People Driven Development

PDD: Episode 3 - Creating Owners
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Eddie Flaisler: [00:00:00] All right, let's see what we have here. Dear PDD,

Eddie Flaisler: I am a second level manager at a public company. I have 20 people on my team. People do well for the most part. They are focused, reliable, and do good quality work in the time frames they are assigned. The problem is, that's where it ends. I don't see going above and beyond to meet deadline. No all hands on deck attitude during an incident. No innovation or basically anything else that tells me they care about our success beyond what they're explicitly paid to do. Do I have the wrong team? Am I doing something wrong? Signed, Frustrated Manager.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I'm really glad you got this one. I think there's a lot of layers and levels to unpack here that are really interesting. I'm excited to do that. Let's cue the intro.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I am Morgan.

Eddie Flaisler: And I am Eddie.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Eddie was my boss.

Eddie Flaisler: Yes.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And this is PDD: People Driven Development.

Morgan VanDerLeest: The first thing I'm curious about here is, what do you think the manager is essentially asking about?

Eddie Flaisler: Every single company I've worked for had this [00:01:00] value. Be an owner. Everyone wants owners, right? You want people thinking big, prioritizing the business first, wanting to solve the problem holistically and going above and beyond. I think that's a fair expectation. I think it's sometimes conflated with some other things.

Eddie Flaisler: We'll get to that. But ultimately, I think clearly this manager wants to see more excitement and initiative from the team members regarding solving the overall problem they're trying to approach. I don't think, as I said, that's a bad thing. However, the question always is systemically, what do we as a company, as an employer, as a management team supposed to do to contribute to people acting as owners. So what I think will be very interesting to cover in this episode is to talk a little bit about what can we do to create owners. Creating ownership is its own kind of art because it depends on so many factors. Some are within the sphere of control of the manager and [00:02:00] some are not. I think that's pretty much what the person is saying. One interesting thing I found about the question was: if you remember that they said something to the effect: they deliver in the time frames they are assigned. Again, nothing wrong with that. But here's a perfect example. Is there alignment that the work model is top down, right? You are assigned timelines.

Eddie Flaisler: You need to meet them. You don't get to tell me what you're creating by when. Totally fine. But are people aware that that's how it's supposed to work? and are you able to get them excited around that?

Eddie Flaisler: In general, I'm not a big fan of the word owners. I never was because they're not actually right, we're employees or team members, but we're not necessarily owners.

Eddie Flaisler: Even if we have some minuscule amount of stock, ultimately it's a business transaction with the employee doing their job, which may include a sense of urgency and thinking outside the box. in return for company and manager doing their job.

Morgan VanDerLeest: You tapped into an interesting [00:03:00] point there around the time frames they're assigned. The question mentions doing quality work in those time frames, but then not going above and beyond to meet a deadline. It's kind of an interesting dynamic, right? If things are being done in the time frame, they are assigned and expected.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Do you need to go above and beyond to meet that? Where is that external pressure coming in? Let's double click on the manager and the company doing more of their job.

Eddie Flaisler: Before all managers stop listening to this episode and I'm like, Oh God, they're gonna guilt trip me for not being enough for my team members to have a sense of ownership. Let's start by acknowledging some people just don't have the right intentions, the right motivation, and intrinsic motivation. They show up, do the bare minimum, and go. So I want to call that out before we even start talking, okay? But now, I'm going to be proactive and assume positive intent, and think about, assuming you have the right set of people, and you are actively managing those who are not the right set of people, here's what we can do.

Eddie Flaisler: The first thing that always comes up to me is atmosphere. [00:04:00] Atmosphere comes from the top, right? So, do you have a compelling, meaningful and reiterated mission statement or a vision? Because if you don't what will you rally people behind?

Eddie Flaisler: I remember working for a company where we had this weekly all hands.

Eddie Flaisler: And the CEO would come up on stage and say, this week, this is how much We sold. Or this was the

Eddie Flaisler: change in volume of orders. Nobody cared. Because it was more about the financial success of the company, which means nothing to people who are, as I said, on a paycheck and maybe some random number of stocks.

Eddie Flaisler: But what would have made sense is hear how we helped this week. I'm going to give an example of our mutual employer, Lob. Lob is a great company. and like many other companies in the past couple of years. They needed to do a lot on the business side [00:05:00] to make sure we as an organization survive.

