Author: Scott Berkun

This week in pm-clinic: mystery of personal goals

Posted on in Management, PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

In the company I work for, we have personal development discussions between manager and developers twice a year. One part of the discussion is goal setting for the next half year period, and I’m a new manager doing this for the first time.

Obviously, we want the goals to be measurable, realistic, specific, and all that. I am not that interested about general properties of good goals as I am confident (ok, arrogant :) about those. Instead, I want to see real examples of goals that have worked well or well written goals that failed. Not team goals, but individual goals.

The whole personal goal thing is shrouded in mystery – no one ever shows real examples from real reviews for real people, and I hoped pm-clinic might have some people willing to anonymize goals from people on their team, prior teams or share some of their own goals.

I realize that goal setting is dependent on context and I don’t expect that looking at other people’s goals would be transferable as such. Instead, I hope to get new ideas and food for thought in this subject that is new to me, and for that reason good and bad examples (with light commentary) would be valuable. Thanks.

Replacing the desktop (not yet)

Posted on in design, Microsoftby Scott Berkun

bumptop.jpgEvery so often the urge surfaces to replace parts of GUI, like Menus, toolbars and the desktop. This popular demo of BumpTop, from the U of Toronto, goes after the desktop.

First, some history: Back on IE4 in 1996 and again on Neptune (and here) in 1999 we brainstormed, prototyped and evaluated all kinds of radical re-inventions of the desktop (and GUI systems). For a time it was our mission, and we tried, read, played with, or prototyped just about everything that had been done. The conclusion (at least mine): The desktop is a ghetto. People spend so little time there during their day that reinvention doesn’t buy you much.

Certainly not enough to deal with re-learning basic tasks. Unless your reinvention carries over to replace File.Open dialogs and their bretheren too, it’s a low mileage revolution. (Not to mention how you get web-apps to follow your new models too). Especially these days with better search and big storage, people don’t suffer much from their messy, poorly organized desktops. Any UI problems there are noise compared to, say, fighting with web-based e-mail apps or on-line banking sites.

One perenial mistake we made in the Windows group was thinking of System UI (Toolbars, desktops, file folders) as a primary place. We spent so much time trying to build the system as a good experience, when the best thing we could have done would have been to get out of the way (admitidly harder than it sounds). Even then, as now, it’s the web and apps that get 90% of people’s time in any OS.

Now, Bumptop: This is fine research work and a great demo. They got an amazing number of details and subtlties right. It is the desktop metaphor to the max: you can shuffle, flip-through, scale, and crumple, just like things on your real desktop.

It’s certainly cool, but what difference does it all make? It’d be easy to run a baseline usability study, and compare human performance with Bumptop vs. Mac or Windows (A note to anyone else doing other GUI reinventions). Does all the visualization and pile manipulation speed finding things? For newbies or for experts? Who knows, but it’d be easy to find out and would cut the hype.

Even if it does – how much time a day do you spend organizing stuff into folders? If you’re like me, as little as possible. I clean things up when it gets too messy, but generally I avoid my desktop, or any file/folder/maintance, as much as possible.

If you do watch the video and get bored, skip to 3:00 in – more advanced manipulations including stuff I hadn’t seen before. If this stuff floats your boat, check out the Data mountain project from MSR, or Maya’s DEC project. There are tons of other visualization projects from the last 2 decades, but I’m too lazy to dig them all up for this post :)

(And now, since it’s 3pm in the peak of summer in Seattle, I’m going to get as far away from desktops as possible, and go outside to play with the dog – you should too).

Mistakes in technical leadership (Hacknot)

Posted on in Management, Software/Web developmentby Scott Berkun

For the last half-hour I’ve been jamming on essays at hacknot, on leadership and management in the tech-sector. The essays are somewhere between Joel On Software and Paul Graham in topic and tone, range from ethical challenges, opinion bias, and Delusions of crowds, to critiquing claims of agile methods.

Not sure why but I like finding writers who don’t rush their stuff into daily posts, but wait until they have something solid to say every few weeks and try to say it well.

