In order to solve society's greatest challenges we need a workforce that is more diverse in life experiences, has overcome adversity, and is more broadly skilled rather than overspecialized. 


Embrace Diversity
One of the things that impressed me the most in the new Star Wars movie, besides the quality of the acting, was the diversity of the cast and the roles they play in the success of their mission. Rey, the main protagonist of the movie, is a scavenger with a diverse set of skills, a pilot, a mechanic, a fighter with the force of the Jedi, unbeknownst to her, but all of these elements are critical to her defeating the First Order. Finn, also known as Stormtrooper FN-2187, is another protagonist who uses his background to help Han Solo and Chewbacca destroy the Starkiller Base. If Finn had been just a Rebel fighter, he would never been able to rescue Rey or destroy the First Order base. It's the diverse background and experience of Rey and Finn that ensure their success.
 
Last month I sat in on inspiring chat on diversity and inclusion between two great technology leaders, Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins and Xerox' CEO Ursula Burns. Ursula shared a great perspective that when we exclude others we end up with a small group of people with limited points of view, where there are just too few of these people to solve all of the massive problems facing the world. Or to put it another way, as Albert Einstein once said: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
 
We need diverse opinions around us, because as humans we are stuck with our own confirmation biases. Even the best business programs fall victim to this if they have the same types of elite individuals teaching, sharing the same background and experience with the same consulting firms or same business roles. It is not just business where this is an issue. Junot Diaz, one of the best modern writers has described the pitfalls of an elite creative writing graduate experience in the New Yorker. I earned my MFA at the University of San Francisco and while we still had a mostly Caucasian male faculty and student body there was significant representation from all genders and sexual orientations. Most importantly, we had a diverse reading list that included a high number of books from writers of underrepresented backgrounds. USF students were widely encouraged to embrace diversity and share their unique experiences, something that Junot Diaz had clearly not experienced in his elite writing program.
 
Great education is not limited to a small number of elite institutions, nor is the Caucasian male group the only one to contribute great minds or workers. I have worked with a very diverse contingent throughout my career and have volunteered and mentored children and adults of all backgrounds, and from my experience all one needs to succeed is to be encouraged and inspired.

 
Embrace Adversity
People who have faced and overcome adversity are resilient. When unexpected difficulties occur they are the ones we should count on, not those born with a silver spoon.
 
Imagine choosing between two candidates. The first candidate has worked for the best tech companies, moving into higher positions every few years. When you interview the candidate they tell you that these companies came to them and sought them out for their talent. Sounds great, doesn't it? Now, let's look at the second candidate. They have had to take time off from work to take care of sick family members or kids, perhaps they had been laid off, maybe struggled for year or more and have had to reinvent themselves in order to reenter the workforce. Which candidate would you choose?
 
Our minds trick us into thinking the first candidate is a proven winner and is the only choice. Perhaps they are, perhaps they are so vastly talented that companies have fought over them their entire careers. Chances are, if the candidate changes companies so often, they aren't investing in their teams and wouldn't stick around for long at our company. The only thing we know for certain is that the first candidate had not faced adversity, had not overcome difficult problems, everything came to them. The second one did overcome challenges. They might not be as qualified, but I bet they would appreciate the opportunity more and be more of a team player. Not to mention, if your company faces tough times the second candidate would be the good go-to-person, while the first one would surely jump the ship as soon as the going gets tough.

Embrace Polymaths
The world we inhabit is incredibly complex and interrelated, and solutions to our problems require people who can understand more than a single layer. We keep trying to file everyone under a single specialist title, as if being good at one thing eliminates someone from being good at something else. As Abraham Maslow's attributed saying goes—"if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." We can look at the recent wars in Asia and Africa and the refugee crisis as caused by the lack of diverse opinions and polymaths. We've used war as our only option and ignored other solutions that should have supplemented or replaced military action.
 
We don't live in a vacuum. The products that we make touch people's lives in a number of different ways. With most software solutions moving to the Cloud and the world's fascination with the Internet of Things, where so many different devices and applications will be connected and integrated with each other, it makes even more sense to hire and train people skilled in different areas. A salesperson needs to be more than just good at sales, they need to understand technical capabilities of the products they are selling and how they better meet customer needs over their competitors. A marketing professional needs to not only understand the target market and what the customers want in order to craft messages to reach the right audience, but must also understand the solutions being proposed and their complexity and user experience in order to gauge how their future customers might react. And when it comes to engineers and managers of technical projects and programs, we need to understand as many different components of software and hardware systems we are building as we can, at least on a high level. No matter what small piece of software we may be developing it will need to work with many other pieces of code, applications, or hardware. If we are only really good at our own piece of the pie, our product will never work well, as it won't play nice with others. We already have very successful companies embracing polymaths, such as Google hiring people with non-technical degrees and training them for more technical roles, and Tesla hiring people who are really good at what they do no matter what their education or experience.
 
