There's one caveat to this – I think it's good to have bias to other people's actions early on in a new role. Taking on little projects that are already understood, taking on cleanups, things other people aren't volunteering for, is all a great way to find where some of the bodies are buried, understand how the team works, and prove yourself as a team player.
Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
31–40 of 81 posts
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#32Cannot cite Chesterton's fence too often. In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the…
I’ve always liked Chesterton’s Fire. Maybe there’s a reason you’re on fire. Until you can say for sure, I will not put it out. I will just be here roasting these marshmallows on your burning flesh. :)
My version was Chesterton's Facehugger.
Something which, as soon as you discover it, you should immediately respond by trying to remove it, without asking questions about where it came from or what its purpose might be.
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#33This article is great advice that I should take if I ever get a role where I’m not going to be pressured into delivering some kind of low-value BS during Phase 2 that causes me to hasten the delivery the most useful organisational changes I can. I can’t help myself when the wick gets turned up. As a result, after 15 years as a software engineer, I’m genuinely considering leaving the industry altogether because the on…
Maybe your responsibility is to push back against the pressure put on you to deliver short-term.
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#34This whole conversation reminds me of the Career Cold Start discussion [1]. I remember looking it up at some point when I started a new job. It was somewhat useful, but a lot of this is also hard won knowledge once you understand what actual "working at a company" entails. I'm only beginning to get that sense after 7 years work experience at different companies (small startups, scaleups and now F500).
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#35I had a role, we got a new CTO. This man could not stop wiggling things. Almost from day one. Not just small things but larger things too (let's migrate to a new issue tracker/wiki thing (back when Redmine was popular)). Flipping staff to new focus (eg: moved a help-desk staff to top NetAdmin, replacing Cisco Certified guy, which caused some havoc during an audit). What a mess, just had to put his fingerprint on ever…
I think there's a middle ground. I used to be intensely critical of "doing things just to do things." The more perspective I get, the more I realize that, in a situation where things are not going right by whatever criteria you use to determine that (outside scope here), you need to make changes.
The right way to make those changes, or at least one way and I don't know a better one, is to perturb the system and see how it responds. This is necessarily risky and uncomfortable, and choosing the right things to perturb and the magnitude of those peturbations is a very, very tricky skill.
But ultimately if you're dealing with an opaque system, which most companies are, and you want to make it a more transparent system that can change, that risk and discomfort are necessary side effects.
This is of course very situational, and the methodical method is by far preferred, but if you'll permit a metaphor: you get dropped into an unfamiliar cockpit, and the controls are labeled in some foreign language. The plane is crashing, or at least you don't know if it is. What do you do? You wiggle things and hope that, in doing so, you don't crash, and you take very careful note of what happens.
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#36My experience as a long time corporate software developer is an exceptionally heavy bias towards inaction. There always seems to be fear and hesitation towards any kind of pivot or new initiative outside the rails of comfort. For example most corporate software developers cannot write an original new application from the ground up no matter how tiny or simplistic. In such environments the people that do demonstrate a…
I think a bias towards inaction often creates better outcomes for everyone, but a bias towards action creates better career results. Most of these places evaluate performance based on impact, and it's way easier to spin any kind of activity or impact as positive impact than it is to spin inaction as positive impact.
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#37I had a role, we got a new CTO. This man could not stop wiggling things. Almost from day one. Not just small things but larger things too (let's migrate to a new issue tracker/wiki thing (back when Redmine was popular)). Flipping staff to new focus (eg: moved a help-desk staff to top NetAdmin, replacing Cisco Certified guy, which caused some havoc during an audit). What a mess, just had to put his fingerprint on ever…
I think there's a middle ground. I used to be intensely critical of "doing things just to do things." The more perspective I get, the more I realize that, in a situation where things are not going right by whatever criteria you use to determine that (outside scope here), you need to make changes. The right way to make those changes, or at least one way and I don't know a better one, is to perturb the system and see h…
> But ultimately if you're dealing with an opaque system, which most companies are,
While most companies have elements that are hard to see clearly [1], I would hope 95% of what the company is doing would be transparent to the CEO.
The CEO should easily be able to tell which divisions/projects are profitable, which are on track to hit their goals, how those goals combine into a coherent strategy, which areas are getting the most complaints and refunds, and so on.
[1] intangible concepts like 'innovation' and 'culture' for example
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a middle ground. I used to be intensely critical of "doing things just to do things." The more perspective I get, the more I realize that, in a situation where things are not going right by whatever criteria you use to determine that (outside scope here), you need to make changes. The right way to make those changes, or at least one way and I don't know a better one, is to perturb the system and see h…
> But ultimately if you're dealing with an opaque system, which most companies are, While most companies have elements that are hard to see clearly [1], I would hope 95% of what the company is doing would be transparent to the CEO. The CEO should easily be able to tell which divisions/projects are profitable, which are on track to hit their goals, how those goals combine into a coherent strategy, which areas are gett…
Sadly at many companies that's really not true. The CEO has direct visibility into direct reports and those metrics, but those don't necessarily clearly indicate what changes to the system would do. Largely because they're descriptive, not predictive, in my limited experience. They also tend to be lagging or current indicators, so they tell you what policy was doing last quarter. If those metrics are trending badly, you can't just demand "move X number up" and expect any success.
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#39I had a role, we got a new CTO. This man could not stop wiggling things. Almost from day one. Not just small things but larger things too (let's migrate to a new issue tracker/wiki thing (back when Redmine was popular)). Flipping staff to new focus (eg: moved a help-desk staff to top NetAdmin, replacing Cisco Certified guy, which caused some havoc during an audit). What a mess, just had to put his fingerprint on ever…
I think there's a middle ground. I used to be intensely critical of "doing things just to do things." The more perspective I get, the more I realize that, in a situation where things are not going right by whatever criteria you use to determine that (outside scope here), you need to make changes. The right way to make those changes, or at least one way and I don't know a better one, is to perturb the system and see h…
A great philosophy for anyone who is pretending to know what they're doing that will still result in the plane crashing because you need to know how to fly a plane to fly a plane, and you need to know how to run a business to run a business.
Re: Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a middle ground. I used to be intensely critical of "doing things just to do things." The more perspective I get, the more I realize that, in a situation where things are not going right by whatever criteria you use to determine that (outside scope here), you need to make changes. The right way to make those changes, or at least one way and I don't know a better one, is to perturb the system and see h…
A great philosophy for anyone who is pretending to know what they're doing that will still result in the plane crashing because you need to know how to fly a plane to fly a plane, and you need to know how to run a business to run a business.
On the other hand, because you've run business A, doesn't mean you have a clue how business B is actually working. I've seen that one more than a few times too.
Sometimes the plane is going to crash and the best you can do is a soft landing.