I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
Follow @roddrury
One of the new things we’ve started doing at Xero is having a biz lunch where our staff can catch up every couple of week and just talk about general business and tech stuff so we can all learn for each other. It’s a lot of fun.
A great question I got was something like: how do you get people to do what you want them too. I thought that was great question on management techniques. The normal text book stuff would use language such as empowerment, trust, goal alignment etc etc.
The reality is that an entrepreneur uses a much broader set of techniques.
To illustrate I’ll use the example of my daily interactions with our CTO Craig. I have worked with Craig for many years and he has played a key role in evolving my management techniques.
A common scenario I’ll use to illustrate is how I try to get features into the latest release of software that is almost through testing.
Here are some examples of real management techniques.
- Cajoling: This latest release is looking really good. You’ve done a great job. Why don’t we add this little extra feature since your going so well.
- Wearing down: Can you pleeeeeeeeease get this in. Pleeeeeeeease. (5 mins later) Can you pleeeeeeeeease get this in. Pleeeeeeeease. (Repeat as necessary)
- Shame: I can’t believe you’d let this version go without this vital feature I’ve just thought about
- Humiliation: Any other CTO would have easily been able to get this feature in a few short minutes - blind folded.
- Divide and conquer: Michelle (Product Manager) said that if you can get it in it’s cool from her point of view.
- Passive aggression: Fine, if you don’t think you can get it, that’s OK with me. I’ll call the customer now and tell them we can’t do it.
- False pride: I’ve got a great new idea but I think it might be a bit hard to program.
- Reverse psychology: A customer came up with a great new feature idea but I’ve told them they have to wait until it’s prioritized.
- Misdirection: That feature your working on, feedback from Customers is that is now less important than this new thing they really want.
- Bait and switch: Can you just change this HTML. Oh, now you’ve changed that it’s obvious we just need to add this new feature.
- Unwilling accomplice: Thanks for making that HTML change. You know that we bypassed change control. I’ll tell them unless you add this feature.
- Guilt: It’s my fault but I had to promise a customer this new feature. Completely understand if we can’t do it but any chance to just getting it in. That would really help my out.
- Bribery: Want to use the car for the long weekend?
- Gluttony: If you can get this feature in quickly I can order the pizza for lunch. (Note: this can be spectacularly effective).
Unfortunately Craig has become immune to most of these techniques so any ideas you can suggest please let me know.
blog
You can now add “embarrassment” to the list. What is it you want me to do that requires a blog post???
I’m afraid he has not only tried these techniques but has also succeeded in all of them on more than one occasion. Interestingly he’s tried a combination of all of these every day for the last week!
The guilt one works for Rod on more than just a superficial level - for those that know Rod well he’s fairly laid back and can be quite amusing but also does the bear-with-a-sore-head thing pretty well - so on the occasions I’ve called his bluff he’s got all serious on me and bloody well guilted me into it!
Now he’s outed all these maybe he’ll try empowerment, trust and goal alignment next :)
Hero - “You know X will LOVE you if you put that in!”
Greed - “We’d make an absoloute killing if we can get X into the release”
Competition - “XYZ have just released a new version with Bayesian Generated Semantic Emoticons!”
Fear - “I know you guys are busy so I’ll just write some VB code and integrate it with yours”
A few others, equally, err, effective, in larger organisations
Physical intimidation: having very large size and peering down at the cowering individual while suggesting that doing it would be the right thing
Thinly Veiled threats: talking about how the last guy that didn’t do it no longer works here
Absence: requesting something then disappearing for days on end, leading you to increasingly panic about the prospect of what will happen if you don’t do it
Sledgehammer: asking their boss’s boss to tell them to do it. Or inferring that you will unless they do it
Sex: a flutter of the eyelashes, a willing smile and a jaunty walk - both males and females can try this
Sure, Rod, that’s a great idea! So are going to slip the next release three weeks or take something else out? We’ve already sunk quite a bit of work into the other planned features.
This post made me feel all nostalgic.
Rod, these are awesome. Nice summary of techniques! Between these and the de-motivational posters (”when your best just isn’t good enough” showing a runner with his head in his hands), I think we have new office decorations.
