The Twin Illusions of Conflict and Power

Aesop's fable, "The Dog in the Manger," concerns a barnyard dog who one afternoon lay down to sleep on top of the hay in the barn's manger.

On being awoken, he growled and barked. "Woof woof!"

He ferociously kept the animals from eating the hay in the manger, even though he couldn't eat the hay himself.

A frustrated ox offers the moral of the story: "people often begrudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves."

The modern discipline of Information Technology gives Aesop's centuries-old fable fresh relevance. Imagine that you're the technical person in charge of your company's newly installed state-of-the-art information system. It might be a complex software tool, like a big-deal Oracle database management system. it might be something simpler but just as important (and expensive), like EMC's latest and greatest networked disk drive array.

You may have helped your organization evaluate and select it. Perhaps you supervised its installation and initial configuration. You've gone over and over its manuals and technical notes for many weeks or months as you've mastered its elaborate ins and outs. You've updated its software and firmware, tweaked and tuned it to perfection, and demonstrated its cool features with pride to your colleagues and management. And, of course, you've upgraded your mental resume, and maybe its embodiment on paper as well, to reflect all of your wonderful new experience with it.

Then, one day, inevitably, others in your organization approach you to make use of it. They ask you for its administrative password, inform you that they plan to migrate some corporate division's data to it, advise you that they intend to connect it to some backup/restore system. In short, they announce their intention to take it from you.

How do you feel about this? After all, it's your system, isn't it? How do you act on those feelings? Do you look for ways to say "yes," or do you look for ways to justify saying "no?"

Thomas and Kilmann Conflict Modes

According to Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann (1974), conflict is a matter of perception rather than fact, and, as such, people can imagine it where it doesn't actually exist. Experience suggests that Information Technology professionals, who tend to entangle their subjective sense of personal self-worth with the objective details of the tools they master, are perhaps more likely to misinterepret as an attack on their ego the logical next-step of handing their beloved tools over to be applied in practice by others. I've known many a colleague who, after insisting that they wanted nothing to do with the day-to-day details of some subsystem they'd installed, nonetheless resisted stubbornly any others who dared try to assume responsibility for it themselves.

Come to think of it, I've been that colleague, and more than once. Was I rightly defending an important technical resource from possible misuse? Or, was I merely defending my own bruised ego? In hindsight, I can tell you that those weren't exactly my finest professional hours.

According to Thomas and Kilmann, people choose to respond to conflict, whether real or imagined, in one of five behavioral modes (see diagram above). There are two ways to cooperate: assertively, by working with the conflicting parties, or more passively, by simply accommodating their wishes.

Thirdly, there's the neutral middle-ground choice of seeking compromise.

And, finally, Thomas and Kilmann posit two ways of saying "No," of refusing cooperation: assertively, by competing, or passively, by avoiding conflict through uncooperative resistance.

Thinking back, as I reacted to the imagined threat my colleague posed when he asked me to hand over that storage subsystem, what choices did I imagine I had?

Active cooperation and passive accommodation would have meant sharing continuing praise and credit for a job well done, my job, with someone else. The middle ground of compromise would have meant surrendering it altogether.

On the other hand, I couldn't actively compete with my colleague for ongoing ownership of the new system, because management wouldn't have supported me, and, besides, I really didn't want that job myself.

So, I resisted. I chewed onto ownership for as long as I could. I snarled at requests for access to the subsystem's passwords. I dogged those last steps needed to make the subsystem operational. And, in doing all of this, I starved my organization of something it needed, delayed others' projects, frustrated others' goals.

What's another word for passive-aggressive behavior? How about "Woof woof."

Discussion Questions:

• In your experience, in the context described in this post, would a typical IT manager be more likely to support or change an IT practitioner's passive-aggressive behavior?
• What would be a manager's best strategy for dealing with this situation?
• How might a frustrated IT practitioner go about changing a passive-aggressive colleague's conflict-handling mode from competitive to cooperative?

"The Little Engine That Could" Could be You

"I think I can, I think I can," puffed the little "Engine That Could," struggling against all odds to pull a stranded train up a steep hill. And, because it believed that it could, guess what? It actually did!

And, guess what else? Psychological research indicates a scientific basis for this inspirational little tale.

According to research done by social psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1990's, a psychological construct known as perceived self-efficacy is a key determinant in, among many other things, the level of success a professional achieves in their work.

