposition to whatever it is that he just said. So now, your boss is embarrassed because, A, he looked stupid in front of a client, and, B, he looked stupid in front of his boss. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. So his natural reaction is to try and find a way to get out of that situation. And that’s where the text messages come in and the crappy day you had dealing with those lousy text messages.

[00:13:21] So, what do you do? Well, I put my engineer brain in gear, and the first thing I’m gonna do is find a thousand reasons that it’s not my fault, right? And before you go and make that list of the thousand reasons your boss is absolutely, undeniably, unquestionably wrong, before you do that, and also if you’ve already done that, don’t email that to the CEO and your boss. It’s not gonna help you. Seriously. Don’t send that out. As I said, at this point, the facts are irrelevant. What matters are the feelings of the leaders.

[00:13:56] Now, for those of us with an engineering background, it’s really annoying because we like to think of ourselves as super rational people. And unfortunately, we’re not. Unfortunately, what happens is we make our decisions emotionally, and then we find a logical justification for them. Your boss will logically rationalize whatever he wants to make it okay for him to have sent that lousy email to you. And there is nothing you can do to change that. So, this bitter pill is that the feelings matter more than the facts, but I’m here to tell you the truth even if you don’t like it. That’s my job. So, now you might think, “Well, yeah, feelings matter. What about my feelings?” Well, I’m sorry to say that I don’t think your feelings are all that relevant to your boss or your boss’ boss.

[00:14:44] So, what should you do? Well, the first thing you should do is find the time when you can go see the boss in person face-to-face. That type, this…conflict resolution is almost universally more effective if you can do it face to face. There’s a lot of power in being able to do that face to face. Do not text-message back, and do not email to try and resolve the issue. That’s not gonna get you where you wanna go. Next, tell your boss you’re sorry they were in that situation. Now, we’re not admitting fault here. What we’re saying is, “Boy, that really stinks for you. I’m sorry that that was the case.” You’re not admitting guilt because you don’t have to admit guilt because you weren’t guilty here, but you can legitimately be empathetic about the situation your boss is in.

[00:15:29] Next, you wanna tell your boss you’ve looked into the facts, and he might be interested in learning what you learned. And this is not the time for you to be defensive, nor is it a time for you to be self-righteous because there were a thousand reasons it wasn’t your fault, right? Even if they were a 100% wrong in accusing your team, this is not the time for you to take a victory lap. What you wanna do is tell your boss that after looking into it, you’re convinced your team wasn’t to blame. Now, in your process, you may have uncovered some facts that led the CEO to believe you were to blame and go ahead and share those. It looks like we did the wrong thing here because. Or so and so said. Or there was this email. Or whatever. But share those facts and then say, “But I’ve uncovered what really happened, and it turns out it wasn’t our issue.”

[00:16:16] And next, you’re gonna wanna try and come up with a solution. Even if it’s something like better cross-team communication or a better approach to problem reporting or problem tracking, the key thing is you wanna focus on solutions, not the history. The history is just not gonna help you at this point. Now, once you’ve settled the issue and you’ve got some kind of proposed solutions, then you can talk about the way your boss handled the situation. Now, I don’t have time today to go into exactly what you should do there, but if you check out season 2, episode 4, which I called “Dealing with a Disrespectful Team Member,” I think you’ll find the technique there to be very, very helpful in dealing with the how your boss handled it. And while the episode is about dealing with a disrespectful team member, the technique I described there, can easily be used with your boss as well.

[00:17:08] So, Giovita, I hope this helps. I’m sorry you had to deal with a boss who picked a lousy way to address a conflict that he was in. And I just want you to remember, the facts are not as important as the feelings of the people that are involved. And that’s today’s “Coach’s Mailbox.”

Thought Leader segment.

John: [00:17:22] Hello, I’m John Maxwell. As one of founding partners, Tom has been trained by me and my team.

Tom: [00:17:28] In today’s “John Maxwell Thought Leader” segment, we’re covering what John calls the “law of intuition,” that leaders evaluate everything with a leadership bias. And this was something I think you can begin to tackle even at level 1 of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

Male: [00:17:44] Level 1, individual. At level 1, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level 1 focuses you on improving your technical skills.

Tom: [00:17:57] Intuition, that is a tough one. How do you explain something you know in your gut? Well, today, I wanna talk about intuition when it comes to your acting as a leader. And one key idea here is that everyone is intuitive in the area of their giftedness. And this is exactly what Dr. Kim Ruyle talked about in episode 9 when he said, “Experts don’t even know what they know or how they know it.” This is a matter of having collected a ton of information over a long period of time. So whatever you’re great at, you’re almost automatically gonna generate a sense of intuition about it. Whatever you’re interested in, whatever you naturally research and read about or study, as you do that, you’re gonna be growing your intuition capacity.

[00:18:43] Now, let me ask you, do you know how to ride a bike? Do you know how to dribble a basketball? When you do that, do you think about how to do it or do you just do it? You don’t think about theory. Now, you mastered those tasks and now you just do it. And one key way for you to be better prepared to be intuitive in the way that you’re interacting with others is to increase that level of knowledge. Intuition is facts plus instinct plus dozens of other things. Intuition is when you know something but you can’t say how you know it. Going deep. Digging into your field, studying and learning and knowing the knowable facts provides a good starting point. You need to do the work to learn those details. There’s no way around that. And that’s related to that 10,000 hours number that Malcolm Gladwell talks about to become an expert, that time involved in the process. And here’s a challenge. When you’re a leader, you often have to make decisions before you feel like you’re ready.

[00:19:44] I’ve got a friend who’s a natural researcher. He’s data-centric. Before he tries anything, he has to do a ton of reading and organizing and collecting data and more. But the downside is, there’s never enough data. And one day he said to me about this, “The law of intuition makes me mad. I mean, I decide we need to take on something new, so I start to look at the options, I figure out everything I can about it, and then I learn a ton of new things as I’m researching. I have to track down all the information I can about those new things, and by the time I’ve done that, I have to go back to the beginning because some of the original things have changed. And what really makes me mad is there are these ‘shoot from the hip’ people, who don’t do any of the work I do, and then they just luckily stumble onto the option that I spent months researching. It’s just not fair.”

[00:20:29] Well, he’s right. It’s not fair. And I think he’d be happy if he had 100% of the possible facts before he decided. But interestingly, former Secretary of State, Collin Powell, said that his practice was to make a leadership decision after gathering only 40% to 60% of the information that can be obtained. And he uses his intuition to make up the difference. Now, there are those who would say, “Yeah, but then you’re wrong sometimes.” Well, the fact is, you are wrong sometimes, and that’s okay. It’s not that we seek wrongness, but we seek action. Most people won’t take action at all, and the process of taking action, even the wrong action, is gonna help you learn and grow your intuition.

[00:21:11] We have to have knowledge, and knowledge alone is not sufficient. Facts cannot solve it for you as much as we like to do that. It’s knowledge plus experience. There’s a saying that goes, “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, however, they’re different.” And this is something I talk to my kids about in the workshop. I ask them to solve problems in the woodshop, and one thing we’ve discovered is this. We don’t actually learn anything about our theory until the saw hits the wood. It’s that practice that makes a difference in our intuition. So, you can increase your intuition by increasing your knowledge, the facts that are out there, and increasing your experience. And that’s how, when the moment comes where you have to make that decision, that gut check, you’re gonna know what to do. The law of intuition says that leaders evaluate everything with a leadership bias. And that’s today’s “John Maxwell Thought Leader” segment.

Behind the Scenes segment.

Male: [00:22:11] In the “Behind the Scenes” segment, Tom shares a tip about how his business works.

Tom: [00:22:20] Well, I have to say I can’t believe it. Here we are the last episode of season 3. What a blast. I have learned a ton over the last three seasons of the podcast. One of the things I’ve done to make things easier for me is I’ve developed templates that I use to create episodes, everything from the way that I write, the content, to the way that I record the content, to the way that that gets processed before it becomes the podcast episode. And I’ve been learning from other podcasters about how to make my episodes better, too. And hopefully, that’s showing up in the quality of the material that I’m sending your way.

[00:22:58] Now, I want to take a minute and say that I appreciate you. I’m really appreciative that you are listening, and I’m here to serve you. That’s one of my goals, is to serve you. And I wanna ask you, would you please help me? Specifically, what I’d like to know is what challenges are you facing? If you could ask anything, what do you wish you could ask? Seriously, send me an email. I read all of them, and I’d be happy to help you tackle your challenge. Maybe there’s a topic you’d like to know more about. Now, let me know. I’m in the final stages of planning for season 4’s topics, things like dev ops and other Agile tools. I’d love to hear more from you about the things that you’re interested in.

[00:23:36] And finally, is there a win you’ve experienced because of what you learned on the podcast? I’d love to hear about that, too, so you can send me an email. The best email address to use for me is coach@brighthillgroup.com. That’s coach@brighthillgroup.com. And that’s today’s “Behind the Scenes” segment.

Episode Hack.

Male: [00:23:55] In the “Episode Hack” segment, Tom shares one action-oriented takeaway from this episode, something you can apply right away.

Tom: [00:24:09] In today’s episode, we talked about how to create great meeting minutes. We talked about the law of intuition, and we talked about managing by text message. And it’s this third area that I wanna focus on in our episode hack. For today’s episode hack, I want you to think about the last time you found yourself in a really uncomfortable situation with your boss or maybe another leader. What might have been happening with their emotions? Make a list of two or three emotional reactions or situations they may have been dealing with. You see, if you take the time to identify the emotions that other people are feeling, that’s gonna help you find ways to overcome that resistance you’ve been getting from them. And that’s today’s episode hack.