Eddie Flaisler: And I'm actually very proud, I'm thankful for what I've seen the leadership team do. However, one thing that when I stepped into a leadership role at Lob noticed was that we were not talking to our people about a very obvious benefit of being in the middle of the logistics train of mailing: save paper, do efficient routing, help the atmosphere, reduce emissions. Right? All these things that by us simply doing our job, we're able to contribute and to help with. Somehow this was very rarely, if at all, reiterated to the team. And then you saw people were struggling with, Why am I here? Sure, I'm getting a paycheck, but I can get that anywhere else as well. Have you encountered something like that in your experience at outside Lob?

Morgan VanDerLeest: You get the places that match really well with the people who are like, this is what I was born to do. And I'm so it's the perfect thing. It's the perfect environment for me to be in to get things done. But then there's also that sense of how does somebody align with where they are [00:06:00] well enough.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Doesn't have to be the dream thing, but where is that bit of, I'm doing a thing that I feel is meaningful to me, not just in the, I'm getting the thing done today, but some kind of meaningful impact, whether it's to a small scale community or to the environment as a whole. What does that look like?

Morgan VanDerLeest: And I think a lot of that can fall to manager and or leaders for how do you communicate that? How do you tie this to some bigger thing so that folks can latch on to that and have more of that sense.

Eddie Flaisler: It's exactly that, because ultimately, we want to be part of something greater, right. I think when you talk to a person, typically in an interview, I mean, it kind of became like this catchphrase that people use. I want to make an impact. But ultimately it's true.

Eddie Flaisler: People want meaning, right? They want to do something that contributes and you know, they may not build their own company or their own organization. They may not have time to volunteer, but that doesn't mean they give up that hope. So I think that giving people something to stand behind definitely is helpful in creating ownership. I did think while you [00:07:00] were talking about the dynamic between manager and individual contributors in that respect, about something that always comes to mind for me when I talk about ownership with people. And granted, this is not the absolute truth. This is Eddie's approach as an employee, not as a manager.

Eddie Flaisler: Thank you. I need to know as a human being that while I'm owning something, someone is actively working on and invested in my success. So I can focus on doing my job really, really well, because I know I'll be taken care of. What does that mean to be taken care of? Somebody planning my career growth. Somebody ensuring visibility or a fair representation of the contributions I make. Someone making sure that I'm properly utilized.

Eddie Flaisler: Which is a very difficult problem to solve because you want to put the right people on the right problems. But it's not just about who's good and who's bad growth areas. And how do you manage knowledge? How do you do succession management? [00:08:00] How do you prioritize between urgency and wanting to invest in someone that might be very good in many ways, but needs to work on their speed? So many things go into that, and that's the job of a manager, and it's very easy to neglect that. And lastly, you know, I want to see someone staying mindful, like not taking advantage of my physical, mental, and emotional health.

Eddie Flaisler: Right. So let's not abuse the fact that the person is working 24 seven and burned into the ground.

Eddie Flaisler: Basicailly, what I'm trying to say is let's not pretend you're supposed to come to work, give every bit of passion and creativity you have and say thank you when all you get is a paycheck.

Eddie Flaisler: Right. Like in every society or a, or a micro society, like an employer, we see those who get that who get that something extra. And I think that an organization should be intentional about giving some of that for reason outside social capital.

Morgan VanDerLeest: The thing that came to mind there for me is it is this micro community, right? And you're trying to support a [00:09:00] diverse group of people. I would say organizations in general tend to lean more towards the younger single male output versus how does a diverse set of people who have other obligations outside of the job show up and do well, how do they perform at similar levels? Or how do we balance those expectations across groups? Because if you look at two people on paper, and one person is able to put in. sixteen hours a day, twelve hours a day, or something to the work and get things quote unquote done and someone who does their eight hours logs off or takes appropriate amounts of time off.

Morgan VanDerLeest: How do you, how do you set the playing field for these folks? So you're leaning on everyone's strengths and getting the outcomes that you're looking for as an organization without taking away from those groups. It's a tough balance because there's the business owners mindset there, maybe more in line of, like, I want to get as much as we can out.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Again, it's that sustainability thing. It's that taking care of people's physical, mental, emotional well, being, as you mentioned, [00:10:00] how do you tie all these pieces together in a way that is fluid, makes sense, supports everyone, even in their individual journey with the company. Let's say you hire, for example, an individual who gets married and has a child while they're at your company.