Bandura found that, when people believe in their capabilities to exercise control over their own functioning, and over the events that affect their lives, they perceive themselves to be self-effective. On the assumption that a measurement of the strength of this belief would yield a measurement of the related trait of perceived self-efficacy, psychologist Dr. Ralf Schwarzer developed a simple 10-item test to measure it:

Answer:

1 = Not at all true, 2 = Hardly true, 3 = Moderately true, 4 = Exactly true

to each of the following questions:

1. I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough.
2. If someone opposes me, I can find the means and ways to get what I want.
3. It is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals.
4. I am confident that I could deal efficiently with unexpected events.
5. Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations.
6. I can solve most problems if I invest the necessary effort.
7. I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities.
8. When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions.
9. If I am in trouble, I can usually think of a solution.
10. I can usually handle whatever comes my way.

(You can learn more about this instrument, its validity, what it measures, and how it's been used in years of global research, here.)

Bandura identified four factors that reinforce a person's perceived sense of self-efficacy (listed in no particular order; they're each equally significant):

• Mastery experiences - the innate positive sense of satisfaction and accomplishment one gets from having done something well
• Observing people similar to oneself managing task demands successfully - learning to be effective by watching others who are effective
• Social persuasion that one has the capabilities to succeed in given activities  - being told by coworkers and superiors that you have what it takes
• Inferences from somatic and emotional states indicative of personal strengths and vulnerabilities - the positive physical, emotional, and cognitive "feedback" one senses while successfully doing a job

Bottom Line: To overcome the impediments, adversities, setbacks, frustrations and inequities of professional life, people need a robust sense of efficacy to sustain the perseverant effort needed to succeed. Research has shown that people with a high degree of perceived self-efficacy, as measured by instruments like Dr. Schwarzer's (see above), tend to perform well in their professions.

Discussion Questions:
Is Self-Efficacy always a valid Perception, or sometimes an Illusion?

The application of Bandura's research to understanding IT task performance, with its uniquely abstract work products, begs several fundamental questions. This post's discussion questions are based on a more skeptical look at Bandura's four foundations of perceived self-efficacy:

• Mastery experiences - do IT professionals pat themselves on the back too much, especially for doing off-point technical jobs that they were never actually tasked with?
• Observing people similar to oneself managing task demands successfully - what effect does "stealing credit" for something somebody else did have on an individual? More importantly, what effect does it have on colleagues who observed the theft?
• Social persuasion that one has the capabilities to succeed in given activities - Really? Is that all it takes? Doesn't such persuasion need to have some basis in fact?
• Inferences from somatic and emotional states indicative of personal strengths and vulnerabilities - In the abstract world of IT, how do we differentiate "real" positive work experiences from delusions?

Thanks to my good friend, and avid blog reader, Joe, for pointing me to this humorous example of stolen credit:

How to Be Your Own Worst Enemy

Thinking back to all those classic Star Trek TV episodes and movies I enjoyed so much as a kid, I realize now that the Mr. Spock character I secretly idolized was, actually, two very different Vulcans.

The "Smart Spock" could always be counted on to perform dizzyingly complex calculations in his head, even under the most dire of circumstances. Bright guy! He always kept his emotions under control, yet he understood and worked very well alongside his chronically overwrought and comparatively slow human colleagues. This Spock was a compassionate and gifted problem-solver.

On the other hand, the "Stupid Spock," for all his obvious cognitive skills, consistently miscalculated the feelings of others and had a great deal of difficulty understanding and controlling even the simplest of his own long-repressed emotions. Dense dork! At his best, this Stupid Spock seemed comical alongside his wise and well-rounded human buddies. At his worst, he was a dysfunctional mess who often inadvertently put the human crew members on the Enterprise at risk.

 What does Smart Spock have that Stupid Spock doesn't? Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence is a psychological construct that explains the variable ability of people, functioning in social and professional contexts, to understand and manage their own emotions while recognizing and adapting to the emotions of others.

Emotionally intelligent people, like Smart Spock, can overcome, and perhaps sometimes even harness, their own feelings and the feelings of others to function effectively in social and professional situations. Because emotionally intelligent people can make others feel valued and understood, people enjoy working with them and enthusiastically help them to get things done.

Emotionally unintelligent people, like Stupid Spock, fall prey to their emotions, which can hamper or even disable them. Insensitive or even scornful of the feelings of those around them, emotionally unintelligent people are often left to work alone.

