How My Team Transformed our Team Meetings

 It all started when I read an article (not this exact article but an article like it) about Psychological Safety and I noticed that I usually dominate meetings and needed to stop. I'm passionate, full of ideas and energy and think a mile a min. I also am not afraid of a deep conversation or even an argument. Growing up, the dinner table at my house was like a court room where we would debate tough issues and often play devil's advocate to explore topics in depth. I thrived in liberal arts classes in college and I'm often a hit at late night coffee filled dinner parties. However, after reading this article on psychological safety I decided to have two goals going forward for all team meetings. 

1. I would only talk in proportion to others talking. 

2. As a leader and facilitator of the team meeting, I would aim to have everyone speaking in equal amounts as this is the number one measure of how to know you have created psychological safety. 

This led me to many conversations about diversity in how people like to share in meetings. Some people are introverted and they like to perhaps think about things in advance of the meeting and write out their thoughts on a meeting agenda document. I had always taken notes but this was more of a shared agenda document. There was already a great template for this at my job so I used the template to create a meeting agenda outline and invited others to add to the agenda. I always tried to put team member agenda items before my agenda items as the manager. This mix of making sure items were on the agenda at least 24 hours ahead of time made room for diversity and inclusion for different work styles in our meetings.

The Template for meetings

Agenda Item Title

TL;DR;

More Details (A paragraph describing the item):

Supporting Data and References:

Outcome:

Another thing about measuring psychological safety is how safe and free people feel when giving feedback to each other. As a leader, getting feedback from your team is very difficult. The idea came to us to have a once a month meeting run by the team where the manager, myself was not present. One representative of that meeting would have the task of bringing feedback and ideas from the group to me after the meeting. I actually received resistance from my leaders about this "Managerless Meeting" and that surprised me. But I received feedback from my leadership team, my boss and my boss's boss that this was not a good idea, that it would lack structure and become a complaining session that would not result in anything. I disagreed. I pushed forward to having these meetings and I was right. Some months there were not any strong feedback items, but about once a year, I would receive a laundry list of everything I was messing up and getting wrong. And it was given to me by the one representative so I could not know who had said what, which I think made people feel safer giving the feedback. The results of this were that when the company survey's came out each year, I ended up scoring the highest as a manager at the company. The reason for that was that I had already asked for and applied the feedback from my team. I was doing that on the regular so the survey was not the first time I was getting the feedback. 

I my 1:1's with my direct reports, I always asked for feedback. However, usually in a 1:1 people do not have feedback for the manager. I think people are scared to give the boss feedback. The managerless meeting created a safe way for people to give feedback and also compare notes with others about what I needed to do better. This was GOLD for me and drove a lot of psychological safety as well as feedback loops. 

The last thing I'll say about this is that measurement of psychological safety is critical in order to create it. If you are relying on your perception as a manager to know if it exists or not, then you may be really off base. You can think you have psychological safety and you can think you are easy to talk too and that people are telling you when you have gum on your shoes but unless you measure it, you could easily fall prey to your own perception errors. 

I decided to measure it in terms of who was speaking in the team meeting with a broad definition of "speaking" such that if someone introverted wrote out a lot of ideas on an agenda, that was an example of speaking. And also, I measured it by the level of feedback that was flowing from the team to me as a manager. Was I getting feedback? These were the two ways I measured it. I feel like I only scratched the surface and I have much more to learn, but just these alone did drive a lot of success in culture building. 

Reflections on Manager Relationships with Direct Reports

 I am a manager but I'm also a coach, sponsor and a mentor. I am all three of these things to my direct reports. I call it sweet spot management. But this post is not about my management style. It is about how to know you are being managed but not coached, sponsored, promoter or mentored and the dangers of confusing these different types of relationships. 

First off, let me get clear on what each are exactly:

Manager  -  Someone who has more information than you and is in charge of what and when you are read into upper management plans. A person who is ultimately responsible for the work you are producing, making sure it is in line with upper management goals, and making sure it is timely, acceptable, and prioritized. This person is responsible for isolating your strengths and your development opportunities. The key point here is that they are managing your work at your current level.

Sponsor - A sponsor is a person who wants to give you a project at the next level, a stretch project and is willing to use their own work reputation to make that happen and has the power to give you this. 

Promoter - A promoter is someone who would be a sponsor if they had a project that overlapped with your skillset but they are not able to give you a stretch project. These people are extremely enthusiastic about your work and they edify you around the company to others.  

