All,

In keeping with the theme of yesterday’s MEMO the last week or two was also unusually active in terms of people on the management team thinking about life and career development. I had more interesting conversations with people on this front than in the previous year.

On the one hand, we’ve now got the group doing the online MBA and started an internal weekly check in to discuss key ideas. We also kicked off the “Elevate” program with Phil Glasgow, with another group of twenty for executive coaching.

For a different perspective though, we also had feedback from quite a number of people that the level of mentoring for people advancing through the ranks was lacklustre in general. There are few caveats to this one, for example what does mentoring even mean as folks get more senior? still there is probably a lot of truth in the sentiment.

Finally a handful of people came to me directly with practical problems, a couple along the lines of “what do I need to do to improve my game to break through to manager / VP / SVP / CXO”. There were a few more along the theme of “how do I stop my manager, clients or the TAMs harassing me at all hours” and finally, quite a few managers struggling with team members, peers or other colleagues who are “unhappy” at the moment.

I took some time over the weekend to jot down a management philosophy top five key ideas, which became a top ten, then a top fifteen.. so rather than spam you with “War and Peace” I’ve came up with the idea of doing one at a time for fifteen weeks.

Where to start… well there’s only one place,.. Peter Drucker.

In particular Peter Drucker suggested that: the objective of management is to create maximum impact with the resources available in the short, medium and long term.

Sounds simple, but the moment you peel away at the layers you start to realise that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. For example, when faced with a squeeze the default action of most corporate managers you’ll ever come across is to ask for more people (more resources). I.e. the default action disrespects Drucker’s objective straight out of the box.

Those of you who worked with me over the years know that my default is to summon Drucker. Many of the biggest challenges we’ve faced over the last twenty years have been off the form: “solve by hiring 50 people, or put in some serious hard thinking and solve with a very smart script”. We’ve tended to engage our grey cells to find the script, not least as its a lot less hassle than hiring, onboarding and managing fifty people.

Next question, what does “impact” even mean?… one for another day.

Finally, and extremely important in technology, understanding that the objective is to find that optimal balance between short, medium and long term outcomes (not just hacking a fix together in the now).

In particular, done right, advances in technology compound over time as one layer of IP becomes the foundation for the next and so on. The aforementioned script from last year becomes the cornerstone for this year’s new system. That “advancement” expresses itself in leaps in product features, value delivered to clients, platform stability, less bugs, increased output per head, productivity by whatever measure. Firms that can harness this compounding effect for a decade can see an explosion of innovation and wipe the floor with the competition, because to a certain extent competition in technology segments is always partially an innovation and productivity war. Think Google or Amazon.

Conversely it’s its very easy to disrespect Drucker and get it wrong by hacking together a fix in the now that creates a can of worms to sift through tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. In the positive case people muddle through one smart hack at a time in the now, then look up five years later and find themselves busily digging in the exact same flower pot. Of course that assumes some better organised competitor hasn’t already eaten their lunch. That Groundhog Day sensation is the hallmark of mediocre management thinking in technology companies.

I said positive case because lots of technology companies have blown themselves up through lack of standards, releasing buggy software or unstable platforms only to be sucked head first into the can of worms they’ve created. Or worse, in the current cybersecurity context, left a door wide open for the hackers.

Virtuous circles and compounding advances, vs doom loops or sudden death… the dramatic spread in outcome is the result of a very subtle difference in management thought process.

Hope this helps or at least was entertaining.

Cheers,

Danny

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