Author Archives: Tracey

I think I was in my late 30s when I suddenly realized that — contrary to what my mother had told me!! — you don’t get extra points for doing everything the hard way.

And it’s not lazy or cheating… if you do it right, it’s LEADERSHIP.

Next time you are at the beginning of an improvement project, assign specific areas of study out to the team, and ask for them to develop some of their ideas about the value of the work and what they would do next. Then you can lead the team in a discussion rather than trying to be Teacher.

You can trust them, they won’t think less of you for ‘not knowing the answer’ — unless people have secretly been hating me all these years and I just don’t know about it.

We always look better from the outside than we know on the inside. Trust them. Trust yourself. Give them something cool to do and step back.

Don’t worry if you don’t know where they’re going yet – the whole game is to figure that out, and leadership is figuring that out TOGETHER. (Yes, while everyone watches — get used to it!)

Also: Especially during a project, always make sure you leave a meeting with action items: a WHAT and a WHEN and a WHO. Then the structure of the meetings can push the group along, and you won’t have to do all the pulling yourself.

Much easier! And a better result.

Recently I replied to a request for support from a colleague who saw me speak at the Itron Utility Week conference last October.

The request focused on how Agile principles can be used to strengthen an Operations team. Here are the highlights of my reply:

The SMNO (Smart Metering Network Operations) group borrowed the idea of the morning stand-up from Agile, and we take to heart the basic concepts of moving quickly on a series of small things and checking in with our stakeholders frequently.

Our Operations team holds a standup daily, to review what happened in the systems the night before, and ensure that any impacts are communicated to stakeholders. We also use it to identify any new actions or tasks, and we work those in as we go (since we’re not ‘delivering’ anything other than highest quality operations). Especially in the early phases of our operations, the standup helped us make sure we were paying attention to the right things, and responding quickly.

I think each team has to decide on a case by case basis whether ‘surprise’ work must be handled right away. Plot these things on the urgent vs important matrix, and keep a close grip on the Agile framework fundamentals to make sure that ‘urgent’ doesn’t drag you off course. Part of Agile is being willing to wait for things to unfold at the right time.

I have worked with many companies who wanted to do Agile, and who eventually ended up doing some percentage of it. True Agile software development requires real courage from the leadership, who cannot ‘manage’ features or timeline in the traditional way. This tends to make them deeply uncomfortable! So I’d advise to make sure that you are telegraphing the heck out of why Agile is so good, and what your leaders can expect to see.

Finally, if at all possible (and often it isn’t) don’t book people to 100% of their time. Agile (and indeed, any kind of development or invention) works best when individuals in a team have some breathing room, to have good ideas, clean up loose ends, work through problems at the water cooler, improve documentation, etc. It is a false economy (in my opinion) to focus on squeezing every last line of code out of each operator. Soon they will all be coding as fast as they can, just to keep up with their minor mistakes.

In this session, I will walk attendees through our team’s typical utility smart meter network operations day, showing which metrics are important and telling you how we use reporting for a variety of purposes.

By telling our story through reporting and metrics I can give the shape of our whole operation at a high level, hopefully without putting everyone into nap mode.

Update: it went very well! Everyone leaned forward and I didn’t catch anybody checking their phones. :-)

Years ago at Tantalus Systems, I integrated the ERP system (which we also built in-house, from JIRA) into a LifeRay-based Team Room portal. Then I presented it at users’ conferences.
I didn’t do it all by myself, of course; I led a wonderful team, and our accomplishments are a source of pride to me still. I wish I had a picture of the team! But here’s the poster that was used at the conference…

This is what my name looks like in Urdu (a Persianised, Arabised, and standardised register language of the Hindustani dialect, Google assures me).

It’s beautiful.

Don’t forget to read it from right to left. ;-)

Meaning no disrespect to Jane Jacobs, but… this Google Doodle looks EXACTLY like me.

A colleague at BC Hydro showed me this trick the other day… I’ll never lose a poppy again!
Thanks for the life hack, Rosa!

“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ”

Eagles, Hotel California

Figuring out how to get people to relate easily and naturally to the things you want them to do is a key leadership skill.

I have worked on this skill in particular, as I often have to rely on my influence rather than accessing authority directly. My goal is to mould the people around me, so they can develop their own ideas and run forward without my assistance.

This empowerment is the best way because, when people sit around and wait for someone to tell them what to do, it’s less effective, their leaders burn out, and the people themselves are less happy in their jobs.

But do people find me bossy? It’s been years since I worried about this, but I notice the fear in colleagues who are experimenting with formal leadership for the first time.

Authority is a cloak that you can choose to wear very lightly. Certainly as a beginning leader, you can frame your contribution in terms of service to others, which is more comfortable for most people.

(1) The right thing is to set a target and then step back and let people figure out how to get there themselves, supporting them as required but never taking back the responsibility

(2) The right thing is to receive roadblocks as a chance to help colleagues improve their own skills and perspectives, and to learn from them in return – and people will love it when they see you listening to them!

Neither of those needs to involve you being bossy. :-)

I was playing with a new whiteboard marker in a meeting the other day, when the guy next to me suddenly frowned at it, clearly disgusted. (I’ll call him Ted, because that’s his name.)

I’d never thought about this, but traditionally the barrel of a whiteboard pen is white, and the barrel of a regular pen is anything else (usually the color of the ink).

I “knew” this, though I’d never specifically noticed.

The new whiteboard marker was a real skookum little unit, with a magnet and an eraser tip, and a non-rolling body in a fashionable black.

But as a leader who frequently uses a whiteboard and a flip chart at the same time, Ted was not pleased!