Referring to those who are manifestly most deficient in Emotional Intelligence, Alexithymia is a common risk factor for a variety of personal and social problems. For example, people with alexithymia:

• can't identify feelings, and often confuse their emotions with the physical sensations (e.g., headaches, nausea) of emotional arousal
• can't describe their own feelings to other people, or put into words the emotions they observe in others
• have difficulty imagining alternatives (as evidenced by a paucity of fantasies) in solving practical problems.
  
  
  
  
  

Was Stupid Spock's problem on Star Trek that he couldn't understand, control, or adapt to emotions? Or, was that he didn't care enough to try?

Maybe that's what made a Smart guy like Spock so maddeningly Stupid sometimes.

Questions:

• Do you think there's a difference between ordinary empathy and Emotional Intelligence? What do you think it is?
• In practical terms, how do you think Emotional Intelligence (or a lack thereof) might affect the performance of a technical task, or the outcome of an Information Technology project?
• What do you imagine would be the first step toward increasing your own Emotional Intelligence?
• How might you begin to coach an EI-challenged colleague?
• When working with someone who may have Alexithymia, what kind of professional behavior should you avoid?

Chickens, Pigs, and Superpigs

Q: What's the difference between a chicken and a pig?

A: In a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

Following up on this blog's last post about Belbin's inventory of team roles, when it comes to any given role that might be played on an Information Technology project team, there are those who calculate, track, and complain about the length of the critical path, and those who take action to shorten it. 

In psychological terms, involved team members observe failures, such as missed deadlines and unrealized goals, in a cerebral and detached way, as if from the outside. These folks offer great comments at post mortem meetings.

On the other hand, committed team members feel such failures as emotionally painful, and this spurs them to act pre mortem, often heroically, to prevent failures.

Various theories of psychodynamics postulate a mechanism, cathexis, to explain the committed individual's investment of their mental and emotional energy in playing an activist role in making their team successful.

A growing school of management theory, Servant-Leadership, suggests that, by persistently demonstrating selfless service to their colleagues in joint pursuit of the goals of their team, committed members can trigger cathexis in their merely involved co-workers. In other words, there are some Pigs who, magically, seem to be able to turn the Chickens around them into more Pigs. Let's call these inspirational players Superpigs, and, when it comes to getting things done, and done properly, theirs is, indeed, a very handy superpower.

So, on IT teams, there are always Chickens, sometimes Pigs, and, every now and then, Superpigs. Which begs these important questions:

• What can C-Suite executives and line managers do to support the Pigs in their organizations, and foster the emergence of Superpigs?
• What common managers' mistakes (inadvertent, of course) tend to demotivate Pigs and turn them into mere Chickens?
• What factors motivate the Pigs? How are a Superpig's motivations different?

Do Super People Help Make Super Teams?

The really big challenges demand a team effort, and the most effective teams are staffed by the best-equipped people.

According to Dr. R. Meredith Belbin, certain key contributors on effective teams possess unique powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men:

Plant

Plants are creative, unorthodox and idea generators. If an innovative solution to a problem is needed, a Plant is a good person to ask. A good plant will be bright and free-thinking. Plants can tend to ignore incidentals and refrain from getting bogged down in detail. The Plant bears a strong resemblance to the popular caricature of the absentminded professor-inventor, and often has a hard time communicating ideas to others.

Resource Investigator

The Resource Investigator gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously pursuing contacts and opportunities. He or she is focused outside the team, and has a finger firmly on the pulse of the outside world. Where a Plant creates new ideas, a Resource Investigator will quite happily steal them from other companies or people. A good Resource Investigator is a maker of possibilities and an excellent networker, but has a tendency to lose momentum towards the end of a project and to forget small details.

Coordinator

A Coordinator often becomes the default chairperson of a team, stepping back to see the big picture. Coordinators are confident, stable and mature and because they recognise abilities in others, they are very good at delegating tasks to the right person for the job. The Coordinator clarifies decisions, helping everyone else focus on their tasks. Coordinators are sometimes perceived to be manipulative, and will tend to delegate all work, leaving nothing but the delegating for them to do.

Shaper

The shaper is a task-focused leader who abounds in nervous energy, who has a high motivation to achieve and for whom winning is the name of the game. The shaper is committed to achieving ends and will ‘shape’ others into achieving the aims of the team. He or she will challenge, argue or disagree and will display aggression in the pursuit of goal achievement. Two or three shapers in a group, according to Belbin, can lead to conflict, aggravation and in-fighting.

