Peter Drucker declared, in one of the most important chapters of his landmark volume The Effective Executive:

Effective executives know that time is the limiting factor. The output limits of any process are set by the scarcest resource. In the process we call “accomplishment,” this is time.

Time is also a unique resource. Of the other major resources, money is actually quite plentiful. We long ago should have learned that it is the demand for capital, rather than the supply thereof, which sets the limit to economic growth and activity. People–the third limiting resource–one can hire, though one can rarely hire enough good people. But one cannot rent, hire, buy, or otherwise obtain more time.

The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it and no marginal utility curve for it. Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever and will never come back. Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.

This fact of more demand for time than the limited supply available, it’s a fact of life for us small businessmen. There’s always too much to do and too little time. Maybe you too have said, as I often do: “I wish there were some way I could find more time!”

But now we have the answer to Peter Drucker! Yes, an ingenious manager has now figured out the secret to overcoming our limited supply of time. And you’ll never believe it. It’s so simple. When you hear what the answer is, you’re going to freak, it’s just so simple!

To find out what it’s about, just click here to read all about this exciting new technique, on Star C’s blog, Wednesday’s Off.

-TimK

P.S. Yes, this is a joke.

P.P.S. If you want the real secret of how to overcome the fact of limited time, see Peter Drucker’s timeless classic The Effective Executive.

This past week I rented one of the best films of the last decade. It’s not a film I usually would have watched. Despite its awards and nominations, the movie got a mediocre rating on IMDB. And there was nothing I read to make me think I would find it any different. But I remembered some old friends talking about it years ago, about how in the movie they put ground chili pepper in hot chocolate. (Tastes good, by the way.) And then I learned that this was how the Mayans used to make it. And I love chocolate, and I love chilies, and history intrigues me. And I figured, “What the hey?” But I was unaware of what I was getting myself into. This is one of those films you have to watch over and over again, each time gaining some new insight. Most surprising, and most painful, and most inspiring, as I watched the film, I found myself identifying more and more with Vianne, the main character, in a way I never expected.

Vianne is an unshakable, Cool Hand Luke sort of heroine. She knows who she is, and she’s not ashamed of it. The story begins as Vianne opens up a chocolate shop in a tiny, conservative village, across from the local church, just as Lent begins.

I was stymied. I said, “That’s a stupid thing to do. You have to give the people what they want. And if they want prayer and fasting, you don’t try to sell them chocolate.”

But the story of the movie Chocolat is about something greater than catering to the lowest common denominator. It’s about passion and innovation. It’s about being an entrepreneur, about independence and self-actualization. Vianne represents this entrepreneurial spirit, which is why I identified so fully with her character. It’s one of those flukes of story, that occasionally I’ll run across a character who speaks to me as she can speak to no other. Or at least that’s the way I feel.

Vianne’s nemesis is Comte Paul de Reynaud, a confused traditionalist who embodies the opposite qualities: self-denial rather than self-actualization, exclusion rather than inclusion, finding a reason something can’t work rather than a reason to make it work, being a cog in the corporate machine, that life I used to loathe in the Dilbert cube.

For a protagonist, Vianne has surprisingly few lines, fewer than the minor characters with whom she interacts. But among these few lines is profound wisdom.

“It’s not going to be a patisserie… It’s a surprise.”

In Vianne’s first encounter with the Comte de Reynaud, he criticizes her for opening a patisserie just as the Lenten fast is beginning. True, the storefront she rented out used to be a patisserie. But her shop is going to be something different, a chocolaterie, which I guess is even worse. Still, there’s no reason to stir up unnecessary angst? She puts newspaper on the windows and keeps secret what is happening inside, until the day of the grand opening.

It’s fun to talk with friends about my dreams and aspirations. And I’ve never seen much value in secrecy. I won’t make you take an oath of non-disclosure and sign a non-compete agreement before telling you about my earth-shattering idea. Because an idea by itself is nothing. What’s important is how the idea is executed. I figure that if the idea alone is so important to my future that I need to keep it a secret, then I need a better idea.

Still, maybe there’s a place for secrecy. New ideas tend to frighten people. I know I’ve gotten sideways glances when I’ve tried to explain my great idea. Trying to explain an idea is like trying to describe the picture you’re planning to paint. No one’s going to be able to grasp your vision except for you. Perhaps it’s better just to wait until the painting is complete. The picture itself is worth a thousand words describing what it will look like.

“What do you see?”

In the shop, on the counter, spins a disc embossed with Mayan art. Vianne spins the disc, blurring the patterns. Then she asks, “What do you see?” There are no wrong answers. There are no silly answers. Even a non-answer is an answer. Because it tells Vianne about you. Like an ink-blot, it’s not really about what images are in the spinning disc. It’s about what images are within your own psyche. Then Vianne will say something like, “The pepper triangle, that’s for you… Tangy, adventurous.” Or, “Very dark. Bitter chocolate, that’s your favorite.”

Earlier this month, Michael Ausiello interviewed Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of Gilmore Girls. After six years of doing nothing but Gilmore Girls, Amy and her husband Dan Palladino left the show they loved. In this recent interview, she says, “The fact that there was no sit-down ever, no face-to-face with the studio or network to try and hash out what we needed and what we were asking for… That will always piss me off…” Did you catch that? After six years of burning themselves out for the sake of this project, Gilmore Girls, all for the passion they had for the project, when their contract came up for renewal, the studio and network execs never even bothered to ask what they wanted. It was just: Here’s the deal, take it or leave it.

The execs probably assumed it was about money. At least that’s what Amy Sherman-Palladino implies. But it wasn’t about money. The execs potentially could have retained the talented, proven, impassioned producers they had. Instead, they told them to get lost. Any we sit back and tsk-tsk-tsk, and we think how stupid that is. And then we go off and do the same thing. We assume that everyone else is just like us, that we know what the other person wants. And we’re usually wrong. Life is about selling. And the first step in any sale is ask, “What do you see? What’s on your mind? What do you want?”

