Because I Was Told Not To

Tonight I went to a book signing by author Karin Slaughter.  Her most recent book, Cop Town, tells the story of two women police officers in the 70’s.  It was during a time when to rent an apartment a women had to have a man cosign for it. Needless to say if it was a tough time to be a woman on the police force.  Slaughter interviewed retired cops as part of her research.  When she asked the women why they signed up- the most common response was “because I was told not to”.  J

The talk given by the author inspired me to write this post (I was long overdue).  The topics of women in leadership & women in technology have been swirling more and more around me for the past year.  I happen to be a woman in technology leadership.

Last year I heard Becky Blalock, former CIO of the Southern Company, speak at a Women in Technology event in Atlanta.  I just finished her book Dare and identified with much of what she discussed in her book.

I thought I would share a couple of topics that resonated with me the most.

“Toot your horn”.  Women are taught from childhood to focus on fitting in and collaborating with others while men are taught to compete.  One of the ways it manifests itself in the work environment is that we don’t do a good job in promoting the great work we do.  We’re likely to attribute our success to others.  There are ways we can graciously promote our successes and it is something we need to do more of. This will help us compete better in the workforce and showcase our value.

“Getting over your need to be liked” – I find this a lot more with women in leadership than I do with men.  One of my favorite quotes in the book is “Change makes people upset. You can’t take it personally or let it distract you. Dogs don’t chase parked cars.”  In my current role, not everyone has liked every decision I’ve made – and initially that was hard for me. I work to be thoughtful in the decision making process and stay true to my core values and the values of my organization. I understand not every decision will be right and/or liked – but am getting more comfortable with those facts and am getting better at taking things less personally.

“Dare to fail”-  she asks how many times have you failed in your career?  If the list is short it likely means that you haven’t taken enough risk.  Failure can be a good thing if you fail responsibly and learn from it.  Lack of failures over the course of one’s career means you’re likely losing out on experiences and opportunities to learn. The lack of failures also typically shows lack of risk which means we're not having the big successes either. We need to learn to take a more positive outlook on risk and how to approach it.

Those are just tidbits of leadership information covered in the book. If you get a chance, it is a great book.  Books like these as well as networking with others in leadership roles are the best way to learn, improve as well as understand how to get to a leadership role.  The power of many is stronger than the power of one – and I’m personally lucky to have a strong network of people in leadership that helps me improve every day.  The book is also a great reminder to give back and share one’s knowledge.  If you want to connect, here’s my linkedin profile. 

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite songs by “Geek Girls & the Doubleclicks"

Let It Go

It’s been awhile since I posted.  I decided to sell my current house and move in town.  Apparently moving is among the top stressful life experiences and I believe it. It’s turned my life upside down. 

Last night at improv class (yes I’m still taking classes) – we talked about letting go of control.  Some of us (me included) have a tendency to try and control a scene.  Our scene partner says something and rather than going along with it – we control it and move it in another direction.  Last night my scene partner told me she was trying to kill me.  I tried to convince her not to by saying we hadn't completed our bucket list.  But when we replayed the scene and I accepted that she was trying to kill me it was so much funnier. When we learn to “let go” in improv and just go with it – the scene ends up in unexpected and fun places.

Its no surprise that I try to control the scene especially since my moving experience has been about a complete lack of control.  I had verbally accepted an offer on my house within 48 hours from putting in the on market.  I didn’t realize it was a sellers market until I was making offers on new places and losing out to other buyers.  I made two offers without physically seeing the condo – I took facetime tours with my realtor while I was out of town.  My inner accountant had to learn to let go otherwise I was going to go crazy (and make my friends crazy with me). I eventually found a place to buy – but even if I hadn’t I still would have figured it out.

As a people leader I need to also learn to let things go – I need to focus on outcomes and not the path that people take to get there.  There are multiple roads to the same destination and by letting folks find their own path we’re both learning. Rumor has it that life is about the journey anyway…right?

And if you thought I’d go this entire post without mentioning Frozen…you were mistaken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_DaizJnnJQ

Improv at Camp

I had a great weekend at South Florida ProductCamp.  I led a session: the 7 Lessons of Improv and how it helped me as a product manager.  Unexpectedly I was able to utilize some of my improv skills in other ways during the course of the day.

