Conflict, Growth, and Turning Pain into Growth

A co-worker of mine has a phrase up on his whiteboard.  “There is no growth without conflict.”  He loves that quote and works with the people in his influence to get them to embrace conflict as a healthy thing.  We’re not talking knock-down, drag-out fights, we are talking rational debate and maybe a bit of passion for the work.  My friend has embraced conflict, but so many of us spend time trying to avoid it in our work lives and in our private lives.  As a result, we may be restricting our own growth as employees and as human beings.

It is very natural to want to avoid “pain’.  Even non-physical conflict can result in painful feelings.  We get that twist in our gut, that headache, that tension in the back.  We all know those feelings, but we may have not put them to work for ourselves.  We may not have recognized those feelings as an invitation to be open and honest about why we are feeling those things and openly and honestly working through them internally or with the people with whom you are in conflict.  Because we gloss over those feelings, they can stay with us, festering and building up until you just can’t take it anymore and a really big painful event erupts to throw things completely off kilter.  You may have experienced this in your work-life, when you’ve flown off the handle after some seemingly small point of contention sends you over the edge.  We have all felt this happen in our personal lives, I’m sure as well.  Instead of avoiding that pain and paying dearly for its cathartic release, I suggest letting it trickle out as it comes up.  Speak your mind and communicate with compassion and honesty in every setting, even at work.

When you fail to express your disagreement during your work-life, you are generally giving in to someone, like your boss or a team member.  When you fail to rationally express your disagreement, you are hurting yourself, the team, and the company.  What if your idea really is better?  What if both your ideas stink, but there is a better one out there that you can find together?  You’ll never know, if you don’t express yourself.  Innovation definitely will not happen if you keep things to yourself.

In the business world when we are developing solutions to problems, whether they be in people or electronic processes, it’s very, very important to speak out if you don’t agree with things that are being accepted as true or if you disagree with a solution.  Even if you are on the business side and you’re disagreeing with a technical resource or a superior in your organization, your disagreement is important.  There is a reason you are feeling “pain”.  It may be that you see a fault in their logic.  It may be that you know how the people in the field work and the proposed solution will cause too much disruption and not enough value for the company to invest in it.  You may have a better idea, you may have a worse idea, but you will never know unless you bring it up.

Tension between the business and technology implementation teams is inevitable.  We’ve probably all seen instances where our business sponsors have asked for a warp capable starship level product but have given you the timeline for building a canoe.  (Hyperbole for fun and illustrative purposes).  That is frustrating and aggravating, if we are honest.  Maybe the timeline is there, but the budget for R&D isn’t.  Whatever the conflict, it is up to the technical team to speak out about it.  The business may not be aware of the complexities of what they’re asking for.  It’s just a warp drive starship.  It’s just a website.  They may not understand that the security behind the site and authorization model for the different roles is going to take a long time to work out and to program and test. You as a technical team member must make sure they understand the pain point.  If they do, then they can rationally think things through and perhaps change the budget, give you more time, or start scaling back on their initial expectations.  They may be fine with a canoe at the outset.  They may be fine with the reduced, minimal feature set to start out with.  You won’t know if you don’t tell them your pain and explain why you’re experiencing it.

As a business analyst, I have frequently come to development teams with the business’ requirements only to be told that can’t happen or that what the business is asking for is silly or not needed.  Talk about a pain.  As the representative of the business, it’s extremely important that I understand the pain points that are driving the technology request and the value that is behind those requests.  I need to understand what is essential and what is negotiable.  I need to be able to articulate that to the development team and work with them to relieve the pain they’re feeling so that we can come to an agreement on the solution, given the needs, resources, time, and technical architecture we must work within.  All that discussion, all that conflict will cause us to re-examine things, ask tough questions and generally come up with an innovative solution that will benefit everyone involved.  You won’t get that innovation if you don’t speak up for the business.  You won’t get that if you fail to speak up for the technical team.  Rational, open, and honest conflict will pay off.