Morgan VanDerLeest: They're going to probably go through various phases of ownership, performance, responsibility while at work. And it's going to shift over time. How do you support all those things? That was a heck of a ramble. I think it's an interesting call out around the kind of ownership aspect is that how do you, how do you do essentially support this entire community of people, hopefully diverse community of people and achieve the things that you're looking to achieve as teams organizations as a company.

Eddie Flaisler: You know, I think the call out you just made is probably the key observation of this entire episode because ultimately it really is about inclusion. Right. I think in recent years, the whole DEI, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, became this buzz word that everyone likes to use.

Eddie Flaisler: But there are such fundamental reasons beyond, quote, doing [00:11:00] the right thing to do inclusion, because it actually brings business benefits. I want to reflect something to you that I don't know if you noticed. I know you, Morgan, for many years as someone who's a huge advocate for DEI, and even you, over the past couple of minutes, were kind of framing it in a way, oh, performance is not always the same, output is not always the same, but that's okay. And I want to challenge that. I want to say some of the highest performing, most outcome oriented people I've met were women, and particularly, mothers, and particularly mothers of color. And I think there's there's a certain skill set that you learn from having to balance so many commitments for having to show up in so many fronts. And to me as a manager, trying to think about DEI or trying to [00:12:00] create an organization where people feel included and they don't think that the only way to succeed is to be a white, young male, is actually not to be nice or understanding. It's to build a framework for working and measuring output and outcomes of work that is not reliant on how many hours you stayed, or did I see you logged in at 4am, right?

Eddie Flaisler: At some point in the past two episodes, I went on a rant about how I'm not impressed when someone creates a bug and then saves the universe by debugging till 4 a. m. And ta da! Superman saved the day. The company is up and running again. Well, how about we don't deprioritize

Eddie Flaisler: infrastructure and framework for quality testing?

Eddie Flaisler: How about we ask ourselves, What is it when we work with enterprise customers when there's a lot on the line? Should we do a better job about scope and negotiation [00:13:00] so we can invest more in the products that we actually release? How about we don't treat observability as a second class citizen? Treating debuggability or logging as a second class citizen.

Eddie Flaisler: All these things ultimately lead to a world where you can do your job within the hours you're paid to do your job. You can move on and you'll still be a freaking fantastic engineer who brings so much value. So, to me, your point is spot on and, and I think such a substantial part is creating that framework and that infrastructure for inclusivity.

Eddie Flaisler: Because if your organization clearly prioritizes those who show up in a certain way, which is not even about what their output is, it's just how they behave. Those who show up in a certain way, you've missed out on everyone else. For sure, you won't get owners out of those people.

Morgan VanDerLeest: This idea of an owner to be an owner is not to work crazy hours or to [00:14:00] care more or whatnot. An owner it's being responsible for something as a whole. It's not this one area, this one slice, this one number it's ownership of the whole thing.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And I think anybody should be or can be an owner. And you can own your own area, yourself and the different ways that you interface with people at your company and at home and across the board. And then also looking at the areas that you impact, what are the ways that you can look at this thing holistically, inclusive of the whole. And say, how do we make this whole better?

Eddie Flaisler: Absolutely. And because in that case, this self management aspect is something that you can expect. But again, people need to be motivated to do that. I agree that it takes a certain persona and a certain background, but there's a responsibility here from both sides. And I think to that end, when I think about creating owners, I think a lot about the notion of building teams. That's, again, another beautiful phrase that everyone, including myself, love to [00:15:00] put on LinkedIn. I'm a team builder. I build teams. And I think that such a fundamental aspect of building teams is not making

Eddie Flaisler: people feel like they're temporary contractors who are so easily replaceable and you just plug in, plug out, come in, do what I asked you to do. Oh, you're tired. Nevermind. Move on. I'll find someone else. I understand. We are corporate. I understand. We're a business. It doesn't change the fact that you need a true sense of team for people to get that feeling of I want to do more for my buddies. I want to work with them. I want to help this environment, which is making me feel so great. And these things reflect in many aspects. They reflect in compensation and compensation model, right? They reflect in messaging. And most importantly, they reflect in when you do get feedback that [00:16:00] people as a team or as individuals don't feel comfortable, you act on it. Because you're not actually leading the team if you're not there to solve their problems. And I think people can feel very disappointed and incredulous and lonely where they surface a problem to their manager and nothing happens. So to the extent possible problems should never be ignored.