Rod try this one “Craig, if I wanted your opinion I would beat it out of you!”
If this does not work then a suitable gift purchased from http://despair.com might be appropriate.
“I’ll let you play in my sandpit, where I will show you the photo’s we took that night”
Just sent that list to my head developer, just so he knows what an easy ride I give him. Perhaps I’m just too nice for this game.
I actually find the truth most effective for some things. “Feature A is pretty limited without Feature B (new feature).” or “If we release Feature A now and then release Feature B next release then everyone will get confused about the switch in functionality. We should include B now.”
Management techniques are just another description of parenting skills. I think I did well, you locked and loaded and I am glad this has rubbed off into your business life.
Love Mum
just love democracy Rod.
Craig - you have my sympathy - whatever you do don’t give him the passwords to the source code control system …
note to self: never work with Rod Drury.
Have you tried ‘Competition’ as a variation of reverse psychology?
“The other developers said you wouldn’t be able to work out a way to do ….”
Have you ever considered combining them - imagine ‘Guilt’ combined with ‘Passive Aggressive’ …. could be very scary…
My revenge was seeing his Mum post a comment :)
Your Mum! Ahhh, bless!
You appear to be missing my two favourites - close cousins:
Short term accomplishment: Get this done by the end of the day and you can head home knowing that today was a day well spent.
Clearing the decks: Besides, you don’t want to come in tomorrow and still have to do it, do you? Would spoil the whole day.
Works for/on me.
How about…
Playing on developer curiosity
I think I know how to do this one - should be just a couple of lines of SQL right? What’s that you say? That wouldn’t work? I guess you are right so you would need to.. uhm.. yeah OK sure why don’t you do it.
Playing on developer’s need for control
Tell you what, I’m glad you gave me commit rights, I think I can do it over the weekend. Should be just a couple of lines of SQL right?
see why I suggested hiding the passwords ….
Hi Rod,
Rule by terror has always been a personal favourite. Anyway you must be doing something right - Xero user numbers are obviously taboo but I notice 65 “Partners” now listed on the site up from the 50 odd in the interim report. Won’t be long now before Joe & Jenny Investor start to pick up on what’s happening growth wise. Keep up the great work.
One alternative that works is to make them believe that it was always their idea “This idea of yours is brilliant - I can’t believe we didn’t implement it sooner and it seems it would be just plain wrong and disrespectful for all you’ve done for us if we didn’t get you to do it”
Hi all
OK I couldn’t let this one go…
I think it would be fun if we developers now turn the tables on Rod, and post what we think would be appropriate replies to his cajoling and bribery.
Me first:
Reply One
Rod, sure, no problem, it’s done.
Obviously, you know that this means we have to take the entire Bank Reconciliation feature out, right?
Reply Two
Use the car in the weekend?
How about buying me a new car, by the weekend, and I might consider getting this feature into the release scheduled for 2018
Reply Three
Well Rod, sure, that feature really is a great idea, I can see that….
I would be happy to do it, however the fact that you are only asking for it at this late point means that clearly, we have had a major failure in our software development cycle. Can I suggest that you fire the Program Manager, send him/her to work at Microsoft because that is where he/she belongs, and assign responsibility for Program Management to me in the future?
With the appropriate pay rise of course….
Reply Four
Rod, that idea is great.
I will put it in the new release that is going out this afternoon at 4pm.
I need a hand from you though….
The columns in the bank reconciliation Datagrid are dynamically created at run time, and this creates the need to recreate them and rebind the data at every postback. This was a crap design decision made by my predecessor that I have to live with.
If our custom control row editing control has been added to the Datagrid during the page life cycle, we need to recreate that control after the postback too, and we also need an AddressOf event handler delegate to capture the actual event raised by the custom control after the postback.
Could you just quickly code that for me ?
Thanks mate, you are a star, and if you get it done by lunchtime you can borrow MY car for the weekend.
Reply Five
( The one I use here at Virgin )
Hey, Rod
F.R.O
Do you ever get to use your own car?