Do you notice how I’m always using the words rational, open, and honest?  These three features define a healthy debate.  Being rational is essential.  The word, rational, is defined as “being based upon or in accordance with reason or logic”.  Rational conflict does not become personal.  It is not about you or them.  Rational conflict looks at the facts, the requirements, the environment and all the other factors that surround a project.  There may be some gut feelings involved from time to time, but in general, that conflict and gut feeling are based upon what is known and what the future state must be in order to realize value from the work you will be putting in. 

Open and honest debate means that you are open to other ideas and express your ideas in ways that allow for debate, allow for you to be wrong, and allow for the middle ground.  Being open means you put all your ideas, concerns, and solutions on the table.  It also means being vulnerable.  Learning cannot happen unless you open yourself to the idea that you may be wrong, the other guy may be right or there is a better solution somewhere in between.  You may take a hit on your personal pride, if your reasoning is flawed or you’re basing your argument on a fallacious assumption, but how can you find out if you’re wrong and grow as a result of learning if you don’t allow yourself to be open to that possibility?  Sure, it will sting for a while, but you will get over it.  Other people will forgive you for speaking your mind and being wrong, especially if you’re open to saying “Oh, I’m wrong.  I didn’t think about that.”  In fact, your “street cred” will likely go up as people gain respect for you.  You will also be reinforcing an environment where people can be open about their conflicts and therefore encouraging personal and team growth.  Honesty is crucial here as well.  As business analysts and as human beings, we should never play games to make a political or personal point.  Being honest about a disagreement allows that pain and conflict to come to light and be addressed.  Being dishonest and creating conflict is definitely a path to destruction but being dishonest to avoid conflict is also a short road to an even bigger conflict down the road.  If you know something is wrong, if you see a flaw in logic, even if the gut feel is wrong, you should express yourself openly, honestly and rationally so that everything can be worked out.  Innovation is going to happen in that working out of the conflict.  Growth will happen when you realize that you were both a little wrong and you find the way to make each of you all right.

I’d like to close with a personal story about learning to embrace change.  I have worked on projects where everything seems to be going fine.  You’re chugging along and suddenly, something fundamental to the project changes.  More often than not, the timeline contracts.  Sometimes resources are diverted to other, hotter projects.  Whatever the reason, things are suddenly up in the air.  I used to waste time griping and wailing about the change.  I’d be sullen and quiet about all my concerns about it. I would start to feel awful about my workplace and my fellow co-workers because I blamed them for the pain of the upheaval.  Sometimes I got to say I told you so, when things went wrong, but that was a hollow victory.  When I learned to speak up an say my piece and take my ego out of the equation, I found that I had a lot less pain, a lot more respect for myself and others and I really believe that I and my coworkers started to benefit from my speaking out.  Now, I still have to coach myself to speak up in some situations, but it is much easier now.  I know that my rational, open, honest feedback will serve a purpose and build value for me, my team and my company. 

I swiped the image at the start of this article from Tim Rettig's excellent post about what to do when a team is in conflict.  He gives excellent advice on how you can rationally come to a solution.  Read that one at http://timrettig.net/7-steps-to-take-when-there-is-conflict-in-the-team/

Three Critical Competencies

I was talking to my husband about work the other day and reflecting upon other similar conversations when I had an epiphany.  It was one of those "It's so obvious" moments.  Whenever there are deep and continuous problems with a workplace, a product, or a project, you can boil everything down to a deficit in one or more of these things:

1.    Communication

2.    Trust

3.    Leadership

Failing to have a good communication strategy for any effort is a fast track to tragedy.  In order for any group to effectively work toward any goal, they have to understand what that goal really is.  They need to know why that goal is valuable to their organization or to their customer and how they can individually contribute to attaining that goal.  More importantly, they need to know when a change comes along, what that change is, and why that change is valuable.   Furthermore, the leaders of any effort must be able to effectively communicate to their customers.  Without a clear establishment of expectations for delivery of a project or product, the client can create a fantasy of what they're getting and build upon it as the effort progresses.  Those unrealistic expectations are not likely to be communicated to the work team until the product is presented to the customer.  Then the fruits of your organization's labor are met with a luke-warm reception, if not open hostility due to your having missed the mark, as far as the client is concerned.  A constant flow of information between work teams, leadership, and customers is crucial.  If a group's leaders founder in their communications, they will be met with confusion, frustration, anger, and resentment from both sides.