Morgan VanDerLeest: So I think we've touched on some of the more interpersonal pieces here. I'm curious if you can dive into some of the more of the organizational aspects.

Eddie Flaisler: When I think about these things that a system can do rather than an individual, there are two quick wins, let's say. They're not that easy, but they're pretty simple to explain that I always think about. The first one is the Sandcastle experiment. So in the seventies, it's always in the seventies, somehow, there was this famous experiment where they divided people on a beach to two groups, and they asked them to build sandcastles. And the first group was being paid to build sandcastles. Like every time they completed a sandcastle, they got a dollar, [00:17:00] which was a lot in the seventies. And the other group did not get anything when they completed a sandcastle and move on to the next one. But here's the thing: the group that was being paid, every time they completed a sandcastle, it got destroyed. And the experiment was to see who gives up first.

Eddie Flaisler: Guess who? The ones who got paid. And I think the point of the experiment was to connect people's motivation to them actually seeing that their efforts and their focus go through and translate into something more persistent, something that is more forward looking.

Eddie Flaisler: And you see that a lot in companies. I think one of my most famous or infamous arguments against Agile, which I think has a lot of strength too, it's very important, is that we use Agile sometimes, we weaponize it to change direction without doing too much thinking. In the name of being nimble, in the name of moving fast, in the name of adjusting to the market. But what [00:18:00] actually happens is that sometimes it's very easy to freak out because there is some pressure for reasons X, Y, Z, or there is an opportunity we haven't actually researched through as a leadership team, but seems cool. So maybe do that. Or some technology popped up, and we think it might be interesting to engage in that. These are not good reasons to make changes, and unfortunately, I've seen these being used as reasons.

Eddie Flaisler: Discipline in starting something, and seeing it through, even for the sake of the people building it, to not feel like a pair of robots who just get instructions, follow them, not even understanding the bigger picture, and move on.

Eddie Flaisler: People need to see and get the satisfaction of completing something and seeing it in the wild to the extent possible. I understand there are business constraints. I understand there are changes as the rapidly changing market, especially as the company smaller and in earlier stage you look [00:19:00] for product market fit. That doesn't mean you cannot plan your horizons accordingly. You can build things maybe in smaller scopes, right? But have a plan for what that iteration looks like. If you think you'll change direction, in a month, be proactive about it. Don't commit the team to something that takes months and months to build. Have them build something small and have them watch as the business experiments with that iteration. And if that's not what we're looking for, we move on. That's very different from starting five, three month projects. and, cutting all of them after one month.

Eddie Flaisler: Very, very different. So that's one thing I think about.

Eddie Flaisler: And the second thing, which is a much easier thing to achieve, is show people concretely how the work makes an impact. One thing that I really liked about all the companies I've been at, and I've seen it help,

Eddie Flaisler: is our manager always used to take us [00:20:00] on a tour somewhere, or to talk to a customer, or to watch a movie about our product being used.

Eddie Flaisler: So much pride, right? So much engagement. You see how you solve actual problems. On the contrary, I've seen organizations where people just work and work and work. And never get to see their work being used, helping, alive. There's a limit to how long you can stay motivated without that. So these are my two biggest points which are kind of related.

Eddie Flaisler: What about you?

Morgan VanDerLeest: Your day to day work may not see the level of impact that really excites you. But seeing the impact that it has on a customer and be that connective tissue, right? So seeing how the widget that you built last quarter made somebody's life better, made their day to day better, when they're going through their workflow, using your product. Even if it's not saving the environment or some kind of huge, huge change, but you get to see on somebody's face that shift and how they've been looking for this for six months, a year, a couple of years.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And [00:21:00] now their day to day is improved. That feels good. And that's the thing that no matter who you are to see that kind of thing, does some good for you, so I love that you brought that up..

Eddie Flaisler: Absolutely. One thing which I think we should probably dig into is, you know, we talked about what we need to do to create owners. Do you have some ideas about what we definitely should not do, in your experience?

