The Misaligned Middle – Getting on Board with Change

Dominica DeGrandis

Director, Training & Coaching @LeanKit

@dominicad

ddegrandis.com

The Misalignment Problem Defined

Why the Problem Exists

Misalignment Stories to Learn From

@dominicad  

Getting on Board with Change

@dominicad https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers  

”Management is the least efficient

activity in your organization.”

•  add overhead – 1:10 ratio •  are expensive •  Increase risk of bad decisions •  disenfranchise employees •  slow down progress  

@dominicad https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers  

”I’m driven by my mission and my

commitments, not by a manager.”

Morning Star

•  double-digit growth last 20 years. •  no managers •  no bosses •  no titles •  Employees manage themselves  

@dominicad https://www.zapposinsights.com/about/holacracy

Holocracy

What: A practice for structuring, governing, and running an organization where top down command and control is replaced with distributed power.

@dominicad http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2012/07/10/the-end-of-middle-managers-and-why-theyll-never-be-missed/#56376fad3143

“You know how leaders will typically say “I empower my people”—and then they don’t?”

•  No tolerance for mistakes, •  Growth squelched •  Need leaders, not managers •  Shape your own future  

@dominicad

 h+p://www.theatlan4c.com/business/archive/2015/08/middle-­‐managers-­‐stress-­‐depression/402193/    

   

Middle managers

suffer more depression and anxiety than execs

and individual contributors

@dominicad https://hbr.org/2014/11/why-middle-managers-are-so-unhappy

Demographics of the most unhappiest managers:

•  College degree •  5-10 years tenure •  Mid-level managers •  Good performance

ratings

@dominicad https://hbr.org/2014/11/why-middle-managers-are-so-unhappy

9. Don’t feel special. 8. See organization as inefficient and ineffective.  7. Overworked.  6. Issues not addressed.  5. Undervalued/unappreciated.  4. Feel treated unfairly compared with others.    

Litany of Unhappiness reasons – in ascending order

@dominicad https://hbr.org/2014/11/why-middle-managers-are-so-unhappy

3. Their work lacks meaning and purpose. 2. They see no career or promotion opportunities. 1.  Poor leadership.    

Litany of Unhappiness – top 3 reasons

@dominicad

Reflections on Misalignment

•  Managers leave behind accomplished skillset for an unknown future

•  Frequent leadership turnovers reduce stable learning & mentoring

•  Frequent change in management methods & frameworks require frequent adaption mindset

2000 - 2008

@dominicad

Change in Leadership enabled:

•  Tolerance for Experimentation •  Kanban •  Continuous Integration •  Faster deployment cadence •  Fewer hotfixes •  Happy employee

@dominicad

Another Leadership Change enabled:

•  Executive political infighting •  Erosion of previous

improvements •  Environment waffled from fun

to not fun •  System within the org failed •  Sad employee

@dominicad

System Defined

The “system” is the network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish a goal.

.

         

@dominicad

When Systems Fail

“A bad system will beat a good person every time.”

         

@dominicad

Symptoms of Misalignment

•  Conflicting priorities •  Different expectations •  Conflicting rumors •  Unhappy people •  Change aversion comments:

“But, we’ve always done it this way.” “I don’t understand why we need to change the way we do _____.” “That won’t work here.”

Alignment: a position of agreement/alliance

Agreement  on  WHY  

@dominicad

Agreement on “Why”

Misaligned Middle Problem:

@dominicad

Disagreement on the “why” (or the inability to see or understand the “why”.)

“Because the boss said so”, is not a sufficient “why”  

The Misalignment Problem Defined

Why the Problem Exists

Misalignment Stories to Learn From

@dominicad  

Getting on Board with Change

@dominicad

On the Road to Alignment Drift

§  IT Managers leave behind deep technical skills to learn more about collective/emotional intelligence.

.

§  Managers get caught in the middle with pressure from above and below.

§  Tolerance for change challenged à Level of investment declines.

Two perspectives

dominate  

@dominicad

Alignment Drift

@dominicad

Alignment is a Leadership Problem

“DevOps is incredibly important to our

mission, so make it happen.”

“But - make sure this other initiative gets prioritized higher.”

@dominicad

Alignment is a Management Problem

“Great – another new thing that will be

superseded soon by next months trendy

buzzword.”

Damon Edwards co-founder of DTO Solutions damon@dtosolutions.com

Alignment is a Management Problem

“Middle Management  

can't see the forest AND they can't see

the trees.”

Observation #1 on the Misaligned Middle

@dominicad

Executives battle over strategy and priorities amongst themselves,

driving misalignment down through the ranks. 

Observation #2 on the Misaligned Middle

@dominicad

Managers behave just like everyone else – depending on

how they are measured.

4 Traditional Management Measures

http://www.effectivemanagers.com/dwight-mihalicz/4-dimensions-for-measuring-manager-effectiveness/

1.  Effective at setting context, boundaries, & planning?

2.  Is work completed on time, on budget w/ high quality?

3.  Are the right tasks assigned to the right people? Is morale high? Work balanced?

4.  Is work identified correctly to provide value?

@dominicad

360 Feedback Method

http://360feedbackexpert.co.uk/ @dominicad

Google’s Management Survey

https://getlighthouse.com/blog/google-management/?utm_content=buffer8a634&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

1. Gives actionable feedback? 2. Micromanages? 3. Shows consideration for me as a person? 4. Keeps team focused on priorities 5. Shares relevant information from Sr. leadership? 6. Has meaningful discussions with me? 7. Communicates clear team goals? 8. Has technical expertise? 9. I would recommend my manager to other Googlers

How IT Managers can help teams win

•  Connect business objectives to teams work

•  Reduce waste - Lean and continuous delivery practices create the conditions for delivering value faster, sustainably.