Monitor Evaluator

Monitor Evaluators are fair and logical observers and judges of what is going on. Because they are good at detaching themselves from bias, they are often the ones to see all available options with the greatest clarity. They take everything into account, and by moving slowly and analytically, will almost always come to the right decision. However, they can become excessively cynical, damping enthusiasm for anything without logical grounds, and they have a hard time inspiring themselves or others to be passionate about their work.

Teamworker

A Teamworker is the greasy oil between the cogs that keeps the machine that is the team running. They are good listeners and diplomats, talented at smoothing over conflicts and helping parties understand each other without becoming confrontational. The beneficial effect of a Teamworker is often not noticed until they are absent, when the team begins to argue, and small but important things cease to happen. Because of an unwillingness to take sides, a Teamworker may not be able to take decisive action when it is needed.

Implementer

The Implementer takes what the other roles have suggested or asked, and turns their ideas into positive action. They are efficient and self-disciplined, and can always be relied on to deliver on time. They are motivated by their loyalty to the team or company, which means that they will often take on jobs everyone else avoids or dislikes. However, they may be seen as closed-minded and inflexible since they will often have difficulty deviating from their own well-thought-out plans.

Completer Finisher

The Completer Finisher is a perfectionist and will often go the extra mile to make sure everything is "just right," and the things he or she delivers can be trusted to have been double-checked and then checked again. The Completer Finisher has a strong inward sense of the need for accuracy, rarely needing any encouragement from others because that individual's own high standards are what he or she tries to live up to. They may frustrate their teammates by worrying excessively about minor details and refusing to delegate tasks that they do not trust anyone else to perform.

Specialist

Specialists are passionate about learning in their own particular field. As a result, they will have the greatest depth of knowledge, and enjoy imparting it to others. They are constantly improving their wisdom. If there is anything they do not know the answer to, they will happily go and find it. Specialists bring a high level of concentration, ability, and skill in their discipline to the team, but can only contribute on that narrow front and will tend to be uninterested in anything which lies outside its narrow confines.

Questions for discussion:

• Which of these roles do you think might be most important to meeting the challenges faced by an Information Technology team?
• How likely is it that one person will fill more than one of Belbin's roles on an IT Team?
• Are people born with Belbin's "powers," or can they acquire them?

Ready, Fire, Aim, Paint New Targets

I always seem to find the shopping cart with the misaligned wheel, despite what I'm sure is a whole lot of engineering and management "process" that goes into preventing this little annoyance. Oh, well, maybe I should just learn to accept that shopping cart misalignment is an unavoidable fact of life?
.
Speaking of inevitable misalignment, let's switch gears and talk about the equally pervasive misalignment of Information Technology, and the people who, for all their well-intentioned "process," seem unable to prevent, and perhaps even unintentionally foster, the problem.
.
IT Alignment: everyone wants it, but, if you ask the average CEO, practically nobody seems to have fully realized it. Why?

.
IT alignment demands the simultaneous targeting of four basic organizational goals:

• Optimizing and applying the individual talent of the IT professionals on staff, consultants and employees alike, to...
• ...meet the day-to-day business requirements of the individual corporate clients they serve, while...
• ...shepherding the collective design efforts of all IT professionals on staff: the hardware, software, and networking tools they use; the solutions they buy or build; and the architecture they establish, all to support...
• ...the achievement of the collective organizational mission of the company as a whole, as embodied in the various operational and customer-focused initiatives of corporate management.

Whether instinctively or consciously, every IT manager understands this. However, because the essential identity of an IT organization is defined more by its reactive response to immediate technical contingencies than by its proactive contribution to long-range business planning, IT leaders typically tackle these four targets separately rather than simultaneously:

In reacting to the myriad things that go wrong in an IT environment, IT leadership understandably establishes isolated processes to manage and measure their performance in hitting each of these targets, and voila! Misalignment.

.

Psychologically speaking, how do IT managers reconcile and accept having to live with this misalignment? All it take is a little cognitive dissonance: "Ready, fire, aim." Then, by clever application of a few cooked-to-order metrics, they paint new targets wherever their arrows land, and pat themselves on the back for hitting the bullseyes. Situation ethics, after all, can make a virtue of any vice, and are a well-known means of rationalizing and taking comfort in situational behavior.

.