Morgan VanDerLeest: Calling back to what we mentioned earlier: making people order takers. Saying this is what you're going to do. This is how much time you have to work on it. Go into your, your hole, your box, your cave, do this and then send us back out the result. That's going to significantly hamper the feeling of ownership within your company. Folks don't feel ownership of the work that they do. And even how they go about that. That may be the extent of some of the ownership that they can have. And that's okay. It's depending on the greater org and how things pan out. But you can start peeling back to layers there.

Morgan VanDerLeest: How can we develop those levels of of ownership? And if you're too prescriptive, too micromanaging, in that sense, [00:22:00] that can really strip down somebody's feeling of ownership. The feeling that they can make change outside their explicit scope of work.

Eddie Flaisler: I think that it's so insightful. And I also think that, you starting with a point regarding a seat at the table, actually having your opinion, your input matter. I think we see that showing up as areas of improvement in multiple facets of the work in engineering. So for example, if we look at a bigger scale, the typical story every engineering leader probably encountered in their career at least once is sales committing without consulting engineering, and now you're on the hook for delivering something. Now, I want to double click on this particular situation, right? There's a big sell .

Eddie Flaisler: There's an opportunity. And sales want to lock down this customer. So whatever they want, whatever they ask for, they're like, sure, let's do it. Let's do it. I can't blame them. Negotiation is hard.

Eddie Flaisler: Sales are on the hook for generating money, [00:23:00] generating revenue.

Eddie Flaisler: Closing is not easy. When you finally even get someone to get back to that cold email and talk to you, you just want to get that thing out the door.

Eddie Flaisler: So I am not judging anyone. But what I have seen is the lack of acknowledgement post fact that this was not okay. I have seen way too many situations where the business is coming to engineering and engineering says, Hey, wait a second, but, but nobody asked us and that timeline, we simply, we can't deliver that or that scope, we can't do that. And nobody cares, it translates immediately into, what are you even doing? Or why are you so slow? Or why is this not possible? It's so easy to do. I always say in conversations like this, once we put a bandaid on it and figure out what we can deliver and defuse the situation. I always try to say, whatever feedback you have about engineering, let's talk about that separately. Let's [00:24:00] not muddy the water with:

Eddie Flaisler: what are you even doing? Or why is engineering so slow? If you have concerns, let's discuss them. But now this is about making commitment to the customer without consulting the people who are actually supposed to be doing it. Which is. something systemic to solve.

Eddie Flaisler: The second thing is, people won't be owners if they don't feel there's a point in being your owner. Because, their agenda would not be properly represented. Or their contribution, or what they're trying to bring. I was just talking to my friend the other week. They work on this really big product release. And so far they've been on time and there haven't been any significant delays, but they are seeing some quality issues. And they need, I think right now the estimate is five more days to do that properly. And so far they've been really good about estimates.

Eddie Flaisler: There's no record of them just going on and on and delaying the release. The team lead told my friend: " [00:25:00] Sorry, I have no way to justify to the business a person spending time on quality because this needs to go out." And another side note is that no customer is waiting for them, but the business decided that they want to release in this cadence. Big red flag, right? You asked me to build things that work and to care, but you're not going to give me a few more days to deliver something where we won't end up, all of us, working around the clock, making excuses, solving fires for no reason. There is no actual customer waiting. We just need to release it into the wild. So even if a random person tries it out, and then escalates, and it's something that like we didn't even plan for suddenly everyone is on their feet. And that stress was not urgent. That let down after so much work. That stress was not necessary. And that let down after so much work was not necessary. So again, representing the interest of those who you want to see as owners is really, really important. [00:26:00]

Eddie Flaisler: I think you also covered micromanagement, so I'm not gonna talk about that. But I think the last thing that's worth calling out is something we've seen a lot in recent years: you don't create an organization so large for such a small problem space. You know, sometimes because of overhiring or, empire building I hate that expression, you end up with a team that is very, very large. And then, it's very difficult, it's a very subtle art, it becomes more and more subtle to be an owner without stepping on other people's domain of ownership. Without minding other people's business. And it creates a lot of friction. So ultimately, there are things both short term and long term, we just don't do. You're just supposed to stop, think and ask yourself, what would be the cultural and the outcome consequences of me making that decision. And it can be anything between interaction between sales and engineering and organizational design.

