Myth of the Garage: A collection of columns by the Heath brothers

This is a short book composed of columns written by the Heath brothers, authors of Made to Stick.  If you have read Made to Stick, they you will like this.

Each chapter in the book focuses one topic and it makes you wonder about it.  Here are a few interesting bits from the book.

In I love you. Now what?, they ponder why don't companies have centers to receive praise.  Most companies have centers to receive complaints and feedback.  Why not praise?

In The horror of mutual funds: Why false information is credible, they observe how cherry picking of data drives investments in mutual funds.  However, a more interesting observation is how a mutual fund investor (who could be making more money) is happy due to her ignorance about what she missed out on.

In The future fails again, they mention about building a better milkshake from Clay Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma.  The reasoning is that we hire objects and technologies to do a job for us, e.g. iPod for on-the-go access to our music collection, Google for quick and effective search.  So, a good (not sufficient) test for a product is to answer the question what job is it designed to do?

The example of how Paul O'Neill made Alcoa one of the safest companies in the world is very interesting.  He "merely" enforced the acceptable rate of accidents was no accidents.  His approach to enforcement was if anyone ever calculates how much money we're saving by being safe, they're fired.  Safety was made a precondition instead of a priority by telling people not to budget for safety.  How cool is that!

Their take on think out of the box is find a new box, cos' constraints can be liberating.

The best lines in the book are from The Gripping Statistic -- A good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion.  For a stat to do either of those, it must be dragged within the everyday.  That's your job -- to do the dragging.  In our world of billions and trillions, that can be a lot of manual labor.  But it's worth it: A number of people can grasp is a number that can make a difference.

They end the book with a great definition of Grit.  Grit is not synonymous with hard work.  It involves a certain single-mindedness.  An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time.  Shawshank Redemption!!!

If you are hopping on a flight, download the free book on your Kindle or Nook and read it.  You will enjoy it.  

Slack: A no-nonsense book about better execution and management.

Recently, I read "Slack" by Tom DeMarco and I had to blog about my experience.  Yes, it was an experience as the book has numerous observations that I have always wondered about in the past while working at or observing organizations.

As mentioned on the cover of the book, it is a book for managers and organization builders.  In addition, I think it is a book for folks involved in planning and/or execution of tasks (which is pretty much everyone).  Personally, having been in the software industry, I think every developer and manager in the software industry will benefit from reading this book.

The book is around 200+ pages with short chapters, and most of these chapters have some interesting nuggets.  So, instead of a summary of the book, here are few excerpts/snippets from the book (in italics) sprinkled with my comments.

From chapter 2 Busyness, energy is evident in the workplace, but it's not the energy tinged with fear that comes from being slightly behind on everything.  The companies I have come to admire most show little obvious sense of hurry.  They are most like an extended family, embarked upon a project whose goal is only partly expressed in getting something done; the other part of the goal is that all involved learn and grow and enjoy themselves along the way.

In chapter 6 Business instead of Busyness, Tom describes why it is better to focus on business as opposed to busyness to save costs.  No, I won't quote the entire chapter.  If you read the book, then give this chapter a thorough read.

From Chapter 7 The Cost of Pressure, "People under time pressure don't think faster." -- Tim Lister; this is referred to as Lister's Law.  While this seems so obvious in the sphere of knowledge work, yet it is seldom considered during planning or execution.

From chapter 8 Aggressive Schedules, there is no such a thing as a bad schedule.  A bad schedule is one that sets a date that is subsequently missed.  That's it.  That's the beginning and the end of how a schedule should be judged.  If the date is missed, the schedule was wrong.  It doesn't matter why the date was missed.  The purpose of the schedule was planning, not goal-setting.  Work that is not performed according to a plan invalidates the plan.  In essence, plans and deadlines should be derived from goals and available resources.

The missed schedule indicts the planners, not the workers. Even if the workers are utterly incompetent, a plan that takes careful note of their inadequacies can help to minimize the damage.  A plan that takes no account of realities is not just useless but dangerous. How often do we see this happen?  How often do we consider the inadequacies of the workers?

