Experiments with XL: Extreme Leadership (Paired Management)

I recently (in early June) took some time off from life and work, decided to be completely unplugged for ten full days, with no access to any electronics whatsoever. This break from work coincided with the last 10 days of Ramadan, a practice called Itikaf, which is about secluding (surrendering) one's self to God by living day/night within the precincts of the Masjid boundaries, where one is engaged in various acts of worship, including self reflection, self-awareness & meditation. Itikaf is about leaving it all behind, including your own family.  I had actually made my decision sometime in April, a feeling that suddenly inspired me as something I just needed to do, without too much thought or planning. I immediately fired off an email at 5AM informing by boss (the CEO) of my upcoming intent, not really seeking his approval - I merely informed him that I'll be away from the office, completely unreachable for 10 full days, a personal life quest I needed to fulfil...thankfully, the boss didn't get in my way ;-)

When people, both friends and colleagues included, found out about my leave plans, they immediately enquired how I was going to manage the work topic. I lead a technology team responsible for an online video platform for DStv (providing live/linear streaming channels as well as video-on-demand Catch Up services, we also support a major part of the business with a full digital/web platform infrastructure). Around that time, my teams were working flat out to stabilise & scale the platform for increased load, in preparation for the FIFA world cup. We will only be ready to "freeze" a week before world cup - how could I possibly leave the team at such a critical period??  On top of that, my division was part of an ongoing group-wide organisational restructure, in those two weeks, there was much HR work to do, including rationalising job roles across various technology divisions, job grading, role & people profiling, as well as one-on-one consultations. How could I leave the team leaderless through this period?? And to add a cherry on the top, whilst I would be on leave, the group's yearly Ops Review would've taken place, I would need to input into this stream as well.  As if this wasn't enough, there were concerns that my leadership team was fairly new, people had some doubts...

I wasn't really concerned by these, instead I saw it as the perfect opportunity to test my leadership team. Whilst a fairly new team that's been only recently formally announced, they are still in between the storming/norming phase (even though it's been over a year since they're under my leadership transformation). I wanted to test out a few things:

Update: Reflections on my career in Software Engineering & Management

Two years ago around this time, I explored my progress with respect to my career choices by performing some self-reflection, by asking myself some searching questions. Later I shared my findings on this blog, in this post: Reflections on my career in the hope my story could resonate with people who may be experiencing similar challenges. I'm glad I did so since people did actually reach out, thanking me for the post & providing feedback.

Anyway, two years have since passed since I last shared the cross-road I found myself at, since I'd started my journey with this path in mind...

a) Software Team Lead -> Software Manager -> Senior Manager -> VP -> Director -> CEO

b) Principal Engineer -> Senior Principal -> Technical Director -> CTO -> CEO

b') Principal Engineer -> Architect -> Senior Architect -> Director -> CTO -> CEO

c) Technical Project Manager -> Senior Project Manager -> Program Manager -> Director -> CEO

...but instead found myself being in the technical project management space for too long, that people started naturally profiling me as the "rockstar program manager" (check out my LinkedIn recommendations and you'll immediately see why). Whilst this is a great place to be (don't get me wrong, I think a career in Project Management is one of the most versatile, lucrative and flexible professions out there, I highly encourage the move), for me, I felt I'd learnt and experienced enough, that I didn't see myself doing that for much longer. I did enjoy the project leadership, but I wanted more. Another factor that was causing me anxiety was that my role as a management consultant was getting a bit boring, what I imagined it to be versus the reality were not fully aligned. My time was fully consumed, leaving me little time to explore my own ideas to look at new ideas/products (my own start-up), I might as well have been a permanent employee - I was living an illusion, in reality I was basically a "perm-tractor". I had built up enough personal equity, credibility to enjoy a decent level of referent power to indirectly influence outcomes in my favour, I still wanted more - I wanted to feel more alive than being a neutral facilitator (which in itself I found quite rewarding but also quite energy-draining).