Morgan VanDerLeest: [00:27:00] It is funny, as you were talking through the story there, the thing that came to mind for me was how different departments or different groups within that setting we re also displaying a lack of ownership. Because they were only thinking: we committed to this thing six months ago so it has to be this day. Or you know, the thing about, customer is not expecting this. If that's not clearly stated. And somebody saying, oh, " by the way, I'm responsible for this area or customer expectations or whatnot and you're right we should put some more time in here because of reputational things that are outside of the scope of that project.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Helping to build that up outside of just engineering, because it's not just an engineering problem, right? Helping to build that up across the board and that muscle, that kind of communication and clarity and style makes a big difference.

Eddie Flaisler: And I think this ties really beautifully into what we talked about at the beginning: atmosphere. It's a tone you set from the top. Ownership is not about winning. It's about thinking of the problem holistically. So if you don't have the right incentive system, if you don't [00:28:00] encourage the right behaviors, which are around collaboration and helping and setting up other people for success. I don't think you can have owners. I mean, if you'll have owners, they'll be measurable. Like they will feel underappreciated. They will feel taken advantage of. I find it really difficult to see long term owners. in an environment that is not generally wired around that.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That's a great point. I think we've had a lot of the theoretical aspects here. Would love to drill down for the next little bit into concretely, what does Frustrated Manager need to do now to help start creating that ownership that they're looking for.

Eddie Flaisler: So my biggest recommendation is pick your battles. You don't change org dynamic overnight. So decide that there are three behaviors that are really, really important to you, which are your idea of ownership. And build team norms around them. For example: how do you behave during an incident? He or she mentioned that people don't seem to have that [00:29:00] sense of all hands on deck. So what is it exactly that you would like to see? Focus on that. Meeting deadlines, right?

Eddie Flaisler: Making sure that deadlines are respected and that we have a proper way to agree on those and to measure progress towards those. And we don't take it lightly when something is missed. So you see it actually bothers people, not just to an extent that they work overtime to finish it. But what I like to see is If you think or if you see that regularly we as a team miss deadlines,

Eddie Flaisler: then the message or the solution is not we need to work harder. Help me as a manager think what are we doing wrong? Are we over committing? Do we lack understanding of the complexity of the technical problem?

Eddie Flaisler: Do we lack clarity of the requirements? Let's do a root cause analysis. But that requires ownership, right? So I really say choose the top three things that are important to you, instead of just talking about the broader notion of ownership, and [00:30:00] make those team norms. You know, there's some great exercise, I think you can Google team norms exercise.

Eddie Flaisler: Very common, very easy, and a lot of fun, because then people feel like a group, they agree on something together, and then we are all held accountable to the same standard.

Eddie Flaisler: The second thing, which you've actually mentioned, and I think it's practical, it's not theory, it's start practicing radical honesty about what type of organization you're running.

Eddie Flaisler: I think so often people are trying to show what is LinkedIn Promotable. We are all about innovation, and we're all about our own timeline, and we work on this until we find it ready. And then it doesn't happen, and everyone gets really frustrated. So, for example, I managed for several years the Enterprise Engineering Organization at Box, and I remember, my first all hands with the team. And I said there, I want to start by setting expectations with everyone: our customers are [00:31:00] Box's, biggest, most revenue generating customers. They have

Eddie Flaisler: earned the right to be divas. They have earned the right to tell us jump and we ask how high. They have earned the right to set unrealistic deadlines.

Eddie Flaisler: We, as your leadership team, have the responsibility to negotiate, to consult you, to understand what is the right scope, what is the simplest way we can achieve this, what is more sustainable, what is less sustainable.

Eddie Flaisler: We're not just going to accept anything, but I want to be clear that working in this organization means you get to make a, lot of impact, you get to have a lot of fun. But also you don't work until you're happy with the outcome. You work until you're told to. You don't decide the scope.

Eddie Flaisler: Someone decides the scope for you. You don't decide the priorities. Someone decides the priorities for you. Pros and cons. There are some teams in the company which work on experimental stuff.

Eddie Flaisler: There are some teams in the company which work on the B2C aspect, which is a little less stressful. They have much more free [00:32:00] hand. But they also don't necessarily get to see their work translated into actual metrics of company success. So it's pros and cons. And what I think happens when you practice that type of radical honesty about what will happen and won't happen is that it weeds out those who don't fit the mold and it starts a conversation with those who do till you get to a point where they can find their jam, right? And they can be like within these constraints. Here's how we get to shine.

