DEV Community: Marcus Blankenship

Does this sound familiar?

Marcus Blankenship — Sat, 13 Jul 2019 17:00:00 +0000

I’m using this example in the book I’m writing, and want to see if this sounds familiar to you.

Ananya: “Marcus, which class should contain the method to check if we have new orders? I need to add it for the feature I’m working on today.”

Marcus: The OrderUpdate class would be good.

Ananya: Okay, I’ll do that.

Marcus: Ananya, what’s the status of that feature?

Ananya: It was quite difficult to make it work in the OrderUpdate class. I had to rewrite big parts of the class, and other classes too. I should be done next week.

Marcus: Oh, that’s too bad. Was there class it would have fit better?

Ananya: I think the OrderStatus class would have been better, but I’m almost done with this approach. It’s fine – no worries.

Marcus: Oh, why didn’t you suggest the OrderStatus class?

Ananya: You said you wanted it in OrderUpdate. I assumed you had a reason.

Questions

What do you see happening here?

What’s your reaction to it?

How could it be prevented?

Let me know and I’ll share the responses to the list, so we’ll all learn together.

Best,

Marcus

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If only I’d had more time

Marcus Blankenship — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 07:47:00 +0000

I was having dinner with some colleagues last night, and toward the end, one of them said to me, “I’ve noticed a theme when you describe your life. You seem to make time to think.”

“That true, but it wasn’t always so,” I replied.

“Most of my working life I only made time to do, not think. But that left me with a vague, uneasy feeling that most things could have been done better if only I’d had more time. Instead of being excellent, I was simply getting by in many areas of life. I don’t want that anymore.”

While I’m far from perfect, I’ve found two changes helped me get my thinking time back.

First, I get up earlier each day.

Once my family is awake, my time isn’t my own. So, I get up at 4:55 am each morning to read, write, drink coffee, and think. This lasts 60-90m.

Second, I write regularly.

I started this email list because I heard it was a good marketing strategy.

I continued it because it forces me to sit down and think each day deeply.

Through writing to you, I have come to know what I believe, and see new perspectives on the world.

That’s not the way I thought it would work. I thought I’d write about what I knew. Instead, I found what I knew by writing.

You might say that I “think through writing” because the process of writing is my thinking process.

I didn’t expect that benefit, but it’s the reason I will continue writing.

As a leader, you need thinking time – and you have to find what works for you to get it.

I don’t know if these ideas are helpful for you, but I can say that I am happier with my life since I set aside time to think. And, I think I do better work and am more satisfied with the outcomes.

Is this something you struggle with too?

Best,

Marcus

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”Grown up” issues

Marcus Blankenship — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 07:17:00 +0000

I believe 99% of issues which get people fired were “no big deal” at one point.

But then, the issues “grew up.”

Pull the weeds while they’re small, and you’ll need weed killer less often.

TL;DR

When a manager sees something that concerns them, they may turn a blind eye, hoping the issue will resolve itself.

I get it – I’ve done it myself, too many times. You don’t want to appear a micromanaging jerk.

For example, maybe Jack isn’t using the branching the same as everyone else.

Or he’s rubber-stamping Pull Requests, occasionally.

Or his UI doesn’t quite match the design, in small ways.

In each case, it’s “close enough,” so you don’t say anything.

After all, we’re all busy. We’re all doing our best.

And you don’t want to destroy Jack’s morale.

Or, worse, cause him to get pissed and quit.

So, you say “it’s close enough” and hope he’ll figure it out with time.

Or with hints, or glares, or snide comments.

But then…

Soon you don’t trust Jack but can’t put your finger on exactly why.

Then, one day, he rubber-stamps a PR one too many times, and you decide to talk to him.

To Jack, it’s a small thing, because it’s the first he’s heard of it.

To you, it’s a big thing, because you’ve got a thousand cuts.

Jack’s confused because the fact that it’s a VERY BIG DEAL to you will always come through.

Make the tough calls even when it’s close.

Especially in the first few months working with Jack.

Start from day one, giving honest feedback about the tiniest things.

Jack will learn that’s normal – no big deal.

I believe 99% of issues which get people fired were “no big deal” at one point.

But then, the issues “grew up.”

Pull weeds while they’re small, and you’ll need weed killer less often.

Who on your team has some “no big deal” issues which might grow up?

