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The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

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Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#61

Post by tensor »

artsyca wrote: post #32

I've worked at all sorts of companies but it's actually been the same company over and over it's the broken top down hierarchy mixed with control dramas and disempowerment where initiative is punishable and the only way to get ahead is to strike a deal with some kind of clique at the expense of the client It's refreshing to know this book exists and I'll certainly look it up but I have zero hope for so called corpora…

The problem is that many people believe "empowerment" means "do whatever the fuck I want." At any company you are going to have objectives and goals, and empowerment means getting the responsibility to make the hard trade offs yourself.

It doesn't mean you can do something outside of the corporate goals, and it doesn't mean you can just ignore some of the challenging parts of the job like delivering a working product to customers in a timely fashion.

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#63

Post by mcguire »

"This makes me wonder whether a good way to make needed change as a leader when there is no obvious crisis is to artificially create one so that people get on board…"

Yes.

You cannot fix people who don't admit that they are broken.

As someone who has been called into broken projects often, I've had this conversation often. If you "help" a project that is floundering, it will just continue floundering, wasting money and time. You have to wait until it's completely broken and an admitted crisis, and you can ask, "Would you like me to take it over?" and not have interference.

I've never had to artificially create a problem, though. That sounds like agent provocateur stuff.

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#64

Post by mcguire »

walterkrankheit wrote: post #22

All good points, although "rather than just punishing, he spent 8 hours discussing with his team"...? There needs to be less punishment as methodology out there, but an eight-hour discussion IS a form of punishment in my book. And for everyone else, too.

At NASA, this is called a "Root Cause Analysis" or RCA. A multi-hour meeting all about punishing the guilty via embarrassment or at least making sure you can shed the guilt.

On the other hand, "announce what you are about to do" is likely the best way to solve the problem.

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#65

Post by dkarl »

tensor wrote: post #61
artsyca wrote: post #32

I've worked at all sorts of companies but it's actually been the same company over and over it's the broken top down hierarchy mixed with control dramas and disempowerment where initiative is punishable and the only way to get ahead is to strike a deal with some kind of clique at the expense of the client It's refreshing to know this book exists and I'll certainly look it up but I have zero hope for so called corpora…

The problem is that many people believe "empowerment" means "do whatever the fuck I want." At any company you are going to have objectives and goals, and empowerment means getting the responsibility to make the hard trade offs yourself. It doesn't mean you can do something outside of the corporate goals, and it doesn't mean you can just ignore some of the challenging parts of the job like delivering a working product…

The problem is theres's no natural distinction between "what" and "how." Every aspect of how you do your job is meaningful in some way. You have to have a good understanding with your boss about where you have discretion to follow your judgment and where you don't.

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#66

Post by nogabebop23 »

My experience as a Development Manager for the past ~year (YMMV):

1. I'm playing chess; senior management is playing checkers. No, not because I'm some sort of genius and they are simpletons, but rather they talk about interchangeable "resource units" and I know these FTE's as "Tom" and "Amy", each with specific strenghts and weaker areas. Big strategic plans cannot differentiate but we front-line managers need to figure out how to position and leverage individuals.

2. Actually, genuinely, caring about your direct reports goes a very long way towards solving a lot of culture problems but...

3. Dev Managers need to put a lot of effort out into their teams to drive change and it is often (most of the time?) not returned. Your biggest enemy is not active sabotage, it's apathy at all levels of the organization. I started pushing for some specific cultural-ish changes about this time last year and, while I was given passive approval & support and lots of latitude to make change, it has been physically exhausting. If I was in an organization that didn't even give me this much freedom it would have been exhausting and pointless.

4. A Dev Manager can make localized changes when not all teams want or can reciprocate, but I'm not convinced yet that the requisite firewalls you need to erect aren't ultimately harmful in the long run. It is a very delicate balance.

In the end my take-away is you need space and time to make any meaningful change, and even that is limited by the crushing inertia of the organization. For me personally it has been physically consuming and I have 6 month & 1 year goals, plus an overall 3-year plan that I'll either complete in the coming year or look for an new opportunity elsewhere.

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#67

Post by nogabebop23 »

mcguire wrote: post #63

" This makes me wonder whether a good way to make needed change as a leader when there is no obvious crisis is to artificially create one so that people get on board… " Yes. You cannot fix people who don't admit that they are broken. As someone who has been called into broken projects often, I've had this conversation often. If you "help" a project that is floundering, it will just continue floundering, wasting money…

I don't intentional break things just to create crisis, but I have pushed for change that I know highlights problems and forces us to address them. For example, after many acquisitions by our company you could still identify the old companies by the insular cultural characteristics of siloed product teams; I pushed very hard to restructure teams and this required learning how to cumminicate and collaborate with new people. Now we've acquired more companies and (while in hindsight I guess I should have seen this coming) I'm learning this is an ongoing challenge that I treated as a one-off project.

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#68

Post by vosper »

paulcole wrote: post #59
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

This reads like a commercial, but I'm not going to downvote it. I read the book and liked it, along with about a hundred other books on culture over the years. There is a similar pattern: a problem, an old way of doing things, a hero, a change, and a beautiful sunset with our hero riding off. I think there are really, really good things in these kinds of books, especially if you identify with the problem and hero. At…

> This reads like a commercial, but I'm not going to downvote it Is it possible to downvote a submission? I thought you could only upvote and flag?

When your internet points on HN exceed some threshold you may be able to downvote. I’ve heard there’s also a thing called a supervote. (I have neither of these privileges)

Re: The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read

#70

Post by DenisM »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #66

My experience as a Development Manager for the past ~year (YMMV): 1. I'm playing chess; senior management is playing checkers. No, not because I'm some sort of genius and they are simpletons, but rather they talk about interchangeable "resource units" and I know these FTE's as "Tom" and "Amy", each with specific strenghts and weaker areas. Big strategic plans cannot differentiate but we front-line managers need to fi…

Can you supply some examples of good goals? Thank.
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