Coach - A coach is someone who you can think out plans and strategy with and bounce ideas off and work to hold you accountable.

Mentor - Someone who can help you develop a skill you are lacking or provide guidance where you are stuck in general. 

The dangers of confusing these different roles or missing that you have a manager and not a mix of some of the others is that you might be missing

How To Know You have more than just a manager

• Is this person giving you stretch projects?
• Is this person articulating a strategy for your career growth and next promotion?
• Is this person reading you into what meetings they attend and what they are learning in those meetings about the strategy?
• Is this person making introductions for you at the company?
• Are you aware of big changes at the company (like a new rollout or structure change) or are you blindsided because this person did not inform you or did not know themselves? 
• I do not think you can tell if your manager is honest and operating with integrity because often managers are in high positions due to having great people skills and charisma. Also, the power differential is very high as they have more complete information than you. 
• Are the praises you get from your manager just private praises and in the review? Or do you feel and hear enthusiasm for your work from others and you know it is because your manager spoke positively about you around the company? 
• A quarter is enough time to find these things out about your manager. If it doesn't happen in the first quarter, it is likely not to happen ever. Give the person one quarter to prove this to you. Otherwise, you are likely wasting your time in 1:1 meetings with this person if you have already mastered your job at the current level. 
• If you have just a manager, the best thing to do is to pick your own project that is a stretch project, get permission of course to do it, and find other mentors, coaches, and sponsors around the company. 
• Find something this person can teach you and try to learn from them in your 1:1's however, it is also the case that your 1:1's may just be status report checkins and not career growth sessions. However, it is very difficult to know what is happening until the relationship ends and you have time to reflect. Sometimes you learn more complete information and that can be a clue as to what relationship you had with this person. 
• The person's job is actually just to manage you at your current level and to keep you productive and focused. I think in today's world there is blurring of management and some of these other roles but it is key not to get confused on what role is meeting you in your 1:1's. 

As for myself, I am always doing all of these roles for my direct reports. That is why I am a super ace manager who builds great high performing teams. I give a lot and get a lot from these relationships. However, I think it is just a reality that most managers are not doing all of these roles and I personally have been blindsided by thinking I had a coach, mentor, promotor only to find out I was only being managed. My key take away from this learning is that I think it is critical to find outside and objective coaching and mentoring. Also, it is completely necessary to find promoters and sponsors. If you spend a year at a company and do not find these then it is best to cut ties and get a new job because promotion is likely not to happen. Also, working your ass off left and right at a lot of projects that are at the next level without promoters and sponsors will cause you to irritate people as they see you are over-functioning vs. just doing your key responsibilities.  They might welcome your hard work but you will not be rewarded for it unless you are strategic at how you spend your time. 

At my job for the last 4 years, I over-functioned over and over and over again, striving for the promotion to director. I never got it because I lacked a sponsor for that role. That role wasn't natural for the business and the business failed to notice how talented I was to make a role for me. My key mistakes were not noticing that I was spinning my wheels and not doing the right networking to create the promotion. I know a lot of promotions are just natural. The business has a need and they see you can do it so you are promoted. If those conditions are not present, a sponsor must be found who does have the power to get creative to retain you for the company. Otherwise, you will need to leave the company to get the promotion. 

The point of this post is to help you and to help me remember these conditions and to be more strategic as you try to move from Senior Manager to Director. It is ok to fail! You are not trying if you are not failing! The key is to learn from it. 

Tell me about a time you failed?

 When I was interviewing potential boss's for myself and the team a few years back I stumbled on this interview question. I was interviewing VP positions and I'd be a direct report. I was shocked at how many people answered the question by telling me about a time someone else failed. Only one person answered with true reflection and humility. She got the job.

So, this is a story of a time I failed. I failed big time just a few days ago. I'm crushed by the experience and I want to write down a list of things not to do so I can learn from this mistake. 

The mistake I made was to be blindsided by a layoff that impacted my entire team and closest friends at the company. Many people will say that this is not about me failing. But it is. I failed and I can learn from this. It is my job as a leader to keep the cycle of life going. The cycle of life is something a leader of a company I worked for taught me. He said, when you take care of your customers it generates revenue which in turn gives us money to invest in the team which in turn drives more customers. It is a cycle. Customers -> Business -> Team. By failing my team, I have also failed the customers and the business. I was asleep at the wheel. 

Here are my learnings so I can never make this mistake again.