How do we fix this situational misalignment of Information Technology?

.

I think I know. But, who cares what I think?

.

What do you think?

.

Imagine The Enemy Within

"O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!

My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain—
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark."

- Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 105–109

It may seem hard to imagine, but a trusted employee or colleague (and not just those found in Denmark, Mr. Shakespeare) might secretly be acting against you or your organization:

"Workers who sabotage corporate systems are almost always IT workers who exhibit specific negative office behavior..."

In a 2006 study, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University notes several psychological factors that may motivate "Insider Spies and Saboteurs:"

• Extreme sensitivity to criticism
• Unusual needs for attention
• Chronic frustration and feeling unappreciated
• Difficulties controlling anger with bursts of inappropriate temper
• Chronic sense of victimization or mistreatment
• Chronic grudges against others
• Belief, and conduct, reflecting the sense that the insider is above the rules applicable to others due to special characteristics or suffering
• Chronic interpersonal problems and conflicts (including physical conflicts) such that the insider is avoided by others or they “walk on eggshells” around him or her
• Compensatory behaviors reflecting underlying self-esteem problems such as bragging, bullying, spending on fantasy-related items
• Chronic difficulties dealing with life challenges indicating an inability to realistically assess his or her strengths, limitations, resources—overspending, overestimating his abilities and underestimating others, attempting to gain positions for which he or she clearly lacks training or qualifications
• Use of compartmentalization such that the insider has no problems living with contradictions between his maladaptive behavior and espoused beliefs (an allegedly religious individual who cheats on his wife or expenses)
• Lack of inhibitory capabilities such as a conscience, impulse control, empathy for others, comprehension of the impact of actions on others, or any regard for the feelings of others such that the insider is chronically offending or exploiting those around him or her 

Their report on the subject offers several telltale behavioral markers that may indicate the presence of the problem in your organization:

• Bullying
• Chronic insecurity
• Intimidation of others
• Refusal to conform to rules
• Chronic complaining
• Chronic disregard for, and manipulation of, the office policies and practices
• Threatening the life of those opposing him
• Stealing items from work
• Admitted theft of computer equipment
• Access from a new employer’s system without displaying remorse
• Withholding of information from team members
• Intimidation of team members to the extent they were fearful for their safety

Followers of this blog might recognize some overlap with the characteristics of the passive-aggressive worker and organization.

Of course, while they may not be very productive, "disgruntled employees" usually aren't maliciously so, and they rarely commit outright bad acts of espionage and sabotage.

Just the same, the Sofware Engineering Institute's report (you'll find it here)  certainly highlights the importance of keeping your privileged passwords secure.

Think You're "All That?" If So, You Aren't

Something to think about before opening your big fat mouth:

People who boast of being "the best" typically score lower than average in objective tests of the superior competence they claim.

On the other hand, people who score well in competence tests tend to underrate their competence relative to others.

In other words, those who brag often do so without basis, while those with authentic professional lights to shine often hide them under a barrel.

IT managers would do well to remember that the illusion of superiority is a well-researched cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. When taking their people at their word, they should take this psychological factor into consideration as well.

IT practitioners: next time you loudly proclaim yourself to be the best and brightest Cisco/Microsoft/Visual Basic/Unix/Whatever genius on your block, keep in mind that you may be revealing more of your true self than you'd like.

What's IT All About, Anyway?

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

- Edsger Dijkstra, 1930-2002

I've been in computing for a long time, working on countless projects, large and small, at every level of the OSI Systems Inrterconnection Reference Model. Over a longer span of years than vanity allows me to enumerate here, I've been "'round the block," as they say.

So, I wondered how it was, then, that my kids always managed to stump me by asking the simplest possible question: Dad, what do you do for a living?

For all my experience programming, installing, upgrading, configuring, maintaining, and retiring thousands of "things," could it be that I didn't really know, in any fundamental sense, what I was doing? That I'd never come to terms with the deep basics of Information Technology?

So many things, so many distractions: computers, from laptops to servers to mainframes; data storage systems, from high-end multi-terabyte farms to the tiny iPod; the dizzying array of networking widgets, from firewalls to gateways to hubs...

So many things, each with their own special language to learn and master... But, does their mastery make me an auhentic master, or just some modern-day Nimrod?

Question: Peering past all these distractions, straining to find a way out of Babel, what is all of our "stuff" really for?

"Time Keeps on Slipping, Slipping, Slipping..."

