Role definitions

This post on Quora, which I found by chance yesterday, goes along the lines of the importance of defining objectives very well. I had some experience in being burnt after accepting a role that was not well defined. So believe me, I can´t stress enough how important it is to have a clear view of what is expected from you before accepting a role.

Here it is

---

Answer on @Quora by Gil Yehuda to What is the craziest thing you have ever said (or done) at an interview and still… 

In response to a job offer, I said no. As a result, I got the job.

I was interested in a particular job, and read the description carefully. It listed 5 specifications, covering a wide range of skills in my field. They really needed two people to do the job as described. After the phone interviews, I was invited to a full day of on-site interviews. I first met the hiring manager, and then a few people associated with the role. The last interview was with the recruiter.

First interview with the hiring manager (CTO) went well, but ended strangely. He asked if I had questions. I asked about the five items listed in the spec: they were diverse. Which was the most important part of the job? He scanned the job spec sheet and said #5 was most important, the other four were much less relevant. I asked: why is the most important part of the job listed last? Usually a list like this would have the most important item listed first. He seemed annoyed at the question, and reiterated that #5 was the primary job, the rest were not as important. That felt strange.

The next five interviews went smoothly, and things looked promising. Each interviewer asked if I had questions, and I asked each the same question: "If we asked the CTO which of these 5 items are most important for this job, what would he say?" Each one answered #1 is the primary job. Then I said "I actually asked the CTO, he said #5 was the essential part of the job. What do you think that means?" Their reactions were very interesting. One said "No, I meant #5..." Another said "Oh that's not right, I need to meet with him and correct this." Fascinating indeed! I discovered a disconnect between the CTO and the team about the job.

The last interview was with the recruiter. We had a frank conversation about the company and about the issues I uncovered. She told me that feedback from my interviews was positive. But she did not have a good answer about the role clarity. Yet they still wanted to make me an offer. The truth is, I really wanted (needed) this job. But I said: I'm sorry, I don't think I can take the job if the company doesn't know what the job is. You need to figure out what you want before you make an offer. I don't think anyone could succeed in a job where the very role is in dispute.

She responded. The reason they wanted to make me the offer was that I was the only person to see what was going on. It was a new role and they didn't understand what they needed. Apparently I read the situation in a way they were unable to see themselves, and that's what they needed. They want me to take the job in order to help figure out what the job should be. That’s a twist, and a huge opportunity.

She asked me what salary range I was looking for. I thought, this makes no sense. Yes, I want the job, but the risk of failure is high since the job was ill defined. Given the risk, how would I know if they are serious about having me figure this out for them? So I said "If you make me an offer I can't refuse, I won't be able to refuse it." She came back 15 minutes later with an offer I could not, and did not refuse. No regrets either.

 Link to the original post

https://www.quora.com/Experiences-in-Life/What-is-the-craziest-thing-you-have-ever-said-or-done-at-an-interview-and-still-got-the-job/answer/Gil-Yehuda?srid=zA9t&share=b2bc108d

Timeless Principles for Leadership

I read these principles on Linkedin and thought it was really timeless and accurate, so I want to share them with you. This is how I try to manage teams, it just reflects my own views perfectly.

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement – understand who you are, your values, priorities, strengths and weaknesses. Knowing yourself allows you to discover your strengths and weaknesses. Self-improvement is a process of sustaining strengths and overcoming weaknesses, thus increasing competence and the confidence people have in your leadership ability.

2. Be technically and tactically proficient – before leaders can lead effectively, they must have mastered the tasks required by the people they lead. In addition, leaders train their people to do their own jobs while understudying the leader so that they are prepared to replace the leader if necessary. Likewise, leaders must understudy their leader in the event they must assume those duties.

3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions – leading always involves responsibility. Leaders want people who can handle responsibility and help achieve goals. They expect others to take the initiative within their stated intent. When you see a problem or something that needs to be fixed, do not wait to be told to act. Organizational effectiveness depends upon having leaders at all levels that exercise initiative, are resourceful and take opportunities that will lead to goal accomplishment and business success. When leaders make mistakes, they accept just criticism and take corrective action. They do not avoid responsibility by placing the blame on someone else.