One of the lessons from my session is “Don’t Prepare”.  Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth – Mike Tyson.  When I started to hook up my computer to the overhead connector thingy – I noticed my slides were not displaying on the screen in the room.  It was showing the slides of the person in the next room over.  After 5-10 minutes of the product camp team trying to get the overhead to work correctly – I elected to go ahead without my slides on the overhead and with someone else’s slides displaying.  Had this happened in the past, I might have freaked out a little (ok – more than a little) because things weren’t going to plan. Not only was my supporting material not showing – but I was already 10 minutes behind.  It ended up being a great session.  Rather then rush my speaking, I skipped a little of my content to keep everything on track. The participants still had fun (we played story story die), and it was kind of neat when the other person’s slides supported what I was talking about in my session.  It turns out the slides do not matter that much if you know your topic and can keep the audience engaged in other ways. Which leads me to PowerPoint Karaoke...

The last session of the day was PowerPoint Karaoke.  A 300+ slide deck with random pictures and words on them.  Session participants volunteer to present for 90 seconds using those random slides to the audience. I learned the hard way – don’t be the last person to enter the session.  Due to my tardiness, the session leader (Jennifer Doctor) had me be the first one up and present.  During this session I was able to leverage another lesson from improv - to say “yes and”.  In improv not only should you not negate your partner but you need to justify whatever they just said (as random as it may be). This is a perfect skill for PowerPoint Karaoke.  I was able to deliver a presentation to the slides that appeared because I was able to relate whatever appeared to my topic. I’ve become used to thinking quickly and connecting seemingly unrelated ideas to each other.  My slides included: a burning car, a graph, a dinosaur, a light bulb, a globe and a bunch of smilie faces.

Both things supported how relevant the lessons learned in improv can help your skills both professionally and personally.

Overall a great day at camp.  I was able to meet some new people in the S FL product community, reconnect with old friends and learn from other sessions. Looking forward to ProductCamp Atlanta this summer!

Abstraction Kills Volume II

I figured if Kill Bill could have multiple volumes so can my post on abstraction.  In my original post I focused on relating some of the lessons to my work life, but Sinek’s book got into personal and politics as well – I elected not to go there.  With the recent reaction to the Grammys Wedding ceremony I thought it was a good opportunity to expand my post.  Here is a link so just some of the reaction to the Grammys.   

We use more then just numbers as substitutes for people. Social media and our 140 character posts are perfect example of abstraction.  For some folks it’s easy to hide behind facebook and post something they would never say to another person face-to-face.  Cyberbullying is an extension of this - the news stories on what kids are doing to each other is heart breaking.  The easy reaction to those hiding behind the internet is to bombard them back with another 140 characters – but this is just perpetuating the cycle. We need to stop this insanity and start having constructive conversations and reminding ourselves there are people at the other ends of our words (and not just an avatar of Daria)

Leaving you with a song that’s on regular rotation on my spotify - Nothing More by Alternate Routes.  

Abstraction Kills

Throughout my career I’ve gravitated towards reading leadership books. Books in this genre typically have good guidance no matter what role you are in the organization: people manager, product manager, or team member.  For me they act like guide rails – every time I find myself veering of my path I can count on a good leadership book to get my focus back on track.

I just finished reading Simon Sinek’s new book: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. It’s now one of my favorite books.  In it he defines leadership as “…. the choice to serve others with or without any formal rank.”

There are many great aspects of this book but my favorite is on the topic of abstraction.  I work for a company that is growing at a significant pace and which prides itself in putting its people first.  It flips the typical mindset of corporate America and believes if it takes care of its employees, their employees will take care of their customers and the end result is the shareholders will be taken care of.  Sinek’s book discusses how the bigger companies get the more distance is put between the people at the top of a company and the folks that use our products or actually do the work..  The larger a company gets the more people become numbers.

Imagine two news stories.  1) A story that discusses 1000’s of people who are suffering due to a natural disaster and 2) one where a family is interviewed, shows the damage to their home and they talk about how they were displaced due to  a fire in their home.   Typically the second story resonates with us more even though significantly more people were impacted in the first story – we have a name and a face to the story. We can empathize more with the family impacted in the second type of news story.  

As product and people leaders we have the risk of making decisions solely on metrics. This is due to the distance that is now between us and our employees or customers. Do you find yourself saying things like “that only impacts 10% of our customers” – without truly understanding the impact to that 10%?  Doing that is a disservice to the people who count on us. We need to have a connection to those we serve to truly make informed decisions.  Get out of your office and talk to the people you work with…talk to the customers who use your product – they are the people that make your organization run. We need to make the time to understand what makes them tick.  This can help drive the culture of your organization to be one based on trust, which leads to a collaborative environment and allow the people you work with to do great things.  

Sinek’s book has given me a lot to think about-especially working for an organization that is in a period of abundance which is when it’s most at risk of making people an abstraction.  I look forward to the challenge in ensuring that doesn’t happen.

There is so much more to this book – if you get a chance give it a read!