The underlying cause of IT managers' chronic screaming and yelling about projects that never seem to be finished may, in fact, be their screaming and yelling.
 

An article on procrastination in Psychology Today suggests that procrastination is, at least in part, a response to the screaming and yelling of authoritarian management.

Attention managers: yelling may feel good, but it doesn't work. In fact, your yelling may further entrench the very behavior you seek to change.

So, alright then, what does work?

Kitchen timers. That's right, kitchen timers.

According to a guy named Francesco Cirillo, a simple kitchen timer can help focus an individual's attention on getting tasks started. A description of his "Pomodoro Technique" (his kitchen timer is shaped like a tomato, the Italian word for which is "pomodoro") of time management can be found at http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/.

                   

 

Perhaps the solution for the chronically delayed completion of IT tasks and projects is finding ways of getting them started in the first place? For some procrastinators, a little investment in a kitchen timer might yield large returns in productivity

Don't Hate Me Because I'm a Customer

The computer support person in this clip from "The Office" (UK) clearly hates someone. A few questions for discussion:

• Whom does he hate? And, why?
• Should this behavior be confronted or ignored? If confronted, how, and by whom?
• How will this sort of behavior affect this employee's job performance metrics (e.g., support tickets closed, problems resolved, etc.)?
• What effect might you expect his behavior to have on that of his IT co-workers?
• What do these kinds of chronic work habits say about the values of the organization that tolerates them?
  

                   

 

When it comes to passive-aggressive organizational behavior, acceptance is merely avoidance, and it's a bad option for everyone. Don't tolerate the intolerable, in yourself, or in those who serve.

A "Buddy System" for Software Engineers

What's the difference between "head count" and "mind count"?

This post shares an interesting article recommended by a reader of this blog. (Thanks, Chris.)

A recent New York Times article describes a "buddy system" called pair programming that claims increased productivity (specifically, faster coding and quicker debugging) for software engineers.

The thoughtless IT manager might wonder about the business sense of putting two expensive "heads" on one job. The smart manager, however, realizes that, when it comes to cognitive effort, productivity and head count are, at best, only loosely correlated, and recognizes the psychological reasons why, when it comes to writing code, two "minds" can indeed be better than one:

• Increaded focus and attention on assigned tasks
• Less time wasted doing "off-topic" things
• Heightened motivation to finish coding jobs on time and within budget
• Less "ego involvement" and more common sense in the coding process
• Built-in mentoring for the junior member of the pair

A few more cognitive activites that might benefit from a "paired-mind" approach:

• Root Cause Analysis (2nd- or 3rd-level problem resolution)
• Short-Term Task Management (e.g., implementations, migrations)
• Product or Technology Reseach, and Selection of Candidate Solutions

Can you think of any others? Leave a comment here, or on the corresponding LinkedIn or Facebook discussion topics.

When Did the Wheels Fall Off the Welcome Wagon?

An e-mail message from a reader reports that, in her last three positions over eight years, she was shown her desk on her first day of work, and then abandoned. 

No manager visited her to describe her job on her first day at work. Or her second. Or even her third. 

Instead, her co-workers showed her the local ropes and explained what her group was supposed to be doing for a living.

IT Professionals: has this ever happened to you?

IT Managers and Leaders: does your company have a procedure for welcoming new hires? If not, do you have one of your own?

Shut up and Reboot

Q: Why work hard at digging up the root cause of a problem when a simple problem-solving heuristic might alleviate its symptoms and put off having to actually fix it for, like, forever?

A: Tsk tsk, you don't really expect an answer, do you? A better question would be:

Q: Why do IT professionals settle for simple 'rules of thumb' in solving technical problems rather than work to find the authentic solutions that fix their root causes?

A: When (otherwise rational) people, under time pressure to solve a practical problem, judge that the properly calculated solution might be too time-consuming or complex for them to figure out, they often (irrationally) apply easier, more familiar, but less appropriate problem-solving behaviors.  They resort to habitual rituals that have "worked" for them in solving other problems over the years, or fire up some troubleshooting tool or method they've used successfully before, or substitute some simpler analysis of the problem in place of the harder one. In effect, rather than solve the problem at hand, they imagine a simpler one and solve that instead.

"Successful" (that is, more "adaptive") IT professionals can be very good at playing this game. Their solutions may not be "real" ones, but they're often good enough approximations to mask the problem's symptoms for a while, long enough to close a ticket, merit a brisk pat on the back, maybe even earn a bonus.

