Carry The Water

When your people are working long hours to get a software engineering job done, you should work the same hours. This sets the right example. Your employees will be more willing to work hard and do a good job if they know you are in the predicament with them. I had a software development manager, Karen Bolda, that did precisely this. It made all the difference in our attitude. During crises, Karen took on the role of "working for her employees." It worked.

If you can't help with the engineering work itself, let them know you are available to coordinate effort, run errands, order food, whatever they need. In short, carry the water.

Communication Skills Are Essential

When recruiting personnel for your project, don't underestimate the importance of teamwork and communication. The best software architect becomes a poor asset if he or she is unable to communicate, convince, listen, and compromise.

Communication breakdowns can occur at any process level. The effects of these problems are not independent. For instance, fluctuating requirements increase a development team's need for communication both with customers and with the project's other teams.

Exceptional architects are skilled at communicating their technical vision to other project members. They usually possess exceptional communication skills and often spend much of their time educating others about the application domain and its mapping into computational structures. In fact, much of their design work is accomplished while interacting with others. The integrative role of an exceptional designer compounds itself. This happens because those perceived as most knowledgeable will become communication focal points, providing them more knowledge about the system to integrate into a more comprehensive model.


Reference:
Curtis, B., Krasner, H., and Iscoe, N., "A Field Study of the Software Design Process for Large Systems," Communications of the ACM, November 1988.

Expect Excellence

Your employees will do much better if you have high expectations of them. Studies by Warren Bennis prove conclusively that, the more you expect, the more results will be achieved (obviously with some limit). In many experiments, heterogeneous groups were divided into two subgroups with identical goals. One subgroup was treated as if excellence was expected. The other subgroup was treated as if mediocrity was expected. In every experiment, the group for whom excellence was expected outperformed the other group.

You can show in many ways that you expect excellence: Be an example (work hard, be proud of your efforts well done, don't play computer games on the job). Provide educational benefits to your employees to help them achieve their best. Reward excellent behavior.* Coach, tutor, cajole, and attempt to inspire your poorer performers toward better work products and habits. If you (or they) fail, find more suitable opportunities for them within your organization or your company. If all else fails, help them find a job outside. You cannot allow them to stay in an inappropriate job, but you must also show compassion. If you leave them where they are, your product will be of lower quality and your other employees will assume that poor performance is acceptable.


Reference:
Bennis, W., The Unconscious Conspiracy: Why Leaders Can't Lead, New York: AMA-COM, 1976.

Tehanu

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent "see the world through someone else's eyes" book. There will be parts that might be distasteful but that's how parts of people's lives are. Another person's opinions might not be correct but they exist nevertheless. I found the afterward really interesting. The way the author talked about writing the book made it sound like a process of discovery instead of creation.

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Trust Your People

In general, if you trust people, they will be trustworthy. If you treat people as if you don't trust them, they will give you reason not to trust them. When you trust others and give them no reason not to trust you, they will trust you. Mutual trust is essential for successful management.

When one of your employees says, "Can I take off today at 2:00 PM? I'll work a few hours extra later in the week," you should say, "Yes." You lose nothing, and you gain the loyalty and respect of your employee. There are many more opportunities to be the bad guy than the good guy. Take every chance you can get to be the good guy. Who knows, maybe in a few weeks you'll need to ask the employee to work a few extra hours for a job you need to have done.


Reference:
McGregor, D., The Human Side of Enterprise, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

Listen To Your People

The people who work for you must be trusted. If they're not trustworthy (or if you don't trust them), your project will fail. If they don't trust you, your project will also fail. Your people can tell as quickly that you don't trust them as you can when your boss doesn't trust you.

The first rule of trust is listening. There are many opportunities to listen to your people: when they visit your office to tell you about a problem they are having, when you need an estimate from them for a software development, when you are managing by walking around (MBWA), among others. Whenever your people are talking to you, listen and hear. They consider what they are saying to be important or they wouldn't be telling you. There are many ways to let them know you are listening: eye contact, appropriate body language, "playing back" what you think you heard them say, asking appropriate questions to solicit more information, and so on.


Reference:
Francis, P., Principles of R&D Management, New York: AMACOM, 1997.

2020 Reading List

I was continuously updating and referencing this list to guide my reading. Therefore, I decided it was more useful to make it a page instead of a post with a link on my blog's landing page.

https://jerryyoakum.blogspot.com/p/2020-reading-list.html

Grain Brain

Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers by David Perlmutter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A lot of reviewers complain that this title is very repetitive. It is but for the audiobook that is alright. It is very easy for much of what the author wrote to slip right by especially if I'm doing other stuff while listening. I'm not convinced that this diet is for everyone, but I am convinced that for the people who need this diet that it is life changing. I'll change my food choices some based on this book and definitely watch for future news on this topic.

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Mycroft and Sherlock

Mycroft and Sherlock by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Great job of portraying a young Sherlock and explaining why Mycroft didn't go on to more adventures like he had in the first Mycroft book.

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Alchemy

Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With exception of the obvious bias the author has in favor of vaping, this was a very enjoyable book. It is a pleasure to look at problems from different perspectives and this book is largely about reframing questions to find different solutions.

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