1. My Direct Manager

I loved my direct manager. Smart, funny, insightful, professional and caring. He passed the airport test, the one where if you are stuck in a layover you would want to be with that person. Yeah, I'd love to be stuck with him in an airport. We'd have great conversations. What I failed to notice was that he was not bringing me projects. Nor was he really helping me work the projects that where stretch projects. He was not bringing clarity to business needs that could have led to projects. He was basically not engaged in any additional projects beyond the keeping the lights on functions. I'd call this the difference between a promoter and a manager. There is a lot written about that, and if your direct manager is not a promoter then you need to find promoters, people thinking of you for projects at the next level. If this isn't happening, it is a red flag. 

Awareness Learning: If your direct manager, the one who needs to be fighting for your promotion is not bringing you projects in a proactive way that give you a chance to build skills at the next level up then this job is most likely going to have a sort of wheel spinning emotion to it and this is a RED FLAG. 

2. Using Your Manager as Your Key Council

I was blindsided by this layoff and in hindsight, I was blind because I let too many things slip that I should have been more aware. I was using my direct manager as my most important council. I was trying to get promoted to director from senior manager. I now see that my manager was bias towards a certain type of thinking, and acceptance thinking, a go with the flow thinking. He was bias against building. I was a salmon swimming upstream and I remember saying in so many 1:1 meetings "Something is wrong here, what is it?" and he wasn't telling me. Instead, he was giving me his bias reporting. He was managing me to continue to be productive at my current level. In hindsight, I would have caught that this job and the growth opportunity I was seeking were not aligned, if I had had more outside council. I think this is why executive coaching is so important. If I had been working on my goals to be promoted with an objective person, then I would have noticed I wasn't making progress. 

Action Learning: Always have a coach if you are looking for a growth opportunity or a promotion. You need outside council. You need to be tracking goals, targets, milestones with someone who isn't managing you to just simply keep the lights on and has bias towards the company culture. 

3. Fiscal Responsibility and Awareness

My group was a boutique group, a high performance team, filled with aces. Think Chicago Bulls in the 90's. Basically the entire team was humming like a race car together in unison. It was a perfect state, like olympic rowers all in sync. Also, we were of core importance to the business objectives being discussed in meetings. I let that comfort me. I did not know cost per contact, which is a key performance indicator for the team that I honestly as a senior manager should know at all times. I asked my boss if I should start working on those metrics, it was certainly on my radar as important. He didn't seem concerned. I thought, well, I know I need to do this, but it is no that important today. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you Tomorrow, you are only a day away!!!! I sang that to myself every time I thought of cost per contact. Well, that didn't work out well for me. Someone was looking at the numbers and laid off my team and myself due to cost who had obviously had no idea how important we were to business. I know we are important to business so that is just not up for debate. 

Action Learning: If I had that number, if I had had to compute that number, that would have led me to the team of people who were computing that number that I did not know even existed. Some department was clearly looking at the cost. If I had met them and interacted with them, I would have learned important contacts. I don't believe I would have swayed them directly, but I think if I had taken those numbers to more people and discussed them and discussed what business was getting in return, then I would have had key conversations that would have lead me to seeing this layoff coming. It might not have changed the outcomes, but I would have been more in tune with the company decisions. Also, if I could not have those conversations then that is also a sign that I will not be a decision maker at the business level which means I am at the mercy of others and that is not good either. Getting myself to those conversations with those metrics is a key action learning. A mistake to avoid next time.

4. Awareness of True Company Culture

In today's world there are a lot of company culture gifts and perks. I sat through a million meetings on learning how to be a better and more empathetic manager. I went to D&I programs that were so good that I felt I was getting an undergrad degree in Black studies during lunch brown bag sessions. There were company culture survey's where things like psychological safety were discussed and measured. The company values were beautifully written and thought out. I received care packages, went to meditation class, had free coaching, had a wonderful mentor, and all this gave me a sense of safety, that I was loved and cared for by my company culture. 

However, other stuff was going on that I ignored. A key learning was that there was a move that I tried to do for a direct report to another country. The decisions were being made by a bureaucracy like machine of a department or set of departments. No manager or executive had any power to really do anything to fix things that were wrong with the decisions being made by this workflow, and I could not get clear answers and explanations in a timely manner without a great deal of tension and resistance. 