Think of the different products with good functionality but terrible design where the engineers seemed to have designed the products for their own use, and not the actual customers, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and Blackberry phones. Compare these to the ease of the iPhone… From a security point of view, understanding different systems and how they connect to each other is an absolute must. Most of our security issues stem from developers being unaware of how their code will be integrated with other systems, such as not checking for proper input or designing a product with full access to the whole world instead of permissions to do its own little job. Think of it as developer of the Internet of Things home solution allowing a toaster to control the front door alarm instead of its own toasting.
 
If you still have doubts over increasing diversity in your company and rewarding polymaths, I have one word for you. INNOVATION. Technology is evolving at light speed. Companies need to have versatile workforces that can master new skills quickly. Companies need to innovate all the time to stay relevant (consider AOL, MySpace, or HP).
 
Can you innovate by doing the same thing over and over, even if you get really good at it? We need creative people who think outside the box, who have had diverse life experiences, who constantly challenge the status quo. I am not dismissing specialists, they have their place. We need specialists to push technical and scientific boundaries forward, but I would wager a guess than even the specialized individuals are closeted polymaths with passion for multiple things.
 
Now get your polymath geek out and rock this world!
Val

In the first part of the recruiting post you learned how a company can help improve its chances for finding good candidates. This post is on the most important part of the recruiting process: the interview. I will skip the common sense intermediate steps, just remember to act professional and maintain regular communication with candidates.

The in-person interview is where you find out how well the candidate fits into your organizational culture and, if you haven't vetted them yet, whether they match the skills needed for the job. Please keep in mind that you should be hiring candidates based on attitude and aptitude, not focusing on every specific skill set. The idea is to hire for the long term, hire employees who will grow on the job and help your company grow, not passionless robots who are satisfied with doing only what they know for the rest of their lives. After all, if someone has no desire to learn a new skill, chances are they are not willing to improve their current skills either.

Here are 4 points to consider, and a few interview outtakes for bonus.


1. Interviewing is like dating, make it fun and uncover the authentic candidate
Going on an interview is a lot like going on a first date. Both parties are excited and cautious and generally know little about what the other one is really like. As an organization it is in your best interest to make the candidate experience great, not just figure out who the candidate really is. You may need the same candidate for another job in the future and you don't want the candidate to share his negative experience with his colleagues or you may lose out on other great employees. 

All you're looking for is a culture fit and you're not going to get it with a script or algorithm. Think about a formal first date over dinner where people follow expected protocols and discuss their life stories. It is a painfully boring experience where both parties hide behind masks. You do not want candidates' pre-canned elevator speeches and memorized answers to stale interview questions. You want to find the authentic person inside every candidate and you won't accomplish that from inside the office. The office comes with its own expectations and formalities.

Just like dating, make interviewing more fun and spontaneous. Go for a hike, a walk on the beach, or play some team sport. At least meet in a cafe or at the very least chat over lunch. Try to get out of your comfort zone and help the candidate get out of theirs. You can learn all you need to know about a potential employee just by watching them play soccer, how much they value their teammates, how individualistic they are with the ball, how much winning means to them and whether they blame losing on their teammates. Simply listening to candidate's passions would work. What they love about a certain book, game, movie, or any kind of experience will show you their values. It is impossible to fake passion. This way you will always see the real candidate. 

We are not hiring robots to perform automated tasks. We are hiring humans. Even for manual labor jobs human qualities are still important. And remember, candidates can have off-nights as well. Do not seek perfection. You will never find it. 

Success of every company depends on the quality of its employees. You may be familiar with some of my earlier posts on building a caring work environment to increase productivity, which would also help you grow and retain best employees. In order to retain good employees, you first have to find them and convince them that your company is the best match for their skills and passions. This can be quite challenging, even more so in Silicon Valley where companies outcompete one another for best talent. You may remember the recent lawsuit where some of the best tech companies allegedly colluded to abstain from recruiting each other's engineers. You could say this is an indication of the changing workforce where many employees feel little loyalty to their current companies. You could also say this shows how challenging it can be to establish a work culture where employees are excited to be building something worthwhile and would not dream of leaving.  

No matter how elaborate your hiring process is (and I will describe some bizarre examples in future posts), for most companies hiring is worse than flipping a coin. Yes, you heard that right. Simply pick out two resumes out of the submission pile, then flip a coin to decide which one to hire. You won't be any worse off than going through the extensive phone and in-person interviews.