Eddie Flaisler: And the third thing is, sounds kind of silly: reward and hype examples of behaviors you want to see. Actually it's funny. find this one really difficult to implement as a human being because It kind of feels like McDonald's employee of the month and at first when you start doing that when it hasn't been done before People might roll their eyes because they're not used to it.

Eddie Flaisler: Oh, God, what is this cringy message? Why did this person send that? Why did they say this? Why did they give this person a balloon or a [00:33:00] gift card? But ultimately, they start wanting a piece of glory too.

Eddie Flaisler: We're all humans. So I'm a big believer in rewarding and hyping the behaviors you want to see. I guess these are my top three. What about you?

Morgan VanDerLeest: slide, please. Curious your thoughts on this because I think that rewarding and hyping scenario has its own pros and cons. You want to make sure that we're benefiting or that we're recognizing things that we want to see without putting it out of reach, also. Something that I've, found helpful for me even on a smaller scale is recognizing the things that folks are doing on your team that nobody else sees and raise that up. Making sure that your team and the people on your team are seen for the things they're doing, and they feel seen. Calling out the small and seemingly small things that say, my manager cares and sees that the way I went about doing this thing was good.

Eddie Flaisler:

Eddie Flaisler: that. that it's we all need validation. Ultimately,

Morgan VanDerLeest: Exactly, exactly. And it's shifting from: oh, I have to do these big things to be recognized to as long as I'm consistently doing [00:34:00] well to the best of my ability. And we're going to have highs and lows and some things aren't going to go as well, even calling those things out.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I can remember sending like high fives and whatnot for scenarios where you had a really crummy week, but you represented the team well, or represented yourself well throughout this whole, like, I know you were dealing with an intense amount of stress and you were still able to come in every day and keep us focused on the areas that we need to be focused on. Those are even the things that seem like failures, cause they become like ownable moments and people can see like, ah, like I, I do have this influence on things above and beyond just the work itself and the direct outcome that occurred from a thing, which I think is helpful,

Morgan VanDerLeest: One of the things that I like to do usually when I'm either joining a company or shifting teams, or even having worked with the team for awhile and want to shift the way that we do things to a more ownership model is say: buck stops with us. Even if it's not something that seems like it's within our domain because we don't know. Let's explore a thing to the extent that we can to the extent that we are capable of doing in a way that we would want somebody else [00:35:00] to do the same for a bug maybe that comes into a different team. How do we do as much as we can again, not just around the one area of responsibility, but for the whole, how do we use our expertise to uncover what is going on here? How do we handle the situation? Okay. This is where we got to. We think this falls within X, Y, Z domain, and they're going to have the best expertise to be able to take this further. But here's what we know and what we were able to do with this thing. Kind of setting an understanding of everything that comes to us, every question that comes to us and, you know, w it starts with, we own this.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And we're going to figure out what to do with it. And then you move on from there. Okay, now that we have a better understanding of this thing, it actually goes in some direction, or maybe we can solve the problem. Having that mindset up front. It's not just our domain. We're all in the same boat.

Morgan VanDerLeest: We are representatives of the company. And we likely can figure something out here. So let's do our best to do that because I want to see that reflected from other teams as best we can. But if no one else is doing it, it's going to start somewhere. So have that start with your team.

Eddie Flaisler: [00:36:00] shedding light on the fact that it's not just about you and your team, right? It's about what reflects back to you from other organizations as well. I think it speaks to that point that it's a team sport in the broader sense. That ownership. You cannot be an owner in a vacuum. One thing you said that I really, really like is about giving praise and credit to the person regardless of this insane achievement that is not always something everyone can get to. You don't lose anything by offering that. Right. If there's a performance issue, you deal with that. If there are certain goals that need to be set, you deal with that. Being kind does not actually mean that you're mismanaging the person. And I like to state random experiments. So in this case the Trinity experiment, which is a really ridiculous name for an experiment because it's such a big university and so many experiments came out of it. But one of the things was they had two group of kids. And there was the group of kids that [00:37:00] was being told, you're smart, you're amazing, you're incredible. And the group of kids who was not told nice things. And the mix, in terms of grades and backgrounds, was pretty much evenly distributed across both teams. But the difference was striking. Those who were told to begin with that they're great and they're doing well, did much better. And you know what? I don't even know if, even though I remember finding that paper somewhere, it doesn't even matter if it's an anecdote or not. There's no harm in doing it. There's no harm, with starting from kindness. It doesn't prohibit you from setting boundaries when needed.