Closeout

[00:24:51] Hey, can I ask you something? Did you hear something helpful on today’s episode? Why not share it with a friend? On my iPhone, it’s as simple as hitting the three little dots on the bottom right of the screen, selecting share episode, enter your friend’s email, and hit send. Why do this? Two reasons. One, your friend or co-worker will thank you. You’ll be seen as a source of helpful and valuable information, and they will appreciate you for it. And number two, I need you to help me get the word out about this podcast. I’m working hard to bring great ideas and great content to you, and it’s a big help to me if more people hear those ideas. Go ahead. Share it now. I’ll wait. Thanks.

[00:25:42] This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of “Becoming a Geek Leader.” Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

Steve Johnson walks u through “What is Product Management” and helps us figure out how to start small to get to success.

Transcript:

Tom Cooper:               So just to kind of get started, at the highest level what is product management?

Steve Johnson:            Well, product management is delightfully ill-defined, certainly in the technology industry and many others. But ideally product management is what a lot of developers call the “one throat to choke.” There’s one place to go to get the answer to everything. I remember reading an interview years ago with Bill Campbell at Intuit and he said that if you are a start-up the second hire would be a product manager. Because the product manager figures out the rest of it.

We often come up with hey, let’s build a thing. But what the customer really wants is that thing wrapped up in services and delivered in multiple pieces, for instance. The product manager’s job is really to be the president’s representative at the product level looking at it from soup to nuts. Is there a business to be had here? Is there a market need that we can address? When we talk about product we don’t just mean software or hardware. We mean the whole product.

I was talking to somebody just an hour ago about the Nest thermostat which is big right now. I have one and it’s just beautiful. It seems to me that there was clearly a product manager looking beyond the thermostat. I mean, there are plenty of thermostats out there. You can buy one from Home Depot or Lowes and they’re all generically the same with very difficult to understand user interfaces. So the Nest thermostat is very easy to use, but more than that it’s an entire product.

When you hook it up it verifies that the wiring is correct. When you get it working it says, “Hey, can I hop on the Internet for you?” And it synchronizes the thermostat behavior with the weather in your city. It sends me an email once a month telling me about my power consumption and some things I might choose to do to improve my performance.

It has an iPhone app that allows me to manage the thing remotely. It has a motion sensor that says, “You know what? Nobody has walked by this thermostat in 24 hours so I’m going to set the temperature to something reasonable since apparently you’re away.” That wasn’t just what the other guys did which was we have a programmable thermostat that you can program and it will do thermostat. They’ve created an entire product.

Tom Cooper:               That’s really interesting because you’re looking at the need even if the consumer doesn’t understand that need. I’ve never thought that I want my thermostat to email me. I’ve thought that I’d like my thermostat to help me save money, but I never thought that I’d like to get an email or recommendations about what I could do. That’s really interesting. I’ve worked in a number of tech companies and I’ve worked with a ton of tech companies and a lot of them don’t do anything that they call product management. But don’t all companies actually use product management?

Steve Johnson:            Well, yes. What every company is doing is managing products. The question is whether there is a person with a title. In a start-up the president is the product manager. It means, what products are we going to build? What revenue can we forecast over time? And in a start-up capability you’re probably looking at it in the context of how is this cash flow going to make sure that I make my house payment?

But then multiply that times a bunch in a regular business that has a track record and somebody said, “Hey, I have an idea for a product”. Well, everybody has ideas. The question is, which one should we pursue? Is there one here that we should fast track? Is it targeting a market full of customers or is it one sales guy talked to one customer who had one need and I’m never going to be able to sell this again?

Tom Cooper:               Right, so really what you’re talking about is a methodology or a process to prioritize future requests?

Steve Johnson:            Exactly. Ideas come from everywhere, right? The executives have ideas. Sales guys have ideas. Customers have ideas. Product managers have ideas. Developers have ideas. The first step of the process or the method around product management is a vetting process that says that we can’t do everything. So we need to be able to pick carefully which ones we do allocate resources to. Once we’ve done that we have to break the idea down into the deliverables.

And if we started from, “I want to build a thermostat” then you would build a thermostat. If we started from customers are extremely passionate about smart energy and let’s build an energy management solution, then you end up saying not just that you need to do some circuit boards in a round box for a thermostat. It’s the bigger thing that I talked about earlier. So the idea becomes, what are the parts that we need to build and we keep breaking that down into constituent parts.

The same thing is true for, “I have an idea for an existing product. I want the iPad to do this. I want my Android phone to do that.” You have to look at all of those ideas and say, “Which one affects the most people with the most benefit?” Beyond that, that’s all product part.

Guess what? Marketing that product often involves product management. People who are doing go to market say, “I need some help understanding how this tool is used or what features it has and how I explain those to the market.” Otherwise you end up with what David Meerman Scott calls industry gobbledy gook. And we just say that we’re the market leading discontinuous innovation deliverer with proven results.

Tom Cooper:               Wait, I’m writing that down. That’s so good.

Steve Johnson:            There’s not even a TM on that. So we have this product idea. We are taking it to market. Guess what? We also have to figure out what is the right price point for this, or do we just throw it to the sales team and say “Take a shot. Sell it for as much as you can.”

Tom Cooper:               Wait a minute. You’re talking about a huge area of responsibility if you’re talking about establishing pricing, looking at the market, marketing communications, feature development, working with the product creation team that’s actually going to implement the ideas. That sounds like your product managers need to have a lot of different types of expertise. What types of things should you be looking for from product managers?

Steve Johnson:            Very good point. I think it’s important to separate these things. There are a lot of activities that need to happen in order that we can manage and market a product. Often that is given to the title product manager. But it may be director of products marketing or it may be a senior executive team. But there are a bunch of things that happen between the idea and revenue. Somebody has to have oversight of that.

Real quickly, I talked to a guy yesterday who posted for a director, I think, of product management and marketing. He said that 98% of his resumes were from marketing communications people. When you say marketing everybody in this industry seems to say, oh yes, that’s the creative types who build sales tools and go-to market materials. He said, “So I ultimately took the name marketing off of the job description so that I could get some product people in here.”

But that’s really the point isn’t it? In terms of expertise 42% of product managers have an MBA which means that they have strong business skills. That’s one thing that people look for. But increasingly a lot of the teams that I work with have pulled product managers so far into the product creation process that they’re really using the product managers for their technical expertise rather than for their business expertise.

Furthermore, as I indicated in the director story a lot of people have marketing expertise, but more important than that is an understanding of market. For example, we want to market our product in Brazil. We want to market our product in higher education. We want to market our product in anti-virus or fraud detection. So these are markets where we need to have somebody who is an expert in the way those markets talk to one another.

The fourth expertise is domain expertise. I have a story about a vice-president from a bank came up with a fraud detection method. He came to a company to turn it into a product. Because he had both domain and market expertise the company misused him. He came to the company to leverage his domain expertise to create a product. But because he came from the world of banking every sales guy on the planet called and said, “I need you to come talk bank with one of my buyers.”

And so he was on the road for nine months until he finally threw up his hands in despair and said, “Now I’m going to go to another company who doesn’t need me to come and talk bank, but wants me to develop my fraud detection algorithm.” So those are the four expertises. There’s business, there’s domain, there’s technology, there’s market. It’s really hard to find all four of those in one person.

Tom Cooper:               So do you think of it in terms of a team delivery? How do you solve that then if you can’t find necessarily all four of those in one person?

Steve Johnson:            Indeed. If I were organizing a product management team today I would look for at least one person in each of those areas. I mentioned higher education earlier. I went to college a long time ago. I wouldn’t say I know much about the world of university. I do know costs have gone up a lot lately, but that’s about what I know. So I would hire somebody who has a deep domain knowledge in higher education. What are the trends in the industry? That would be the person that I would use for all of my thought leadership pieces rather than talking about product and talking about trends in the industry.

I would hire a technical person to work with development and turning the ideas that we’re finding into the development deliverables. I would hire a market specialist. If we chose to sell to universities in the Americas, universities in Asia and universities in Europe, I’m guessing those are different.

I remember one of my vice-presidents/colleagues years ago did a little presentation from the context of non-U.S. thinking. He put up dates where the numbers were in the wrong order. He used commas instead of periods. He put “U”s in words that didn’t deserve them. He talked about summer. We thought, “Wait a minute. You’re right. If you’re in Australia, summer is different.” So what does it mean launching this summer?

And the fourth thing, I don’t know if I mentioned, as I’m talking this through I’m thinking of a fifth one. I would certainly want somebody on staff who had strong analytical skills with a business background who can turn ideas into spreadsheets. What’s our financial road map down the road?

And yet, often what I’ll do is if I don’t have that business skill on staff I’ll send a market person, probably, over to finance and say, “Can you guys help us with a three to five year revenue and costing breakout?” The VP in finance is delighted to help and generally assigns you to one of his experts and they’re delighted to help because they haven’t done anything meaningful since college. This isn’t what they thought they were going to be doing. Instead they are just checking expense reports against policy. That was kind of rude.

Tom Cooper:               The one thing about working with you, Steve, is that you know exactly where you stand.

Steve Johnson:            Yes, subtly is my strength.

Tom Cooper:               So now in this space, what you’ve covered is a huge amount of territory here. I hear CEOs saying, “This costs too much. I can’t even think about doing that because it’s so darn expensive.” But really, I think what you’ve said to me before is that it’s really about investment for seeing a return. You should be able to see a return on all of the money you spend on this.