The first place to fix when it comes to hiring is the candidate application process. See if you can spot problems with examples at the top (answers provided at the very end).

Here 5 basic guidelines to follow when it comes to attracting candidates online:

1. Create an engaging and easy to navigate website. 
Think of your company's website as the face of your company. Would you build a maze for an entrance to your office or force each employee to scan their retina, say the daily password, and donate blood to gain entry to the office? Note: if your office happens to be the NSA, please continue as is.

Do not cause the potential candidates pain. Your website may be the first exposure a candidate has to your organization, so make it a good one. Your current employees will thank you as well. They want to feel proud of their company, not embarrassed.


2. Make job searching easy. 
Your career section should follow the same UX/UI principles you would use for your products, simple and intuitive. The job search should work in most browsers and mobile devices and allow candidates to customize their search and open posting links in multiple tabs. Applicants should be able to filter and sort by whichever attribute is available to them. Don't depend on simple job titles as many companies use different titles to describe similar responsibilities. A Project Manager in one company could be titled a Program Manager in another, or even a Product Manager in a startup. An engineer in one place could be called a developer in a second, or a hacker in a third.


3. Make applicants fill out as little information as possible. 
Candidates should be able to apply with a resume or a LinkedIn profile and basic contact info (name, email, phone number). Your hiring manager/recruiter will be able to judge candidates' initial potential by their resume and have a way of contacting them if interested. What more do you need?

Think about it this way: what is the goal of your applicant tracking system? Is it to make things easier for your HR department or for the candidates? Yes, APS should work for your human resources, but HR's ultimate goal is to make your employees' experience awesome. If you don't have employees, you have no HR.

You may think that pulling in applicants' education and work experience details will allow you to mine your candidate database to find employees for future positions. Think again. Has anyone ever got a call about a different role in the company simply because of their candidate profile? The only reason companies would follow up with past candidates is when those candidates had made a great impression interviewing, but were either not deemed fit for exact role, or turned down the job. Candidates' experience and interests continue to change. Why would you want to follow up on an outdated profile?

Let me reiterate. Do NOT force an applicant to fill out a profile. You will only get the most desperate candidates that have time to spend filling out profiles or the ones who will do anything to work for your company, which does not mean they are qualified or would be a good fit. Why would a candidate go through the hassle on your site when your competitor needs only a resume?



4. Do not force candidates to use plain-text resumes. 
Would you like them typed on a typewriter as well? Humans are visual creatures. If candidates go through the trouble of making their resumes/LinkedIn profiles easy to read, don't force them back to the Dark Ages. Your hiring managers and recruiters are human too. Let them have an easier time reading through and understanding candidates' resumes. Think about it this way. Allowing a candidate to represent themselves visually gives you an idea of the kind of person that candidate is.

What could be the reason to use a plain-text resume? To evaluate everyone on the same level? In that case, ask them to answer a long list of questions and watch them leave for your competitor. One possible reason could be a security concern. It is possible for hackers to embed malicious scripts in vulnerable versions of Adobe PDF files and Microsoft Office products. However, you can always use sandboxed machines to open up these documents first.


5. No cover letters. 
Ever. Not even for a communications or government or non-profit position. All they do is waste candidates' time. Unless the candidates' job is to write cover letters every day, you will not be learning anything about their writing skills other that they can put together a cover letter. Ask for a writing sample or a short essay that relates to their specific job duties AFTER you found the candidates' resume adequate.

If you don't follow these steps you may end up with PopCopy employees:

I'd love to hear your stories of good and bad hiring practices,
Val


p.s. 
Answers to puzzle:
- Accenture: candidates forced to fill out a profile to apply.
- Google: search limited to only 2 filters: Relevance and Date.
- LinkedIn: not allowed to sort by Job Title, Location, Distance, or Company Name.
- Symantec: search cannot be expanded to fill entire screen, limited to less than half of webpage.

If you've been following Dr. David Paul's research on Employee Productivity you already know that Caring for Others Boosts Work Performance and that there are simple Steps to Caring about Employees. A caring environment helps employees become engaged in their jobs. Why is engagement important? 

Think about a task that you recently worked on which you found engaging. Did you enjoy working on the task? How much did you accomplish? Now compare your engaged productivity to a task which you did not find stimulating. 

Without engagement we have little enjoyment and limited productivity. This applies to all tasks, from the simplest to the most complex and challenging. Let's use working out as a sample of one of the most basic tasks. Was your disengaged workout ever better than the one where you were fully engaged? You don't need to be Michael Phelps or Michael Jordan to feel the difference.