Sound delusional? Well, it is, but the imagined reduction in the "pain" associated with a superficially addressed problem is often counted as a victory over it, and the resulting short-term kudos, however undeserved, can feel just as satisfying as arriving at the real answer.

This is a cognitive bias called attribute substitution, and it's the root cause of many errors in judgment in Information Technology.

To help illustrate attribute substitution, try solving this example problem: together, a toy bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Did you quickly arrive at ten cents for the ball? Most people do. Rather than dredge up memories of High School algebra, most people would rather simply subtract the $1 difference in cost between the bat and the ball from the $1.10 total figure, concluding -- incorrectly -- that the ball costs a dime.

Here's the correct answer: Bought separately, the ball costs five cents, the bat costs $1.05, totalling to $1.10 and satisfying the constraint that the bat costs a dollar more than the ball. Attribute substution probably costs the average SAT test-taker 100 points on their math score.

What's the "cure" for attribute substitution?

Where possible, Information Technology managers, leaders, and supervisors need to relax the push to fix things quickly in favor of emphasizing the value of solving problems fundamentally. Do you measure the resolution of technical problems in your organization? Where possible, your metrics should reflect the depth of those solutions.

For their part, IT professionals need to question their own reasoning and emotional motivations in solving technical problems. Do you feel driven to announce a solution first? When someone else solves a problem before you do, do you feel as though you've "lost?" You're prone to attribute substitution if you answered "yes" to either of those questions. 

Q: What's more important, arriving at any plausible answer quickly, or finding the correct answer?

                   

 

Working on solving a problem? Force yourself to ask "why" at least five times. Probing iteratively is hard work and time consuming, but it arrives at real answers.

The Clueless Manager

When asked in our Facebook poll last week to identify the source of their greatest IT frustration, two out of three respondents picked the answer "Oblivious, clueless, or disengaged management."

If it's true that we laugh hardest at familiar folly, then maybe the Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB) character in Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strip is so uproariously funny because, apparently, 66% of all IT professionals work for him?

For those who don't follow Dilbert, a PHB is a "mind bogglingly stupid boss lacking foresight, technical knowledge, leadership skills, morality and/or tact." (From the Urban Dictionary)

Nobody consciously sets out to become a Pointy-Haired Boss, but, in the creative perception of their colleagues and subordinates, all-too-many IT managers seem to unconsciously shout "Look at Me! I'm a PHB!"

How is it that, when an IT manager or leader says engaging, positive, and affirming things like:


    “How’s it going?”
    “What do you think?”
    “How can we help?”
    “Nice work.”
    “Thanks.”


Their employees and team members hear instead:

    “You can be replaced.”
    “You’re going nowhere.”
    “Your opinion is worthless.”
    “You can’t do anything right.”
    “You’ll never be good enough.”

Pointy-Haired Bosses declare themselves as such not by what they explicitly say, but by their subtle behavioral traits, which "speak" far louder than mere words. These are examples of quiet ways to loudly proclaim "Look at me! I'm a PHB!"


- Interrupting face-to-face meetings to take cell phone calls
- Disciplining employees in front of others
- Leaving meetings abruptly because “something came up”
- Arriving late for scheduled appointments or meetings
- Micromanaging the "how" of tasks assigned to subordinates
- Announcing top-level reorganizations without explaining their significance to the people in lower-level positions

___________________

(This entire Dilbert montage is funny, but you'll find the best example clip of this post's point 1 minute in.)

                   

"We're Clueless!" is never explicitly pronounced; it's implied by our behavior. "Clueless" is perceived, and, in this and all matters of human behavior, perception is truth.

Understanding "Don't" Diligence

Due Diligence: the performance of an act with a certain standard of care. Expressed in other words, "covering all the bases" in the thorough pursuit of a (usually professional) goal.


Don't Diligence:  Concealing passive-aggressive, obstructionist behavior behind a plausible-looking veneer of Due Diligence. In other words, protracting the completion of a finite task by inserting an infinite number of requisite sub-tasks within it. Deliverables dealt the Death by a thousand cuts. Projects shot stone dead with Zeno's Arrow.

                   

"Can God make a rock so heavy that she can't lift it?" I don't know about God*, but thousands of lesser beings in Information Technology manage this paradoxical miracle every day.

_____________

* "Damn it, Jim. I'm a psychologist, not a theologian."