From chapter 11 Power Sweeper, it's (blower) is not a labor saving device.  It's a face-saving device.  This remark is about sweeping being a low-status job and the blower is used to make it a job that draws attention.

The word processor is a labor saving device (please don't take mine away!), but it has also served a face-saving role, enabling us to transfer a class of what was previously considered clerical work up the higher-paid workers.  It's not at all obvious that companies have come out entirely ahead by this switch.  Tom observes that word processors make clerical jobs easier and helps introduce slack for clerical workers.  Instead, clerical workers are eliminated and their tasks are being offloaded to their managers or knowledge workers.  His observation about the organization gaining when clerical work is offloaded to gofers is right on the mark (provided the gofers do indeed help!)

Most of the neat things that your desktop computer does for you today were, in the pre-computer world, handled by clerks, typists, mail room workers, librarians, researchers, and interns, people who typically made a lot less money than you do.  This just made me laugh :)

From chapter 12 The Second Law of Bad Management, management is hard, and not because there is so much work to do (an overworked manager is almost certainly doing work he/she shouldn't be doing).  Management is hard because the skills are inherently difficult to master.  Your mastery of them will affect your organization more than anything going on under you.  Running from the challenge doesn't help.  Soft skills, soft skills, soft skills.  Enuff said!!

From chapter 14 Litigation, in a healthy organization, a certain amount of failure is okay.  At Microsoft, for example, there has long been an almost official policy of "sink, then swim."  People are loaded down with so much responsibility that they sink (fail).  Then they have a chance to rest up, to analyze and modify their own performance.  Finally, they are loaded again with a comparable amount of responsibility, but this time they succeed.  A nice strategy that aligns with "fail fast" mantra often heard in companies such as Microsoft.  However, do organizations practice this approach?  If so, to what extent and how successfully?

In this chapter, Tom provides an elaborate description of the common sense "nobody wins in a litigation; everybody loses".  Specifically, how it plays out, who is to blame (sometimes, "internal politics"), and how the lack of slack plays a role in the bad contracts.  He also touches performance evaluation policies that pit manages against each other.  His recommendation to avoid litigation is pretty obvious.  Verna Alle's "principle of fair exchange" requires you to arrive at an agreement that would be equally acceptable to you from either side.  In other words, you would be willing to sign as either party.

In chapter 15 Process Obsession, Tom explores how Taylorism from manufacturing is applied to knowledge work and why it doesn't work (as usual).  In short, Taylorism called for rigorous standardization of manual factory activity so that the human pieces of the process would be as interchangeable as the parts of the products.  Tom provides Volvo and Post cereal factory (in Jones-boro, Arkansas) as two examples of moving beyond Taylorism.  And, he presents the following argument of why the observations in these examples work.  Ownership of the process is pushed downward.  Instead of being a corporate asset, it is a team asset.  Somewhat lost is the flexibility to move people from one team to another, since over time the teams may being to deviate substantially from each other.  Offsetting this loss is a much more interesting workday for the workers enhanced identification with the product (and its customer), lower turnover, and strongly felt loyalties to the team and to the corporation.

You can't empower anyone without taking chances.  The power you've granted is the power to err.  If that person messes up, you take the consequences.  Looked at from the opposite perspective, it is this capacity to injure the person above you that makes empowerment work.  It leaves the empowered person thinking "Oh my God, if I fail at this, my boss is going to look like a chump for trusting me."  There is little else in the work experience with so much capacity to motivate.  This remark is in the context of empowerment to define process and ties closely with leadership.

In chapter 16 Quality, Tom provides nine reasons why he chooses Adobe Photoshop as the best software product (at least at the time this book was published).  He argues that only one of the nine reasons --- it is solid as a rock --- has to do with absence of defects.  He states real quality is far more a matter of what it does for you and how it changes you than whether it is perfectly free of flaws.  This is so true today as we grapple with soft aspects of products such as utility and user experience (not just user interface).