“I have a knack for guessing people’s favorites. These are your favorites. Am I right? On the house.”

Don’t you believe it! It’s not just knack. It’s a skill, refined through generations. Vianne learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, who learned it from… And so on.

And once Vianne knows what you like, she knows what you are most likely to buy. And once you taste her intoxicating confections, you can’t help but come back for more. Vianne never extols the virtues of chocolate, much less her own chocolate. She never pushes herself on anyone. Her passion is not about herself. It’s about how she can make others happy. The very purpose for which she is cursed to live a nomadic existence, like Mary Poppins, is to bring love and life to those in need. So, Vianne makes the townsfolk happy. And then neither logic nor conscience nor guilt can keep them from coming back for more, again and again.

Once you find the right prospect, turning them into a customer can be easy. Give them a taste. You have what they desire. Don’t be a high-pressure salesman. Rather, just give them a taste. Then ask them if they’d like to buy some.

“And these are for your husband, unrefined coco nips from Guatemala, to awaken the passions.”

The woman scoffed. “Ha! You’ve obviously never met my husband.”

Vianne replied, “You’ve obviously never tried these.”

This offer was not a blind shot in the dark. Something the woman had said clued Vianne into thinking that the romance could use a little coco. Those nips became a staple for that couple. They were even seen shopping in the chocolaterie arm-in-arm. I often wonder where Vianne got her supply.

Never underestimate the value of the cross-sell. Again, it’s not about you. Pushy salesmanship will get you nowhere. It’s just that it’s way easier to do even more for an existing customer than to get a new first-time customer. It’s way easier to find out what other needs your existing customers have that could you help with. It’s way easier for them to buy from you, since they’ve already bought from you before. It’s way easier to get them to trust you, since they’ve already trusted you before.

“Whatever you say.”

Oh how it bothered Vianne when little Luc reported the nasty things the comte had been saying about her! She probably felt cheated that Luc would shun her. But you wouldn’t know it from how she treated Luc. After all, Luc was not the villain. And arguing with him would accomplish nothing. She didn’t even force the issue, unlike the comte, who does force the issue, which is why Vianne is unavailable to help him before he— Well, let’s just say that she’s too busy befriending the people he is intentionally alienating.

Not everybody is going to like you. Not everybody is going to be a prospect for what you have to sell. But as Dale Carnegie said in How to Win Friends and Influence People, “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.” The only way to keep the lines of communication open is to be nice, even when rejected. This is why high-pressure sales tactics don’t work. If someone isn’t a suitable customer, badgering them won’t turn them into one.

“To be your friend.”

What do you think was the question to which this was a response? The woman might have said, “Why did you track me down just to deliver to me a free box of chocolate? You know, I’m a kleptomaniac, right? You must have heard. People talk.” Instead, it was simply:

“What do you want?”

“To be your friend.”

It was no lie. Vianne’s raison d’etre is not just chocolate, it is life. And this woman desperately needed it. The fact that the comte would hate this friendship, that was just a bonus.

When I used to go on job interviews, I’d think of every interview as an opportunity to meet someone new. Even if the job turned out not to be right for me, I thanked the interviewer for taking the time to talk to me. Now, whenever I meet a potential client, I’m more interested in making a friend than in making a sale. And this is what Vianne does, too:

“It’s nice to see you. Would you like to come in for some chocolate?”

Vianne spent hours sitting across the counter from her customers as they drank their hot chocolate. And she listened, and encouraged, and probed, and listened some more.

Business is not just about product and service. It’s about community and friendship.

“Dip the ganache into the white chocolate.”

Vianne not only loves to make chocolate. She loves to teach others to make chocolate. For her, chocolate is independence and life. And this life rubs off onto others. No wonder the comte despises her. And fears her.

There may be a time for secrecy, but there’s also a time for openness. Share your strengths with those who admire them. Entrepreneurship is not about money, it’s about passion and leadership and fulfillment. Don’t fall into the trap of keeping all the knowledge for yourself, thinking it will make you better off. You’ll end up quashing your own chance to make a difference.

“You can if you want, but it won’t make things easier.”

The question was from Vianne’s poor beleaguered daughter Anouk: “Why can’t we go to church?”

Don’t misunderstand. Anouk did not want to find religion. She just wanted to fit in. But Vianne follows her passion, wherever it takes her. She has to. To deny her passion is to deny herself, like the comte denies himself. Of course, the comte believes self-denial will save him. The fact that it only makes him miserable is therefore easy for him also to deny. These conundrums are part of the problem Vianne faces, as well as the solution.

You can do what everyone else is doing, but that’s no answer. Because you can’t deny who you are. If you do, you die. How many people have died inside, because they do what they don’t believe in? Pam Slim talks about all the people she’s met who have died inside. They hate their job. They live their life feeling they “should” be happy, “should” spend more time with their family, “should” do this, “should” do that. They feel trapped in whatever situation they’re in. They feel betrayed by their employer. They long for meaning. She concludes, “The sad fact is that a lot of people really feel crappy for most of their work life.”

It’s not worth it. Besides, being different is the only way to be noticed. You can be the same as everyone else, and blend in, and no one will notice you. Or you can be different, and you can stand out, and you’ll collect fast allies. So don’t hide your uniqueness. It’s part of what makes you strong.

But coming to life is a double-edged sword. It means you are accountable for the consequences. You can’t blame anyone else if you’re miserable or stressed out or if your boss is a schmuck. And on top of that, no one is going to admire you. Rather, they’re going to feel sorry for you. They’re going to pity you. They’re going to feel like they have to do something out of charity to help you. And I can understand why they’d feel that way.

