Everyperson's strategy

In our last article, one of the challenging co-workers we mentioned is the one who takes credit for your work. This is an incredibly frustrating situation that is so difficult to deal with without looking petty. It is often cited by women, minorities and junior associates as something they deal with regularly, but it can happen to anyone. Situation 1: You’re participating in a meeting, brainstorming about how to overcome a challenge the department is facing and you make a suggestion. The suggestion is quickly dismissed. Ten minutes later, someone else makes the same suggestion and suddenly everyone thinks it's the best idea since sliced bread. Situation 2: You’re working with a group of people on an important task. You stayed up all night finishing it and after the team reviews it and gives the OK, someone sends it to the boss. In the upcoming company meeting, the boss gives a glowing commendation of the task and singles out one of the team members, thanking them for a great job an...

Strategy is a methodology used to achieve a goal in the face of obstacles. A lot of obstacles are internal or self-contained - what do I need to do to put myself in a position to make my goal achievable. This is similar to what our previous articles have been discussing, and it's easy to miss the fact that you are overcoming a challenge. These obstacles require discipline, but are relatively easy to plan and understand whether you are capable of overcoming them or not. The other kind of obstacle is external, where there are forces working to prevent you from accomplishing your goals.  There are times where direct confrontation is the best move, but in an office situation that should be the exception and not the rule. In martial arts, there is a common saying “use your opponent's strength against him.” This is also true when using strategy to overcome opposition. You’re never going to be able to bring all people onto your side, but you can learn how to use a good strategy to neu...

In our last article, we reviewed how to strategically use an inclusive process to make group decisions. This both empowers and grants ownership of the decision to the entire group. In this article, we will discuss one of the major aspects of the open decision making process: enabling dissent. This article is a compilation of ideas from a number of my colleagues at Red Hat, in an open forum discussion we had on the subject. Dissent is super important in open decision making. You don’t want to be surrounded by “yes-men”, people who always agree with everything you say. You already know everything that you’re saying and what you believe to be the best path forward. However, you also know, or should know, that your knowledge, experience and visibility of the entire picture is limited. What you really need are perspectives from people with knowledge, experience and visibility that is complementary to yours to help round out your view of the complete picture. People who will bring up som...

Group decisions used to be so easy to make. The leader of the group made a decision and everyone else listened. The leader may be a manager, a team lead or the alpha in a social group. Was that decision the best one for the group? Did it take everything into account? It didn’t really matter because people didn’t want to buck authority and face the ramifications. This fit very well into the strict hierarchical society that has been slowly eroding for the past 20 years. Recently, there has been more recognition of the value of collaborative decisions. Leaders started to understand that allowing group members to influence and participate does not lower their standing. Requesting feedback from people before finalizing a decision brings new perspectives, experience and ideas to the table. Just as importantly, it shows the people in your group that you care about what they think and respect their experience and knowledge. Gaining buy-in and ownership of a decision is hugely important today, ...

In our last article, we mentioned that your plans should include small, accomplishable steps that don’t take too many resources. This is a strategy used in all aspects of the business world that enables the maxim "fail early and fail fast." The idea is that when a problem arises, the less you have invested, the less it will cost and the easier it is to pivot.  The term in software engineering is "agile methodology" and in starting a business it is the "lean startup". You may have also heard the term MVP - minimal viable product. The technology landscape and business ecosystem are continuously changing. Developing and following a multi-year plan is bound to be at least partially, if not completely, irrelevant by the time you complete it. So don't try to figure out exactly what the entire picture will look like when you're done. Instead, only develop a detailed plan for the smallest piece of work you can do that will actually mean something. This is ...