4. Set the example – people want and need their leaders to be role models. This is a heavy responsibility, but leaders have no choice. No aspect of leadership is more powerful. If leaders expect courage, responsibility, initiative, competence, commitment and integrity from their direct reports, they must demonstrate them. People will imitate a leader’s behavior. Leaders set high but attainable standards for performance and are willing to do what they require of their people. Leaders share hardships with their people and know that their personal example affects behavior more than any amount of instruction or form of discipline.

5. Know your people and look out for their welfare – it is not enough to know the names and birth dates of your people. You need to understand what motivates them and what is important to them. Commit time and effort to listen to and learn about them. Showing genuine concern for your people builds trust and respect for you as a leader. Telling your people you care about them has no meaning unless they see you demonstrating it. They assume that if you fail to care for them daily, you will fail them when the going gets tough.

6. Keep your people informed – people do best when they know why they are doing something. Individuals affect the bottom line results of companies by using initiative in the absence of instructions. Keeping people informed helps them make decisions and execute plans within your intent, encourages initiative, improves teamwork and enhances morale.

7. Ensure the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished – your people must understand what you want done, to what standard and by when. They need to know if you want a task accomplished in a specific way or how much leeway is allowed. Supervising lets you know if people understand your instructions; it shows your interest in them and in goal accomplishment. Over-supervision causes resentment while under-supervision causes frustration. When people are learning new tasks tell them what you want done and show them how. Let them try. Observe their performance. Reward performance that exceeds expectations; correct performance that does not. Determine the cause of the poor performance and take appropriate action. When you hold people accountable for their performance, they realize they are responsible for accomplishing goals as individuals and as teams.

8. Develop a sense of responsibility among your people – people feel a sense of pride and responsibility when they successfully accomplish a new task. Delegation indicates trust in people and encourages them to seek responsibility. Develop people by giving them challenges and opportunities that stretch them and more responsibility when they demonstrate they are ready. Their initiative will amaze you.

9. Train your people as a team – teamwork is becoming more and more crucial to achieving goals. Teamwork is possible only when people have trust and respect for their leader and for each other as competent professionals and see the importance of their contributions to the organization. Develop a team spirit among people to motivate them to perform willingly and confidently. Ensure that individuals know their roles and responsibilities within the team framework. Train and cross train people until they are confident in the team’s abilities.

10. Make sound and timely decisions – leaders must assess situations rapidly and make sound decisions. They need to know when to make decisions themselves, when to consult with people before deciding and when to delegate the decision. Leaders must know the factors to consider when deciding how, when and if to make decisions. Good decisions made at the right time are better than the best decisions made too late. Do not delay or try to avoid a decision when one is necessary. Indecisive leaders create hesitancy, loss of confidence and confusion. Leaders must anticipate and reason under the most trying conditions and quickly decide what actions to take. Gather essential information before making decisions. Announce decisions in time for people to react.

11. Employ your work unit in accordance with its capabilities – leaders must know their work unit’s capabilities and limitations. People gain satisfaction from performing tasks that are reasonable and challenging but are frustrated if tasks are too easy, unrealistic or unattainable. If the task assigned is one that people have not been trained to do, failure is very likely to result.

The original link is here, in case you want to take a look at the complete article. 
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140607131713-404673-11-timeless-principles-of-leadership-us-army-1948

Loyalty, respect and fear

There are as many Managing styles are there are managers. Some base their leadership in loyalty, others in respect, others in fear, and so on.

I take a lot of time just thinking in the type of manager I want to be, and how I want my teams to follow me. I sometimes experiment on different approaches and see what happens. But there are some things that don´t change, they are a part of me. I do love working with smart, rebellious people that challenge me. I love teams that debate, where people need to be convinced instead or ordered. And I make sure they know they can all argue and challenge me, again and again.

I really takes a lot of effort to lead teams of people where people just do what I say and never argue, those that bring me coffee cause they think that is what I want, and always answer what I want to hear. It annoys me deeply, and I have to breathe deep for a while just not to react quite badly.

Now I am facing the challenge to work for people that expect from me being obedient and quiet. And I am not sure I can do it. I am not sure I want to do it. It’s going to be a hard week. Hope I can survive it. 

It has been really hard to be lead after so many years of being the leader. But his has also given me back the sense of working on a team, to put one stone to build something bigger.

The ones we miss, the ones we don´t.

What makes people a good employee… according to me!


Last night, we were talking among other things about all the people that have helped us in projects since our company started. We remember a few because we really missed them when they left, and others because we were so happy they left, we almost made a party.