“The whole town’s against me.”

It seems the comte may have won. Even Vianne’s regular customers are shunning her.

You see, the local pere preached a sermon warning of Satan’s helpers, which come in many disguises. Even as “the maker of sweet things, mere trifles, for what could seem more harmless, more innocent, than chocolate?”

You can be sure the comte had written that particular homily.

That’s what happens when you challenge the status quo. That’s what happens when you make friends with the people no one else loves. And sometimes, things can’t get better until after they get worse.

But true entrepreneurship is ingrained in the heart. A true entrepreneur cannot just do what he’s always done. He is always questioning, always re-evaluating, always challenging. He can’t help it. It’s what’s inside him.

Don’t expect this road to be easy. Being different will bring you allies, just as passionate as you are. It will also make you enemies, who feel you are threatening them. And there will be times when you feel you are all alone in your plight.

The simple, immutable fact is, in Vianne’s words, “It’s not easy being different.”

Chocolat is actually a much more complex story than I’ve made out here. I’ve watched it three times, and each time I understand something I didn’t before. There are numerous sub-plots. There’s the conflict of the villain, the Comte de Reynaud, which I barely touched on. And most importantly, throughout the story is a struggle between who Vianne is and who she is becoming. A change occurs within her, and it sets her even more at odds with the comte. And that change is also a part of entrepreneurship.

-TimK

Both of my daughters needed to come home from school. One of them had an infestation of head lice. Her scalp was red and extremely itchy, even bleeding. And she had numerous nits, the eggs of the vermin, in her hair. Our school has a no-nit policy. Searching on the web, I learned that some schools avoid no-nit policies. Because parents would be embarrassed to learn that their kids have lice. And I became thankful that our school does have a no-nit policy. But that’s just the way I am.

Head lice are not something to treat disrespectfully. They are parasites, bugs, alien-looking insects that prey on the blood of their victims, leaving behind itchy and painful sores. They attack the rich and poor alike, the young and the old, the clean and the messy, of all races. They spread by touch, so once a family member is infected, the whole family is at risk. But the condition can be treated, with some effort. Now, in what universe would I as a parent not want to know that my daughter had lice?

In this universe, apparently. Human beings have a long, distinguished history of stigmatizing disease. We do it with cancer, dysentery, melanoma, and worms. We stigmatize everything from AIDS to zits. Just search the web for “cancer stigma,” or whatever disease you care to try. We laugh. We cajole. We blame the patient. Because we desperately want to hide from what we fear. Is this ever an effective course of action? Never.

Playing the Blame Game

I found on the c2.com wiki something called the Blame Game. It’s a group activity, played at corporate meetings. Here’s how to play:

1. Start by identifying a serious problem, the more imminent and avoidable, the better.
2. Point your finger directly at someone who has nothing to do with the problem.
3. Think of an unfounded, false accusation that implicates him.
4. State it loudly and unashamedly. This is called Passing the Blame.
5. Watch that person shrivel in terror.
6. Play then passes to the person you’ve pointed at.

The object of the game is to keep the Blame Session going as long as possible. Remember that no one is ever allowed to offer an actual solution to the problem. You earn bonus points for blaming people not at the meeting while keeping the Blame Session alive. When any player is unable to Pass the Blame, the Blame Session ends. At this time, the players choose a Scapegoat.

One brief word of advice: If this game is an accepted part of your corporate culture, decide now to leave. Look for another job, or whatever it takes to get out. But do get out.

A Dis-empowering Belief System

Raj Persaud, author of The Motivated Mind, wrote in an article for Telegraph.co.uk, “Blaming what happens to you on external forces encourages a victim mentality that frequently leads to inactivity and self-loathing.” (“How the culture of blame has made victims of us all.”) When it’s okay to blame others for your problems, it’s ever more difficult to take on those problems, and ever more difficult to solve them. According to Persaud’s research, this has a number of effects:

• A victim believes he has no control over his own future. He feels helpless to change himself or the world around him. Why bother trying to control the future if you can blame it on someone else?
• A victim takes the easiest way out. Why work hard if happiness is the result of forces beyond your control?
• A victim seeks short-term gratification. He engages in opportunistic behavior. Why plan for the future if you can’t change it?
• A victim does not face challenges and does not solve problems. Why bother doing something if your problems are caused by someone else? If your problems are out of your control?

As a result, placed in a Culture of Blame, enthusiastic and creative individuals may become:

• Discouraged — You feel unappreciated and do not want to go out of your way to improve the future. You may even be told outright that your initiative is unwanted.
• Dismayed — You lose your sense of direction. The choices that have always made you fruitful and happy are now being looked down upon.
• Disengaged — You stop trying to do your best. Why bother if you’re just going to get in trouble for it?
• Demoralized — You no longer even care whether you can make a difference or whether you can be happy.
• Depressed — From Depression.com: “Some people say that depression feels like a black curtain of despair coming down over their lives… People who have low self-esteem and a negative outlook [like those mired in a Culture of Blame] are at higher risk of becoming depressed.” I’ve actually experienced this.
• Departed — In a figurative sense, this can be the result of depression. You’ve simply lost touch with yourself. In a literal sense, I believe this can actually be healthy. Leaving a bad situation can be a step in the right direction.

Looking to the Past Versus Looking to the Future

Blame looks to the past, not to the future. Blame encourages people to do the minimum necessary, for fear of making a mistake, whereas we need them to take initiative.

Blame tells everyone not to try anything new, whereas we need creativity.

Blame is the sword of politics. Politically adept managers, when something goes wrong, are always able to point at another department and say, “It’s their fault.”

Blame is one of the components of worry-driven organizations. On this topic Jason Nocks wrote, “At no time are you supposed to actually accomplish any real work. The primary goal is effective worrying, a state of enlightened inactivity.”