I can give you an even simpler example - washing dishes. To say that I don't like washing dishes would be an understatement. If I think about how much I hate washing dishes I can never be engaged. The washing takes forever, is distressing, and results in poorly cleaned dishes. However, if I simply start washing the dishes, watch the water pour over my hands, the sponge rub the soap into the plate, the grease rinse off into the sink, the process turns meditative. I enter a state of Zen and end up with a stack of perfectly clean dishes and a happy demeanor.

I am sure we've all experienced mundane tasks at work or ones we found pointless that took us forever to complete. Whether you're designing an algorithm or building a user interface, engagement is the key to success. Why is it that only 13% of employees are engaged at their work? Because employers don't seek to bring out their enthusiasm, but take employee engagement for granted.

Dr. Paul's research identifies three pillars of a productive and caring work environment: Regard, Respect, and Reward. In a similar article by ISE Partners three main ingredients to employee engagement are presented as trust, communication, and reward.

1.Trust
"Micromanagement is something of a workplace plague. It erodes employees’ feelings of being trusted team members, which prevents them from taking full ownership of their work. If you loosen your grip on the reins there may be a few mishaps, but a strong team can weather those. What’s more, team members’ increased engagement and feeling of control over their work will more than make up for the losses."

2. Communication
"As a manager, you’re not only responsible for offering advice and information to employees, you also need to listen. While you have an unparalleled view of the big picture, those at lower levels of the company are seeing a side of your business that is often invisible to you. While the board might have facts and figures regarding customer satisfaction, that can’t replace the intuitive understanding of those who engage with customers every day. Building effective channels for this kind of communication ensures that the unique expertise of low-level staff members is recognized and utilized, enhancing their feeling that they are valued contributors."

3. Reward
"Rewarding employees is about much more than occasionally sending a complimentary group email. An individual employee will become engaged if her specific talents and contributions are recognized. Instead of simply saying “I’m really glad we won this account,” say “Laura, I’m really impressed with how you read this client’s situation. It made the difference in achieving the outcome we wanted.” Based on the second statement, your employee feels that she is an integral part of the process, which will tap into her natural urge to achieve."

Stay caring, engaged, and productive.

Val

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Caring for employees results in a more productive work environment (see earlier post for research details). Yet not enough companies realize it is in their own interest to invest in their employees. Fortunately, we have many positive examples where a caring environment extends past the typical Silicon Valley habitat with its free food and ping pong tables at the expense of burning people out by working them 60+ hours a week.

Paul Spiegelman, the Chief Culture Officer of Stericycle and The Founder of BerylHealth describes how caring is integrated into his company's work culture:
"We care about our employees in the totality of their lives. They take Beryl home with them and they bring what's at home to Beryl. Having an ingrained culture of caring translates directly into every interaction a member of the Beryl family has."

Beryl's four step methodology for caring about their employees is a great guide for other companies to follow:
1. Create a process to know what's going on with your staff.
2. Acknowledge your people offline.
3. Be sensitive.
4. Let your employees loose.
You can read Paul Spiegelman's full blog post on Beryl's caring practices here.  

There is a "dark side" to caring for employees and creating a caring work environment. A liability.

We now know what is important to our employees, because we have listened to them, cared for them, asked them what we could do for them at the workplace to help make their lives better. Next comes the hardest part. Doing the work. If we make our employees believe that we care, that their thoughts and values matter, but we do not act on their inputs, then we may lose their trust forever. Our employees will feel even less motivated, their work will suffer as a result, and they will likely leave the company at first opportunity.

Not doing what we know needs to be done is an abrogation of responsibility. It may be that we do not truly want to know what works, because then we will have to get out of our comfort zone, reject the old ideas and prejudiced ways of doing business. We will need to abandon the "extractive mentality" ('sit down, shut up, and do what I say,' or alternatively, 'you should just be glad you have a job'). We will need to work on creating a sustainable, compassionate approach to the human beings that work for and with us.

We need to understand our "baseline" approach to valuing others. Are we comfortable with creating an inclusive, regardful atmosphere at work, one that listens first, asks questions, is thoughtful, and then responds? Or do we fire first and aim later, like so many others who ignore servant leadership?  

We may have some excuse to not changing out ways. We may be hijacked by our own limbic system, which can become an embarrassment to us and a liability to our shareholders.

Our limbic system governs our motivations, addictions, and engagement with the world. It also lights up on functional MRIs when romantic love is involved. On the down side, our limbic system is also home to prejudice, bias, and preconceived notions about all people, and specific races, genders, ethnicities, etc. 

Future posts on caring will present challenges that will help replace the erroneous reactive 'we' with a thoughtful, more caring 'we' through the use of values centric, clear conscious thought.

Let us resolve to break out of the old habits together to create thoughtful, mindful, respectful, and regardful work environment.