There was a sort of toxic positivity to the experience. I kept hearing things like "Isn't it great that this and that" when this and that were actually tone deaf situations and problems. I ultimately realized that as a manager I was completely powerless to help this bureaucracy make kind decisions that where right by the team. This was a red flag. 

Also, what are the actual goals of the company. It is one thing to have D&I classes, but do they have strong D&I ORK goals and metrics? What are they really focused on accomplishing? What are they measuring and creating projects regarding. Are those projects moving the needle? Are the business functions connected to the L&D groups such that they are following their own teachings? Or is the core business functioning outside of the principles of the lunch and learn seminars on building great cultures?

We did culture surveys each quarter, but one thing I noticed was that each time there was a learning, it was taken back to the team and team people managers to solve those problems. There was a lack of awareness from upper management that some of those learnings and messages were things in their control and the fixes needed to come from top -  down vs. down - up. This meant that the same things just kept coming up over and over and over again in the survey as a problem but the employees were not truly heard and the problems were never addressed. 

I was having a hell of a time getting projects approved and blasting out of my silo. There were projects going on about my line of work and I was only being asked to give updates in project documents. I wasn't in the meetings and people were not banging down my door to get my expertise even though I was the most knowledgable manager of the team most knowledgable on this product and its customers. This was a huge red flag. I thought the answer was to go knock down their door and introduce myself. I was doing that but it was more of a red flag than I realized. 

Awareness Learning: What is the true company culture? How are decisions made? Is there a way for you or your boss to push back and tweak those decisions when they are not the right decisions or when a small change could be a more empathetic experience? It is a RED FLAG if the answer is no. This is something to pay a great deal of attention because if you are going to be laid off or there is going to be a decision that is bad for business, bad for customers, and bad for the team, you should realize that you will not have a chance to correct it. And if that is the case, then that means you are not really able to influence the cycle of life (customers -> team -> business) when it really matters and nor will your manager or your manager's manager. You will be at the mercy of a non empathetic and removed department operating with no knowledge of core business sentiment and experience. It won't matter if you have attended a thousand workshops in building a great company culture because you won't be able to apply that to your team in the case of that decision. You must realize the true company culture. 

5. In political climates the answers are hidden and subtle. What truth do you not want to see?

My manager once said to me that he would not begrudge me if I moved on to another job, one that was at the level I was trying to be promoted too, director. I was shocked and I thought to myself that he made a mistake in saying that. I chucked it up to just poor management. It was actually the one moment he was being truly authentic and helpful. The second he said that, I should have gone on the job market and left. That wasn't the answer I wanted though. I thought if I worked hard and my team kept knocking homers out of the park that eventually someone would take notice. I thought if I kept trying to build that eventually it would just all work out. My own desire to stay at the company which was driven by my love of the product, my team, and the customers was blinding me to the fact that my manager had just said I should leave the company. He only said it once. And in all honestly, it wasn't in his best interests to say that. I should have noticed. I should have seen what I didn't want to see. 

Action Learning: As a programmer before each release I would spend a few mins thinking of edge cases for my changes and running tests to check for them. I started doing this after I released a bug that broke when the dates changed from 09-30-20XX to 10-01-20XX. I had failed to catch the month changing from one digit 9-30-20XX to 10-01-20XX. That caused me a lot of pain and that caused customers to be unable to do wire transfers for a few hours. Well, from now on as a manager, I am going to spend some time each month thinking and pondering "What exactly do I not want to see?" items in the hopes of not ignoring sage advice in the future. I should have noticed that my boss, who was really at an executive level of seniority, who was beyond director, was politically savvy enough to not make such a rookie mistake in messaging. He was telling me the truth. A truth I did not want to hear. 

Summary

In summary, I failed. I will never fail again like this. I will be humble and learn from this and never make these mistakes again. I will be a better leader next time. Next time I will not let my team be blindsided. I will be more in the know. I will have more awareness. However, in this case the truth would have most likely ended in us all just leaving the company earlier than we did. I don't think I could have changed the Titanic's course towards that iceberg. So, ignorance is bliss while it lasts! We all got hurt and blindsided on my watch,  but we also had 6 or more months of a grand time being a kick ass team together. We did great work and built our careers in those final months. We had a wild ride together. It is a very special event when you are blessed to be with a team that expresses true care for each other and the customers and you are all working hard together in unison towards shared goals with shared values. So, maybe even knowing what I know today it was worth it, to ride the train a little longer together before we had to get off. 