Hacknot’s latest is a list of Mistakes in technical leadership.

(Link from architect’s linkblog)

How to Prevent Bad Morale Events at Work

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

theater.jpgThe basic rule for managers who are trying to “build morale” or “team build” is this: any event outside of work does not create morale.

What we commonly call a morale event only allows whatever morale that currently exists to surface, and if it’s healthy, to possibly grow. But if you take a dysfunctional team out to an amazing event, they return to misery. Take a happy team out to a horrible event, they return to happiness. It’s the experience at work that defines morale and you can’t fix a team through events alone.

Real morale requires consistently giving people work they care about, treating them fairly even in difficult situations and creating a culture of trust and shared values. This is harder to achieve in many organizations than obtaining budget to spend, which explains why so many poorly managed organizations spend so much on “morale”.

That said, there are ways to plan events so that they create the most opportunity for morale to grow.

What happens at good morale events?

  • Coworkers get a chance to become friends. By letting people play instead of work together, they have chances to build more natural relationships. They might learn that marketer or engineer that annoys them is fun to be with when they’re on your whiffle-ball team. They won’t be best friends but odds improve they’ll see each other as interesting people, rather than just the annoying coworker down the hall. Those non-work connections are buffers against conflict and hostility while at work.
  • Inject fun into group dynamic. Good morale events create stories: something crazy Fred did, how Sally beat the VPs at Halo, or the comeback the boss had for John’s rendition of his boring speech that morning. Create an event that makes stories possible. Those stories live on as a positive force, forever, in your organization. Think karaoke, an obstacle course, a scavenger hunt, something with seeds for stories. You have to take risks: even if the day is a complete disaster, guess what? That’s a story! Playing it safe never ever provides stories. Alcohol is tempting as a source for fun, but can lead to inappropriate or abusive behavior: don’t use it as the prime catalyst for fun.
  • Experience something new. Challenging (but non-threatening) morale events work because they force memories – They stand out and define that time for everyone there, giving them all a shared memory unique to their working experience. I can’t remember a single morale event on teams that just took us to the movies (see below) – but I can remember running through every building on campus when Windows 95 released, the time our team had a manager vs. programmer water-fight outside building 27, and the insane foodfight at the IE4 ship party (I have $50 for anyone who can find that lost photo of me with a pound of guacamole in my right ear).

By far the worst morale events are movies. There is no chance for interaction. No one gets to share anything about themselves. It’s a parade of mass forced introversion, where people join together to spend two hours staring silently at a screen. I love movies, but it’s not a good way to get to know someone better, unless the movie is followed by a meal where we can talk about what we just experienced.

How to plan a good morale event:

  1. Get the number of people down. If you can’t throw a good morale event for 10 people, why try for 200? Smaller is easier. Bringing 200 people to the movies adds zero morale to your team: but giving 20 a great day, that they’ll spread the word about when they return, adds tons of points. Either rotate teams, do a lottery, or dole out budgets to small teams at a time. And do not make morale events family days – that’s another thing. If people are getting paid for going to the morale event, than it’s a work thing, not a vacation day. Go for 200 only when you’ve figure out smaller events.
  2. Three key elements: fun, interaction, challenge. These elements explain why movies are so terrible for morale. They are not interactive and offer no challenge. How can sitting in the dark, in silence, with people you don’t know well, raise morale? And who wants to see movies in a packed house at 10am on Friday just because that’s the only time you can rent the place? Good morale events hit the trifecta, giving people a fun way to interact with others in the course of challenging themselves. Going to sports events isn’t as bad as movies, as you can talk to and see each other, but you’re watching other people do things instead of doing things together yourselves.
  3. Pick the right person to design the event. Some people are great at throwing parties, but most people are not: know thyself. Pick the person, or people, who are the spirit of your organization, or the organization you want to have, and let them organize the day. (Note: these people rarely have any correlation to the hierarchy). Give them the budget, your high level goals, and get out of the way. If you delegate right the first time and the event’s a success, people will fight over doing the organization work next time around. Never ever let the staff of managers, as a collective, design the day. You’ll get three big scoops of boring: a day no one hates, but no one remembers.
  4. Think cheap but clever. Money is a distraction. If you’re clever you can come up with creative ways to save cash. If it’s spring or summer do something outside: most parks are free or cheap to reserve. Organize carpools instead of having everyone drive (saves gas and time). See if you can barter your companies services to a place you’d like to rent. Ask around: who knows who, and can call in a favor, or offer one in return? Try to spend budget on food and drinks, two things you shouldn’t ever skimp on.
  5. Get away. It’s worth a 20-30 minute drive to wherever. People won’t wander off to check their e-mail at the first sign of boredom, and they’ll be committed to socializing (“Well I’m here, I should stop hiding in the corner and go talk to someone.”) Getting away raises the odds you’re taking them somewhere new and giving them an experience. Rent kayaks at the lake. Do a great BBQ at a really neat park (not the most convenient one). Don’t get suckered in by the convenience of big conference rooms or company spaces: you’ll instantly kill the buzz on whatever clever ideas you come up with. If you schedule wisely, you can dodge traffic both ways. And 5 great hours are better than 8 mediocre ones (and if you go for 5, give everyone the rest of the day off).
  6. Make it mildly competitive. If you’re afraid of low participation, or boredom, play on team rivalry. Organize it as the programmers vs. the testers, the website team vs. the management team, Over 30 vs. under 30 – I don’t know – make up something funny. The management vs. thing has potential for venting frustration in a safe, fun way, just be careful your competition doesn’t slide into war. Ask the folks from #2 to drive formulating how to break this down (Maybe it’s 3 teams? 4?). Throwing down a nice prize for the winning team as bait will get people involved if nothing else will.
  7. Think grade school games. Kickball is hands down the best no-frills, low-cost, easy organization activity to do. The goofyness of the ball (it’s big and red) equalizes just about everyone – there are no rock stars in kickball. It’s fun and, even for the super-competitive, hard to take too seriously. Throw in some good beer, food, music and a made up rivalry or cool prizes for the winners (that’s where your remaining budget can go), and you’ll have an awesome day. Frisbee Golf is runner up, as you can make courses anywhere, with teams of any number or size. (Whirlyball can work, but this has been a morale event staple for years). Semi-athletic things get people moving and change the hierarchy: no matter what happens co-workers become more than just their jobs.
  8. Pull surprises. If you’re in a big org, get a well-liked executive to drop by. If you’re a start-up, make a mystery day or afternoon. But if you go for the surprise, go big. If you say only “bring a swimsuit”, don’t take the team to the pool at the Y. They’ll never bite again at your surprises. But if you take them on a snorkling trip, or out on the lake for waterskiing, they’ll bite every time you offer a surprise in the future.

I’m convinced I’ve got some of the above wrong. There are too many teams with too many different things going on to prescribe morale plans for all of them. But I bet on the spirit: get out of the lame event rut. Take chances and do something interesting. You just might spark a fire, in them or in you, that leads to real morale back at work.

So help me out: What are the best and worst morale events you’ve experienced?

More on preventing innovation

Posted on in Innovation, Managementby Scott Berkun

From Tyler Blain, the Top ten tips on preventing innovation: His list goes further than mine in cynicism, in that it’s actually written as a playbook for squashing the creative life out of orgs. Fun read :) Of particular entertainment value:

5. Treat employees like garbage. Yell at them. Whenever possible, call them at midnight to yell at them some more. They work for us. If they get uppity, make them work on the weekends. Make them dig holes and fill them back up again. Threaten them – especially when they need the job. If you can’t yell, at least be condescending in public forums. Remember we are smarter than they are. Punks.

Love and hate: the management of Mark Cuban

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

cuban.jpg.jpgWhere do you draw the line for passion?