Steve Johnson:            Exactly. And furthermore, people are doing this anyway. There are people in your company today who are saying, “I don’t really have deep domain expertise, but I need to know whether I should do it this way or that way.” So they guess. The real challenge to me is, sure everybody wants to do everything on ROI, but for me it’s thinking what’s the cost of doing it wrong?

Tom Cooper:               That’s a really good point. I think we tend to think that whatever we’re doing today is okay and it’s risky to do something different. It’s that myth of risk that there’s actually risk associated with even current state.

Steve Johnson:            Exactly. So when we talk about product management, it’s happening in your company today. The question is, who’s doing it? Is it the president? Is it the VP of sales? Are the sales individuals saying, “Well, we don’t have anything but I decided to partner with that guy over there and bundle my own thing and offer it at a price that’s 10% above our costs”? That’s an interesting initiative on the part of the sales guy, but is that the business that we even want to be in? And is 10% enough money to make it worthwhile? Those are the questions that aren’t being asked. And as a company looks at their limited resources they need to make sure that they are putting their limited resources on the thing that has the best value to the company in the long run.

Tom Cooper:               That’s fantastic. I appreciate that kind of perspective because it’s a different one. People don’t necessarily think of it in that way. I appreciate you bringing that perspective to us today. So tell me a little about under 10 templates. Why under 10 templates?

Steve Johnson:            Better than that, there’s under 10 templates. But anyway, I worked with a team a while back and they said, “Well, we formalized our product planning process.” They handed me a three ring binder that was three or four inches thick. It was delightfully comprehensive, but completely unrealistic.

I reflected back in my first job 20 to 30 years ago as a product manager. I had a printed notebook that I kept with me all of the time. What happened was people would ask me questions and I couldn’t answer them. So I started carrying these pieces with me. And I said that people ask me about pricing a lot. Let me keep the price list with me. People asked me about positioning a lot. Let me keep the positioning with me.

Over time I developed six or seven or eight living documents that I referenced probably daily. That became my product plan. Instead of having a 45 page business plan that nobody, including the author, has ever read, why don’t we just identify the smallest number, preferably fewer than 10, of living documents that make sense to the executive team?

For instance, the kinds of documents that I’m talking about are a road map of where we are going down the road. A list of features that we want to build that the [inaudible 18:29] call a back log, a price list, a positioning document so that we can inform our marketing people and our branding people and our outside agencies of the product’s message. How many of those could replace some of these heavy dead documents that more established companies are still creating?

Tom Cooper:               That’s a really interesting point and I think it’s helpful to have a framework to move forward. I think that you said that you’re going to offer up a planning canvas as a resource for folks who are interested in learning more about this. Is that right?

Steve Johnson:            Yes indeed. Canvas is the right word. It is a place for you to articulate all of the different steps between idea and revenue and, for that matter, post-delivery retrospective. Who should be doing this step and what are the minimum set of artifacts that we need to articulate that step? You start with, what business are we in and what market do we serve? What products are we going to build? How are we going to market them? How are we going to sell them? How are we going to support them after the fact? The part that I think most young companies completely forget about is after the sale saying, “What did we do right? What did we do wrong? Is this even a good customer?”

Tom Cooper:               You’re really talking about product strategy and even can lean into corporate strategy type things which most organizations kind of struggle with. That’s fascinating.

Steve Johnson:            My dentist fires 10% of his customers every year because he looks at a post-customer retrospective and says that these customers are annoying. And it’s not that they don’t brush their teeth and floss, it’s that they don’t show up on time and they argue about the bill or they have a difficult insurance carrier. He says, “I have better things to do than to try and sell the same hour two or three or four times.” And I think that most companies don’t take that after the sale retrospective saying, “What is a good customer for us and what isn’t? Maybe we should fire some of our customers because they don’t move us forward strategically.”

Tom Cooper:               That is definitely a kind of radical thing. I think it is worth consideration, for sure. So if folks want to dig in and know some more about Steve Johnson and what you’re doing, where can they find more information about you?

Steve Johnson:            Please come to under10templates.com. You will find lots of stuff there. I have a description of the under 10 planning template that I’m going to share with people who listen in on this. I am blogging there. I have a bio there. I think of it really as my online resume. My belief is that companies want the smallest amount of process that helps them mitigate their risks. A lot of times they have too much or, frankly, a lot of companies have too little. Do we have more time for one more quick story?

Tom Cooper:               Sure.

Steve Johnson:            You can’t say no to that. I worked for a huge company, a billion dollar software company. There was so much process we couldn’t get anything done. So I got recruited into a start-up and employed with 25. I got there and thought that this is going to be great. There’s no process and we can get stuff done. Then a week later I was pulling my hair out because there was not process. You want to find that fine line between process that helps move you forward and find that balance for what makes sense in your organization. That’s the kind of stuff that I work with teams on today.

Tom Cooper:               That’s great. I appreciate that idea and wrapping it in that way because I think a lot of times we find ourselves caught in that middle place where we need process but we have too much process and we can’t actually get anything done. Steve, thank you so much for joining us today.

Listen now!

In this episode:

Dr. Kim Ruyle is my guest for episode 9.  He shares terrific insights about how to get experts to listen to you, and how to get great answers from them, too.

Plus, don’t miss out on the John Maxwell thought leader segment where we talk about the Law of Respect.

Resources:

HBR Article: “If Your Boss Could Do Your Job, You’re More Likely to Be Happy at Work”

“Google Project Oxygen Reveals 8 Keys to Being a Great Boss”

Transcript:

[00:00:00]

Dr. Ruyle: So, let’s get rid of that idea that everybody’s equal. We’re not equal. Nobody’s equal. I mean, we’re equal in opportunities, but we’re not equal in intellect. We’re not equal in skill. We’re not equal in motivation. We all bring different things to the table. And so, what we want to do with our employee population, is we want to optimize the contribution of every single person.

[00:00:23]

Announcer: Becoming a Geek Leader, Season 3, Episode 9.

[00:00:29]

Sponsored by Brighthill Groups Team Leadership Services

Tom: Dysfunctional teams are painful and cost you time and money. They also suck the life out of you and take the fun out of work. How about your team? Is it time for a tune-up? How prepared is your team for the challenges ahead? I can help create a simple development process for your team members, something easy for you to use, not another project for you to manage.

[00:00:56]

Growth doesn’t happen by accident. Whether it’s through a leadership assessment or helping you plan a leadership retreat, give me a call to talk about how to set up an affordable program to improve your team’s teamwork and help your team members perform like a well-oiled machine. Check out brighthillgroup.com/geektraining, that’s brighthillgroup.com/geektraining, for quick videos on my team-building and leadership retreats. Then, give me a call at 240-668-4799. That’s 240-668-4799.

[00:01:34]

Introduction

Tom: Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

[00:01:56]

Tom: Hi, I’m glad you’re here. I know I’m often excited to share these episodes with you, but this week I am particularly excited. Let me ask. Are you an expert? I mean, like a Dr. Gregory House kind of expert? Today, I’ve got a terrific guest talking about the difference between a strong technical contributor and a deep expert. Dr. Kim Rule shared with me what he has learned about leading and motivating experts and other technical people, too.

[00:02:24]

In our interview, we talked about how you can spot those experts, and he shared how to engage with experts so you can get the most from them. And I’m also sharing John Maxwell’s Law of Respect. Man, we have a lot to talk about. Let’s get started.

[00:02:38]

Thought leader segment.

[00:02:40]

Man: In the thought leader segment, Tom brings in ideas from today’s best thought leaders.

[00:02:45]

[music]

[00:02:58]

[00:02:58]

Tom: In our thought leader segment today, I am so excited to have Dr. Kim Ruyle with us. During his career, Kim has been involved in performance management, organizational development, and learning and development leadership roles. And today, he’s an associate in Korn Fairy’s global network. He also has many academic credentials, and he’s done study in neuroscience as well. It was a blast to get a chance to connect with him and to learn from him. The things he’s teaching here are ideas you can begin to use at Level 1 of the 4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader.

[00:03:31]

Announcer: Level 1: Individual.

[00:03:33]

Man: At Level 1, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level 1 focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:03:45]

Tom: Let’s join the conversation as I ask him about what it means to really be an expert.

[00:03:51]

Your practice, a lot of times, is working with highly technical experts, and I’m curious, from your perspective, what does it mean to be an expert as compared with, maybe, a regular technical worker?

[00:04:04]

Dr. Ruyle: Oh, that’s a great question. You know, expertise is a continuum. And you can say, starting at the low end, we have people who are unskilled, and then you gradually develop a level of competence, and we kind of equate competence with skill. So, when somebody is fully competent or fully skilled, that’s great. But you can go beyond that, so that you develop the ability to model best practices, to advance practices, to teach other people.

[00:04:31]

And then, you can go even beyond that to the realm of what becomes almost magical in the way it plays out for true experts. So, expertise, by definition, is rare. And just about everybody likes to think they’re an expert in one thing or another, but there are very few true experts, people who stand head and shoulders above their peer and have insights into their discipline or their field that other people don’t have. And the thing about, that makes them different, is that a lot of that kind of magical component that they have, that gives them this insight is transparent to them.

[00:05:12]

It’s developed through a particular type of focused practice and experience, and it manifests itself in intuition. And so, I think one of the striking differences between people who are just good and competent, and even people who are good teachers of something…so, they’re beyond competent. Maybe you could say they’re exemplary. Those people, they’ve got the book learning down cold. They know the foundations of the field. They know the theory of the field.