The above excerpt is borrowed from the upcoming book by Dr. David Paul and Val Dobrushkin: "Tapping into the Future Want:  How Caring for Your Customers, Employees, and Other Living Things Is a Strategic Imperative."

Do you feel cared for in your job? Do your subordinates feel that the company cares about them? If the answer is yes, then your business is likely to thrive.

Caring is something that I believed in all my life, but I never knew there was empirical data to support those beliefs until I met Dr. David Paul. Dr. Paul has several decades of professional management experience as well as teaching undergraduate and graduate business courses where he was able to test and implement the caring principles. His Doctoral research uncovered that the feelings of being cared for correlated with a huge increase in employee productivity, up to 10 times or more.

While many think of monetary rewards as the most important driver for employee motivation, studies prove that non-monetary rewards are more valuable. Dr. Paul's research focused on identifying elements that promote feelings of care in employees and the three major motivational attributes: Regard, Respect, and Reward. Regard, the attribute closest to caring, came in as the top motivational factor for over 40% of all individuals and groups. Regard had the strongest lead in the following categories: Personal Interest and Connection; Feelings Are Taken into Consideration; and Professional Growth and Nurturing. If we make employees feel that we are actively interested in their professional growth and also their feelings, their productivity will increase.

Caring reaches far beyond the workplace. I've observed that best performance from others and myself happened in caring environments, whether they involved athletic activities, playing games, volunteering, or anything professional. I've seen plenty of successes and failures caused by caring or lack thereof. Below are a few examples from my own past.

As a child, I trained on a soccer team in Europe where I had a wonderful coach who believed in me and pushed me to excel. I was better than most boys 2-3 years older and thought I would be the next Pele. Then one day my coach quit. The new coach cared little for any of us and after three years of hard daily training I simply walked off the field. I still play pick-up soccer and watch a few games when I find the time, but I never got back to the skill level I had as a child. I don't regret keeping soccer as a hobby rather than life-long pursuit as I see how the grueling game schedule and training strains the players physically and hurts their relationships.

I did use my soccer passion to improve work dynamics. I formed a team to bridge the gap between different age groups and projects. We did not do too well in the beginning, but as I made my colleagues more aware that I cared about them and would support them no matter how many mistakes they had made, the team got better and better. I had to make tough choices and cut really talented players who disrupted our team chemistry as my goal was to increase collaboration and team building and not win the league. My proudest moment was seeing my colleagues encourage each other after bad plays and passing to teammates when they had chances to score themselves.

I've had wonderful mentors wherever I worked and attribute much of my success to their caring ways. I was an average performer on one project early in my career where I had no overly caring managers or challenging tasks until a new manager asked for support on a critical information security project. I was by no means an expert in the field, but this manager believed in me and gave me his full support. He sponsored additional training and let me take charge of key tasks. In the end, I surprised even myself with how much I achieved. It was because this manager recognized my full potential at the time when I was still unsure of my own abilities, my only accomplishments being college degrees and a few years experience.

I've used the same caring principles to grow my own teams and turn around lackluster performances of my subordinates. I had to invest more time in their development and support their learning, but it paid back quickly as I was able to delegate more tasks to them and use my time on more pressing projects. Everyone benefits from caring, no matter the age group, even Generation-Y.

Stay tuned for more of Dr. Paul's guidance on how to become more caring people in all areas of our lives, not just our jobs.

Looking forward to hearing other examples where caring or lack thereof made a difference,
Val

NOTE: Tom Hanks' Volunteers is a good for a laugh, but not as a promotion for volunteering.

Volunteering is as common as breathing. It is part of our nature. All of us are volunteers in our everyday lives. Children volunteer their time to play with other children, to teach each other a new trick or a game, to help build sand castles and invent new toys. Older kids help each other with homework, social support, relationship advice, and house chores. Adults share their knowledge and help out their families, friends, and strangers. The simplest of gestures such as holding the door or an elevator for someone, or giving up a seat on the bus, or saying a kind word, are all acts of volunteering. No one is forcing us to do these things, but we do them anyway. Some behaviors are conditioned by society or family upbringing, but many come to us naturally because they feel right.

Even if we feel we contribute enough to making this world a better place with our high impact jobs, raising great children, or donating to charity - here are some reasons to take a more active approach and consciously volunteer:

1. Improved health and happiness. Helping others feels good and has been scientifically proven. Volunteering can improve our general mood and make us happier through reducing stress, bonding with other living beings, and appreciating what we already have in relation to others who are less fortunate. It helps us not to take things for granted and may give us a good excuse to exercise more or at least get out of the office.