Are you willing to have a quick discussion today before they become a big deal?

Best,

Marcus

P.S. – I’m thinking of doing our 3-day in-person workshop somewhere in the late fall, probably October. Would your company like to host it? Write me back to discuss.

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What Jack (probably) thought about being fired

Marcus Blankenship — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 08:11:00 +0000

On Wednesday I mentioned that I’d fired Jack out-of-the-blue rather than put him on a PIP.

He didn’t pick up on my “performance hints”, so he never really knew there was a problem.

Or, at least, he didn’t know how serious the problem was.

I didn’t use any formal warning processes (e.g. formal verbal, written warnings), so I enabled him to continue thinking things were just fine.

I don’t know what might have happened if I’d done even one formal warning.

Maybe it would have gotten his attention, woke him up, and showed him he was in danger.

Maybe that’s all it would have taken for him to have a change of heart, and turn things around.

If you recall my PIP story/podcast, it took a formal warning for me to wake up to reality.

And for me to wholeheartedly decide I would “do whatever it took” to keep the job.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, Jack probably thought I was a jerk afterward.

It was a jerk move, but it was the only move I’d left myself.

Don’t fence yourself in

Learning to use employee discipline systems might be uncomfortable, but the consequences are worse. Without them, you’ve got nothing left but surprise, fear, and anger.

How you treat one employee gets back to the rest of them, through the grapevine or Glass Door.

Even though you’ve hinted, who on your team might not know they are in danger?

How can you do the kindest possible thing: make it crystal clear they are in danger, and openly discuss next steps?

You might be the boss, but you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.

Take care,

Marcus

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Use a PIP, or just fire them?

Marcus Blankenship — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 07:27:00 +0000

If you’ve been on my list for a while now, you know I want to help you become a better tech manager.

One way I do this is by helping you see situations from new perspectives, often your team’s perspective.

Because it’s easy to forget that there are other perspectives.

So easy that I committed the same error in my writing.

See, I’ve often neglected your perspective, along with the perspective of your boss, company, and users.

With that in mind, let me try answering a question my friend Will posed today, from the manager’s perspective.

“When do you put someone on a performance improvement plan, and when do you just fire them?”

Begin by thinking of someone on your team who you’ve thought about firing, but haven’t yet. Maybe they know it, and perhaps they don’t – doesn’t matter in this case.

Begin with the end in mind

I think it’s important to ask yourself these questions, probably in this order:

What outcome do I want?
How long am I willing to wait?
How much effort am I willing to invest?
Given my answers, is the outcome realistic?
How confident are you that this will yield the outcome you want?

Let’s use the example of Jack, a real programmer at my own consulting company. (The names have been changed.)

Jack made and deployed some late-night changes to our company website one night.

But he didn’t load the site after deploying, and he didn’t realize he’d broken it completely. He went home wholly unaware there was a problem.

The next morning I walked in, and my partner was furious. We discussed it as a management team. We never thought Jack was great, but we’d never talked to him about his performance. What should we do?

We started with these questions:

What outcome did we want?

We wanted Jack to pay closer attention to his work, stop doing risky activities, and stop making “silly” mistakes (like not loading a website after a production deploy.)

How long am I willing to wait?

Jack had screwed up on multiple client projects in the past, and we were not willing to wait very long. Probably only days.

How much effort am I willing to invest?

We’d tried multiple informal training and coaching approaches with Jack in the past, so we weren’t willing to invest much more effort. If any.

Given my answers, is the outcome realistic?

This question was hard, and we didn’t all agree. One of us felt that with more intensive training, Jack could improve. Another felt Jack was an idiot, and would never improve with all the time in the world. One of us just wanted to go back to coding.

In the end, we all admitted the answer was, “No, the outcome isn’t realistic given how much more time and effort we want to invest.”

How confident are you that this will yield the outcome you want?

We felt unanimous about this: we had no confidence that the amount of time and effort we could afford would get us the outcome we wanted.

Thus, I terminated Jack that morning with 4-weeks severance pay.

It was a short, painful discussion. More painful for Jack, but it sucked for us too.

Learn from my mistakes

You might suspect that I learned something. A few things, in fact.

First, I learned that the kindest thing I could have done was speak frankly with Jack as soon as I saw problems.