Morgan VanDerLeest: You know, as we've carried on this conversation. I'm curious if you think that every organization actually needs owners or not?

Eddie Flaisler: I think it's a really good question. I think in a way we both already answered this question, but maybe it's worth kind of bringing it home. We tend to conflate ownership with things like doing high quality work, respecting timelines, helping others. In my [00:38:00] mind, that's not being an owner that's performing. So let's be clear on what we expect. I see ownership very similar to what you said as taking the opportunity to leave everything you touch in a better state than you found it. Within the limitations of your role and scope. So, you know, for an engineer, it's code documentation, everything around succession management, thinking about the fact that there will be developers who come after you, who need to work on this. processes, business problem statements. Things that are assigned to you and within your scope, you think you can actually do better than what you were asked to do. The problem is sometimes there's just no organizational appetite for people to do that. I have spoken to so many people and experienced that myself, who are so confused and disheartened by trying to think of the bigger picture, trying to step up, trying to solve, only to encounter resistance, frustration, very aggressive pushback. And ultimately they [00:39:00] ended up being very demotivated and it might sound like an unhealthy organization, but you know, Morgan, we need to acknowledge that much like humans and like human relationships, it's a living organism and those come, you know, companies and organizations come in different shapes and forms. They all have their motivations. They all have their agendas where they're trying to achieve the culture they built, which they may or may not be comfortable with. And if you work at such an organization or you manage such an organization, I think it's about being honest with yourself and with others about what are you running here and how should people behave in that environment. As opposed to pretending that a successful organization is a one size fits all not getting anything done out of the box because there's no appetite for that and then shaming people for not thinking out of the box. So I think that that honesty, which we discussed. Is really foundational to understand whether or not you even want people to do more than [00:40:00] what they're told and you can be successful either way. And the second thing I kind of want you to talk about because you brought up the whole thing of you want others to be owners: be an owner yourself.

Eddie Flaisler: Build an organization where things can happen without you. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Morgan VanDerLeest: Sure. A thing that I find interesting, and being radically honest about the organization that you're leading. It can be a totally viable, impactful message to say, as a CEO or leader, even of your org, part of my job, my goals is I want everyone to work typical days, go home and not worry about stuff when you're gone and that we are creating our processes and hiring people and building expertise and the product and quality that we were putting together is a foundation for that. So to say, we have a system set up where we don't have many incidents because we have put more time into refining and cleaning things up prior to being released. Or where oncall can be less intense things like that. To kind of give a different perspective to Frustrated Manager's [00:41:00] question here.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Maybe this is the intent. If the goal is that people live their life outside of work and to show up and do the thing they need to do while they're here. And not be as stressed and urgent about things while they're there. That's okay.

Morgan VanDerLeest: But lot of places don't explicitly say that. And if they're not explicitly saying it there's some misalignment of the expectations, which is always the thing. Because you can look at this from a leader manager, individual self, not even as an employee, like family at home, how can you better own your situation?

Morgan VanDerLeest: And what's around you? What are the ways that you can have impact? What are the ways that you can't? Be aware that there are certain things you don't have influence over. That's okay. It is what it is. What can you impact? And I think to your point around we're all humans. We want to see that.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I think a lot of times people do. But until they've seen it or seen it at work and see Oh, wow, I talked about this thing to my manager. And then it happened. I do have an impact on these things. Or I said, I wanted to do this and I went through the effort to do it. And now we have shifted the way [00:42:00] that our deployment process works.

Morgan VanDerLeest: It was because of the effort that I put into this thing, we had put up with it for years and now it's better because I did the thing. That's possible.

Eddie Flaisler: It definitely is possible. Alright, it seems that this is all the time we have for today. If you enjoyed this, don't forget to share and subscribe on your podcast player of choice. Are you facing a tough challenge as an engineering leader that's left you unsure what to do? Hit us up at people driven development, that's one word, peopledrivendevelopment@gmail.com. Chances are we also have no idea, but we can definitely try. Cheers, y'all!