The opposite is an organization that fosters a Culture of Examination. Compare some of the things you might hear in a Culture of Blame and a Culture of Examination:

In a Culture of Blame, here are some of the things you may encounter:

• “It’s not my fault.”
• “Whose fault is it?”
• “He did (such and such), which caused (some really bad thing).”
• You don’t know what others are working on, what they think, what they feel, or what they need from you.
• No one commits until after the issue is moot.
• No one ever tries anything new.
• Fear of getting caught on a technicality (because some people actually do).
• That you can control your own destiny is seen as a idealistic, childish belief.

On the other hand, in a Culture of Examination, you’ll find:

• “How did this happen? How can we make it less likely to happen again?”
• People take pride in their work, and they’re not afraid to have it critiqued.
• Constructive criticism.
• A focus on results, not on technicalities.
• Creativity and initiative.
• An unshakable belief in future possibilities.

Addicted to Blame

Blame dis-empowers. Yet we naturally resort to blame. And we teach our children to blame. And we teach others to blame. I’m constantly telling my kids, “I don’t care whose fault it is.” And you know what? They rarely even listen. The urge to blame is so deeply rooted in the human psyche.

For example, let’s say I walk into the livingroom and see a pile of dirty laundry on the floor. (Yes, this happens all the time.) And I say, “Can someone pick up this mess?”

My daughter, sitting on the couch, then replies, “My sister left it there.”

Did that answer my question? No. Do I care who left it there? No. All I care about is, “But who’s going to pick it up?” Did I teach her to say that? I hope not. The fact is that picking up the mess, no matter who does it, produces gratitude, special favors, and a very Happy Daddy. And I know that my daughters really enjoy Happy Daddy.

Why do they keep doing it? Because in the moment, it eases their fear. They think punishment is linked to blame. And they fear punishment. So they try to deflect the blame as a first resort. It’s a pernicious addiction. Getting out of the Culture of Blame requires a long-term perspective. And a long-term perspective requires getting out of the Culture of Blame.

But they’re catching on. Occasionally, I encounter enlightened moments in which they’re more interested in making a difference than in griping about things outside their control. And this is good. Because both my daughters are enthusiastic, creative kids. And my greatest fear is that they will feel pressure to conform, rather than to explore and to become all they can be.

Leadership and Blame

It is never effective for a leader to belittle or blame his constituents. It is never effective for a parent to belittle or blame his children. And it is never effective for a manager to belittle or blame his subordinates.

“But,” you may object, “there’s a difference between someone who has a disease and someone who makes a wrong choice. A sick person isn’t responsible for his disease. But an employee is responsible for his actions. We need to hold people responsible for their actions.”

Firstly, people have always tried to link a patient’s disease with some choice he made in the past. They’ve done so around the world, across cultures, throughout recorded history and into the present. We have a natural inclination to find a scapegoat, and we will employ whatever distorted logic serves that purpose. In most cases, that’s what happens with an employee. He makes a mistake, and it causes a crisis in the project. Maybe he did make a mistake. Is that a surprise? We’re humans, and humans make mistakes. Deal with it; move on. The problem is that we don’t deal with it. Any process is broken that permits a single mistake to jeopardize the entire project. So the project was doomed from the start. It would have been doomed no matter who was working in that position. Because all humans make mistakes. Most of the time, this is what we mean when we say “an incompetent employee is responsible for his performance.” In this instance, it is never effective to blame the employee.

But let’s leave that aside for a moment. Because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether a person is morally responsible for his situation. If you judge him for it, he will deflect the blame onto someone else. And the Blame Game begins. As a leader, your job is to let him be accountable for his own future, but that requires a Culture of Examination. We have to feel safe enough to look truth straight in the eye if we ever hope to effect good. And as leaders, this has to be our first priority. Because the first job of a leader is to get things done. So if I want to be an effective leader, I must encourage examination and shun blame. It may not feel morally right. But this is my choice: Do I want to be right? Or do I want to do right?

-TimK

In fact, I continue to be amazed at how many people have not read even the most significant of these books. How many businessmen have never read Peter Drucker. Every executive, every manager, every entrepreneur must read Peter Drucker. Or how many software engineers have never read Frederick Brooks or Demarco and Lister. Or how many software managers don’t even know who Brooks or Demarco or Lister is.

The Executive in Action by Peter Drucker. This has three great books in one volume: Managing for Results, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and The Effective Executive. Peter Drucker’s work was my introduction to the science of running a business, and I grieved at his passing. No matter how well versed you are in the subject, these seminal works will still likely bring you new understanding.

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Brooks. This classic on software development processes and practices, it’s still quoted often. Because every developer sees some part of himself in Frederick Brooks’s adages and stories.

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom Demarco and Tim Lister. If you are miserable in your software development job, read this book, and you’ll immediately understand why. What’s so amazing is that Peopleware is almost 20 years old now, it still holds true, and software managers and staff still face the same problems and ask the same questions and come to the same wrong answers as they did 20 years ago. I think they all need a swift kick in the incompetence.

Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams by Alistair Cockburn. I’ve written about Crystal Clear before (and Peopleware, too). If following a formulaic system isn’t working for you, and it probably isn’t, try seeking the 7 properties Alistair Cockburn says characterize successful teams.