Chapter 18 Management by Objectives touches upon how performance is evaluated based on one or few quantitative measures, called objectives.  Clearly, we have all experienced this at some time in our careers, e.g. increase sales by 50%, add 10 new features, publish twice the number of articles.  Tom's argument why this does not work is brilliant --- MBO is always based on stasis.  In today's fast changing world, such simple minded objectives can be easily disrupted by numerous factors.  With slack, one can adapt in the face of such factors and survive another round in the ring; however, it does not guarantee MBOs will be achieved.

From chapter 19 Vision, successful change can only come in the context of a clear understanding of what may never change, what the organization stands for.  This is what Peter Drucker calls the organization's culture.  Culture, as he uses the term, is that which cannot, will not, and must not change.  Something every new company should identify and make its own.

From chapter 20 Leadership and "Leadership", leadership is the ability to enroll other people in your agenda.  Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit.  While I agree with this aspect of leadership, I think there is more to leadership.

Further, lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership.  There is never sufficient power.  In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership.  This reminded me of the story of the Assamese man who single-handedly planted a 1360-acre forest.

From chapter 22 Fear and Safety, when your thirteen-year-old son skateboards up onto a cement park bench and of the other side and turns a flip in midair on the way down, your parental concern may make you ask, "Weren't you afraid you'd break your neck?"  The answer comes back, "Aw, Mom, of course not!"  Which means yes.  Of course he was afraid.  Skateboarding is apparently one of those skills that are best learned with a healthy dollop of fear.

Learning, the key activity of meaningful change, is not antithetical to fear.  I will go so far as to suggest (in Chapter 26 just ahead) that feat is a constant in any kind of essential learning.  So, if fear is not a fatal deterrent to learning, why is safety so important for change?  And, what does safety mean anyway, beyond a simple absence of fear?

It's a much more insidious kind of fear that interferes with change: the fear of mockery.  If you want to make change in your organization utterly impossible, try mocking people as they struggle with the new, unfamiliar ways you have just urged upon them.

The safety that is required for essential change is a sure sense that no one will be mocked, demeaned, or belittled while struggling to achieve renewed mastery.

Irony and sarcasm, pointed jabbing criticism, personal mockery, public humiliation, exasperation, managerial tantrum, eye-rolling: These are the true enemies of essential change.  To make an organization change-receptive, you need to rout all of these various kinds of disrespect from the culture.  Replace them with a clearly felt sense that people at all levels are to be honored for the struggle they've been willing to take on.  I think "honoring the struggle they've been willing to take on" is the key to keep the change engine alive in an ever changing world.

During change every failure has to feel like a treasure (for the lessons it imparts).  The person who fails is a hero, the backbone of the change effort.  Failure gains that person more respect, not less.  Of course, the failure discussed here is failing at unobvious, unexplored, relevant, and disruptive tasks.

In chapter 23 Trust and Trustworthiness, Tom observes that successful leaders emerge by acquiring trust by giving trust.  Like management, this involves soft skills for which there is no recipe book.

From chapter 27 Danger in the White Space, there is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive.  The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation.  It would be interesting to study if and to what extent is this observation true in large organizations such as Microsoft or Google or Apple that usually have competing products/offerings in pipeline.

Training = practice by doing a new task much more slowly than an expert would do it.  This is  no-brainer for folks who play sports as this is what they do when they train to learn new skills --- shot, variation, or tactic.  However, this is a lost observation in the corporate world.  Training is given lip service with X-hours of lecturing in closed rooms instead of tryouts in the isolated trenches.

To transform a non-learning organization into one that at least can learn requires two simple changes:

1. Drive internal competition out of the organization to enable cooperation, collaboration, and joint ownership among managers.
2. Take time for the practice stages of training by allowing people to exercise their new skills at a much slower-than-expert rate.

From chapter 28 Change Management, instead of authority and consequence (the management staples of the factory floor), the best knowledge-work managers are known for their powers of persuasion, negotiation, markers to call in, and their large reserves of accumulated trust.  I think this applies equally to all sorts of management.

As I work with folks who are interested in risks (not the financial market kind!), part four of the book piqued my interest as it discusses risk from a management perspective.  And, the part is alone worth the price of the book as it demystifies risk and risk management.

