Communicate, but wait first connect

Been on stage ever wondering, why those lads in the audience are busy yawning? Ever walked to a ticket counter and noticed why the lady behind the counter never looks you right into your eyes? Ever tried to figure out why calculating a TV TRP is such a difficult task? or ever wondered why the RJ on your favourite radio channel never blabbers what you want her to? Well they all miss one critical part of communication.... The CONNECT part.

The connect in the communication makes the communication effective and vital, eventually managers, leaders who fail to bring the connect part in the work they do, always tend to fail in the overall results. A few months ago I attended a live music programme and a seminar on some typically financial topic. I always thought speeches and seminars are boring while music is great.. My assumption changed when I had the speaker of this boring topic make a few connects with the audience, he asked questions, he cracked jokes, he made gestures and he involved the audience and dragged them deep into the topic. On the other hand the singer and the band playing the greatest hits ever never ever got the audience involved. That's the importance of connect in the communication.

Its the same thing with articles and blogs... if they don't connect, they loose the touch, the hope and the feedback, eventually making the communication connectionless.  The video below explains how connect plays a key role in communication... Be it the safety measures video before you fly or the most hostile speech you hear...

Remember to connect when you communicate... 

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Communication : Talking, Listening or more?

"The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished" - George Bernard Shaw 
A few days ago we happened to do our Project kick off, an event where we discuss what we would achieve in the quarter, for the product in a given release cycle with details of who does what and when. Wanting to keep the mood of the kick off light we wanted to have some cake cut at the end of the kick off meeting and celebrate the beginning of the release; I happened to pass on few quids to the office boy and asked him to get us a cake, when the kick off meeting was over and we opened the box it was a small cake that probably wont be enough for our team, so what was this?

Also a few weeks ago, my wife called me while I was on my way home and asked me to get a "Few cold drinks" mentioning my kids friends are in. Thinking that the troop was at home for a puppy party or something I ended up taking a few gallons of soft drinks, only to reach home and realise they were 2 of them. What do you call this????

Well its the disconnect. The ability to speak is not the same as the ability to communicate. Speaking is different than constructing a message, building it, conveying it, gathering the feedback, processing it and returning it back in a way it is understood. Most times the part involving feedback and further is lost and hence a disconnect happens breaking the communication and causing pains and disasters big or small.

Communication is not about you blabbering, it is conveying processed information
Communication is not about words exchanged, it is about processing the words to result an outcome
Communication is not about you listening or you telling, Communication is always about connecting

Next time when you communicate..... make sure

1. You construct a message that would be easy to understand and can be easily conveyed
2. You take that message and use an appropriate channel to pass it on
3. You wait for the feedback once you convey the message.
4. You take the feedback and process it to understand if your message is rightly understood and if not you re-convey.
5. You take the resultant feedback and build the next message in a language and mode it is understood...

None of the above is new to us, eventually we in the rush always tend to forget the completeness of the communication and that results in delays and waste of efforts you never looked for.

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Apologies for keeping this dull

If you were a reader of the blog and have been noticing dull periods on this blog.. I would start with an apology... Its been a really busy year for me and inspite of having tons of drafts documented I had absolutely no time reviewing them.

I have just found a better time to spend on this blog and a better way to do it... so I am hoping to bring some life to this blog soon.

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The No Whining Zone

How much of negativity do you see around when you sit on your desk? How much of those vibes hurt your development? How much it affects your moral and productivity? How much you start whining yourself? I am sure, answer to a lot of these questions are not known to you. A lot of us basically dont even notice or consider the whining around to be actual whining. For several reasons whining in office spaces have become the basic necessity and believe me you would certainly see moral and attitude troubles in places that are whiner-land.

So what and how does this whining affect us? I recently happened to visit a Travel agent, a small office clubbed with around 8-9 people who would help the clients book hotels, flights etc. I wanted to get my vacation planned with them and since the tour planner was running late I got a chance to sit in the crowded place. A few moments I noticed that that the girls around were talking, I could not avoid over-hearing but they were cribbing about phones, about customers behaviours, about bosses, about people.. during the same time they chose to have their working lunches and I noticed the whining increased in mercury levels.... there were arguments, complains and raised voices... huh.... Before I left the office I asked my planner on what was the issue with the girls working there, he said they have several and sometimes they just crib about everything..

I realised if your office space is a whining area.. where people choose to do nothing but complains.... you are soon de-moralizing your teams, building wrong attitudes in people and of course affecting your over all growth and productivity. Whiners spread there magic like fire and when they spread the negativity they dont care where they do it, how they do it and who it affects.

In today's era we all are burdened with a lot of work, deliveries, quality, customers and deals. Hence we all need that sympathy soul who can hear us out... most times whining is done to get away from responsibility or blame others for things not happening. A engineer can whine if he is consistently working hard on deliverables, if he see's not so good quality work coming to him, if he sees issues in the work place, if he notices any troublesome factor.. sometime he will wine if he see himself working more than others, if he thinks he is paid less, if he thinks other companies pay better and the list continues.... all these situations and talks happen in work desks, passages, smoke area and pantry rooms.

The Book Whining : 3 steps to stopping it before tears and tantrums gives a superb view of different types of whining that happens in a house, family. But it is not bad to link it to a workplace where the effects are much broader and affects bigger audience.

So how do we create the no-whining zone in workplace?