[00:05:42]

They know the stuff you can learn from books. But they don’t necessarily have the insight that comes from really deep, focused practice, disciplined practice in things where you, actually, are creating neural networks in the brain. And what happens when an expert sees a problem or an issue, there’s cues in that context that causes things to jump to their mind, and they can’t really explain how that happens.

[00:06:11]

But what happens then, is that they see similarities in patterns, they see differences in patterns, they see anomalies, and that’s really what expertise is. It’s the ability to recognize these anomalies and similarities in patterns that other people miss because they don’t have those embedded neural networks that come through the focused practice.

[00:06:33]

Tom: Okay, so I can jump in here, I think I heard you say that expertise is sort of the highest level of competence around the technical area, but it’s more than just technical execution. It’s that amalgamation, or the collection, or the connection between different pieces. So, an expert…a talented technical person would be able to execute a specific task, but an expert would be able to look at it and say, “Wait, we can optimize this,” right? See ways that there are synergies with other areas. Is that right?

[00:07:08]

Dr. Ruyle: Yeah. I think, you know, what we think about, the typical misconception is that experts are better problem solvers because they’re more analytical, they have better problem solving techniques and so forth. But the truth of the matter is that experts don’t really use kind of a rigid or formulaic problem solving method. They just have intuition. And intuition is this recognition of things in the environment that springs from their subconscious, that’s formed during practice, a lot of practice.

[00:07:44]

And so, these kind of solutions to issues, the insight that they have, springs to mind almost magically. And it doesn’t come through any kind of, you know, specific problem solving technique. And so, it’s very hard for an expert to explain this because expertise is transparent to the expert. They don’t know how they know things. They just know things.

[00:08:10]

And hence, that leads to all kinds of issues in terms about how do we replicate expertise, how do we disseminate it in the organization, and, you know, kind of replicate it? There’s issues around that. But I think that’s the thing that really sets a true expert apart.

[00:08:25]

Tom: So, are…

[00:08:26]

Dr. Ruyle: [inaudible 00:08:26] above the others.

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Tom: So, I’m wondering then, you know, taken to the extreme or, perhaps, absurd, I think about the TV show “House” with Dr. House.

[00:08:37]

Dr. Ruyle: Oh, great, great example.

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Tom: And so, he certainly, I mean, other problems that he ran into, right, he wasn’t…he had plenty of behavioral and psychological challenges that impacted his work.

[00:08:48]

Dr. Ruyle: Right.

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Tom: But, in spite of that, I think, you know, his methodology appeared to be relatively…well, it was random and selective. It was random in terms of give me a bunch of ideas, and then it was selective to eliminate things until he could find the pattern that would work. And is that something, you know, not justifying the behavioral problems, but is that something that we would look at in an expert, where they would follow a pattern which doesn’t seem to be a pattern at all?

[00:09:15]

Dr. Ruyle: Yeah. Actually, the show “House”, I wish it was still running. Of course, it’s completed its run, but that was a great show to study how experts work. Some things about House, you know, and you recognized he’s got the kind of psychological, narcissistic disorders and things like that, which isn’t necessarily a condition of all experts, but experts do have certain psychological traits that are more common than others we can maybe talk about.

[00:09:42]

But I think what you can get from that show of “House”, every show followed the same kind of script. So, a patient presented with a problem that the normal doctors couldn’t solve. So, what did House do? He had a team. Now, that’s an important thing. He had a team. The team would generate ideas. None of them work. And we go all the way through, 50 minutes into the show.

[00:10:07]

Tom: Right.

[00:10:07]

Dr. Ruyle: And what would happen is, in the last 5 to 10 minutes of the show, somebody would say something to House or he would see something and bang, he gets insight. He sees a solution. He goes in and he does this almost magical kind of thing at the end, and he amazes everybody, “How did you know that?” Well, can he explain how he knew that? No, he can’t explain it.

[00:10:28]

It came to him because there were cues in the environment that raised something to his consciousness that another person, somebody who’s less than an expert, wouldn’t have that capability even with those same cues, would not have that capability to come up with those insights. So, House is a…that’s a great, great example.

[00:10:46]

Tom: I also would like to touch on the question of interaction with experts. You know, going back to our Greg House example, everybody who doesn’t understand at his level is a moron. So, you know, and as I’ve interacted with some people that I felt were experts, I definitely got the sense that because I didn’t…I mean, I had a team member one time who said, “Look, Tom, our clients are idiots.” And he was totally sincere. He genuinely believed that our clients were morons.

[00:11:17]

Dr. Ruyle: I’ve heard the same thing, yep.

[00:11:19]

Tom: So, what can we do, who are non-experts, to interact with an expert in such a way that isn’t quite so caustic, or perhaps that causes the expert to feel more comfortable in expressing their ideas and information in a way that’s actually helpful to us, as opposed to just condescending and insulting?

[00:11:34]

Dr. Ruyle: That’s another great question. So, I have a strong opinion about this, formed over many years of working with experts and studying expertise. So, let’s talk a little bit more and kind of lay the groundwork for what goes into an expert’s personality and what they’re typically like, and what motivates them. So, we said that they know things they don’t know they know. They are passionate about their discipline and that passion follows expertise.

[00:12:03]

Now, you generally have some level of passion to get started down the path towards expertise. You need some level of motivation. But let’s face it. There are people who become experts that are forced to, in the beginning, practice their discipline. I mean, you could think about the three-year old kid forced by his parents to play violin lessons, and eventually puts on his first concert and he likes the recognition, and he starts to…

[00:12:27]

And it’s the same thing. I’ve got grandkids who are playing chess now. And what happens is, at first they might not want to play because they’re losing. But as soon as they start winning a few games, they start getting passionate about it. The people that are attracted to those kinds of disciplines that normally are associated, or more easily associated, with expertise tend to have personalities that, okay, I’m gonna stereotype here, which is always a little dangerous.

[00:12:52]

So, recognizing that there’s a normal distribution of any personality characteristic you want to look at in the general population, and likewise, within the population of expertise, but I can say that the mean score on a personality index, on some things, are going to be different than the general population. For instance, introversion, extroversion. I don’t have research to back this up, so this is opinion. I’ll be frank about that. But I believe that true experts are more likely to be introverted than extroverted.

[00:13:27]

And part of the reason for that is that introversion serves you well when you’re practicing your craft and you’re spending the time that you need to put into to develop that expertise, and to reflect on things, and to learn those lessons. So, they tend to be, I believe, more introverted. I believe they often start off with a deficit in emotional intelligence.

[00:13:48]

Tom: Okay, so if we know that they tend to skew toward being more introverted and having less facility with people, they’re less comfortable in that space, if I need to work with an expert, if I need to get an expert’s help, how can I appeal to the expert or how can I get the expert to be comfortable with me to not feel like, “Oh, I’m wasting my time to talk to you?”

[00:14:11]

Dr. Ruyle: Good, good. So, now we’ve got a little bit about the personality. Another thing is that what motivates an expert is being the expert. So, you know, of course experts are motivated by financial considerations and other kinds of status, social status, affiliation, all kinds of things that motivate everybody, but for most experts, the epitome of motivation is in being recognized as the expert. That’s what motivates them.

[00:14:40]

Being the expert is actually the reward in itself. And so, they’re protective of that. And when you’re asking them to give up their expertise, what you’re really doing is asking them to give up the thing that actually defines their value to their organization, because an expert’s value to the organization is largely defined by their expertise. So, when you ask them to part with that or share that, there may be an implied threat there. Some experts are more sensitive to that than others.

[00:15:06]

You’re also asking them to part with something that they don’t fully understand and can’t explain because it’s tacit. It’s transparent. They can’t explain it. And so, there’s a whole lot of issues there. And the other thing is, because an expert wants to be the expert, they have little patience for people who don’t speak their language. So, here’s one piece of advice I’d give someone who’s gonna actually work with an expert.

[00:15:32]

As an example, let’s take an instructional designer, somebody who’s got to create a course on some topic they’re not an expert in, they don’t know much about it, but they’re an instructional designer. They’re expected to create a course of instruction so they go interview the expert. If you go interview that expert and you don’t have the book knowledge, just the basic book knowledge of that discipline so that you can actually speak their language and understand their terms, you are going to be dismissed by the expert. You are not going to be respected by the expert.

[00:16:04]

And that expert is likely gonna take one of two approaches with you. One is they’re gonna do a brain dump and try to impress you with everything they know. And as a person who doesn’t even have the basics of the field, and even the basic vocabulary, you can’t sort out the wheat from the chaff. You can’t tell what they’re saying is really important. Or, they’re gonna take another approach, which is to be totally reticent and it’s like pulling teeth to try to get anything out of them.

[00:16:29]

And because you can’t even phrase your questions appropriately, using their language, they’re just not gonna respond to that. So, that’s the one thing I would say is, don’t even attempt it until you get a basic knowledge of the book knowledge and you can hold your own in a conversation. Obviously, you’re not an expert. You don’t have their insight, but you can at least understand their language and understand the basics of the discipline.

[00:16:54]

Tom: You mentioned that the experts are motivated by being the expert, by having that passion that follows their expertise and drives them. If I want to communicate to an expert, then, that I value them, that I want them to stick around, that I appreciate their contributions to the team, what are some things that I could do that would allow me to be able to do that in a way that an expert’s gonna hear it?

[00:17:16]

Dr. Ruyle: Yeah, well, first of all, recognize the importance of their expertise, acknowledge it, verbally and in other ways. You know, personal influence is an engagement driver for all employees. Every employee wants to feel like their opinions are heard and their opinions matter, but to an expert that’s really an essential thing. It’s really essential that their opinions are sought out and valued. And so that’s not so hard to do, right?