Watching Mark Cuban’s behavior as owner of Dallas Mavericks, currently vieing for the NBA championships, is a love and hate fest for me. There’s are hints of goodness in him, but it’s lost in his choices of expression. He’s an echo of some tech-sector VPs and managers I’ve worked with: a core of good intentions, misguided by imaturity and self-centric egoism.

His passion and emotion about what happens to his team is real and wonderful to see: he’s not a guy in a suit, he’s personally invested in what happens (Seen at right wearing the jersey of a suspended player). It must be a boost for players to work for someone so visibly passionate and interested in what’s going on. Finding that kind of empathy from managers is rare in all businesses, including the NBA.

But the problem is how those emotions are translated into behavior. Cuban complains, vents, rants and draws more negative attention to himself as if working only from the Billy Martin & Bobby Knight (Mr. chair thrower) playbook. He deliberately violates rules, challenges not only officials but the league commisioner, showing little respect for the game. Drawing heat away from the team can be a sweet management move, but his behavior often seems more about his own feelings rather than driven by protecting the emotions of the people that work for him.

A noble man, with respect for himself, his team, and the game, would find an appropriate forum to vent his complaints, but Cuban lacks restraint: there seems little wisdom between his feelings and actions.

Instead of spending $1.5 million in fines over 5 seasons, he could pay to bring every single NBA referee to a training camp of his own design, or driven by a coallition of (other disgruntaled) coaches. He could find some positive way to both bring other people to support his view, and to effectively be an advocate for positive change. Why not found an NBA referee recruiting program? Work with other owners to boost their salaries to draw better talent? Regarless of whether his complaints are valid or not, there are more respectable ways for handling them.

But as of late, he makes it all too easy to pidgeon hole him as the spoiled rich kid who expects the world to circle behind his wake and give him what he wants when he cries. Whether he deserves this stereotype or not, being percieved in this way can’t possibly serve whatever his true ambitions for Dallas are.

Berkun down under: Sept. workshops in Australia

Posted on in On Tour, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

Working out the final details with the fine folks at  Step two designs to teach my workshop on Leading UX teams. More details to follow but tentative dates are:

Sydney, Sept 1st
Canberra, Sept 5th
Melbourne, Sept 8th

The one day workshop will be a crossover between project management and UX design, hiting all the sweet spots folks leading UI efforts often struggle with (including highlights from the ux-clinic list).

If anyone wants to try to meet up for drinks or a bite, leave a comment and I’ll follow up.

Hard conversations

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

An interesting link from Reforming project management: Harvard Business school writes about Morning meetings – a daily meetup where leaders meet to get in sync. The essay is ok, but one passage caught my eye:

In contrast, two qualities characterize high-functioning leadership teams: (1) hard conversations happen—difficult issues move quickly from people’s heads to the conference table; (2) accountability is shared—individuals on the top team feel a responsibility to the organization as a whole, not just for their piece of the action.

What a great goal – hard conversations happen. I can’t tell you how many teams are stuck in the 5th level of hell for the single reason that leaders never let hard conversation happen. And the kicker is accountability – nothing more fun to work in a team culture that’s proactively accountable, with everyone taking their fair share of heat when things go wrong – suddenly people spend more time working instead pointing fingers.

Now if only someone at Harvard would write an essay on how to make hard conversations and accountability happen :)

This week in pm-clinic: Shifting a culture

Posted on in PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a development lead in a high powered web development company. We beat competitors on speed and quality technology, and engineers like me do the closest thing to project management. We avoid specs and docs, working in small enough teams that fast communication is pretty easy. There is a strong anti-management vibe in the company, as well as a hyper proactive “do it now and fix it later” mentality, but those attitudes have served us really well – our company has been super successful.

The problem is that our organization has grown from 100 to 2000+ people in a handful of years. Many engineers work on several projects at a time, including lots of remote programmers. We have a high number of virtual teams and a super flat hierarchy – things that are liberating, but are suddenly annoying at times. The consensus driven approach we have isn’t as speedy as it was.