From the prologue to part four Risk and Risk Management, plan for success is the intellectual equivalent of: Make big bucks by winning fifteen consecutive hands of blackjack without taking any money off the table till the end.

Risk management is almost the opposite of Plan for success.  Risk management is --- take a deep gulp of air here, this is going to be unsettling --- a discipline of planning for failure.  Companies that practice risk management make explicit provision for lots of small (but expensive) failures along the way to overall success.  Overall success means taking a lot of money off the table at the end.  Were you aware of this distinction between plan for success and risk management?

From chapter 29 Uncommon Sense, four key observations about risks based on an insurance example.

1. Risks are not inherently bad.  Risks are the entire reason there is money to be made in your business.
2. Risks don't ever go entirely away.  You still have some loss when the bad thing happens.
3. Managing the risk costs you something.
4. If the risk doesn't materialize, risk management cost you something extra.

Risk management is the explicit declaration of uncertainty.  It allows you to go forth into risky territory with some assurance of just how much risk you're running.  Probably the simplest definition of risk management.

After presenting the negatives of risk management and moving on to present the positives of risk management, Tom summarizes why negatives make a devastating package: nondeterministic control, counterintuitive tools, and misfit with an important part of corporate culture.

The individual manager has to be Can Do or Can't Do in attitude; the two don't mix.  The company, on the other hand, could have a mix of complete Can Do managers and few Can't Do's.  If you have ever wondered about the most basic writing advice is "separate out writing and editing phases", then here's your answer.

From chapter 30 Risk Management: The Minimal Prescription, aggregate risks are the potential overall failures of any undertaking.  The reason you do risk management is to reduce or eliminate the possibility of these overall failures, but it doesn't follow from that that you can expect to manage aggregate risks directly.  The essential business of risk management is managing the component or causal risk --- that is, the set of things that can go wrong that might lead to aggregate failure.

You can't claim to be managing your risks unless you:

1. List and count each risk.
2. Have an ongoing process for discovering new risks.
3. Quantify each one as to its potential impact and likelihood.
4. Designate a transition indicator for each one that will tell you (early, I hope) that the risk is beginning to materialize.
5. Set down in advance what your plan will be to cope with each risk should it begin.

Setting aside a risk reserve with a 50 percent or better confidence level is called risk containment. When risks are paid for out of this reserve, they are said to be contained.

Risk mitigation is the set of actions you will take to reduce the impact of a risk should it materialize.  This is probably the simplest differentiation of risk management and risk mitigation.

From chapter 31 Working at Breakneck Speed, mitigation is the jewel in the crown of risk management.  If you can't do mitigation (can't take action now to make future risk-containing action possible or reduce its cost), you can't do risk management.

The difference between the time it takes you to arrive at "all the prudent speed" and time it would take you at "breakneck speed" is your slack.  Slack is what helps you arrive quickly but with an unbroken neck.

From chapter 32 Learning to Live with Risk, it may be another client-server conversion, or a minor upgrade to plug a slightly faster chip into an existing processor, or a pro forma redesign of last year's vehicle with last year's engine and last year's transmission but a new dashboard layout and different fenders.  These "initiatives" are virtually risk-free ... so it's time to stop doing them.   This is the bar by which innovation and research efforts should be measured.  If there is no risk, why bother?

I hope the above excerpts have whetted your appetite to read the book and learn from it..

BTW, if you like this book, then I recommend reading the "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister.  Impressed by reading the second edition more than five years ago, the recent third edition of this book is on my bookshelf waiting for a re-read  :)

2 days, 900 kms, and 20 hours of driving

Planning

About a month ago, Ashwani posted pictures from his trip to the coastal region of Karnataka. When I saw them, I thought "if the roads are good, this should be a fun trip". I mentioned this to my family and they were eager to do it if I could manage to get out of my home office!!

Then, events transpired over the last two weeks and triggered the trip. My mother wanted to visit Udupi, a long weekend was looming for the kids, and I had just gotten routine maintenance done on my car. So, on Thurday night, we decided to head out to Udupi on Saturday morning (via Hassan and Mangalore) and head back to Bangalore by Sunday evening.