So what did I do? I went back to my RAGE model, here's what I had for my persona as a professional:

• As a software professional, I would like to learn & grow, seek out individuals, companies and interactions, to reach heights of excellence, so that I can not only enjoy the profession, but take me to new opportunities & experiences. I want to surround myself with people that motivate me, journey together to grow to the next level.
• Want to work with inspiring, motivated leaders that I can learn from. Want to surround myself with deeply technical, bright people. Want to work with people who know what they're doing or unafraid to take chances. Want to work with disruptors, people unafraid to push boundaries, challenging status quo. Want to work with people who are equally, if not, more motivated than me. Want to learn from people so that I can grow and do my own thing one day. Want to be with fellow professionals that will help take me to the next level. Want to work on projects and products that are interesting and cutting edge, not "me-too, copy-cat products. Want to stay at the cutting edge of software, be involved in the next wave like cloud services, mobile app development, car infotainment / self-driving cars, drone software, cloud, etc. Want a chance to start-up my own business in ideas in product development, services-space like crowd-based testing, etc.
• As a professional, I want to run a company, lead my own division. I believe the experiences and skills acquired over the years puts me a good position to do this, regardless of technology stack. I haven't been successful in launching my own start-up, so the best place would be to go back to corporate, be part of story much bigger than myself, and get the experience I need.

I also came to the conclusion that being a specialist is not a bad thing, so I'm now settled with the fact that I'm a Digital TV Technology Specialist, so I should just focus my energy in this area. I can still keep abreast of new technologies, but the road to my continued success is to build upon this experience - the rest is noise - if an opportunity comes my way for investing or if there is something truly exciting with a lot of upside, then I still might consider it ;-)

So what's happened in the last two years?
I made a decision to leave project leadership behind. I explored opportunities that aligned with my aspiration of running my own division. I took a chance by breaking the perception that I'm the guy to call in to rescue failing projects - landing an engagement as interim GM/CTO. A year later, I decided to leave consulting (248 weeks consulting) altogether and enter the corporate world as a permanent employee, taking on a CTO/Head of Technology role :-)

So my path has indeed played out a little different but now seems to be back on track:
Software Engineer > Senior Engineer > Technical Project Manager > Senior Project/Program Manager > Principal Engineer > Program Manager > Management Consultant > CTO (now) > CEO (next)

Lessons learnt / myths busted?

Who says you can't change tracks in between (especially switch to project management) and switch back to technology leadership? It can definitely be done!

Be prepared to Leave it All Behind as long as you believe you're heading in the general direction you seek (maintain your guiding compass always).

Take time to process your situation with Life/Work by investing the time in self-reflection & planning. I found my RAGE model to be a constant source of guidance. It does take some self-control, but it will be worth it in the end, just keep at it...

It is indeed possible to start from humble beginnings and change your life for a better outcome...

2017 Life/Work Balance Review

2017 was a year that went by lightning fast. It seems like not so long ago I was reflecting on 2016 when I did the write up of 80/20 rule on my life/work balance timing review around this time last year. Now a year later, I'm reflecting on how my time was spent in 2017. Interestingly enough the overall profile of my life/work balance hasn't changed drastically if you look at the summaries, but once I dive a bit more into the detail it becomes evident that my time did take a knock in some areas.

I've been tracking my time on how I spend my life for three years and counting. I've still not developed an automated system yet for tracking, need to write an app that simplifies all this manual work, however I need to find the time to do this :-) Part of my personal projects which had taken a knock last year. Once I've automated this through an app, it should make Life/Work goals tracking much simpler, lets see what 2018 brings!

My Personal Value System - Personas

At the turn of 2017, I'd optimised my value system to the following elements, split between Personal & Professional lives:

This was supposed to reflect the priorities in my overall life, with the view that when it comes to time management, how I consume time should be relative to these priorities. In hindsight, this is more difficult to achieve in reality.

What happened in 2017?