My dilemma has two parts:

Tactics: I’m more willing to try changes than many of my peers and reports. So how do I add in more management-y things, a little more structure and clearer division of ownership, without rocking the boat and being called a weenie? (Our lingo for fuddy-dutty management types). I fear it’s a one way ride: These things I’ll add will never be removed and it’s a downward spiral of over-management (And my team of engineers fears this too).

Strategy: How do you work to shift the culture the company was founded on and take pride in, when it’s not working as well anymore? I can’t say I’ve worked anywhere that handled this successfully – either the success ends, or people leave, whenever leaders try to mature the culture.

This week in ux-clinic: Does help matter?

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum:

I’m an information designer and developer, aka technical writer. I’ve recently been told that the v1 of our new product will not have context-sensitive help. The engineering team lead says “too bad; no one reads the documentation anyhow.”

I believe it’s impossible to design a totally intuitive UI, since everyone’s intuitive is different, and frankly, we’re not perfect as designers anyway. I think this means documentation has an important role – but since it’s my job, maybe I’m biased :)

So I’m curious about how other organizations either include documentation / support as a first order part of the experience, or how they justify depricating it given how often even the best designs fail their users. Is documentation something easily cut on your projects? How do you justify (or argue against) this?

– Help with help

The Power to Stop Innovation

Posted on in Innovation, Managementby Scott Berkun

As part of the research behind The Myths of Innovation, I read a tall stack of books with the word creativity or innovation in the title. Many had the same theme: they make incredible promises. They often say that with just a few simple steps or “secrets”, your competitors will stumble in your wake. Profits and promotions will be your dominion. And if the promises weren’t grand enough, many of these books presume that you have enough power in your organization to make anything you desire happen.

But an important question that’s easily overlooked is: Who has the power to stop progress in your organization?

Before you worry about pitching ideas or leading change, it’s worth considering who the powerful enemies of your, or anyone’s, good idea are. Most books, despite their promises, don’t help much with powerful coworkers who are in love with the status quo. Unless the books are slim enough to fling across the conference table and heavy enough to knock our their targets them out when they strike.

People in power stop progress because they:

  1. Are scared. They’re struggling to lead right now, without introducing more change.
  2. Don’t understand the new idea.
  3. Understand the idea, but see it as mere change, not progress.
  4. Are afraid of the changes the idea represents.
  5. Think the idea conflicts with their organization’s existing goals (which they don’t want to change).
  6. Are generally risk-phobic. They reject most ideas regardless of merit.
  7. Fear they’ll lose control over their organization. Or their empire will shrink in prestige.
  8. They don’t know how to convert the idea into profit, or advantage.
  9. Don’t see how it can help them get promoted.
  10. See the idea as creating more work for them.

Of course sometimes rejecting an idea is a wise move. Change isn’t always progress. But as this lists suggests, there are many strong and private reasons someone in power will reject ideas for reasons that have little to do with the merit of the idea itself. If you want to work with ideas, you need to understand the true landscape of power. And adjust the approach you take for getting support for the ideas on your mind.

[revised 12-7-15]

Tales of Vista development at MSFT

Posted on in Management, Microsoftby Scott Berkun

An interesting opinion on Vista’s project management issues from a former development manager on the Vista team (now a manager on the Tablet PC team at Microsoft).

It’s worth a read, is better informed than my outsider opinion, with references to action vs. results management, Too many cooks, Broken windows theory, opnions on Line of code measurements, etc. One favorite quote from his essay:

After months of hearing of how a certain influential team in Windows was going to cause the Vista release to slip, I, full of abstract self-righteous misgivings as a stockholder, had at last the chance to speak with two of the team’s key managers, asking them how they could be so, please excuse the term, I don’t mean its value laden connotation, ignorant as to proper estimation of software schedules.

Turns out they’re actually great project managers. They knew months in advance that the schedule would never work. So they told their VP. And he, possibly influenced by one too many instances where engineering re-routes power to the warp core, thus completing the heretofore impossible six-hour task in a mere three, summarily sent the managers back to “figure out how to make it work.” The managers re-estimated, nipped and tucked, liposuctioned, did everything short of a lobotomy — and still did not have a schedule that fit. The VP was not pleased.