[00:17:46]

I mean, we can easily do that, recognize people for that. I think the challenges come down to, okay, so we’ve got a homegrown expert in our company, and they’ve been around for 10 years or more, and perhaps they’re at risk. I mean, if they’re highly valued by us, they’re gonna be highly valued by our competitor. Or perhaps they’re at the end of their career horizon and they’re gonna be leaving. So then, how do we keep from losing that expertise? And that’s a really difficult thing.

[00:18:23]

So, there are some things. If we have time to talk, I can maybe give a few suggestions about how to do that, but I guess, at the core, is try to instill a love of teaching or desire to teach and coach others in your experts. Now, many of them are going to, because they tend to be introverted, they tend to not be good in EQ skills, many of them are not natural teachers, but some are. And those people that do have an aptitude for teaching, and also don’t feel such a strong threat to sharing their expertise, those people are diamonds. I mean, you want to hang on to them, and you want to promote that ability.

[00:18:58]

So, a couple things you can do. If you have a high potential…if your organization has the ability to do a good job of identifying early career high potentials, what we might call emerging talent, these are people that aren’t necessarily going to be your experts. They may be future general managers, maybe C-suite people, but they’re early career. One of the things you can do is pair them with an expert as a coach or mentor. And what happens in that relationship is very interesting, because there’s development that happens for both parties.

[00:19:35]

The emerging talent is going to ask them hard questions, and not just questions about their discipline. They’re gonna ask them questions about, “Well, how does this relate to some other technology our competitor is doing? How does this relate to the marketplace?” Those are things that experts don’t think enough about.

[00:19:48]

Tom: Right.

[00:19:49]

Dr. Ruyle: Experts are too laser-focused on their discipline and they tend to lack perspective. So, one of the things we want to do is we want to try to promote a broader perspective among our experts so that they begin to understand the business issues and how their technology and their expertise really fits into the grand scheme of things. I mean, there’s a reason they’re valued and it’s not just because we value their particular discipline. It’s for what that discipline does for our business.

[00:20:16]

Now, another thing is, because expertise is transparent, experts don’t know what they know. They just know things. So, things that you can do. If you have the baseline, like I talked about, if you’re coming to it with the book knowledge and you can kind of craft some solutions on your own, and use an expert to find fault with those, experts love to do that. They love to prove you wrong and prove themselves right. So, one of the best techniques I’ve ever found is to say, “Okay, I can’t go to an expert and say, ‘What’s the right way to do something or how did you figure out how to solve this problem?'”

[00:20:49]

Tom: Because they don’t know.

[00:20:49]

Dr. Ruyle: Because they can’t really tell me, right? What I can do is I can go to them with a problem and say, “Here’s how I’m solving this problem, and here’s my thoughts, and here’s what I’m doing.” An expert will then point out all the things that are wrong with it. And by doing that, they kind of explicate their transparent expertise to you, and it brings things out that wouldn’t otherwise come out. And so, you can be very creative in doing that.

[00:21:13]

A one-on-one, like I just described, but you can also, if you do things in a non-threatening way, you can have one or two experts get together for a lunch-and-learn or some kind of a, you know, group development activity where you bring in early career people that are in their discipline. And you can prep those people. You can provide coaching to both populations.

[00:21:34]

So, with your experts, you can say, “Okay, you two guys or two gals are gonna be our experts, and you’re gonna be up here. This is gonna be fun, but we’re gonna do kind of stump the experts. So, they’re gonna bring in some problems and they’re gonna ask you about some of the most difficult problems you’ve had, and just talk through there. And they’re gonna ask you questions to see if they can stump you.” Now, the typical expert is gonna say, “OMG. I might be exposed.”

[00:21:57]

Tom: Right. I’m a fraud.

[00:21:59]

Dr. Ruyle: My expertise, I need to protect my status as an expert. So, you need to work on messaging it so that it comes across in a non-threatening way, to the extent you can do that. To the people who are going to be participating as more the learners, you’d say, “Ask questions of the expert about…ask them about the context: time, space, distance, other things that enter into the solution to a problem that the expert picked up on but doesn’t really know to explain.”

[00:22:32]

And what’ll happen in that situation, is you’ll actually see experts as they’re describing something, and getting these questions, and responding to those questions, the lights will go on to the expert and they’ll suddenly get insight into, “Oh, that’s how I knew that. I didn’t really know how I knew that before, but this question that asked me about the weather conditions outside, now I recognize that played into my decision and I hadn’t even considered that before. I just knew it.”

[00:22:56]

Tom: But, then for many of these technically competent workers, they’re not going to become the expert. Is there a risk of kind of a caste system or a competition between these technically competent people and the experts? Or do you [inaudible 00:23:15]…

[00:23:15]

Dr. Ruyle: Yeah, that’s there. That’s there whether you recognize it or not. I mean, that’s there in every work environment, right? I mean, people jockey for position, they jockey for status, they jockey for salaries, they jockey for perks, they jockey for all kinds of things. And that’s just part of human nature. I don’t think that needs to be destructive. I think we can actually do that in the right way.

[00:23:38]

So, if we apply what I call differential treatment, and we kind of recognize what’s motivating people, what we really want to do is… First of all, what we don’t want to do is we don’t want to treat everybody the same, because equal treatment isn’t fair. So, let’s get rid of that idea that everybody is equal. We’re not equal. Nobody’s equal. I mean, we’re equal in opportunities, but we’re not equal in intellect. We’re not equal in skill. We’re not equal in motivation.

[00:24:03]

We all bring different things to the table. And so, what we want to do with our employee population, is we want to optimize the contribution of every single person. It’s not about treating everybody the same, because then you get a nice minimum level of contribution by everybody. No. What you want to do is you want to optimize everybody’s contribution. And so, I think it’s kind of a mindset. And it’s some of the management of talent management, frankly, and management in terms of how you develop people and grow people that manage your workforce.

[00:24:33]

So, the workforce should be a meritocracy. There should be equal opportunity for everybody. Our experts should be rewarded for their expertise. That’s one of the problems that organizations have in terms of the career paths, because what happens is, the technical expert, they’re highly motivated. They’re bringing great value to the organization. They’re very smart. They’ve got all this potential, right, to contribute. And they are contributing.

[00:24:57]

But they look across at another career path and they say, “Well, the sales people are getting bigger bonuses and making more than me. And general managers are doing better than me.” So, there’s this temptation, because they are highly motivated, to jump over. So, sometimes you have to be creative in terms of creating, maybe even, new positions or bonus structures, variable comp structures, or things like that. Recognize people in meaningful ways so that you’re actually not causing people to, not only damage their own career, frankly, but harm the organization when you lose good people from that technical path.

[00:25:33]

And the technical career path, there are people who are gonna go to the top. And if you think about all the enabling functions in an organization: finance, IT, HR, supply chain logistics, whatever, I mean, you’ve got C-suite people that are leading those. And those people have developed a high degree of expertise, but they may not be the most expert in their organization. But, they do have a high degree. They spent their whole life, probably, in a fairly narrow swim lane in their career.

[00:26:05]

They’ve developed deep expertise. They have a lot of experience in that area. And, if everything goes right and you’re developing people in the right way, they’ve developed the emotional intelligence, the learning agility, and the perspective to serve as senior levels in the organization. So, you don’t want people to jump out of that career path. Otherwise, you’re gonna have a vacuum leading those functional areas. And so that’s an interesting thing.

[00:26:32]

And, looking about how do you develop the leadership skills in a technical discipline, and how does that contrast with people who are going to just be, maybe, a senior individual contributor or manage a small time, but be true, deep, recognized expert in the company. And you need all those people. You don’t want everybody to be one type of person, because your organization is gonna tip over from lack of balance.

[00:27:02]

Tom: That’s a really good point, and I think it’s…I mean, gosh, there’s so many things that we could dive into, and I love talking with people who are passionate about the things I’m passionate about, because there’s so many areas that, I think, are just unexplored or explored too little. You know, organizations don’t think a lot about these kinds of things. And I’m sure we could spend the next couple of days talking in depth about some of these things.

[00:27:24]

Dr. Ruyle: We really could. We really could. Yeah.

[00:27:26]

Tom: But, appreciate very much you being willing to be with us on the podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.

[00:27:32]

Wow, that was a ton of great information. I’m telling you, we could create an entire course on how to motivate and lead experts, just from the last 20 minutes or so, by unpacking the ideas that were there. I hope you grabbed some good takeaways. That was powerful. And that’s today’s thought leader segment.

[00:27:55]

Thought leader segment.

[00:27:57]

Man: In the thought leader segment, Tom brings in ideas from today’s best thought leaders.

[00:28:01]

[music]

[00:28:15]

[00:28:15]

John: Hello, I’m John Maxwell. As one of my founding partners, Tom has been trained by me and my team.

[00:28:22]

Tom: Today’s John Maxwell thought leader segment is about the Law of Respect, which says that people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. Now, this is something you can begin to appreciate when you’re at Level 1, but you’ll really start to apply it when you’ve reached Level 2 of the 4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader.

[00:28:45]

Announcer: Level 2: Team Member.

[00:28:47]

Man: Level 2 is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:28:55]

Tom: In John Maxwell’s book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” John introduces us to this idea that people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. And I want to share a story from the book to illustrate that idea, because not everyone who has a leadership position acts as a leader, and not everybody who is a leader in real life holds a leadership position.

[00:29:21]

Here’s what John says. “She wasn’t a very impressive woman. Just a little over five feet tall, in her late 30s, with dark brown, weathered skin. She could not read or write. The clothes she wore were coarse and worn. Her employment was erratic. Most of the time, she took domestic jobs in small hotels scrubbing floors, making up rooms, and cooking. But, just about every spring and fall, she would disappear from her place of employment.