Fail-Safe Investing : Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes by Harry Browne. I first discovered Harry Browne during the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign. I was a typical disenfranchised voter, except for the fact that I was willing to consider alternatives. This was back in the days before Google, and I searched the web for information on third-party candidates. And I found Harry Browne. At first, I thought he was a little crazy, but closer to my position than any other candidate. As I listened, I heard the words of an eloquent, patient sage. By election day, my own political views had changed significantly. Over the years, I’ve learned from Harry Browne how to treat others, how to persuade, how to love life, and how to plan for the future. And I still sometimes must remind myself that he too is no longer with us, even though it’s been over 7 months since he passed away. Here in this compact volume, Harry Browne lays out a plan for practically risk-free retirement savings. It’s based on a so-obvious-it’s-overlooked philosophy: None of us knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. Since you don’t know what’s going to happen, don’t try to predict it. Instead, choose a portfolio that will perform regardless of what happens tomorrow.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I was like many other software developers. Through my childhood and early adulthood, I knew how to get the computer to do almost anything I wanted. But I was no good at working with people. I knew how to win any logical argument, but I would never be a leader. Then Harry Browne referred me to Dale Carnegie’s seminal work. For many people, Carnegie’s advice will seem so obvious, they’ll wonder why it needs to be said. For others, it will seem manipulative, but only because they don’t actually mean the kind things he advises us to say. For someone like me, who has a good heart but just doesn’t know how to express it, Carnegie was heaven sent.

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi. Doing Dale Carnegie one better, this is a modern classic on networking. Keith Ferrazzi explains how to establish and maintain relationships, how to make a difference, and how to get ahead. He challenges some common assumptions, such as when he advises, “Never keep score.” Rather, he tells us never to withhold help from others, because the more you give, the more you’ll get in return. And he caters to the maverick in me, with stories of challenging the status quo in his department, his company, even his whole industry. You can even see this book’s influence in this my blog. How many times have I said, “The worst they can do is fire you”?

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. (But the 50′th anniversary edition has been updated with more current statistics.) In this libertarian classic, Henry Hazlitt explains why “Live and let live” is good for everybody. More importantly, he draws lessons that apply to running a business. For example, too many economic fallacies come about because we notice what we see, but we ignore what we don’t see. We ignore what would have happened if we had taken a different course. Of course, this is human nature. It happens in every aspect of our lives. And the man who can see the whole picture can do better than he who only sees what’s in front of his face.

The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. This is a very thick, very dense book. I mean dense as in, so jam-packed full of insight, reading it makes my head feel like it’s going to explode. The Leadership Challenge lays out the characteristics and behaviors of a leader. One thing I found is that some parts of myself that I was afraid of, sublimated through years of living in the establishment, were the leadership strengths I needed to exercise.

The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions by Scott Adams. Dilbert needs no introduction, of course. But the Dilbert Principle might. You may have heard of the Peter Principle: Once competent people rise through the ranks of management until their brains turn into lemon meringue. But move over Peter Principle. Now, we’re in the age of the Dilbert Principle. Now, we systematically identify and promote the least competent among us. This explains a lot. (It explains, for example, the President of the U.S., and why I consider it an insult to suggest that either of my daughters would ever rise to that office!)

-TimK

The forces of the universe must be aligning for me. Because this sounds awful similar to what Maxine Clark, the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop, talked about in her book The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart:

I challenge you to think about what your ideal business would look like if there were no obstacles—financial or otherwise—in your way. That’s what I did in the planning stages for Build-A-Bear Workshop… I imagined, down to the smallest detail, everything I would need to build a successful brand and company.

It was a grand vision indeed, and although I wasn’t able to do all the things I dreamed about immediately, I knew the possibilities that were out there. My vision and the resulting business plan provided me with the ultimate blueprint of goals to work toward as the company (and our profits) grew.

In other words, a dream is not a pie-in-the-sky feeling. It’s something you can see and hear and touch and smell and taste. It’s clear, and it’s possible. But these possibilities are not limited by outside forces. A dream is a manifestation of your faith, something you believe in; otherwise, you won’t put your best into it. And it’s something only you can make happen.

-TimK

I’m not about to suggest that whatever we want, all we have to do is to intend it, and we’ll get it. That’s preposterous. It’s the sort of hogwash you hear from slimy televangelists looking for a quick donation. Or marketing superstars promising to make your home business succeed. “All you have to do is buy my e-book and discover the secrets that have made millionaires. Or at least one millionaire: Me.”

Let’s be realistic here. For all of the secret connections they claim to have, let’s not be silly. Buyer beware. Get-rich-quick schemes do not work. Following one of these plans won’t bring wealth or happiness.

But what if it will? How does that change my world? How does it change the choices I make and the opportunities I pursue?

A resistible opportunity

As I said, I’m not about to suggest that whatever we want, if only we will it into existence, it will become ours. On the other hand, how often do we rule out choices because of our mistaken beliefs?

Let me tell you about what happened to me at work. Two weeks ago, one of our customers had a problem with our system. The way they had it configured, it generated a lot of files in one directory. Thousands of files. One particular feature, however, needs to identify which file was created at a given time, in order to view the file’s contents. So software then scans the entire directory, looking for files with the correct timestamp. Doing this with thousands of files in the directory takes a long time, tens of seconds. And performing this operation multiple times, which is a reasonable thing to do, is unacceptably slow.

So we all got together and talked about what we could do to fix it. I suggested a simple “directory cache,” which would store the directory listings in memory so that we wouldn’t have to go out and read from the disk every time. Memory is faster than disk. But then I noted, “That doesn’t really make much sense, though, The operating system should be storing all that data in its disk cache. The disk cache is in memory, so it shouldn’t need to read from disk over and over again. And even if it did, it’s not that much data. Does it really take that long to scan the directory, even if there are thousands of files in it?”

The answer came back affirmative. “Yes, it does.”

I consider myself responsible. Not because I was in charge, because I wasn’t. Not because I made the decision, because I didn’t. We all agreed on the decision. I consider myself responsible, because, damn it, I should have known better. Remember that I’m writing this in retrospect, and I’m telling you now, I asked the very questions that needed to be answered back then. But I myself didn’t even think about answering them. This anomaly was more a curiosity to me. But I too had witnessed enough curiosities with this particular operating system such that I missed not a beat. I began working on the directory cache.