•  Invest in developing capabilities people

https://puppet.com/resources/white-paper/2016-state-devops-report/

 @dominicad

Understand the Business ROI from Good Management Practices

•  Less unplanned work •  More employee

loyalty •  Higher performing

organization •  Experimental

approach to PD

https://puppet.com/resources/white-paper/2016-state-devops-report/

 @dominicad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbPi68GQX10

Why Change is Inevitable

@dominicad

Physicist Professor Brian Cox - The Wonders of the Universe  

“Everything is irreversibly changing.” It’s not just permanent change, it’s decay. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, everything goes from low to high entropy, from order to disorder.”

@dominicad

Exercise 1/3: How do you create value now?

Take 2 minutes Write down 5 things you do today that create value.

Grab a pen and

a pad

@dominicad

Exercise 2/3: What about in the future?

Take 3 minutes Given what you know about the future, how will you create value in the future?

@dominicad

Exercise 3/3: And then?

Take 5 minutes Go around the table and ask others what they came up with. Give everyone a chance to speak, unless they choose to pass.

The Misalignment Problem Defined

Why the Problem Exists

Misalignment Stories to Learn From

@dominicad

Getting on Board with Change

Break Down Barriers by lowering resistance

•  Highly regulated (HIPAA, SOX, FDA, PCI)

•  Focus on small change curve

•  2/16 hr Deployment to 15 min

•  Investment in relationships

•  From warring tribes to sitting around the table

Automating just a few things helped break down barriers and pave the way for increased alignment across departments.

Founded 1851

                               

h+p://stevenmsmith.com/ar-­‐sa4r-­‐change-­‐model/  

Radical Change Curve – Big J Curve

Big change meets with resistance

Change  Agent  Fired  

                               Evolutionary Change – Little J Curves

Small change meets

with less resistance /  

Ask one simple question

How painful are deployments?

Where code deployments are the most painful you’ll find the poorest IT performance and culture.

- 2015 State of Devops Report

 

Sometimes it takes a Crisis

•  Data quality issues on high profile fed Govt agency mission

•  Dev and Ops not talking to each other

•  Fragile release process provoked a workflow mapping event

•  Improvements in one functional area created new problems downstream

Paula Thrasher, Application Delivery Lead, CSC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hen6lk3J_ss

Visualize the whole system

Breathe Customer Oxygen

•  First hand customer experience for all

•  Thursday lunches

•  Flawed football metaphor

•  Connect IT teams with business goals

•  Business metrics > System metrics  

Metric inspected à Predictive revenue over actual revenue instead of just focusing on up time

Jody Mulkey, CTO, Ticketmaster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USYrDaPE

Metrics Shifted Perception

Mean Time To Repair changed from 47 min à 4 min

Expose the Workflow

Leadership teams get together once a month to look at the metrics and ask, “Why?”, when they see patterns that don’t make sense.  

•  Participate in workflow exercises •  Testing assumptions •  Streamlining dataflow between

teams

Courtney Kissler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88_y1YFsRig

@dominicad

Essential DevOps Reading

The Misalignment Problem Defined

Why the Problem Exists

Misalignment Stories to Learn From

@dominicad

Getting on Board with Change

@dominicad

http://corinnegregory.com/blog/2011/06/04/change-requires-doing-something-different/  

@dominicad

When you are overwhelmed by change:

“Fortunately, it is not necessary to have all the answers for good

management.”                                    ―  W.  Edwards  Deming  

Done Top 3 Doing

Card Legend

Validate Options

Product  task              

Internal  Improvement  

Maintenance    

Unplanned  work  

Visualize Workflow to Drive Conversations

@dominicad  

Make problems self evident

@dominicad

When you want to support change, change culture:

•  Influence how people are measured

•  Experiment using safe to fail approach

•  Conduct Blameless post mortems

@dominicad

What makes a great team?

Google two year study results: Who is on a team matters less than

how team members interact.

The willingness to talk about errors is by far the most important factor for a team

Amy Edmonson TED talk: 

h+ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoLuui9gX8  

@dominicad

@dominicad

Typology of Organizational

Culture (Westrum)

https://puppet.com/resources/white-paper/2015-state-devops-report

@dominicad

@dominicad

Skills to grow to Improve Alignment

•  Communicate context •  Increase clarity •  Connect tribes •  Adapt to change •  Give feedback •  Mentor others •  Provide training

@dominicad

When you are the change:

•  Provide context, the what, when, who, how and why.

•  Consider a Lean philosophy - Hypothesize and Experiment

•  If unsure on how to proceed, Scientific method – Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) is a good way to begin.

Done Prioritize (3)

Do

Act

Maybe Someday

Plan

Check

To Do

           Plan  Do  Check  Act  Kanban  Design  Doing (9)

@dominicad  

@dominicad

@dominicad

Show the data

“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” - Jim Barksdale

Be the voice of reason.

@dominicad

The point in brief

The Misaligned Middle – Getting on Board with Change

Dominica DeGrandis

@dominicad ddegrandis.com

Open Q&A