I was a lousy employee when I was one. But after being a “boss” for many years I think I will now be a fairly decent employee. (Same when you start driving, you suddenly become a very good pedestrian. You are aware of what bad pedestrians do and endanger their lives quite stupidly.)

These are some of the things I leaned:

Good employees help solve problems, bad employees create problems. I have so many many things in my mind, that what I appreciate the most is someone taking some of the load from me. When employees complicate the simple, or interrupt me to tell me some really silly problem, it’s really annoying.

Good employees work even when I am not watching. Bad employees need me to be on their back all day in order to achieve minimum goals. The typical bad employee spends most of his/her day chatting, doing homework or working in their second job, the funny thing is that they all think I´m stupid and don´t know.

Good employees tell the truth even when things are bad, bad employees will always lie and say everything is perfect and suddenly resign when they can’t keep up the lie. As a manager, when there is trouble in a project, and you know it soon, you can do something about it. As an employee you will never be punished for raising issues when they come. Hiding it and resigning the day before the dead line is the best example of a bad employee.

Good employees know they still have to do their jobs, even if I am friendly to them. Bad employees assume they can stop doing what they are supposed to because they share a beer or lunch with me. I finally learned my lesson and no longer share any beer with any employee. Have to say I learned it the hard way.

Good employees will help with ideas and new perspectives when a decision needs to be made, but then follow my lead even if they don’t understand or agree. Bad employees always want to do what they want and fight every single day about it. You cannot lead a team that does not understand you are the leader. In my experience, it happens a lot with very young employees (like a pack of teenagers fighting their parents).

I have a mental list of all my employees. They are listed in good or bad employees. But, why keep the bad ones? Well… It’s all about the money. Some times it’s cheaper to keep the bad ones that finding new ones, training them and taking the risk they are worst employees than the ones I already have.

Don’t hire someone just because you like him/her: Bad hire means loosing time and money

After some years of losing a lot of time and money selecting new hires I finally developed a good eye for reading resumes and a few tips to get the hires that last. I no longer interview more than a few people for each position and haven’t been terrible mistaken for a while.

This is how we select personnel today (technical and not technical staff), and why:

1. Publish the request for at least 2 weeks, and get as many resumes as possible:
We don’t use paper, only specialized portals or Universities Alumni organizations. People will apply even if they don’t have the required profile or experience, so you will get many resumes that don’t even apply making you lose time. That is why we prefer Alumni Associations that will filter that for you. Specialized portals give an additional help, they force people to include their resume in a template, so the information you receive is normalized, making it easier to compare candidates.

2. Just by reading resumes, we select a group of no more than 10 people:
Only with what is written you can eliminate most of the bad candidates. You should avoid: people that switch jobs too often, recent graduates that insist they have managerial experience, those who state the obvious with many details(*), lack of confidence or excessive confidence in presentation letters or career goals and those that work as a hobby.

3. We do first interviews and check references of those that seem to have an option (no more than 10):
The main objective here is to see if you could work with this person. Its more like a chemistry thing, and here it will depend on the values of your company. For us, we look for people that will speak their mind, will be creative in problem solving, but are disciplined and not a rebel without a cause. From those I like, I check references by phone… You’ll be surprised, but many people lie in their resumes…

4. If it’s a technical position, we include some technical test or code examples:
Some will be excluded form the selection if their test show no understanding of important concepts, and if code is not 100% complete. We recently started asking candidates to send code a few days after the interview. It helped me see who will go the extra mile for the job, and most important, will keep his/her word in when the work was going to be sent.

5. We select 3 or 4 people per position we need to fill, and then, let someone else choose:

we hire an expert in Human Resources do some character and values tests. Technical knowledge can be taught, but honesty, commitment or discipline can not. As a sub product of this stage, we also get a profile of the candidate, giving us tips on how to get the best of each person, if hired.

Only then, after this 5 step process, we decide who to hire… Its not a infallible system, but has lower our bad hires to almost zero. I am quite confident with it.

(*) This was sent to me by diegus9, and I do agree with it… might help the programmers improve their resume:
http://improvingsoftware.com/2009/04/17/the-programmers-guide-to-getting-hired-your-resume-its-the-little-things-that-hurt/
And these I found also in the same page:
http://improvingsoftware.com/2009/04/10/the-programmers-guide-to-getting-hired-the-code-sample/