With due diligence, we searched for hotels on the beach. Braving against the negative comments on TripAdvisor about the resort, we booked a room at Paradise Isle Beach Resort at Malpe (home for the finest beaches and fishes in coastal Karnataka). The booking was confirmed on Friday morning. So, in the evening, we topped up the car with gas, loaded up the iPods/USBs with songs, bought some fruits and snacks, packed our bags, printed route maps, and hit the bed.

As we slept, little did we know that our plan would only remain so, a plan.

9 hours of driving

On Saturday, we started out at 7:30AM. After traveling 90 km east on the smooth NH-48 road, we stopped at "Swati Delicacy" for breakfast. While we enjoyed good Masala Dosas, Idlis, and Vadas, we were treated to a large group of bikers exiting the restaurant. The group rode on classic motor bikes such as Rajdoot-350 to new motor bikes such as Kawasaki Ninja and Harley-Davidson. It was treat to watch the group split into small packs and take over the highway. Their patience to wait for the oncoming traffic to give way for them to enter the highway was only matched by their eagerness to throttle and zip on the highway. A biker's treat.

Finishing our breakfast, we continued towards Hassan. A pleasant drive on rather smooth and obstacle free national highway. We made it past Hassan by 12PM and entered the stretch of the highway lined by coffee estates, lush greenery, climbing roads, and hard curves --- a drive that I was looking forward to.  

While the start of the stretch was good, it went bad pretty quickly. Once we went past Sakleshpur and into Shiradi ghat section, it felt like I was dirt biking in my sedan. At hard curves, monsoon rains had washed away the asphalt on the road and exposed large patches of bumps/potholes that were easily 6 to 10 inches height/deep. So, driving across such patches amounted to playing a video game (or being Indiana Jones) in which you drive your car such that the wheels would move from one bump to the next bump without lodging into a pothole until the car clears the patch.  

As for the question "what happens if you miss a bump?" Well, you will hear a loud thud, you close your eyes and wish for your car to not stall, and try to drive the car out of the patch.

Once we were thru this stretch at around 2:00PM, we realized that I had "thudded" my car thrice and luckily my car managed to survive on a stretch where finding immediate assistance is impossible. Also, we realized that we entered this stretch of approximately 30 km at around 12:30PM and exited it at around 2PM. So, we had traveled 60 km in 120 minutes while we had traveled close to 180 km in 180 minutes from Bangalore to Hassan.  How's that for speed?

Past this horrible section, we reached Mangalore by 3:45PM and we headed North towards Udupi. This was a pleasant drive on well paved roads flanked by thin tall grass.  An experience that reminded me of the roads in Goa, another beach city in India.

Finally, after 9 hours of driving, we arrived at the beach resort at 16:45PM. We checked into a room with a scenic view of the beach. Since we had not stopped for lunch and survived on the fruits and snacks that my Mom had packed (an example of when experience saves the day), we were starving. So, we ordered a few sandwiches and munched on them while watching the sun set over the sea.

Lamps of Udupi

As I had driven a manual car through bad roads, I did not want to drive anymore for the day. So, at 6:30PM, we took a cab from Malpe to Udupi to visit Udupi Sri Krishna Matta. Lucky for us, it was a special night at Udupi.

Deepavali (Diwali) is a big festival in Udupi. For fourteen days after Deepavali, there are special ceremonies in Udupi. And, most of these ceremonies occur during the evenings. The festivities culminate on the fourteenth day with the patrons simultaneously lighting up 100,000 oil lamps in and around the Matta.

Interestingly, we were in Udupi on the thirteenth day and the lamp lighting custom had begun in small number. So, girls and ladies in my family joined the crowd and lit lamps. It was a wonderful sight.

While we waited to enter the inner shrine of the Matta, we were privy to watch Thepoothsava, a special ceremony in which the main diety Krishna is carried around a little pond on a boat. After visiting the inner shrine, we watched the Rathothsava, a ceremony in which the main diety is carried around a city block on a chariot. The ceremony was marked by fire torches and fireworks.