[00:29:51]

She’d come back broke and she’d work again to scrape up what little money she could. When she was present on the job, she worked hard and seemed physically tough, but she was also known to fall asleep, sometimes in the middle of a conversation. She attributed her affliction to a blow in the head she had taken during a teenage fight. Who would respect a woman like that? The answer is that more than 300 slaves who followed her to freedom out of the South.

[00:30:17]

They recognized and respected her leadership, and so did just about every abolitionist in New England. The year was 1857 and the woman’s name was Harriet Tubman.” Now, I don’t have it in my command the time to share her whole story, or even more than just a tiny snippet of her work, but her journey began when she was a teen. A white overseer in Maryland demanded her assistance so he could beat an escaping slave. She refused and he threw a two-pound weight that hit her in the head and nearly killed her.

[00:30:48]

It took her months to recover, and that incident affected her physically for the rest of her life. Though she escaped captivity personally in 1849, she returned to the South to free her family in 1850. Overall, she made 19 trips to rescue those enslaved in the South. She was fearless and her leadership was unshakable. She rescued more than 300 people and she was very proud of the fact that she never once lost anyone under her care. She was so effective that, at the time, Southern whites put a price on her head of \$12,000.

[00:31:23]

And by the start of the Civil War, she had brought more people out of slavery than any other American in history, black or white, male or female. People respected her for her achievement, her commitment to doing what was right, and her unflinching courage. She was sought out by leaders such as Senator William Seward and Frederick Douglass. Tubman’s advice and leadership were requested by famous abolitionist John Brown.

[00:31:47]

Brown referred to her as General Tubman, and he was quoted as saying she, “Was a better officer than most he had seen and could command an army as successfully as she had led small parties of fugitives.” That is the essence of the Law of Respect.

[00:32:02]

Now, let’s talk about you for a minute. You know this. If you believe your boss is capable of doing the work that you do, you’re gonna have more respect for him or her, and you’ll more willingly follow their lead. In the show notes, I’ll link an interesting Harvard Business Review article that’s based on some research that shows this aspect of the Law of Respect. There are many other components that Google’s Project Oxygen dug into, and on the episode page, I’ll put a link to an infographic on what they discovered in their research.

[00:32:30]

I sat down recently with the president of a manufacturing company. He told me his mid-level managers needed help. They’d been promoted to management but they didn’t have the right skills that they needed. If we were gonna rank them on a scale of 1 to 10, they’d have to be a 4 or a 5 when it came to leadership. And he asked, “Can you help them grow?” Sure. But as we talked about the needs his company was facing, I asked about the leadership skills of the senior leaders on the team.

[00:32:56]

And he said, “Well, they’re all smart folks, but they got promoted because they were producers. On a scale of 1 to 10, they’re probably 4s and 5s, too. And not only do they not have the leadership skills they need, but they’re not really interested in investing to grow those skills either.” As we talked, I explained the Law of Respect to him and I shared that if we were wildly successful with his middle managers, but his senior leaders didn’t grow, that he would be helping his managers grow from 5 to 6s and maybe even beyond, some of them on the path, eventually, to becoming level 8 or level 9 leaders.

[00:33:31]

But the problem is this. Once your middle managers begin to understand what great leadership looks like, they’re gonna start to want to see that from their leaders. And they’re gonna become stronger leaders than those who are already in leadership positions. And what do you think’s gonna happen then? Because people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves.

[00:33:54]

Eventually, we made some good progress with his managers and some of them got really frustrated by the weak leadership skills of the people above them and they moved on. The fact is that people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. And when your leadership skills are stronger than your boss’s leadership skills, you’re likely gonna be looking for a better leader to follow. And the same thing is true for your team members, too.

[00:34:16]

If they are stretching and growing, if they are becoming better leaders, they’re gonna look for a leader who is stronger than themselves. If you’re not on a growth journey, you’re gonna be setting yourself up for some difficulty. The Law of Respect: people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. And that’s today’s John Maxwell thought leader segment.

[00:34:38]

Episode hack.

[00:34:39]

Man: In the episode hack segment, Tom shares one action-oriented takeaway from this episode, something you can apply right away.

[00:34:48]

[music]

[00:35:01]

[00:35:01]

Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about the Law of Respect and how it’s important for those people in leadership positions to keep growing their skills. And even if you’re not currently in a leadership position, it’s important to grow your influence skills because the only way you’re gonna have long-term success, from a career perspective, is if you grow those skills. We also talked with Dr. Kim Ruyle, and we learned a ton about what it means to really be an expert.

[00:35:29]

For today’s episode hack, I want you to think about an expert you know. Think about how you might approach your expert with a couple of different lines of questions. One is, how does our core technology relate to the engine that our competitor uses? How is ours better? How is theirs better? Or, can you go to the expert and say, “I’ve been thinking about X. Can you listen to my idea and help me find the things that are wrong with my approach or with my assumptions?”

[00:36:01]

Asking these kinds of questions will open the door to you learning some new things, and really unlocking things that even your expert doesn’t know he knows. That’s today’s episode hack.

[00:36:14]

Closeout

Is the podcast helping you? Make sure you don’t miss out on the latest info. Head over right now to brighthillgroup.com/join to be sure that you stay in the loop. When you do, you’ll get my PDF Become a Geek Leader in Two Easy Steps, and you’ll be notified as soon as new podcast episodes are available. Plus, you’ll get updates and ideas that I don’t share on the podcast. Head over to brighthillgroup.com/join right now.

[00:36:48]

This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

Today I’m talking about some important things.

• What does it take to get promoted?
• When the company starts to outsource, does that mean your job is at risk?
• How can serving others help you as a leader?

Listen now!

Transcript:

[00:00:01]

Tom: I have to pause here for just a minute to say that there was a time when I was exactly like Dan. I was so task focused. I had a lot of things to do. I mean, I just needed my team to get out of the way so I could do the important work. But John’s response to Dan floored me. He said, “Dan, you just walked past your work.” Never forget that leadership is about people. Leadership is about people. Dan did care about his people and so did I, deep down. But both Dan and I made the same mistake. We failed to show how much we valued people in a way that they could feel and understand and appreciate.

[00:00:41]

Man: Becoming a Geek Leader, Season Three, Episode Eight.

[00:00:47]

Sponsored by Bright Hill Group’s Professional Speaking Services

Tom: Are you a member of a professional association? Is your regional state or national group planning their upcoming annual meeting? I can help your meeting planners with keynotes and workshops on topics like communication, leadership, delegation, planning or conflict resolution.

[00:01:11]

Also, is your company planning an all-hands meeting? I can help your leaders plan a productive and memorable event. I can professionally facilitate your meeting and deliver content that is completely aligned with your goals. Here’s what Erin Kwon said after having me speak for her statewide association.

[00:01:29]

Erin: I really enjoy working with Tom because he is practical and down to earth. He brings really good content. He’s very engaging as a speaker and I think the audience really connects with him. They not only get the content but they also get an entertaining presentation. So I would definitely recommend working with him. I will certainly call him in the future for any events that I have.

[00:01:50]

Tom: Check out brighthillgroup.com/speaking. That’s brighthillgroup.com/speaking, for testimonials, videos of me on stage, information about my most popular topics and more.

[00:02:05]

Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people too. Ready?

[00:02:27]

Introduction

I’ve promised you on the podcast I’m sharing what I’m learning, and today’s episode is a clear example of that. Today I’m talking about what it takes to get a promotion at work. And I’ll be sharing some of the many, many things I did wrong that actually held me back in my career. And in the Coach’s Mailbox segment, I’m answering a question about outsourcing. What do you do when your boss tells you outsourcing is coming? Is it time to quit? And I’m talking about John Maxwell’s “Law of Addition,” that leaders add value by serving others. Man, we have so much to talk about, so let’s get started.

[00:03:04]

Mentoring segment.

[00:03:23]

Tom: In today’s mentoring segment, I wanna talk about goal setting, specifically goal setting when it comes to your career. Now, this is something that you can start to use when you’re at level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:03:38]

Man: Level one: Individual.

[00:03:40]

Tom: At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills. As I look back on my career journey, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to work in technology, and so, from the time I was even a pre-teen, I loved technology. I wanted to work with computers. And so I was really passionate about that, but I wasn’t clear on exactly what that meant. So what I did was, I focused on my technical skill development.

[00:04:17]

And I really [inaudible 00:04:18] think that much about which skills I wanted, I just wanted a job, and I found some geek work. And generally what I did was I just kind of followed along with whatever my employer wanted. “Oh, you need to solve a problem related to X? I could learn how to do that. Let me look at that and I’ll get back to you.” And that’s how I started doing networking. And after accidentally making that choice, I eventually became somewhat of an expert in data networking and writing code and building systems that shared data and protected networks from attacks and extended communications around the globe and even into space.

[00:04:53]

And later, I was asked by an employer to solve problems with software deployment, software delivery and installation on remote machines. And over time, I became somewhat of an expert in the software tools and even wrote many tools to assist in that process. And even later, I was asked to look into identity management and how could I solve problems with that. And I spent a lot of time digging into those types of technologies. But my point is this, I really didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just knew I wanted to keep doing interesting work. And I was having fun. I was solving problems. And most importantly, I kept getting paid more every year. So, it was all good.

[00:05:34]

But here’s the thing. I remember I was in one position and I’d been in that role for maybe three years. And I was growing at my technical acumen and I was getting better and better at delivery of the technical stuff, but I had this realization that suddenly hit me. First, I wasn’t getting promoted anytime soon, as far as I could tell. And second, I actually had no idea what it took to get promoted.

