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The no excuses culture

steveblank.com

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Re: The no excuses culture

#31

Post by [deleted] »

cj wrote: post #27
kristianc wrote: post #19

This is a piece of positioning. It's not so much Blank giving any serious solution to the solution of 'no accountability' as him saying 'look at how tough and uncompromising I am.' He literally says he thinks 'creating a culture' is the same as 'I hung a sign on the door.' Well no. A lot of management thinking (5 Whys etc) has gone into breaking down problems into micro-blockers. If your graphic designer is constantl…

Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article: > By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable. > The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and…

[deleted]

Re: The no excuses culture

#32

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
aaron-lebo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to detract from your main point, but authoritarianism exists across the political spectrum. See the USSR and Nazi Germany, or modern-day Venezuela and Russia. That there are authoritarians in academia isn't too surprising - it's all about politics ;)

It exists everywhere , no need to single out specific countries.

[deleted]

Re: The no excuses culture

#33

Post by jacquesm »

The whole problem is 'hands off management'. Just get out of your jacket and work along periodically with the people that are below you in the org chart. That will create an atmosphere of being in it 'together' and it will work wonders for team spirit. It will also help to convey that you actually know your stuff (which will cut down on bullshit excuses like nothing else). Miraculously, even when you're in meeting with higher ups or other departments, the work will continue (who would have thought).

Of course that would require management to be able to actually do something. The best managers I worked for did just that, and I copied their style as much as possible.

Managers that isolate themselves from their department are the very worst kind. One guy I knew literally had a code-lock on his door to make sure he wasn't bothered when he was doing 'important' stuff (which was all the time, his door was always closed). Guess what happened to productivity in that particular company.

Re: The no excuses culture

#34

Post by lucideer »

analog31 wrote: post #24

I've always been struck by an odd irony in academia: People tend to have left-wing political beliefs, but maintain an organizational culture that is decidedly authoritarian. Perhaps this is necessary: I can't think of how else to manage a classroom than to have hard deadlines for things like homework assignments. Even in college, by definition, the work is finished when the semester ends. I'm personally guilty of mis…

Nolan charts, or the more typical 2d 4-coloured political compasses used for displaying results of buzzfeed quizzes are not exactly a thorough and accurate representation of the intricate nuances of the political spectrum, but they do improve on the typical binary left-vs-right. The authoritarian left is very much a thing, and in the context of the organisation of educational institutions, quite a nice parallel.

Re: The no excuses culture

#35

Post by williamdclt »

I'm surprised that nobody here realize that this marketing team has reinvented part of agile and lean managment? Making devs accountable but not holding responsible, group solving problems and Andon, prioritizing tasks, a bit about handling external dependencies, kind of sprints, visibility, staying on budget...

They're obviously not following Scrum in Action at the letter, but I really saw a striking resemblance with the "agile & lean" company where I work

Re: The no excuses culture

#36

Post by pm90 »

kristianc wrote: post #29
cj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article: > By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable. > The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and…

Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.' Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where people are constantly fearing for their jobs.

Heh, I think it made sense upto the point where he threatened firing people. I agree that is too extreme: you're gonna quickly lose a lot of people who perform best when they're not under constant pressure.

Re: The no excuses culture

#37

Post by Sorreah »

I don't like that article. I believe that it's entirely backwards actually.

If you actually do everything right in your organisation, you'll end up with a "no empty excuses" culture anyway. If you try to enforce a "no excuses" culture without doing all the other things right, then your team is likely suffering and often won't get the chance to express themselves in actually pursuing what they think needs to be done instead. Sometimes, your team members have an equally good idea about where you should be focusing your efforts to get the most value out of them or avoid future pain points, despite what most management people think.

So if you go about this wrong, you might lose that, but what's worse you might end up losing the wrong people. Sometimes things are out of your control. And even when you can get help, when everyone is focused on doing their best to avoid being fired, help from someone else is hard to get.

So if you fix everything that would make following such a management strategy a huge disaster, you quite possibly end up not having to enforce such a strategy, because you got people willing to help each other and people who know what matters and what needs to be done.

You end up with a "no excuses" team after you fix all these, but that's an emergent fact not the fact that got you all your success.

Re: The no excuses culture

#38

Post by cj »

kristianc wrote: post #29
cj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article: > By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable. > The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and…

Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.' Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where people are constantly fearing for their jobs.

You missed Steve Blank's point.

My interpretation is he's simply advocating that if someone is aware of an issue that will set a project deadline back, don't keep it a secret and surprise everyone when the deadline isn't met.

Instead of "management by fear", build a culture where missing meeting deadlines is OK as long as a valid reason was communicated to the stake holders BEFORE the due date (no surprises). If a someone who's a project dependency had a family member pass away which will likely lead to a project delay, Blank is suggesting that's something that can be communicated honestly + transparently to a superior (and very much understandably - should be no fear involved). The upside is the superior can potentially reallocate resources to keep the project on track while not be getting caught off guard with a project unexpectedly derailed.

Re: The no excuses culture

#39

Post by taurath »

kristianc wrote: post #29
cj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article: > By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable. > The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and…

Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.' Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where people are constantly fearing for their jobs.

Further than that, the manager tells their employees "I've made myself too busy to ask you about what's important to me, so it's now 100% on you to do so."

That's like expecting your relationships to go well with no upkeep on your side, only a "tell me if I'm doing something wrong"!

Re: The no excuses culture

#40

Post by icebraining »

GuiA wrote: post #7

"[Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming V…

Funny, coming from Steve "you're-holding-it-wrong" Jobs.
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