Trust is a three way relationship.  Not only do team members need to have trust in their leadership, leadership must have trust in their team members.  Open and honest communication about an effort is instrumental in building trust.  The communication must flow freely within a work group, both up and down the leadership ladder.  If team members do not feel like their leaders want to hear honest assessments of the situation, a decision, or an issue, they will shut down communication.  Leaders will then find that they are the last ones to know about problems.  They will not have input from their best advisers on the project, the people who are doing the work.  The work team whose leader does not trust them will not get the full picture of what they're trying to accomplish.  The team may not even be given an understanding of the scope and interrelationships of efforts and so make fallacious assumptions about the work and further undermine both their trust of leadership and leadership's trust in them.  To carry trust even further, the customer must be able to trust that they are getting what they have asked for and what the team has promised to deliver.  Setting realistic expectations and communicating constantly about status and deliverables will keep trust alive between the customer and the supplier.

Leadership is a quality some believe comes from a title.  This could not be further from the truth.  Leadership is seldom given and is almost always developed organically.  Work teams will naturally start to look toward those individuals who express a clear vision of how things are.  They will respect and follow the person who they feel is giving them the opportunity to succeed by providing key information on what is to be done, the goals for doing work, any supporting information, and honest acknowledgement.   They will follow the person(s) making decisions they feel are well considered and take account of different perspectives.  If a work group's managers or other leaders dither rather than decide, the team will feel rudderless since they have no definite goal and no rationale for that goal. Output will suffer and a joint effort will experience thrashing as different factions start working to their own agenda which likely will be divergent.  A more insidious risk lies in the team starting to follow poisonous leaders who can and will crop up in work groups with a power vacuum.  There is always the possibility of a person within a group who will be critical of the project, the organization, and/or leadership and offer themselves as the person speaking the truth about the situation.  

You MAY be able to limp along with communication and leadership alone, but your team(s) will not be as engaged as they could be.  Trust is the glue that binds teams and keeps them working harmoniously together.  Trust breeds frank communication of issues or risks because the team members feel that they can say the hard and unpopular things without fear of retribution.  They feel valued and invested in the work being done.  They have some skin in the game.  That's why I believe that you really must have communication, leadership, and trust in any work effort in order to succeed together.

Stress, Relief, and Benefits

Every single person I have worked with, as a BA, battles stress and anxiety.  Really, anyone in I.T. has probably experienced an acute case of either or both once in their work career.  How we handle stress is important.  It's important to us, as individuals.  We need to take care of ourselves so that we don't get sick or burned out in our jobs.  Acute stress and anxiety in a team are counter productive and can destroy a team, if it carries on long enough to become chronic.

I personally believe that we American Adults are not generally well taught how to handle stress and anxiety.  We are told to buck up, shake it off, and/or cope.  No one ever tells us how to do those things.  As a result, we just carry stress around with us as it builds and builds until you either have an explosion or you just burn out and stop caring, stop trying, and freeze up.

I believe that is why there is suddenly a great interest in Yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, and other disciplines which aim to make us more aware of our bodies and our minds.  They also generally focus on relaxation even in the midst of exercise.  This focus on relaxation in the face of doing new and sometimes challenging things is instrumental in helping a person learn to calm themselves and relax when in the presence of stress.

With this in mind, I have made it a goal to practice Yoga and yoga-ish exercise every day.  I have blocked out time in my workday (no more than 15 minutes) in order to unplug and do some yoga.  I also have the intent to do this type of break at home.  Now, it's not possible to be able to do this every day; we get smothered in work or sick, or just have no will.  Here's the important part, THAT'S OK.  What could be more horrible than heaping more stress upon yourself for not doing your de-stressing practices?  The thing that I am striving for is the concept of perfection.  As I am a mortal being, living in the mortal world, I will never reach perfection.  That's fine.  As long as I am always moving toward it and looking to the hope of future improvement, I'm reaching my goal.

Maybe we all should find our de-stressor, un-stressor, anti-stressor; pick your term.  Then, allow for that activity every day. It needs to be something small, that doesn't require a lot of special equipment or preparation.  Something that you can do upon need and at regular intervals.  What is your best way of relaxing in the face of stress?  Only you can find out.