[00:06:04]

And eventually, I talked to my boss about it, and this is what my boss said. He basically said, “Tom, you’re doing great work. There’s nobody else on the team who can do what you do. And by the way, it’s actually your job to do that great work that you’re doing. So, really, you’re meeting my expectations. Why would I promote you?” Ouch! It didn’t matter that I was smart or that I was hard working. I wasn’t even being considered for getting a promotion. Wow! I was shocked. But who could I blame? I mean, I didn’t really even have a plan. Not only that, but my belief about what it took to get promoted, that was wrong too. It’s no wonder I felt like I was stuck.

[00:06:50]

It was on my journey when I bumped into Ed. Now, Ed was a coworker. He was ahead of me in his career. And I was blown away when he made an offhand comment about his plan for his career. You know, this didn’t start out as me going to Ed and saying, “Ed, I’d like to hear from you about how I can improve in my career.” Actually, it was kind of an offhand comment that he made about having a plan. It was really all about him. It wasn’t about me at all. And I think at that point he might have been a senior director in this big company where we both worked.

[00:07:25]

I was just astonished when Ed said, “I have a plan. In five years, I wanna be an executive vice president in this company.” Now, in the company we worked in, that would have been lightning fast. He would have had to go from Senior Director to Vice President, and then from Vice President to Executive VP. Those are two big promotions in a row. Even if you’re a fast mover, it was not an uncommon thing for you to spend at least five years in each of those levels. And here he was saying he wanted to cover 10 fast years of career growth in just five years. That’s crazy, right?

[00:08:07]

But what do you think happened to Ed? He actually did it. He set a goal, he told people about it and he made it happen. Now, it wasn’t magic and it wasn’t like he was just walking around whining about how he wanted a promotion. Actually, what he did was, he spent time looking at the next role. So when he was a senior director, he was looking at Vice President. What skills, what network, what capabilities did he need to have to perform well in that role? Once he had a clear picture about what he needed to have, what abilities he needed to deliver in that next role, he began to work intentionally on finding experiences and opportunities to grow those skills and to demonstrate those skills.

[00:08:59]

And while he was doing that, he was consistently delivering the expected work for his current role. He made clear to everybody around him that he was looking for opportunities to move up and that he was willing to take on tough projects that could help him gain the skills he needed. And these skills might have been in his wheelhouse already, but realistically, as he wanted to step up to those higher levels, he actually had to step out of his comfort zone to develop some skills that were not natural for him and not comfortable for him.

[00:09:36]

So he did get a promotion to Vice President, and he served in that role for a few years. And eventually, on schedule, he left that job to become a CTO. So he wasn’t the executive vice president that he aspired to, but he moved to a C-level role within a division of another large company. And he did it within the timeframe that he had planned to do it.

[00:10:03]

So let’s take just a second to reflect on the difference between Ed and Tom. See, Ed had a plan. He took action on the plan and he proactively looked at the skills, the relationships and the accomplishments he needed to be fit for the right role, at the right time. And he looked around to watch how others were succeeding. What was the key for that person? What was the organization valuing? The people that were getting rewarded, why were they getting rewarded? And he did those things, and he did more too.

[00:10:39]

Now, what about Tom? I just showed up. I did strong technical work and I expected that somebody was gonna notice and reward me. But how do you think that worked out? You know, Jim Rohn says, “If you don’t have a life plan, then you’re gonna fall into someone else’s plan.” And do you know what they have planned for you? Not much.

[00:11:03]

The thing is, your career advancement is gonna take off when you decide what you want, when you tell people about it and then you do the hard work to get the skills you need to fulfill that role. Having a plan about your career growth, that’s today’s mentoring segment.

[00:11:22]

Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:11:54]

Tom: For the Coach’s Mailbox segment, today’s email comes from Steven. Steven writes, “Tom, my boss tells me we need to hire an offshore software development team. I’m pretty sure this is the first step toward eliminating jobs like mine. What can I do? How am I supposed to compete with people who make so much less money than me? Should I just go ahead and quit right now?”

[00:12:14]

Steven, the skills you’re gonna need to handle this are skills you can start to use when you’re at level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:12:23]

Man: Level one: Individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:12:36]

Tom: So, should you quit? Look, Steven, that’s a common concern when we start to talk about outsourcing. It’s a worry that a lot of folks have, and in some cases, it’s a really serious worry. For a while, I worked for a large company that eventually did outsource their entire IT department. And now they’re bringing it back in-house, but that’s a topic for another episode. Most of the time, it’s not that bad.

[00:13:01]

Organizations are being challenged to deliver more with less. And candidly, it’s very difficult, and you know this. It’s very difficult to find highly talented, technically skilled performers who are available when you happen to want them. I remember I was hiring people and it would take months for me to find the right people, to assess their capabilities, to see if I could get them to agree to work for me. And even then, that was a bit of a roll of the dice. So it’s not unreasonable for companies to say, “Hey, we have a shortage of highly technically skilled talent. We are paying a lot of money to get the right people in position. Is there a better or cheaper way for us to deliver? And what kind of tradeoffs might be involved in that process?”

[00:13:46]

And candidly, most of the time, it’s not that they’re looking to get rid of you. That’s usually not the case. Now, I know that that does happen sometimes, and I’ve got some clients I work with where that is exactly what the company’s doing. And we’ve got to help my clients figure out how they’re gonna make the adjustment. But most of the time, it’s just not that bad. In fact, this can be an opportunity for you to deliver even more value and increase the impact of your skills that you bring into the business.

[00:14:16]

Now, I know as a geek there’s a pretty good chance that your gut reaction when you hear the word “opportunity,” you think I’m playing Buzzword Bingo. But I’m not. Let me be really specific. Time and again, I have watched highly technical experts step into roles and become brilliant in their niche. And think about Bill and how great he was at desktop hardware and operating systems internals, or James and how he completely understood telephone call detail records, or Steven and how competent he was in understanding the nuances of the core engine of our product.

[00:14:56]

Each of these guys was an ace, top of their class. Each one stepped in and they got more and more deeply involved in their chosen technology until they were always the smartest guy in the room when it came to their stuff. Now, what happened is, all those guys, unfortunately, all of them, fell into a trap, and it’s a trap I’ve fallen into as well. The trap is this. When you’re the only person who knows how to do something, you’re the only person who can do that thing. And that means two things to you. If you’re the only person who can do a specific thing for the business, one, you will never be able to stop doing that job. You will have that job for as long as you are employed. And two, you will never be able to deliver more value to the company than you did back in the good old days when you slayed that dragon that you work on each day.

[00:15:53]

See, there was a time when the company didn’t have any idea how to solve the problem that you work on right now. And you’ve been involved in solving that problem and delivering great value with that solution. But the trap is, if you’re the only guy who can work on that solution, if you’re the only one who solves that problem, now that problem is solved.

[00:16:15]

Sure, there are things you can do to make it better. Sure, there are changes in the marketplace that require you to do updates and improvements. Yes, but that particular problem, as far as the business is concerned, that problem has already been solved. And the business’ value of the problem is not going to get bigger. It’s gonna get smaller. They’re gonna say, “Well, that was yesterday. You know, what have you done for me lately?”

[00:16:41]

And you know this. You know that technology changes. That hot, high-performance toolkit that was incredible five years ago, is yesterday’s news now. The newer stuff is so much better and stronger and more powerful. And you know that the market has changed. The business problems that were very exciting to the client at the time are no longer nearly as interesting because the marketplace is different now.

[00:17:08]

So, here’s the opportunity. Your schedule is probably filled with enhancements, maintenance, and operations on your preferred technology. And you’ve probably thought to yourself from time to time, I’d like to fix X, but we’ll never get support to do that. And even if we did, when would we have time to work on that? Now is the time to increase the impact you’re gonna make by investing in the stuff that the company needs but they just couldn’t spare you because you were the only person who could work on that.

[00:17:40]

Now, I just have to pause here. Hang on one second. I’m talking about what the company needs, not only what they need, but what they think they need. It’s not about your backlog of technical debt, because I know that there’s a good chance if you’ve been working on a particular set of technology for a long time, there’s been a hot list of things that you really would like to refactor. And they may be very helpful to the company if they were refactored, but candidly, they might not. They might not deliver the kind of value that the company needs. And remember, I’m talking about what the company thinks it needs.

[00:18:20]

Now, it’s possible that your technical debt is actually a looming crisis for your company, but I’m pretty confident that unless that technical debt has actually caused customer-facing outages or it has actually caused the sales demo system to fail in the middle of a sales pitch, that the business leaders aren’t gonna believe that’s their number one priority.

[00:18:42]

Your goal is to be seen as a high impact expert, right? Wouldn’t it be great if you could solve some of the most pressing issues the company was facing? If you could look at your product pipeline and looking at the things that are on the project list, to figure out how you could free yourself up.

[00:19:01]

What if you could break that project list into two categories of work? The first category of work is technical work that requires strong and capable developers. It’s work that’s got a clear scope and it’s got a reasonable timeline for delivery. It’s work that you can easily package up to be outsourced to smart offshore developers.

[00:19:22]

And the second category of work, and we all have these types of projects, they’re kind of spongy and soft. Maybe the scope isn’t completely clear, the deadline is pretty urgent, the business problem is pretty urgent and you’ve got rapidly changing requirements and maybe a set of stakeholders that’s changing pretty fast. That kind of project just isn’t suitable for you to push out the door. That’s why companies need you. That’s why they need you to step in and do that. So, many times companies aren’t looking to get rid of you. They’re looking to find ways to deliver higher value at a lower cost.

