No sooner did I post my thought for the day, only to have a much more wiser blog appear from Guy Kawaski.
Guy wrote about a new book “Escape Corporate America.” Read the blog, it’s good. Read the book, it’s better. It’s relevant.
So, I have a friend who is a successful marketeer. (Anyone else immediately get an image of a person with big Mouse ears?) For four years she has killed herself doing a great job in her current position at a small-ish software firm. Over the time she has been there she was recognized as an important element, and lured along with promises of promotions, even replacing a member of the executive team.
Now, I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have kept doing her best. She genuinely loves what she does. But after four years, how many of you think the promises made by her management team have occurred? Okay, for those of you who voted yes, please look at the bridge I am selling; for the rest, of you, you’re right.
So, that leaves her where? She now has woken up and sees the toxic environment that is around her at work. She recognizes that all the hours she worked killing herself when no one else was, only hurt her. And, she still hasn’t gotten the promotion with which she was lured.
Did she do it to herself? Partly. We all know that. She could easily have seen that after the first 21-18 months there were no changes, and started to look for something else if that was what she wanted. But, she trusted in the management, and stayed.
But, partly it was that management that didn’t get it. Management promises of growth, money, and fame seldom will lead you down the right path. How about this? Why don’t we get management to recognize us and create development paths? Wow. Novel approach. And it’s even working in a whole lot of companies. Why does it work some place and not others?
Simple, there are still management teams that believe you can keep dangling the carrot and we will follow. Eventually these people need to change their behaviors, it does hit a point where it is not us. Management needs to look at their own actions, and how they treat people. Again, in some companies, this is not a concern. but I’ve seen it way too much in the small-smallish software world, to believe it is/was just me and my behavior.
Management teams need to invest – and believe – in the programs to help them build successful teams. These programs need to recognize and reward talent and achievement with realistic carrots, that you actually receive. They need to look from the outisde and see how they are really treating their employees, before the good ones – like my friend, and me before that - finally wise up and take their talent elsewhere.
Saeed says he has made requirement decisions – when all things are equal – so people will “get off his butt.” And, he says he was honest. But, he shouldn’t apologize. Anyone who has been in product management has done the same thing.
Even in the short time I’ve been in service pm, I have done the same thing. If there is a content owner who is more cooperative, responds in a timely manner and generally doesn’t beat me up on every call, e-mail or IM, and I have a content owner who is nasty, demanding, and uncooperative – guess whose work I favor?
Yes, requirements should be prioritized. And, yes, this prioritization needs to be driven from market information. But, if all things are easier, don’t we all tend to add a human element into the prioritization process. Saeed chose one over the other to get people to leave him alone; I chose one over the other because it would be less confrontational to finish the work. Haven’t you not returned to a restaurant because the service was poor? I mean, the server had to prioritize, and you lost.
Will Saeed and I pay the price later? Maybe. Does it mean we ignored the market needs? No. Looking in from the outside, aren’t product managers allowed a little room? Developers take it. Management takes it. We’re just claiming a little piece.