I still might have fired him, but it wouldn’t have come as a shock.

Second, I learned that once you’ve lost confidence in someone, it’s probably time to fire them.

You’ll probably use the PIP to “manage them out,” rather than using it to help them improve.

And if they do improve, you may still want to fire them, because you’re so over it.

So, it’s a bad situation for everyone.

Those five questions aren’t the place to start thinking about performance problems, but they can help you reason about what actions to take next.

Of course, if I told this story from Jack’s perspective, it would be completely different.

But I suspect you see that already.

Take care,

Marcus

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My haunted closet

Marcus Blankenship — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:00:00 +0000

There is a tiny closet in the front room of the beach house where I’m staying this week, in Santa Cruz, CA.

The closet has no light switch. Instead, the inside light is on a motion sensor.

At 2 am, I got up for a drink of water and froze in my tracks.

I could see closet light was on, shining brightly under the door.

Who or what turned the light on???

Was someone in the house?

Or, an animal?

Or, a ghost?

I still don’t know – I wasn’t brave enough to open the door.

Ahem…

Every day we see people’s behavior “shining” under the closed door of their thoughts.

It’s easy to make guesses about what’s happening in the closet of their mind.

Is someone late for morning stand-up? “They’re not committed to the team.”

Someone commit’s sloppy code? “They just don’t care about quality.”

Someone’s silent in meetings? “They’re checked out at work.”

Try to catch yourself.

Remember, all you can see is the light, not what’s going on behind the door.

Be braver then I was – knock on the door.

Ask what’s happening.

Be curious – and act on it.

A good question to start with is, “Tell me more about that, please.”

Best,

Marcus

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”Nah”

Marcus Blankenship — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 07:01:00 +0000

I shuffle when I walk, which means I kinda drag my feet on the ground. This results in ’scuffing’ along, as my father put it.

You can think of this shuffling as a system that’s balanced when my action (shuffling feet) is met with a particular reaction (dirt or gravel which give way) in a suitable environment (loose dirt or gravel).

It also means that I stumble a lot because I trip over the rocks which refuse to move.

Tripping sends me temporarily off-balance, arms thrown out, stomping with giant steps, trying to regain my balance.

When part of the system which usually moves says “Nah” (like the rock that refuses to move) the system ‘trips’. It’s thrown off-balance.

Systems strive for balance (homeostasis), so it immediately tries to regain balance.

This may mean pushing harder on whatever said, “Nah.”

Or, simply ignoring it and trying to avoid it next time.

Or adjusting to find a new balance that works in this environment.

Today, there may be systems that you’d like to change.

Maybe the first step is to be the rock that doesn’t move.

To say “Nah,” throw the system out of balance, and watch what happens next.

Sound Risky? Sure, it might be.

But things will continue until the system becomes unbalanced, and has to find a new balance.

Change starts with imbalance.

Today, what would you like to say “Nah” to?

How might the system respond?

Write me back if you wish – love to hear your thoughts.

-m

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Let’s play “name that bias”

Marcus Blankenship — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 07:28:00 +0000

My sister has twin 4-year old kids, a boy, and a girl. Both have autism and are on different points of the ASD spectrum.

I was having lunch with them on Sunday, for Fathers Day, and I noticed something interesting.

Our waitress happened to mention that her two-year-old son doesn’t like loud noise.

My sister immediately spoke up, “Oh, you should have him checked, my son didn’t like loud noises, and we found out he has autism.”

Later, someone else mentioned that her young daughter has difficulty sleeping through the night. Again, my sister spoke up, “Oh, our little girl has a tough time with that too. You should get her checked for autism.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this, but it was the first time I noticed it.

I don’t know what to call it, so I’m using the phrase experience bias.

A working definition for experience bias might be, “a bias toward noticing situations which appear similar to our past experiences which contain strong emotional content.”

The observable behavior isn’t her noticing, but her “suggestions” to others. But that wouldn’t happen unless she picked-up on something. For example, I heard the same conversation but didn’t pick up on the same things.

I suppose the tendency (or compulsion!) to offer unprompted advice to others also has a name, but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe “the consultant’s curse”? I’ve suffered from that myself.

When we have an experience which contains strong emotions, our attention seems tuned toward similar circumstances around us.