If we can obtain the goal of a less stressed work environment, collaboration and innovation are more possible.  Those positive energy activities cry out for an unstressed environment.  Therefore, I am coming to believe that an unstressed workforce is a collaborative and innovative workforce.  I'm not saying that there should be no challenges.  I am saying that having a high level of stress on a continuous basis works against those two essential business needs and is therefore highly detrimental to any organization experiencing it.

What are your thoughts?

Finding A Sense of Urgency In A Relaxed Environment

Finding Urgency in a Relaxed Work Environment

I am one lucky duck.  I work for an incredible employer who values each and every one of its employees.  We work in a relaxed environment where the I.T. professionals are treated well and where our business owners know our worth.  Not only that, they are a part of our teams, resulting in a high level of trust between the business and the technical sides.  That in and of itself is a rare occurrence.  Sometimes I think I’ve reached employment nirvana.

Other times, however, I have been beset by a nagging little voice.  That little voice probes and pokes me when I review our backlog or talk to our product owners about future product plans.  I can’t help but wonder “Are we moving as fast as we can or should?”

A little background here.  I come from a series of workplaces where I.T. had little to no control over timelines.  I come from a background where I.T. resources were treated as highly interchangeable assets in a cost center.  We could be replaced with little to no fuss or muss.  The business drove our timelines and I.T. was tasked with fulfilling their requests at the timeline specified or risk being replaced.  As a result, we were driven to work at a fast and furious pace.  As you may expect, we never lacked for a sense of urgency bordering on fear.

Coming to my new employer, I experienced prolonged cultural shock.  The pace at my new employer proceeded much more gracefully and I.T. was able to negotiate with project/product ownership to determine the timelines (unless they were driven by regulatory compliance).  This is when I started hearing that little nagging voice.

The sense of urgency that I was missing was mostly of my own making.  I was so accustomed to having the hammer hanging over my head, I didn’t know how to act without it.  I perceived my own work and those of my co-workers as proceeding at a snail’s pace.  I didn’t like this state of being, nor did I think that I or my team members deserved my own harsh judgement.  I had to find that urgency in the relaxed and respectful environment I found myself inhabiting.

To do so, I started by looking at the business.  I thought about what we deliver to them.  As an I.T. team, we deliver business value.  We may not directly make dollars for the company through selling our software, but we provide value to our company’s position when we give them quality software that meets their immediate business needs.  Therefore, it is extremely important to do the very best job we can to understand not only what they are asking for, but the context underlying the request.  It’s also important to understand what client requests and feedback is driving that request.  Often times, we can start coding early on and perform the requirements gathering as we work.  This can be costly, as requirements discovered later rather than sooner can cost time and money, and maybe even a client’s business.  I found urgency in the need to do the best business process analysis and requirements elicitation as early as possible. 

Next, I looked at the technical discovery and design process.  I wanted to work with my team to create rapid prototypes at a very low cost.  I pushed for use of wire frames and even hand drawn workflows to test out workflows with little to no developer time needed.  If these prototypes failed, it would be a matter of hours at most to revise them and present them anew to the client.  I found an urgency in failing rapidly with cheap prototypes rather than wasting developer time in creating a solution only to have it rejected by the business at a late date in the project. 

Finally, I looked to testing.  How could we as a team perform testing in a more efficient and time-frugal way?  I started looking at my own testing and how I may have been overlapping with the testing provided by our more than capable QA team.  I talked to the QA in my own team and discussed the matter with other Business Analysts.  This introspection and questioning helped me and channel my sense of urgency and help my team and the QA folks find opportunities for improvement.  It was incremental value, but value none the less.

My search ultimately led me to understand that you don’t need looming and unrealistic deadlines to have urgency.  You don’t need the looming specter of a highly competitive employee review process to drive you to new levels of heroics.  Urgency is there all around you to find.  Continuous improvement and reflection on how we work individually and as a team can fulfill that need.  Understanding the business drivers and the wants and needs driving requests adds to that sense of urgency and the need to please the customer, the team, and yourself.