2. Spreading happiness. Happy people give more. When we help someone we set off a chain reaction that makes the other person more likely to give back to the world in some way. If each one of us made just one other person happy, there wouldn't be any unhappy people in the world.

3. Acquired knowledge. We have to know something before we can teach it. Anyone who has ever had to mentor or tutor someone knows this already. Our understanding of the subject deepens when we attempt to impart that knowledge on someone else, so we grow as a result. In addition, we learn from the general experience of volunteering. We learn how to better communicate, how to motivate others, how to be more patient and caring, and discover new ideas and new abilities that we never knew we had.

4. Mental stimulation. New experiences stimulate the brain. We grow the most when we step outside our comfort zone. When we break away from the same routine our brain thinks about problems in a different way. Being away from the office or home can help us identify new solutions. We may encounter situations through our volunteering that will help us understand our coworkers or families better and gain new perspectives on what we can and should do. Volunteering creates new experiences and positive psychology research indicates that we need new experiences to sustain happiness. Volunteering is a great opportunity to try something completely different from what we have been doing, a new activity, a new community, a new industry. Why not try joining an activity or community that you were always curious about and help people at the same time?

5. Continue the cycle. We all have people in our lives that inspired us to achieve the unachievable. Parents, teachers, friends, colleagues, bosses. These great mentors are not born this way, they are formed through volunteering. We can have a great positive influence on someone else's life too. It is in our own professional interest as well. If we help our employees improve - our employees would produce better work, be more likely to help others and stay with the company longer, and support us should we need their help down the road.

There is a dark side to volunteering. OK, more of a shadow. We should not force our help on others if they are not interested, because that would backfire and cause the opposite effect. We need to understand our own strengths. We should not overburden ourselves with volunteering and give up our own goals. We must still lead our own lives and pursue our own goals. It is about finding a balance.

There were times in my life when I was burned out, because I had given so much of myself to others. I had to recognize that my energy had a limit. I found that medium point now where I can foster growth in others and leave room for my own. It's a fantastic feeling and I hope to share it with you.

So what are you waiting for? Find a great cause and be an inspiration to others!

Val

I would like to share a secret that most of you already know. We are more productive when we work in short focused bursts instead of long hours. This is true for all areas of our lives. In fitness, high intensity training improves performance faster and reduces weight. In writing, most successful authors dedicate only chunks of their time (2-4 hours a day) to write. In music, violin players improve faster via short and intense practice sessions.

One would hope that as we rethink and improve technology in the 21st century, we would also reevaluate how we manage our productivity. Most companies still place higher value on people who appear to work more hours than others. There are surprisingly few recognized studies in this area, but those that exist confirm that productivity suffers from overtime.

I've worked with start-ups, small and medium companies (100 – 5,000 employees), and large private and government organizations. I am still waiting to see the global cultural shift to a culture that values output versus perceived effort.

I did my share of overtime work over the years that ranged from 60-hour spurts over 3 days to 80- and 100-hour weeks. Most of that was on the East Coast where I had a great reputation not only because of the results I had produced, but also because of the effort I had put into my work. Some of the overtime was necessary. We worked with limited lab assets so when they were available we had to take advantage of the opportunity, ignoring however many hours we had already put in on other tasks. Many of our systems had to be manually tested and documented, which made the actual work much longer. I wanted the issues to be fixed right away, so I did not mind the additional hours. I did notice that it took me longer to write up reports after 12-hour days, but I wanted them out the same day, so I persevered and never questioned my productivity.

I am no longer a hamster in a wheel, measuring productivity by the number of hours I spend running in place. I try to accomplish one task at a time to eliminate multitasking. I use the Pomodoro Technique to work in short bursts (thanks to Mike Plotz for suggesting the method). I set timers to switch to different tasks or take short meditation breaks. As a result I am now more focused, creative, and productive.

It is easy to fall into the trap of working long hours. We think higher of ourselves because businesses depend on our contribution. We need to be there for longer hours or things would fail, making us feel important. There are too many things to be done which we consider necessary, and which cannot all be accomplished in normal hours, so we stay late. Yet, it is a false premise. Everyone who has ever managed a project or even procrastinated has already faced Parkinson's law.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. If we give ourselves or our employees more time to do the job, then that job will take longer. If we allow ourselves or others to work overtime then we will not push ourselves as hard, knowing that if we are unable to accomplish the task in normal hours, we can stay later. This does not mean that people are lazy or that we can accomplish unlimited amount of work.

We need to be aware that our energy is limited and we should focus it on the most important tasks. Remember the Pareto principle which has held up through the ages – 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. As a consultant in Silicon Valley I help tech companies determine which of their proposed projects fall into the 20% category and should be pursued. This way, people can work normal hours and produce better results.