This could be having a child with autism, going on a long-anticipated vacation, getting in a car accident, or even getting a well-deserved promotion.

There are at least two lessons here – probably more.

First, notice what you’re tuned-in to; what you’re noticing these days. For me, I’m noticing people talking about publishing a book, installing watering systems, and dealing with gout.

Yah, I know it’s weird. But these are three things I’m likely to comment on (and even give advice about) if they get brought up.

Noticing what you’re noticing is essential because it allows you to avoid the consultant’s curse.

It allows you to a pause and ask a question, such as “Would you like to hear about my experience?”, or maybe you’ll decide to remain quiet rather than rushing headlong to give advice.

Second, when you see others offering advice, you have a clue about what’s happening in them. Their experience bias might be reminding the current situation of an emotionally important event in their past. Or maybe something they are dealing with right now.

Either way, it’s an interesting way to understand people around you better.

Do you see this happening around you?

What do you make of it?

Write me back…

Best,

Marcus

P.S. – If you know the ‘official’ name of this bias, would you send it to me?

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We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Marcus Blankenship — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 07:41:00 +0000

Leaders need to understand that mental models are the lens through which we see reality, indirectly.

Otherwise, we fall into the bias of Naïve Realism, believing that we see things objectively, as they “really” are.

This is a problem because it makes us sure that what we perceive is true and correct.

And being sure of something can motivate us to take the “obvious” action or reaction.

It also makes anyone who doesn’t agree with us appear ignorant, crazy, or stupid.

We’d be well advised to pause and ask ourselves:

What perspective am I using right now, and what are the subparts of that perspective?
Can I think of the situation from multiple perspectives?
Are their perspectives missing from my analysis?

Any given situation has multiple perspectives.

Let’s try a simple example:

You are a development manager working at BIGCORP, and your company announces a change to adopt an “unlimited vacation” policy in 2020.

What is your gut reaction to this policy change?
What perspective is your gut using?
What subparts of the perspective can you see?
Can you think of the situation from other perspectives? Do they provide a different reaction?
What perspectives might be missing from your analysis?
What conflicts/surprises may arise between different perspectives?

It might be interesting to pass this around your team, and see what different perspectives and reactions they have.

Or, take a moment and write me back with your answers.

Best,

Marcus

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Mental Model Machinations

Marcus Blankenship — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 07:08:00 +0000

Over the past two weeks, two ideas have been bouncing around in my brain. They have now smashed into each other, producing a couple of emails.

Today’s email is about the first idea, which is from fourth-wave systems thinking. It’s the idea of “mental models,” which we all use, all the time.

Here’s the idea: We see reality indirectly through our mental models.

Trippy, right?

Imagine yourself wearing goggles labeled “mental models” and viewing everything through them.

For example, right now, I’m sitting on a system of cloth, steel, pulls, gears, and hydraulics. My mental model says I’m “sitting on a chair,” and I don’t think twice about it.

I’m also using my fingers to rapidly depress a sequence of illuminated black plastic squares mounted to a rectangle. My mental model says I’m “typing” on a “keyboard.”

We all have mental models and begin forming them as soon as we come into the world.

For example, my 1yr old grandson doesn’t “type” yet, but he does bang his hands on the keyboard, possibly copying me.

I don’t know what his mental model about keyboards is yet, but someday we’ll share the same one.

”These go to eleven.”

Due to its abstract nature, software development turns mental models up to 11.

Not only do we have our mental models about physical reality (computers, monitors, networks, etc.), we have mental models around software (applications, websites, databases, web servers, etc.)

Add to this all mental models about building software (code in files, architectures, patterns, frameworks) and processes (agile, kanban, quality, testing, deployment, branching, etc.), and it’s easy to get confused.

If mental models are the lenses we use to understand the world, why don’t we talk about them more?

What do you discuss?

I notice that people often share information created with mental models, but they rarely share the mental model they’re using.

Sharing information is good, but that’s often like sharing a brute fact, such as “42.”

The mental model is the “engine” which produces information, such as “add the numbers 20 and 22 together.”

As you might notice, there are other mental models which would produce “42.”

It’s no surprise that when people argue about a technical topic, they don’t share the same mental models.

Do you see your teams discussing their mental models?

If not, how could you help?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so write me back.