If you are a software engineer, you hopefully see the folly. However, we had a room full of software engineers, and none of us saw the folly. This is what we deride as “premature optimization.” How do you know that scanning the directory is slow, if you haven’t actually measured it? What if it isn’t? How does that change the way you approach the problem?

Because we had already decided what we wanted the answer to be, we didn’t consider any of the other alternatives. It wasn’t until I had completed work on the directory cache that I even asked whether we had reproduced the customer’s setup, so that we could demonstrate the problem the customer was experiencing, so that we could tell whether our fix would help. As it turns out, our system has deeper problems than just scanning the directory. The directory cache does speed things up a little, but we don’t know whether it will actually address the problem our customer is having.

A liberating thought

Later, I asked myself, What if I had made this kind of stupid mistake in my own business? What if I had to eat the wasted effort? It’s always easier when someone else pays for the bungling.

And ironically, it’s also easier when someone else benefits from it. It’s easier not to pursue opportunities that may be open to us, because we can always choose to believe they’re not for us. We can always slough off our wasted opportunities onto someone else.

I once got a call from a recruiter for a job opening a friend of mine might have liked. So I asked my friend if he’d like me to put him in touch. He politely declined. He said he believe in fate. If a recruiter happened to call him up, he’d politely take the call. But he didn’t want a referral. Those of us who have worked with recruiters to keep our careers on track see how silly this is. It’s fate when a recruiter somehow calls him, perhaps accidentally dialing the wrong number, but it’s not fate when that same recruiter happens to get in touch with me? But for my friend, this was his reality. He was shutting off a whole set of career opportunities through his beliefs.

How many of us have toyed with the idea of starting our own business? But there’s always some reason why we’d rather not, or at least explore it at a snail’s pace. Lately, for me, it’s been that I don’t have the investment capital. Which is true, kind of. But what if I do have the capital? Or what if I don’t need as much as I thought? What if I can get into the market some other way?

Pam Slim on her excellent blog Escape from Cubicle Nation notes several reasons why people avoid taking the entrepreneurial leap. And if you’re taking the entrepreneurial leap yourself, your friends and family will have many more objections. But they all come down to one issue: Each of us has a preconceived notion of what makes him happy. You enjoy your corporate status. What if you enjoy non-corporate status more? A corporate job is stable. What if running your own business is more stable? Being an employee helps your career. What if being an entrepreneur helps your career more?

I used to think I’d never make any significant money by blogging. If I was lucky, I though, I could make back what I spend for web hosting. I can’t get enough visitors, and I couldn’t earn enough revenue to make a living. I’m not Steve Pavlina or Darren Rowse. I don’t have an expertise everyone wants to hear about. And I’d hate running a dozen blogs in order to make ends meet. I rarely verbalized these thoughts. But that didn’t matter. I believed them. And so I wasn’t even looking for ways to pursue these opportunities.

But what if reality is different? What if I can make a living by blogging? What if I can get enough traffic? What if I can monetize that traffic? What if I do have an expertise a large group of netizens wants to hear about? What if I would enjoy running multiple blogs?

What a liberating thought! After considering these questions, I see that I might be able to. Or if I couldn’t, I would be able to fail fast, risking very little trying it out. I’m not sure I want to pursue this idea. But I’m no longer just shutting it out.

Dream big

I’ve just begun reading The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart by Maxine Clark, the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop®. This book especially interested me because of my own experience with Build-A-Bear Workshop.

I was introduced to the company by my younger daughter, after one of her friends got a stuffed toy there. She pointed out the commercial: It’s where best friends are made. So for her next birthday, we got her a gift certificate to Build-A-Bear Workshop. I still get a little mushy inside remembering how she picked which toy she wanted, chose what music it would play, stuffed it, and put in its heart, bringing the little bear to life. If you have a little one yourself, you no doubt understand perfectly.

We spent over $50 there that day, on a single stuffed bear and a bunch of accessories. Oh, the accessories! Did I mention the accessories? Talk about monetizing the idea. I paid more for accessories than for the bear itself. And I’d do it again. I’d do it again tomorrow, if I could justify spending another $50 on another stuffed toy.

Maybe someday I will, just for me, again visit Build-A-Bear Workshop. For now, I’m basking in the wisdom of Ms. Clark’s story, as it begins:

People often ask how I was able to take the rough idea for Build-A-Bear Workshop and turn it into such a successful business. Above all, it started when I simply allowed myself to dream. And I’m a true believer in dreaming big.

Since the very beginning, I didn’t put restrictions on my vision, nor did I let the way others made or sold stuffed animals stand in my way. Instead, I allowed myself to dream of this unique business going from one store at the Saint Louis Galleria to something that could be as huge as I thought it could be. My dream eventually came true, and continues to evolve even beyond my wildest imagination. But you must start by believing you can truly achieve whatever you set your mind to, no matter how monumental it might seem.

Most people don’t do that. They stymie themselves and their ideas with negative thoughts. They’re so caught up in what they can’t do that they don’t think about how much they can accomplish. As Marianne Williamson wrote in Return to Love, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.”

The secret to breaking out of the box is to dream. Don’t be afraid to dream. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t be held back by your own doubts. Don’t be held back by others’. Dream big and dream real. And then keep trying different methods to fulfill your dream.

You might think it’s strange for me to call a failure a good thing. But I count it solidly a good thing. Because it means I was stretching myself, doing something I had not already mastered. And the fact that I recognize that there was some part that I can improve, some part I would do differently, means that I’m using the opportunity to grow. That’s the most important thing you can get out of a failure, and that’s why we need to fail. Actually, we shouldn’t even call them failures. Like Phil McKinney did recently on the Killer Innovations podcast, we should call them opportunities to learn.