Always Do Whatever's Next

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  I took a new role within my organization within the product management group and it’s been keeping me pretty busy.  My new role and a recent post by another PM, friends don’t let friends become product managers, inspired this post.

A little background. I’ve been a product manager for 15 years and it’s the only job that I’ve wanted within a software company.  Like many folks, my start in product management was accidental and I was picked to be one based on my domain and product knowledge. The opportunities that I’ve taken since my initial job have not been in the same industry. I like to learn new geeky things.   I’ve also been up and down the food chain in the product management world. I’m a weeble – I bounce back :)

I’ve learned that there are many opportunities to grow as a product manager if you’re with the right organization.

You can continue and be a rock star product manager.  With that title be seen as a leader in the organization if you know your market, how to influence people and where to take the product.  If you get bored, you can take responsibility for a different product that has a different set of challenges like lifting a new one off the ground or reinvigorating one that’s more mature or one’s that in a different domain with different users.

My organization has a strategist role and is something I’ve been hearing more and more about lately (but with different titles).  This is typically more visionary and less execution as compared to a product manager.  You’re responsible for being an expert and setting the direction as it relates to one more market problems.  Typically these market problems cut across products.  You’re a big picture person and work with the product managers on execution.  This role gets everyone on the same page, doesn’t require everyone to become a SME and ensures execution of solving the problem correctly across product lines.

Then there is the traditional upward mobility path – director, VP, GM etc.  This is where you get into leading people and setting overall strategic direction.

I recently took the position of director of product management – responsible for leading a team of product/business analysts (not product managers).  I’m unsure if many organizations have this role and it will spark the debate of PM vs. PO. It’s been a new and fun challenge.  I recently met with someone who has a similar role in another company and it was great to get to learn from him since I don’t think there are many of us out there.

It’s been an interesting transition.  Getting out of the PM role and specifically letting go of old role had to be done for me to successful – its not easy but it can be accomplished (recently re-read the First 90 days to get my head straight).

Friends can let friends become Product managers – there are growth opportunities besides the traditional path. Also if there any of you out there that have a similar role to mine, please comment or tweet me – I would love to talk about it with you.

Start Anywhere.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’ve been taking an Improv class - because I was dropped on my head as a small child. Not really, but you will need to read my initial post to find out why I signed up. A friend of mine recently sent me the book: Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson.

Recently I’ve accepted a new position within product management at my current company.  As any typical overly analytical person does, I decided to read some books in the area related to my new position.  I put the book my friend sent me on the back burner.

I started reading the Improv book last week and of course it was more relevant to my day job then the 2 leadership books I recently read.  I’m about halfway through the book and it has already made small impacts on my day-to-day, reminded me why I started taking Improv class and inspired me to write another post.

One concept it discusses is “start anywhere”. 

When dealing with a daunting task or one you just don’t want to do – just simply start anywhere.  The idea is that once you’ve started something, you will be in the middle of the problem/project and things will become clearer on where to go next.  Sitting there on the sidelines overanalyzing where to start doesn’t solve anything – you don’t have a good idea of what the issue is standing on the outside. (note: this approach does not apply to surgeons, pilots, etc.)

It doesn’t just apply to tasks/projects but our speech.  Typically when I’m in a meeting with many people, I’m constantly listening, thinking and trying to figure out the best place to jump in.  I over think it – by the time I figure out what I want to say – the conversation has moved on to another topic. I’ve also potentially filtered a good idea that others could have built upon.  Don’t hesitate – start anywhere and the ideas will start to build on themselves. 

I learned this very early in Improv  but somehow didn’t apply it to my day job.  In Improv someone yells out “parole officer” and in a split second I have to become a parole officer. I have to start – because what’s worse then saying something dorky is saying nothing at all while on stage.  When I do that in Improv – I’m starting anywhere and the juices start flowing as soon as I get out my initial ideas and words.

The other big take away so far is that I shouldn’t script things when doing presentations or speaking in front of a group.  Much to my dismay, I do end up speaking in front of groups all the time.  The idea is that when it’s scripted, what you’re communicating can come across forced or inauthentic and less engaging. Also when scripted, you’re likely to lose your train of thought and fumble if things change on the fly.   Rather then scripting, the idea is to formulate questions to help drive what you’re saying.  For example, if I’m presenting features/capabilities in a product roadmap presentation those questions I prepare might be:

• Who is my audience?
• What capability are we delivering?
• Why is this feature important?
• How does it help my audience?
• When is the plan to deliver it?

When delivering the presentation, I’m simply answering the questions I made in my notes.  Try it – it flows relatively easy.

This is about trusting yourself and making the information engaging and relevant.

I’m off to Start Anywhere!