As business owners or managers we want ourselves and our teams to function at our best. This means having employees who have little stress, get enough sleep, and ideally some exercise too. We cannot guarantee how the employees spend their personal time, but we can strive for an environment that does not require employees to spend all their time in the office to the detriment of their performance. If we expect our employees to be reachable at all hours, then we are forcing them to be aware of their job at all times, limiting their ability to recover and return to peak performance. As someone who has spent years working on nuclear submarines, I can tell you that there are very few true emergencies when you need an immediate response.

Forcing employees to work long hours does have some benefits. It can bring team members closer and make people feel better about themselves and their roles in the company. It can make employees value their company more, because they think that they work harder than their competitors. It can improve employee retention, because employees are too worn out to look for better opportunities. Suffering also creates value for people until we resolve it. When we suffer we always think it is for a great cause, thus raising the company's value in our eyes. But wouldn't be better if employees never considered leaving, not because they were too stressed out to think about their future, but because they were passionate about the company and its products?

Let's be smart and productive so that nobody (including ourselves) would ever ask us this question:

Val

You might wonder what managing a professional soccer team (football team for all Europeans) has to do with managing a tech project or company. Team sports are terrific at raising morale and building camaraderie and I used soccer to bring employees closer together during my tenure at Progeny. I had noticed that as we grew and became more successful the company culture struggled to keep up. Our teams worked on different projects with little interaction between groups. We also had greater employee diversity that included interns, recent college grads, mid-level and seasoned professionals, and military veterans. So, I started a Progeny soccer team to join a nearby league. We played for several years, not winning any trophies, but we did have a better record each year and even qualified for play-offs. Most importantly, soccer brought all our age groups and projects together and the office soon buzzed with excitement of team building.

Think of managing a high quality project for a leading tech company like Google or Apple in the same way that leading soccer clubs like Bayern Munich or Real Madrid manage their teams.  

As managers, we assign roles based on individual strengths and passions to bring out the best in our employees. Frank Ribery, one of the best players in the world, can play many positions, from winger, to striker, to center midfielder. Bayern Munich is loaded with terrific midfielders and forwards. Therefore, Ribery is most often used as a winger where his top skills (speed and creativity) can be best utilized. He is not asked to defend as much as generate goal scoring opportunities.

It is the same way with tech management. We might have an employee who is a decent software developer, but if he is incredible at finding bugs it would be much better to let this person lead QA effort whenever possible. Another employee might be an exceptional engineer who is eventually promoted to be an engineering manager. Yet, it might turn out that this person does not have very good social and management skills. So, we should set this employee to be a lead architect where he/she can design IT systems, not manage projects or people.

In soccer, same as in tech management, it is very important to allow people to grow into greater responsibilities or switch to different roles depending on the person's interests and the needs of a project. Real Madrid's top defender, Sergio Ramos, played as a central defender and even a defensive midfielder when it was required, but enjoyed and excelled at the right back position where he scored many goals. Similarly, Gareth Bale progressed from a defender to winger to striker as his goal scoring improved for his clubs.

Where soccer teams use different formations, tech managers use different methodologies depending on team resources and project goals. A soccer team that is full of goal scoring talent like Barcelona can use an attacking 4-3-3 formation against any opponent. A team that cannot match Barcelona's attacking prowess (like Celtic) or a team that needs only a draw might play a defensive 4-5-1 formation. Similarly, tech managers will use different methodologies for different tasks. For instance, we would use an Agile approach if the project involves incremental releases or if we build a product one concept at a time, let's say Google Maps or Hangouts. We would use a Waterfall approach if things need to be planned and done exactly right at each stage, such as sending a rocket to the moon.

Cross-functional projects are similar to balancing club and international soccer teams. Soccer managers try to balance the goals of both clubs and nations (e.g. keep players from playing too much and risking injury, or benching them for one game to be well rested before a more important one). It is exactly the same with a tech project when we try not to force too much overtime for an employee with a large commitment to another project. We strive to use that employee's time sparingly so that we can keep good relationships with other managers and not burn people out.

Cross-functional projects can be used for motivation and as fun side projects to create a better environment for employees. In soccer, a player whose club team is having a poor season like Robin van Persie at Manchester United might rejoice at playing for the Dutch national team which has a great year. The national team breaks allow van Persie to return to Manchester with more enthusiasm and confidence. That is exactly what we hope to accomplish with cross-functional technical projects.