So, how did I encounter this opportunity to learn? First you have to understand something about our system. It’s a legacy enterprise web-app written mostly in C++. Numerous consultants wrote much of it back in the 20′th century. Money was tight, and the most important goal was getting new features delivered. So a consultant would be hired to add features as fast as he could and pad his resume at the same time. For example, one of these consultants apparently wanted to be able to say that he developed a web server. So he did. And we’re still saddled with it.

Yes, our enterprise web-app uses a web server that isn’t a real web server. But that’s only the beginning. It also uses an app server that isn’t recognizable as an app server. And interwoven with these are the application model and domain model. And I do mean interwoven. There is duplicated code everywhere, and each piece of code has at least five different responsibilities. Before working on this system, I thought I had seen unmaintainable legacy code. Ha! If you’ve ever read Working Effectively With Legacy Code, I routinely face real-life problems as bad as the most terrifying stories Michael Feathers recounts. Whatever code you’re wrestling with, take heart that it probably isn’t as bad as this. The basic rules every first-year comp-sci student learns: high cohesion and loose coupling— Remember those? Well, our system has no trace of them anywhere.

A good design is like an egg. If you crack an egg into a bowl, you’ll see the yolk in the middle and the white around it. Each of these parts has its own form and function within the egg. Each is highly cohesive. The two parts have a well-defined relationship with each other. Each never intrudes on the other’s space, but they work together to form the whole egg. They are loosely coupled.

Take a fork and whip it through the egg over and over again. Now you have a scrambled egg. That’s our system. My job is to unscramble the egg.

I wanted this responsibility. I’ve been pushing for it. You might think this is an instance of be careful what you wish for. But I’m not afraid, and I’m not overwhelmed. Because I know the secret to unscrambling an egg. The secret is to do it with tweezers, one pinch at a time. Pick up a tiny bit of egg. Is it yolk or white? Yolk? Okay, put it over here. Next tiny bit. Yolk or white? White? Okay, put it over there. The secret to refactoring code is to do it bit by bit.

So the way it worked out, I was in charge. No, it wasn’t on a grand scale. It was just a mini sub-project. I didn’t make a Gantt chart. I did end up posting a burn chart, which I’ll get to in a moment. I was not officially a manager. But I was, for a few weeks anyhow, in charge. And I discovered something fantastic: I liked it.

The first thing I did was to prepare a small presentation for the rest of the team. I went over how the bits of our system fit into a proper enterprise architecture. And I identified a first step: Refactor our response code to use an IHttpResponse interface, instead of typing in HTTP response text and pushing it at the open TCP socket. Yes, that’s really what the old code did. I boiled this down to a set of refactoring techniques we could use. I pulled the general process from Working Effectively With Legacy Code. But then I applied it to the specific problem we were facing at that moment. I provided refactoring templates that applied to most of the code that we needed to refactor. Yes, there were special cases. But we could handle them as they arose.

When I gave the presentation, a junior engineer was already working with me. He was refactoring the parts of the system he was intimate with. Afterward, another senior engineer was asked to help out. She picked a module with some pretty hairy refactorings that were all interrelated and had been bugging her. I worked on the rest. I picked a module to refactor and went at it. Then I picked another module.

But how did we know what code we needed to refactor? We searched through the code for a particular function call: the Send() function. Send() was the function that pushed response data up the open TCP socket. We could just search for instances of Send(). Then instead of generating HTTP and calling Send(), now we wanted to generate HTML and use IHttpResponse.

This also made it very easy to chart our progress. Just search for instances of Send(), and find out how many instances we’ve eliminated. I threw together a semi-automated process and did this every day. Then I updated a burn chart, which I posted in our shared hallway. Everybody appreciated seeing the progress, especially my manager.

Can you imagine my elation the day I actually deleted the definition of Send() and rebuilt the project? I told everyone what I’d just done. How cool is that? All that excitement over one little function that had its tentacles woven throughout the whole system. And now it is gone, hopefully forever.

There’s one big thing I would do differently. I would only take on personally those parts that required my insight into the big picture. As soon as other developers were on-board, I would start asking them to work on any part of the project they could. In other words, I would delegate more. As it was, I spent a lot of time doing by-the-numbers refactorings. Then at the end, there was one more function, which has a couple unique twists. To refactor this monster, I first had to change the inheritance hierarchy and add additional features to the supporting classes. It took me days. If I had been thinking more effectively, I would have avoided all the by-the-numbers work. A junior engineer could have done that, and at much less cost to the company. I would have been working on this code much earlier, and we probably would have finished sooner.

And that’s what I plan to do with the next phase. Right now I’m implementing IHttpRequest. We finished the response side of things; now we’ll do the request side. Of course, the function that needs to instantiate the request object currently does things from all layers of the system, including the domain model. It’s 465 lines long. And it’s full of bugs and, er, undocumented features. So I need to deal with that, again using the techniques Michael Feathers talks about.

But once that’s taken care of, we can start refactoring the application-model code to use IHttpRequest instead of the global variables and duplicated logic it uses now. Most of this code will follow straightforward patterns. But some of it will hold unexpected surprises. I plan to look for the unexpected surprises first and save the rote stuff for later. We’ll see how that works out.

-TimK

UPDATE (March 2010): A recent conversation reminded me of this old post. Before I left that job, I did successfully refactor the 465-line monster-function into a proper web-server/app-server architecture, and I did it by writing unit tests first, and then refactoring functionality piece by piece, until I could delete the original (now unused) function.

A year or so ago, I reconnected with some of the people on this project. I found out that they still hadn’t integrated these refactorings into the baseline. And they no doubt still haven’t, even today. Oh well, it was still an exciting and rewarding experience at the time. Maybe sometimes it’s prudent not to ask what they actually do with your work-product: you may not want to find out.