1. Make people accountable.. if they know how to take responsibility there will be lesser reasons to whine.

2. Make people responsible, if they know their responsibilities well there will be less reasons to whine

3. Suggest people they talk positive.. Unless they speak good things about even the worst possible elements there wont be those negative whining vibes.

4. Suggest people to have smiling than frown faces.

5. Put boards across office asking NO WHINING PLEASE

6. Create whining zones which are distanced than the work place and people can be noticed... it is important to let the whining not affect regulars or the motivated.

Last but not the least... whining is a problem.. try to fix the issue that matters... changing whiners is a difficult task.

Make your workplace a fun area not a whiners paradise

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We love Unhappiness? Do we? Really?

One thing I have learnt in my 32 year life is that humans are most insecure, dissatisfied and whining fellows. We just don't know how to be Happy or rather we just don't want to be Happy. I mean a few days ago I was playing the Age of empire, a strategic game. You build farms, food, infrastructure, you build your empire, make friends, allies and what not. Eventually after I spent around 8 days building a good set of empire, I started feeling uneasy, I decided to build an army, I wanted to grow my power, money and designation in the game. I was unhappy about them and I wanted to do more... In turn I made a few allies, attacked others. Huh? Tension grows.. wars, battlefields, blood... Darn it, even in a game? One can just not stay happy.

No??? tell me one game you have played that where you are happy and you keep playing? Lets take caveman.. once he is reaching his destination after playing all those difficult levels.. the Game ends... For that matter even the movies... it starts all good, romantic then some blunders and unhappiness, sadness and then the moment you get to be Happy the movie ends. Huh?

I think we humans are trained to become unhappy :). OK OK.. I am not teaching you about happiness here. Last when I wrote about Happiness quotient I emphasized on this part. In fact when I asked the question If I am happy years ago, I learnt I tried to be one. Well we spent most of our times at work, and hence work plays an important role in our happiness.

A few years ago the place I worked got me the experience of happy and unhappy people. I still remember the lessons and I have to say I am happy I learnt them. A few days ago I overheard someone whining to others about morning, traffic, day, office, parking, work, salary, job, role and I don't know what not, it made me feel he/she was not Happy. Since I wrote in my previous post about it, I asked the person what is it that is keeping him blocked? Why is he/she not able to enjoy work, be a part of the momentum or create one? I guess the answer I would say as for all whining lords was missing.

Unhappiness is an attitude, that gets more and more deeper into you. The more time you stay unhappy, the more your attitude turns ugly. It reaches a level where you have no turning back. I think over period I have realised that several companies spend their energies not in making their workforce happy... they spend there effort on working to not have them unhappy. The later is disastrous. I have experienced it, the more you try the more it grows, because the one's that are unhappy will always be unhappy. But don't get disappointed some psychology experts have figured out that Love can help improvise the situation.

Love...

Ask yourself, your teams, people who surround you to answer the following questions and actions:

1. Do you love the people you work with? If not what will make you love them?

2. Do you think the people you work with love you? If not what is it you think can make them love you?

3. Do you love what you do? If not what do you love to do? and can you tell the people you love on what you want to do?

4. Do you enjoy what you do?

5. Do you tell what you are unhappy about others?

6. Do you tell yourself what you are unhappy about?

7. Do you like to admit your mistakes? Do you like to improvise?

8. Do you think love can make a difference?

9. Do you love to be happy? If not unhappy? insecure?

10. Do you enjoy love and being loved?

Ask these and a few more, confront, talk, speak, learn and yes Love. Happiness at the place you spend most of your time is as important as oxygen. If you cant be happy and you have not made any efforts to be happy, you maybe on the path to be a whiner or a looser. Lets change path. Lets find ways to be Happy with people you are surrounded with.

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Are bugs hurting your backlog?

I ended up in a discussion with the team last week on how bugs cause a unmanageable link to the Technical debt. The debate was how should bugs be treated. my argument laid with bugs that hurt the current development and the future backlog. As a agile team a product backlog is key driver in defining what we do for in every release, the known unknown here is the bugs that are generated out of the current development. Let's say your product backlog is 200. If your team of 10 is burning say 100 user stories in a release of 10 days we can say that the velocity is around 10. But if in the same situation your team is burning 100 user stories in 10 days and creating 20 bugs that take 5 days to fix, your velocity is dropped to less than 7 + on the release day your backlog increased from 100 to 110 say a 20% increase.

Gauge the effect bugs can have in your system. Now go a bit deeper, assume you can only only resolve 10 of the 20 bugs in 5 days. The other 10 bugs go sit in your product backlog. When you cant get them in the current release and put them up for the next they take 20 days to resolve (Due to the time spent in between it no longer is hands on) your velocity rate with the bugs regards is then 100 user stories in 25 days (Just around 4?) Now if these 10 bugs are mapped for a future unknown release???? The technical debt it had created can be high, very high and would lead to say 10 more bugs getting created [causing you 8 days or maybe 10] your velocity with regards has now gone to ?????? less than 3 and forget about the qa and discussion cycles, customer unhappiness, quality quotient. Your product backlog spanned to 120 which is 20% more than what you expected to burn.

So next time when your release user story is generating a bug, go shout on your developer and tell him/her that the bug is a part of requirement and when you go live you want the feature to be done, not debted.

Obviously for those "Think Realistic" atheists this wont sound good. But remember your product backlog is piling up with the bugs, your velocity decreasing, your debt increasing and your cycles of qa increasing... in other words nothing in favour of better product.

What do you do to bugs that get created from your development bug and found during the release?

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