Overall, the data for 2017 is shown below:

Putting this in pictures, it looks like this:

Comparing this to 2016, it looks pretty much similar at the high level:

Quick Analysis

2017 compared to 2016, the data shows roughly a balanced life/work split, although in reality I don't feel like it was balanced at all. In May 2017 I started a new job, which had me focused on work more than anything else. If I ignore the hard reality constraints, which is something I define as unavoidable, must-happen activities like Rest/Sleep, Driving-Car and Household maintenance, the picture looks a little different:

In 2017, I worked a total of 2383 hours.

The income-generating portion was spent working as a consultant, totals 2339 hours.

Accounting for 168 hours as the legal working hours per month, this works out to 13.33 months.

Assuming a full calendar month for leave & public holidays (11 working months), I've worked an extra 2.33 months in 2017!

Whilst time spent with Family exceeded Work time, my personal time for my own individual interests took a knock. I've hardly spent time on hobbies, pet projects as well as general health/fitness/well-being.

2017 Lessons Learnt

I worked more in 2017 than 2016, in 2018 I need to reduce work-time, to focus more on personal time. If Personal time invested as an Individual is prioritised higher than Work then I need to figure out a way of allocating more time in this area. I can't compromise on the Family aspect so the time has to come from somewhere else.  Even if I leave consulting and enter full-time employment, I need to create space to value my personal endeavours. Pet projects and new ideas have had a dismal focus in 2017, making me wonder if it's worth any focus at all - the reality is quite different from aspirations or expectations. General Health & Well-being took big hits as well. Becoming an entrepreneur is hard, running a consulting company is also hard - are these just dreams, or am I serious about these? It maybe enough just to have three major focus areas: Family, Life & Work, unless Work converts to Entrepreneur / Running my own business - need to ask myself some serious questions here. Career-wise, my trajectory is looking promising but I don't know if I should resign to the notion of just spending the rest of my years working in a corporate and just settle...

Tracking 1:1 time with each child is also very challenging, with three kids where the age gaps are not that huge. The numbers do reflect quite poorly, what I've found though is that the interactions are captured as Family time - so it might not make sense anymore to focus on sole 1:1 time with each child. I still think this quite important, and need to figure out a way of creating these 1:1 times more frequently. I may have to kick-off the weekly family retrospectives to get this going again.

How did I enjoy Work in 2017?

So if I feel I'm working more than anything else, and the data shows a major part of my life is spent in the office, am I having a good time? Am I enjoying the work? Am I spending my valuable life-hours just to get by as a matter-of-fact, or am I actually enjoying the gig, and getting some fulfilment out of it? I've been tracking my level of enjoyment at work for the last few years - here's what the data shows.

I track feelings as: 

Enjoyed - Good! When I had a good productive day, relationships good, achieved something, good flow-state.

Bad When I feel I should really be doing something else, had a bad encounter, things pear-shaped.

Indifferent / Neutral Neither good nor bad, just another day-at-the-office, uneventful.

Personal Time Time off to focus on personal topics: Leave, Family-Time or Personal Time Out

The theory is that if the number of Bad days increases to a level of causing alarm, then this signals an event for me to start reconsidering my options - like just leave the work and find something better. Looking at the data, there is still far greater upside than downside - 2017 has been a year of increased enjoyment at work, so there is really no reason for me to look elsewhere...unless the level of uncertainty in employment is increasing - which as I write this, might just be the case. I've learnt through the years never to be complacent, no matter how "secure" you might feel...so as I start 2018, I must still keep my options open.

2018 Key Goals/Objectives

In 2018 I need to get back to re-evaluating my state every three months. The themes to focus on for now:

1. Find a way to reduce work hours to a point that it is actually sustainable, and not be the only thing that consumes me (even if I'm having a good time at work). Goal is to maintain a consistent level of 168 hours maximum per month on work. Need to do this by building an awesome management team, foster leadership & responsibility downstream. Implement behaviours from "Turn this Ship Around".
2. Create space for Personal endeavours, focusing on leisure activities as well as health & fitness. 
1. My 3D printing experiments seized in 2017. Start again.
2. Cycling virtually non-existent in 2017. Start again.
3. I have a boxed Lego Robotics Mindstorm set waiting for me (gifted this toy for my birthday)
4. Five programming books to read and new languages to code - waiting for a year, unopened. 
5. Read 24 books this year. In 2017 I completed just 9 books of the 38 I'd planned to read!
6. Create the software for my RAGE tracking tool.
3. Continue to nurture the family time to be as memorable & enjoyable as possible.