Tomorrow: Näive Realism

Best,

Marcus

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It works, but you’re gonna look silly doing it

Marcus Blankenship — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 13:40:00 +0000

Friday I sent you a fun puzzle to consider. It was an encoded message that began:

Toothy purse in respond civil force ending theme honey:

Some of you replied with the correct answer:

To the person responsible for sending the money:

Not sure how to solve it? Iain wrote to me about his technique:

”They key is to speak it out loud (or imagining it being said) with an American accent.”

Try it now – say the first sentence out loud a few times.

Listen closely and you may hear yourself saying it, even though you didn’t realize it.

There are many possible lessons in this. Some are:

Lessons about communicating effectively.

Lessons about necessary things which make us feel silly.

Lessons about what you’re saying, even though you didn’t realize it.

Other lessons which I’ve not realized.

Possibility to reality

Most of my potential lessons fail to turn into actual lessons.

So I’ve found that asking myself three questions help me capture more of them.

How does this remind me of my work life?
Can I see an underlying principle here?
What small experiment might help me understand it better?

Which lesson would you like to take away from this?

And, if you choose, tell me too. I’d love to hear.

Best,

Marcus

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Her unexpected fall from high-performer to clock-puncher

Marcus Blankenship — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 17:48:13 +0000

Tina is discouraged. With 13 years of engineering experience, she recently took a Front End engineer role with a clean-water startup.

She’d been sought out, courted, and accepted a great offer by this company.

After months of consideration, she’d joined the company six months ago.

She loves the company’s mission, and many of the people she worked with.

She is in the SF office, but unfortunately, the rest of her team is in Ohio.

Rob, her primary contact in Ohio, has been working there for two years. He graduated from a code school two years ago, and then immediately joined the company. He built most of the app that she works in.

Tina’s new to the application and infrastructure, so she has more questions than answers. Rob is the person she works with most often, so she asks him most of the questions, even beyond those related to the app.

He is, in her words, “just the nicest guy.” But she can tell that he doesn’t really enjoy being “tapped on the shoulder” via Slack.

She’s accustomed to collaborative environments, but everyone in Ohio is heads-down all day. Discussions and questions are considered a bother, something that gets in the way of real work.

And that’s precisely how she feels: like a bother.

Everyone has a place, except her. Everyone is contributing, except her.

Everyone else is changing the world, except her.
The time difference causes problems, too. When he needs something from her, he might wait a few hours for her to arrive at work. But if she needs something from him or anyone in the Ohio office, she often has to wait until the next day.

This leaves her with a frustrating amount of free time.

Tina hates this because she’s a Type-A, driven, high-energy person. She’s accustomed to having too much to do and misses that feeling.

Instead of paddling as hard as she can, she’s mentally drifting along, aimless.
She talked to her boss about it. He suggested that she continue to look for ways to add value, but mostly shrugged and rushed back to his other team. The other team he managed he also contributed to, and they had lots of important work to do. So, he was very, very busy.

Soon she wondered if she was bothering him, too.

She felt trapped.

On the one hand, she believes in the company’s mission and has developed friendships there.

On the other hand, she isn’t able to contribute.

Like anyone who feels trapped, she feels nervous, anxious, even… fearful.

She knows that when you’re not contributing, it won’t be long until you don’t have a job.
More than that, she wants to save the planet! She wants to make this happen!

When I spoke with Tina, it was clear how painful this situation was.

Toward the end of our chat, she sheepishly admitted that she felt she’d been “punching the clock” lately.

After all, if she couldn’t contribute value, at least she could contribute eight hours.
In a system that didn’t offer her other ways to contribute, she gained some feeling of accomplishment from putting in her time.

We both admitted harshly judging the “clock-punchers” at past jobs. But now, from this new perspective, we saw that we’d judged the wrong thing.

The problem wasn’t that clock-punchers don’t want to contribute, but that the system doesn’t allow them to.
The system is the problem, not the person.

I don’t know how long Tina will stay at this job.

Unless something changes, I suspect it won’t be very long.

Too bad, because she’s a skilled, articulate, driven, high-performing engineer who cares about the mission.

Which is exactly why she’ll probably leave.

Have you ever considered that your system isn’t allowing people to fully contribute?
If you suspect that’s happening, why not ask in your next 1:1 or team meeting?

You might be surprised — and you might still be able to save the “Tina’s” on your team.