[00:19:57]

So, assuming that’s the case, what if you lead the charge to get that first category successfully handed off to a competent partner? And in doing so, what if as you handed that work off, your daily work off, to somebody who could do some of those tasks, what if that freed you up to find creative and valuable solutions to that second category of work, that high urgency, high business value category of work? Or what if it allowed you to cope with possibilities when it comes to your technical debt that you haven’t had time to think about?

[00:20:32]

I mean, just as an example, maybe, maybe instead of refactoring the entire business engine for your app, which would improve performance and get you new technology and wipe out a bunch of technical debt, right? Maybe instead of refactoring that whole thing, maybe you could find ways to leave that code base intact, but you came up with a set of APIs that would allow that engine to keep running and would allow you to get other projects carved off and handed to somebody else.

[00:21:04]

I’m not saying that you stop using your technical skills. You’re gonna continue to use those core skills. You’re still gonna continue to be the go-to person. You’re gonna deliver those technical solutions and you’re gonna focus on delivering higher value work, personally. You’re doing that while you’re finding a way for the important but candidly, the lower value work to be competently handled by somebody at lower cost to the company. It’s really a good business decision for you and it doesn’t require you to compromise on your technical acumen. That’s really what becoming a geek leader is all about. It’s finding ways to deliver higher value, be recognized and rewarded for the contributions you’re making.

[00:21:47]

So, Steve, getting back to your question, I guess you have to assess whether you think your boss and the other leaders are making deep cuts or if they’re just trying to refine the business model to deliver faster and higher value.

[00:22:02]

Now let’s take just a minute and walk down the dark path together. Let’s assume the handwriting’s on the wall and they’re gonna cut you and everybody else. Even in the worst case scenario, I think you have an opportunity to grow your skills, to find ways to work with outside teams, to work with people from different cultures and languages and locations and time zones. Those are skill sets that you’re gonna definitely need in your career. If you’re not using them today, it’s not gonna be long before you’re gonna need that.

[00:22:29]

Globalization is a real thing. And whether it’s working with diverse team members in cities across the U.S., or whether you’re working with people across an ocean, if you wanna be seen as a strong performer, having skills in this area, it’s only gonna be a win for you.

[00:22:46]

And I wanna just remind you that as you move up in your career, your boss is not really measuring your success by the work you do with your two hands. Your boss is measuring you by the work you deliver as you work with others. Maybe those people report to you. Maybe they work on your team as peers with you. Or maybe these are people that you work with across teams.

[00:23:10]

As you move up in your career, it’s not enough for you to want to be able to deliver personally, you’ve got to be able to enable and empower others to deliver value if you wanna keep getting raises. I mean, that’s the deal. If you focus entirely on what you personally can deliver and just get out of my way and get stuff done, there’s a limit to how much you’re gonna be able to make. What you wanna do is continue to raise your game, to raise your value. Because the skills that got you here will not get you there.

[00:23:43]

Now, let’s talk about, just for a second, if it’s not the worst case, right? Because the worst case, that dark path was if they were gonna cut you. If your leaders are generally trustworthy folks, then I think I’d be working on helping them make this partner strategy a success. The skills and capabilities you gain in the process are gonna be valuable to add to your toolkit. As I said before, the world is getting smarter, at least in part, because of the technology tools you’ve been building during your career. So, Steve, I think the ball’s in your court. What do you think you should do? And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:24:20]

Thought leader segment.

[00:24:40]

John: Hello, I’m John Maxwell, and as one of my founding partners, Tom has been trained by me and my team.

[00:24:47]

Tom: Let’s talk about the “Law of Addition,” that leaders add value by serving others. And this is something you’re gonna start to tackle when you’re at level two of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:25:01]

Man: Level two: Team member. Level two is where you work well with others and together you all succeed.

[00:25:11]

Tom: In a time when CEOs are often paid hundreds of times what the average worker is paid, Costco’s CEO Jim Sinegal stands out. Jim’s salary is far lower than that of the CEOs of his competitors. And fundamentally, Jim believes in paying his team members well and offering them good benefits. On average, they’re paid 42% more than their closest rival, and they have high employee loyalty.

[00:25:36]

Sinegal keeps an open door policy with team members and he visits every store, every year. And when a company like Costco has been so financially successful over the years, many leaders would be bragging about how great they are and how much good stuff they’ve done. But in contrast, Jim says, and I quote, “It is improper for one person to take total credit when it takes so many people to build a successful organization.” Jim gets it. He really gets it. Not only that, but he cares about his team members and he shows it by serving them in ways that demonstrate his care for them.

[00:26:13]

Sinegal once flew from Texas to San Francisco when he heard an executive was hospitalized for an emergency surgery. It came as no surprise to the executive because it was consistent with the way that Sinegal leads. And this is tied directly to today’s law of addition, “Successful leaders add value to others by serving them.”

[00:26:33]

John Maxwell says, “The bottom line in leadership isn’t how far we advance ourselves, but how far we advance others. This is achieved by serving others and adding value to their lives. The interaction between every leader and follower is a relationship, and all relationships either add to or subtract from a person’s life. If you’re a leader, you’re having either a positive or negative impact on the people you lead. There is one question. Are you making things better for the people who follow you? That’s it.” Period.

[00:27:10]

John goes on to say, “I would say that probably 90% of the people who have a negative impact, do it unintentionally. They don’t realize their actions subtract from the other person and from the relationship. They don’t see that it is harming the team. And if a subtracting leader doesn’t change, he will eventually move from subtraction to division, significantly harming his ability to deliver. Conversely, probably 90% of the people who have a positive impact on others, do it intentionally.”

[00:27:44]

John writes, “How do I know? Because people are selfish. I’m selfish. Being an adder makes me step out of my comfort zone every day and think about adding value to others.” If John Maxwell, the worldwide guru, the number one influencer on leadership, needs to constantly step outside his comfort zone and remember to serve his people, don’t you think you and I need to do the same?

[00:28:13]

And my favorite story from this law is the one John tells about a strong leader on his team named Dan. One day, when Dan was new to his job, John was chatting with people in the lobby. Dan came in, briefcase in hand. Dan walked past everyone without saying a word and went straight down the hall toward his office. John said, “I was astounded. How could a leader walk right past a group of people he worked with and not even say, ‘Hello’? I quickly excused myself from the conversation I was having and I went to his office.” After greeting Dan, John said, “How could you walk past everyone like that?” Dan responded, “I’ve got a lot of work to do today and I really wanted to get started.”

[00:28:50]

I have to pause here for just a minute to say that there was a time when I was exactly like Dan. I was so task focused. I had a lot of things to do. I mean, I just needed my team to get out of the way so I could do the important work. But John’s response to Dan floored me. He said, “Dan, you just walked past your work.” Never forget that leadership is about people. Leadership is about people. Dan did care about his people, and so did I, deep down. But both Dan and I made the same mistake. We failed to show how much we valued people in a way that they could feel and understand and appreciate.

[00:29:31]

So what’s the payoff? Why should you make the time to invest in others and add and serve them? I just want you to take a moment to think back over your career. I bet you remember there were some bosses you liked and others you didn’t like so much, right? Well, when you think about the good ones, wasn’t there an aspect of them helping you? And if they were helping you and helping other team members, wasn’t that a part of making the team highly productive?

[00:29:56]

The fact of the matter is that relationships tend to drift apart. Without intentional help, relationships rust. They decay. And that’s compounded by people who don’t even realize they’re being subtractors. They’re accidentally making withdrawals from an account that has less and less money in it. And eventually, that account is overdrawn and the relationship is severely hurt. And that often happens entirely by accident, through unintentional neglect.

[00:30:26]

So even if you’re not the official boss, you can serve others. You can build up the team and you can add value to them through your service to them. So let me ask you, will you do it? Are you adding value to your team members? And how would you know? What are some steps you could take to show value to them? The law of addition, “Leaders add value by serving others.” And that’s today’s John Maxwell thought leader segment.

[00:30:55]

Episode hack.

[00:31:17]

Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about what do you do when your boss wants to start outsourcing the work you’re doing. How should you respond? We also talked about the law of addition and how we need to intentionally help serve and add value to others. And we talked about career development. What does it take for you to move ahead? And of course, you’ve got to be thinking like a geek leader in order to be ready to step into that next role, but let me ask you, have you decided what your next role might look like?

[00:31:46]

For today’s episode hack, I wanna encourage you to think about your career. What’s the next logical step for you to take? Do you wanna be a people leader or do you wanna be a deep technical expert? Either way, what skill should you work on next to prepare you to step into that role? As you think about that role that you wanna hold next and then evaluate what’s one skill that role is gonna require for you to acquire that’s gonna make you a better fit? Having a plan and then taking baby steps, like writing down the skills you wanna grow, it’s a great way for you to begin to make progress. And that is today’s episode hack.

[00:32:28]

Closeout

Hey, can I ask you something? Did you hear something helpful on today’s episode? Why not share it with a friend? On my iPhone, it’s as simple as hitting the three little dots on the bottom right of the screen, selecting “Share Episode,” enter your friend’s email and hit “Send.” Why do this? Two reasons. One, your friend or coworker will thank you. You’ll be seen as a source of helpful and valuable information and they will appreciate you for it. And number two, I need you to help me get the word out about this podcast. I’m working hard to bring great ideas and great content to you and it’s a big help to me if more people hear those ideas. Go ahead, share it now. I’ll wait. Thanks.

[00:33:18]

This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.