On Managing Change: Damped Sine Wave

I recently read a piece from the June edition of ACM, Q&A with Erik Meijer, which I found quite apt as it speaks to my current situation at work. Whilst Meijer talks specifically to software projects, we can apply this to any kind of topic, be it personal or professional, work & life - everything we encounter when it comes to dealing with change & uncertainty (career, new teams, family, new projects, etc.).

This is especially relevant to the period I'm in now, a leader driving change - i.e. changes to the way we working, kicking-off a focused management war room, and the recent announcements around delivery priorities for the next three months. This is a large corporate, multi-million dollar industry, the amazing part is that things are so fast-paced and always changing that one can argue that the only constant in this company is one that of Change!

So we need to deal with this reality, it's not going to go away anytime soon. My experience is pretty much aligned to Meijer: try to manage the level of uncertainty (balanced by one's appetite for risk) as quickly as possible through communication & stakeholder engagement, converge on well-bounded known-knowns based on the information we receive, agree to execute & deliver within the binding time constraints. Add to this is a sense of measured calm and patience, start practising ways to control your default responses too...

Courtesy: ACM

Below is the excerpt of the Q&A:

<quote>

What is your team process? How does work get done? How do you communicate status? 

A lot of what you read about process and agile has very little evidence behind it. I don't believe a lot of process is scientific. Instead, I define general guidelines about what I want to see happen, and within those I don't care how things happen.

My thinking has two main sources of inspiration: the military and the hacker way.

Over thousands of years, armies have figured out how to get things done and achieve their goals in an environment that is really chaotic and unpredictable. That is the environment we live in as developers as well. If you read the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting manual, and replace the word war with software, everything in there holds true.

So how do you deal with uncertainty? When people attempt to solve with process, they are trying to fight or control uncertainty. For example, someone can say just adopt zero inbox and your life will be awesome. In reality though, that isn't really the case.

One of the things I like about Facebook is "the hacker way". It is an approach to creating software that involves continuous improvement and feedback. It is about computational thinking: how do you program the system, and how do you make the system do things that no one thought possible?

Being agile is about communication.

The process needs to change with the situation. You have a big picture of where you want to go, but any plan or process will shatter immediately when you hit your first bug or something happens out of your control.

In most projects there are two phases: an exploratory phase and an execution phase. Your project should progress like a damped sine wave, where the amplitude gets smaller over time (see picture above). You have to figure out what to build, and figure out what question you are trying to answer. In the beginning you want to increase the vertical velocity to get the uncertainty under control, and then you want horizontal velocity to increase when you get into execution.

With prescriptive processes. people are looking for a silver bullet to solve problems, but it doesn't exist...the world is super-confusing, and you have to embrace it and work with it.

</quote>

On driving change: Kotter's Model

I've not only been studying organisational change management for a while now but also been part of some of the process in my recent engagements with clients. The subject has started to fascinate me, which has created a deeper sense of appreciation for system dynamics in the workplace.

I've decided to capture some frameworks on my blog for note keeping, since it will become a likely go-to place for me to reference. I'll start with Kotter's model and build from there. 

The source of my information in this post, is cited & referenced from Leach's Critical Chain Project Management book, Chapter 11, Pages 283-286.

1. Create urgency

The first step is to get a sense of urgency building within the organisation that something must be done. Most people in most organisations feel overwhelmed by keeping up with the daily workload so suggesting doing something more to change the way the organisation works looks at best to be just more work and at worst to be something that is going to make things worse than they presently are. People need something to motivate them.  Kotter suggested some things that work:

• Show others the need for change with a compelling object that they can actually see, touch, and feel.
• Show people valid and dramatic evidence from outside the organisation that demonstrates that change is required.
• Look constantly for cheap and easy ways to reduce complacency.
• Do not underestimate how much complacency, fear, and anger exists in your organisation.