Leadership is like Ronny Cammareri’s love, from Moonstruck:

Love don’t make things nice, it ruins everything! It breaks your heart, it makes things a mess. We’re not here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect, stars are perfect. Not us! Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and— and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and— and die! I mean, the storybooks are bullshit!

Similarly, great leaders make as many enemies as friends, and most of what they do goes unnoticed for a long, long time. Leadership is about taking the initiative, about challenging the status quo. Leadership is about vision and perseverance. It’s about listening and humility and letting others take the credit and pleasure in the little gains that other people accomplish. Leadership is about setting an example and letting someone else run with it. This is the kind of leadership that may earn you no accolades, no awards. In fact, people may criticize you at first, because they don’t see the difference it makes. Even worse, they may ignore you. But it does make a difference. Or rather, a bunch of little differences.

Occasionally, you’ll make a big difference, but never by yourself. My last performance review was a shock to me, and it was because I was not talking enough with my manager or with his boss. Now, I could have just let it slide, which is one’s natural instinct. Why rock the boat? After all, you can’t force someone else to talk to you or to listen to you. And with your manager, if things don’t work out, you can’t fire him.

But I knew there was only one professional course I could take. And I also knew that others had been saying the same things I have, that we don’t know how our efforts fit into the team’s long-term goal or into the corporate vision. I went further: I don’t know what management expects of me. And I went further even than that: Management doesn’t know what I expect of the company.

Then I committed to meeting with my manager each week to discuss these issues. I didn’t know how that was going to go over, because you can’t force someone to talk to you or to listen to you. But the option with the greatest risk also has the greatest reward. And there was only one professional course I could take.

Now, my manager’s boss goes over my performance review, as a matter of policy. And he had a meeting with me to hear my thoughts. And I told him exactly what I thought. I told him that I disagreed with parts of the evaluation. And I told him that I thought I needed to talk more with my manager, because I didn’t know what he expected of me, and he didn’t know what I expected of the job. And I told him that I didn’t understand how my work fits into the team goals or the corporate vision.

And he was on the same page. He has now started having regular lunches with the software department. He’s already explained to us his vision for the future and opened a dialogue. And when I went to talk to my manager for my first weekly chat, he was open and receptive. He listened, and I listened. And I ended up thinking, This could work.

The honeymoon isn’t over yet. Wait another few months, and then we’ll see how permanent or effective these changes are. It somehow feels like too big a step to make all at once.

What does any of this have to do with moving chairs? Well, in my team, moving chairs was a little step, one of those things most people don’t even notice as significant. But it excites me. It excites me as much as the corporate-and-team-vision thing.

A few months ago, we moved to a new office space. In our previous space, the four of us shared two offices, two developers per office. A short hallway joined the two offices. You’d think we’d have pretty good teamwork, sharing space and being relatively close together. But the opposite happened. We felt closed in upon and cramped, which does not foster openness. And the hallway between the two offices meant that those of us in one office rarely talked to the people in the other office.

Our new space affords us each a normal-size work-area. But we don’t have cubicles. Instead we have alcoves, three walls and a missing fourth side. This was not our choice. I myself would have rather had a fourth wall. But at least we all sit together. And one of the side-effects is that I can look out from my desk and see two of my colleagues. And if I can see them, I can talk to them, too. Each of us can do this. It’s as if we each had our own area in a big, common office.

Here’s where the moving chairs come in. Shortly after we moved into the new space, one of my colleagues asked me to help him with something. We have no guest chairs, so I grabbed my chair from my desk and wheeled it across into his space. The practice caught on. I remember the way I felt when one of the other engineers wheeled his chair into my space. It’s such a little thing, but it represents something to me. It represents camaraderie. It represents that the four of us are not living in isolation, but that we’re part of the same team.

Recently, we had a design meeting in my manager’s alcove. One by one, we brought our chairs over to sit as we worked on his white board. Someone walked down the hallway that divides our space, and we joked that they were walking through our conference room.

This, all because we were moving our chairs. And I did it first.

-TimK

In a recent post, Jared Spool talks about how important it is to fail.

-TimK

(UPDATE: The series I later changed to “Tales of a Wanna-Be Software Entrepreneur,” because entrepreneurship makes it possible not only to manage, but also to do it the way I think best.)

I never thought I’d want to be a manager. In fact, I don’t want to be a “manager.” I don’t want to spend all of my time administering the people who do all the interesting, creative work. But I’ve been filling more leadership roles in my life: where I work, where I worship, even in my family. And I want to do more of that. I want to be a team lead.

So what does that mean? It does not mean being in charge. And this fact is actually what makes me long to fill that position.

Being in charge does not make you a leader. I started learning this as soon as I became a father. Being able to set the rules and enforce them didn’t make anyone actually listen to me. I found that parental discipline isn’t about the ability to administer punishment so much as it is about teaching and respect. So in my studies to become a manager, I’ve been practicing effective management techniques on my kids.

Being in charge does not make you a leader. This is even more true in a church. I am a musician and worship leader at my church. Churches are non-profit organizations staffed largely by volunteers. They can’t be fired, because they’re not being paid. As a church leader, if you try to push them, they’re more likely to disappear than to do what you want. If you want them to go all out, you have to engage them, involve them, and get them excited. Over the years, I’ve seen both happen, and I’ve done both.

Then there’s my employ. As a senior software engineer, there are plenty of opportunities for me to take a leadership role. In a small company—the only kind I love—there’s always more work to do than there is time in which to do it. And there is always a leadership vacuum, no matter how great the managers of the company are. So there are opportunities to engage the other engineers, to prompt innovative solutions, to take the team culture in a new direction, to mentor more junior engineers. I get little credit for any of this, but I don’t care. I’m making a difference.

That’s really what it boils down to: making a difference. The more I think about it, the more I conclude, it really doesn’t matter whether I’m officially a “team lead.” Because a leader is something you are, not something your company calls you.

-TimK