Tech employees and soccer players both benefit from their managers' support and belief in their success. Arjen Robben has had terrible few years by 2012. His club and national teams lost multiple finals with Robben playing well, but missing a golden chance in the World Cup 2010 Final against Spain and then a crucial penalty kick in the 2012 UEFA Champions League Final against Chelsea. Most soccer fanatics thought Robben was done then, his confidence shattered. Many had wondered why he'd been given so many chances already. Yet, Bayern Munich coach stuck with him and Robben was pivotal the following year, scoring the game-winning last-minute goal in the 2013 UEFA Champions League Final.

We need to do the same with talented tech employees - give them confidence to grow so that they strive to be the best they can be, not afraid to make mistakes. If people are afraid to err, they will always be subpar, thinking about not failing instead of succeeding. I was fortunate to have held the confidence of upper management throughout my career and I have done the same with my subordinates who always rewarded my trust by delivering amazing results.

Believe in your team and they will reward you!

Val

Last week we examined five qualities that Gandalf displayed in The Lord of the Rings that highlighted his expertise as a project manager. Here are the rest of the project management lessons Tolkien was kind enough to impart on his readers. (The first five are here).

6. Establish great relationships. Few inhabitants of Middle-earth know of Gandalf's heroic exploits. Gandalf does not try to impress anyone; rather he befriends Middle-earth beings. Gandalf's friends (Gwahir, Shadowfax, Galadriel and others) come to his need in the current project to destroy the One Ring. Gwahir, the King of the Eagles, rescues Gandalf out of Saruman's imprisonment, allowing Gandalf to join the Fellowship of the Ring. Shadowfax, a great horse of Rohan, carries Gandalf across Middle-earth so that Gandalf can prevent the fall of Minas Tirith. Galadriel, the greatest of Elven women, presents members of the Fellowship with invaluable gifts like the Phial that Sam and Frodo use to fight off the giant spider, Shelob.
A successful PM values people, not just immediate goals. Future projects may involve the same people where past positive relationships will be of great help.

7. Do not use same standards to judge those of different skills. Gandalf does not evaluate everyone he meets based on their combat skills, but rather appreciates the unique value they provide. Gandalf is fond of the innkeeper, Barliman Butterbur, for his care and patience and does not think less of Barliman for his slow thinking when he forgets to send Gandalf's letter to Frodo. At the Council of Elrond Gandalf accepts the hobbits Merry and Pippin into the Fellowship of the Ring over such great elf-lords as Glorfindel. Gandalf trusts in the value of hobbits' friendship over the power of Glorfindel, since he knows they will not reach Mount Doom through force, but rather through stealth.
A successful PM needs to know his or her team members' individual strengths and create opportunities for their best skills to be utilized in the project.

8. Lead when above leadership fails. Gandalf accepts a secondary role when it is appropriate such as at the Council of Elrond, but he is not afraid to take charge when needed. At the most crucial moment in the siege of Minas Tirith, Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, goes mad over the apparent death of his son, Faramir. Gandalf could have used that moment to supplant Denethor's authority, but instead he tries to convince Denethor to come to his senses and take an active role and save his city. Only when Denethor refuses to lead does Gandalf assume control over Minas Tirith defenses.
If a project is falling apart due to lack of executive leadership, a PM should first raise the issue with the project sponsor. However, if the problem persists - you should step up and lead.

9. Do the job that nobody else can. In the quest to destroy the One Ring, Gandalf provides benefits that nobody else can, many times throughout his travels. Gandalf smites wolves, keeps the Fellowship warm with his fire in the snows of Caradhras, and leads the group through the dungeons of Moria. However, he is most pressed to decide where to lend his service at the siege of Minas Tirith. Gandalf must either continue to fight the Witch-king of Angmar, the leader of the Nazgul, or run off to save Faramir. Gandalf knows that the Black Captain will likely kill others, but decides to save Faramir, because "no other help can reach him." In the end, Faramir lives because of Gandalf and Eowyn and Merry slay the Black Captain.
You should let others take over your duties when there is a new crucial benefit that only you can provide. Just because a project manager managed a project up to a certain point, does not mean he or she should continue to lead it in exceptional circumstances.

10. Strive for project success above personal gain. The Lord of the Rings novel and movies present us with an extreme but useful example of a project manager, who thinks the success of his project is more important than his ego and even his life. To secure the escape of the rest of the Fellowship, Gandalf stands alone against a great enemy, a Balrog. He is not afraid to die, because the quest to destroy the One Ring is too important to fail. Gandalf slays the Balrog at the cost of his own life. However, this battle and death leads to evolution: Gandalf is then brought back to life to be even more powerful than before.
As a project manager, nurturing and protecting your team at all costs will bring you great rewards in the long run even if you face criticism or difficulty in the short term. Keeping a project’s ultimate goal beyond egos and striving for a greater cause will always be the right thing to do.

Val