This post is dedicated to the team I was on and my love of them and our time together. I hope some of us land together at another company. Life is short and the only way to live is with your heart wide open. This team does that. I am better for being in their company even a day more so maybe it is also true that being blindsided isn't so bad because one just needs to remember how fun the ride was and accept it all as part of one connected experience. 

Python Extension Notations (Regular Expressions)

Extension Notations

Extension notations start with a (? but the ? does not mean o or 1 occurrence in this context. Instead, it means that you are looking at an extension notation. The parentheses usually represents grouping but if you see (? then instead of thinking about grouping, you need to understand that you are looking at an extension notation.

Unpacking an Extension Notation

example: (?=.com)

step1: Notice (? as this indicates you have an extension notation

step2: The very next symbol tells you what type of extension notation.

(?=       Only do a match if what follows the equal sign follows

(?#        Indicates a comment

(?!        Only do a match if what follows the ! does not follow in the string

(?iLmsux)        This turns on in python some special flags. I will elaborate below.

step3: How to use these. As far as I can tell, these are specific to python's regular expression engine. I have not found many references to them elsewhere and in the case of (?iLmsux) these are python regex specific flags, so I am thinking these are only implemented in python's regex engine.

inputString = r"genericWebSite.com"

regExString = r'(?=.com)'

m = re.search(regExString, inputString)

if m is not None: # m is a match object    print(m.group())
    print(type(m))
else:
    print('m is None, so no match was found')

Running this code returns a match object but m.group() does not return the match. 

Hello World with Clojure and LightTable IDE

Open lighttable and also open the lighttable docs, getting started guide.....

hit your Ctrl + Space Bar.

Type insta until you see the choice 'Open a clojure instarepl'

Once you have chosen to Open a clojure instarepl, the Instarepl pops up in lighttable

then type (+ 3 4)

And 7 pops up as the answer if everything is working correctly.

We are used to seeing 3 + 4 = 7, which is called infix notation. However, clojure operates with prefix notation, which is (+ 3 4) = 7. This is also known as polish notation. Reverse polish notation is known as postfix notation and would be (3 4 +) = 7.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day!

Today is Ada Lovelace Day.

Finding Ada

The idea behind Ada Lovelace Day is to share stories about women who have inspired you to become who you are today in regards to programming and science (STEM Stuff)...

So, today I'm going to write about my wife, Marta Smith, who inspires me all the time. She is a programmer. Currently she is in school at Franklin University in Columbus Ohio where we live. She studies hard and she is passionate about programming. She's smart and she teaches me things and because we are both programmers it is fun to mess around solving problems together.

She stays up late to finish assignments and she is enthusiastic about learning more each day.

We recently went to the Grace Hopper Women in Computer Conference where I watched her lug her 10 lbs of laptop + books all around the conference as she tried to take in as much of the conference as possible while she also completed her homework. She made time to talk to others and she made a lot of friends while we were there. She just has so much passion for programming and for learning.

I'm proud of her. She's an inspiration.

Hard work comes with rewards. There is no better feeling than solving a hard programming problem that you've been struggling with for some time. To be a professional in any field it takes years of study and application. There are lots of women doing it everyday. Marta is definitely one of them. She is taking the field by the reins and having fun challenging herself and it is an inspiration.

How to run Knockout inside MVC 4

I'm watching Knockout Fundamentals by Steve Michelotti

I was having trouble getting the example running that he wrote to show how Knockout is used inside of a MVC 4 project.

This worked for me.

1. Create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Project using the Internet Application template. Razor view engine is fine.

2. Right click on References and choose "Manage NuGet Packages". Install knockout.js

3. Navigate to Views -> Shared -> _Layout.cshtml
add in script tags:
http://github.com/downloads/SteveSanderson/knockout/jquery.tmpl.js

After this reference, add the knockout reference
"~/Scripts/knockout.js"

The order must be (a) jquery, (b) templates, (c) knockout. Also, the microsoft URL that worked in the previous post does not work in MVC 4 projects. This order must be exact or else it will fail.

4. Go to the scripts directory of the project and create a javascript file, named codeFile.js
Place the javascript code from this jsfiddle link into the javascript file.
JavaScript code from jsFiddle

5. Navigate to Views -> Index.cshtml
Place the html code and the template script tag from the jsfiddle link above into this file.

6. Create a reference to the javascript file by dragging and dropping the javascript file onto the view (Index.chtml).
src="../../Scripts/codeFile.js"