2. Build team

One person can only succeed to cause change in a very small organisation. Many people are not even able to cause changed behaviour in one person: themselves. Think of how many people succeed at losing wait or stopping smoking? Planning real change at an organisation level needs help, you can't do it alone. You need to enlist the leaders of the organisation who have bought into the sense of urgency. Kotter suggested the following that could work:

• Show enthusiasm and commitment to help draw the right people into the group.
• Model the trust and teamwork needed in the group.
• Structure meetings for the guiding team to minimise the frustration and increase trust.
• Put your energy into step 1 (raising energy / urgency) if you feel you cannot move on to step 2.

3. See vision

People need to be able to see the proposed change because that is what can begin to create an emotional feeling that will motivate them to change. A vision should be a picture of the end result. If you describe it in words, the words need to evoke an image. Kotter suggested:

• Try to see - literally - possible futures.
• Make the vision so clear that you can articulate in one minute or write, or better yet draw, it on one page.
• Supply a moving (emotional) vision such as serving people.
• Put forth bold strategies to make the vision real.
• Focus on how to quickly make the change.

4. Communicate

So people can feel the change, you need to communicate:

• The vision in terms of the benefits people will see when they change their behaviour.
• What has to be done to make the vision a reality.
• Reinforcements when people exhibit the right new behaviours.
• "Wins" by people and groups who do the new behaviours.
• Anything and everything else about the change that will keep at the top of people's agenda.

Kotter suggests some ideas on communicating:

• Keep communication simple and heartfelt.
• Do your homework before communicating, especially to understand what people are feeling.
• Speak to anxieties, confusion, anger, and distrust.
• Rid the communication channels of junk so that important messages get through above the noise.
• Use current technologies to help people see the vision.

5. Empower action

You need to empower action: make sure people know that they are expected to take action now and that they are free to do it as the see fit. Empowering action is as much about removing obstacles to action (pulling) as it is about causing people to act. Kotter's suggestions:

• Find individuals with change experience to bolster people's self-confidence with "we-won-you-can-too" stories.
• Recognise and reward in ways that inspire, promote optimism, and build self-confidence.
• Deal with disempowering managers through coaching or move them out of the way.

6. Create wins

Your team needs to coach people to create successes: wins. Then you need to reinforce the behaviour of those who created the wins and communicate their wins and reinforcements to the rest of the organisation. Pilots are a powerful tool to create short term wins but you need to ensure that people who live those wins with the pilots do not immediately go back to prior behaviours. Kotter's suggestions:

• Early wins that come fast.
• Wins that are as visible as possible to as many people as possible.
• Wins that go through emotional defences.
• Wins that are meaningful.
• Early wins that speak to powerful players whom you need to engage.
• Wins that are cheap and easy even if small.

7. Do not let up

The leadership team has to keep the desired change at the top of agenda through and well beyond the planned-for successes. There will be obstacles and there will be some failures along the way but the winning teams take failure as a learning and motivating experience to add vigour to the change process. Kotter's ideas:

• Rid yourself of work that wears you down - tasks that mattered in past but may not matter now or tasks that you can delegate.
• Constantly look for ways to keep up the urgency.
• Use new situations opportunistically to launch the next waves of change.
• Show 'em, Show 'em, Show 'em...

8. Make it stick

Once you have completed the first round of getting the organisation to exhibit the desired new behaviours, you need to continue right on to improve what you have accomplished. If you do not continue to improve, the organisation will revert to the previous behaviours in a surprising short period of time. Kotter's ideas that work:

• Never, never, never give up on step 7.
• Use new employee orientation to demonstrate what matters most in the organisation.
• Use the promotion process to place people who exhibit the new behaviours into influential positions.
• Tell vivid stories over and over about how things now work.
• Ensure continuity of behaviour and results that help sustain and grow the new culture.