After witnessing the ceremonies and my daughters charming their grandmother to buy goodies at local stores, we headed back to the resort. Along the way, I described to Vishwanath, our cab driver, the state of roads on our way to Udupi and asked if he knew of an alternate route back to Bangalore. He suggested two alternatives; both nowhere close to the map that I had printed.

Upon arrival at the resort, we dashed to the restaurant for a tasty and sumptuous North-Indian dinner. Later on, the rest of the family made plans to hit the beach in the morning while I slept like a log.

11 hours of driving

I woke up at 8:30AM when my family rushed into our room soaked in sea water and sand from the beach. After the chaos of getting the kids bathed and dressed, we all headed for a quick breakfast and then got on the road at 10:30AM.

For the return journey, as described by Vishwanath, we had two options both starting at Manipal. The first option was to drive North to Shimago via Hiriadka, Agumbe, and Thirthahalli and then drive down South-East to Bangalore via Bhadravathi, Tarikere, Arsikere, Tiptur, and Tumkur. The second option was to drive South-East to Hassan but via Karkala, Kudremukh, Kalasa, Mudigere, and Chikmagalur. Both routes were around 20 km longer than the direct route we took on our way to Udupi. However, both routes promised relatively better roads, hassle-free driving, and scenic drives to coffee/tea estates and forest.

We decided to take the first route. However, before we reached Manipal from Udupi, we were swayed by inputs from extended family members who had recently traveled the area and we decided to take the second route.

So, we started from Manipal at 11AM and headed towards Karkala on a state highway. Incidentally, the state highway was in much better shape than the national highway that we encountered from Sakleshpur to Uppinangadi. However, the road signs were pretty bad on state highways. So, at every junction, we had to stop and ask if we were turn left, turn right, or go straight to reach our destination.

Driving for a while, we reached the Kudremukh National Park area. After getting the pass to go thru the park, we started ascending the hills in Kudremukh National Park (at around 12:15PM). While the roads are small, they are really well paved. Further, they are steep with lots of curves. To top it all, the roads wind through thick forest. Green, green, green. Parts of the roads are covered in green like a canopy. It is a nature loving driving enthusiast's dream come true.

After a slow and scenic drive, we reached the ghost town of Kudremukh and then descended to Kalasa just after exiting the National Park area. At this point, little did we know that the curving steep roads will still continue for quite some distance through Kootigehara and the lush green coffee and tea plantations of Chikmaglur district.

Interestingly, the road seemed to thread thru most towns and villages in the region. So, while threading thru the estates, we picked up fresh coffee and tea produces from the local stores run by estate owners; these shops offered to ship fresh produces to our addresses if we desired so.

Finally, after ascending and descending for hours on small roads, we reached Mudigere close to 5PM --- over 4 hours of driving in the winding roads of Chikmaglur. From here on, we sped to Hassan via Belur as the road was even and less curvy.

Since we had yet again skipped lunch and survived on fruits and snacks, we stopped again at "Swathi Delicacy" for an early dinner at 7:40PM. After a slow dinner topped off with "Gud bud" ice cream, we started the final leg towards Bangalore at 9PM. 

With everyone sleeping in the back of the car, my wife and I chatted as we zipped on NH48 and the NICE road to reach our home around 11:15PM.

Looking back

On this trip, I intentionally left my camera at home. So, all I did was experience the moments as opposed to capturing them. It was a welcome change. Something I recommend others to try.

Also, you would have observed that the blog post is void of pictures. While a picture is worth a thousand words, one needs to have lots of pictures to describe an entire journey. So, this time, I decided to word my view of the journey as a blog. Something I haven't tried before, but I am sorta liking as I write up the blog post.

As for the trip, it was unexpected, lightly planned, and started out badly. However, it was one of the most memorable trips of my life that ended with spectacular drives. In addition, everyone enjoyed the scenery, the beach, and the lamps of Udupi. So, it was a success :) Yeah!!

Now that I'm writing this blog post, I am tempted to try out the first of the two return journey routes. Possibly, even try out a variation of the second route that threads through Karkala-Moodbidri-Belthangady or Karkala-Bajegoli-Belthangdy and Charmadi on the way from Karkala to Mudigere.

So, until next time....