“You’re smart people. Find a way!” This went back and forth for weeks, whereupon the intrepid managers finally understood how to get past the dilemma. They simply stopped telling the truth. “Sure, everything fits. We cut and cut, and here we are. Vista by August or bust. You got it, boss.”

Note: I had to set font size down in Firefox (Ctrl -) to read this without wanting to bash my monitor in.

(From metafilter)

Small tales of technology failure

Posted on in designby Scott Berkun

death.jpgEvery now and then I’ve seen airport arrivals boards showing only the blue screen of death – This time it was somewhere new. I walked past about 10 gates to find the arcade, only to find new evils lurking inside those tall 1980s style video games.

Depressed at my inability to crash up some cars while waiting for a flight (curious how there are never flying games at airports), I wandered into the restroom. After washing up, I found failed technology #2.

There’s nothing sadder than a spring that’s lost its nerve.

Staring at the broken spring, hands wet at my sides, face dripping onto my once pretty shirt, I found a new longing for those tempermental autodetecting hand dryers. And yes, dear friends, at this moment of great moisture reduction need, there were no paper towels to be had.

deaddryer.jpgI guess at least in this case it’s obvious things are broken – with those autodetect things, trying oh so hard to be smart, you never know if you’re doing something wrong, if they’re broken, or just teasing you.

Still wet, I wandered into the nearest Starbucks, ignoring the strange stares of baristas and customers (Is he just sweaty or does he have the plague?), and consumed a half dozen napkins to dry myself off.

This week in ux-clinic: Keep ’em seperated?

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a lead designer (manage team of 5 usability and design folks) who was told last week to merge with another UX team. I’ll be the overall manager, but I’ve never managed a group this large. My team services about 10 projects across the company, and we’re a centralized and self-contained org.

I see 3 options:

1) Keep the org flat for awhile. Until I see a path, stay with one manager (me) and 10+ reports.

2) Split into a design team and a usability team. I’d be the uber UX manager, with one design lead and one usability lead.

3) Cross-discipline. I’d mix roles on both teams, with two UX leads, and some designers and usability engineers reporting to each of them.

Opinions?

This week in pm-clinic: A management puzzle

Posted on in PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

As a break from situations, for this week here’s a PM puzzle that never fails to surface astonishing pet theories and assumptions:

Since a 100 person-day project cannot be practically completed in 1 day with 100 people, it’s safe to assume it cannot be completed in 2 days with 50 people. But the question is, assuming the total amount of work is known (e.g. 100 person days), how should you estimate how many people you need, or how much calendar time it will take?

Do you need radicals for change?

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

An interesting post at Anil Dash: A Malcom and a Martin.

He suggests that change happens when there are two distinct forces at work on the same position. One radical (Malcolm X) and one rational (Martin Luther King. Jr). I’m sure there are nuances to the history of the civil rights movement, but there is a familiar pattern. The radical position gets attention and riles up those who disagree, and space is created for a moderate position to gain ground by being more paletable than the radical.

My position is that you need attention to have influence, and radicals can bring attention to an issue that is being ignored. But there are other ways to get attention. You can earn it from people who learn to respect you for intelligent work you do, problems you’ve solved, or smart things you say.

In my experience real change in organizations happens quietly, in small meetings with a handful of people – The drama of movements, big speaches, and flaming e-mails is to get enough influence to earn a seat in those small meetings. Or to have the ear of someone else that’s there to represent you, or give you the scoop on what’s happening next, before the whole organization knows.

So I don’t think you need radicals for change – They can help by adding leverage to a position, surface a point of view that’s gone unheard, or put momentum behind an idea that is being ignored, but often there are other ways to achieve those things without taking radical positions or actions.

Saving the world by laptop

Posted on in designby Scott Berkun

The most challenging design works involve big constraints, noble goals and few rewards – and one candidate for design work of the year is the One laptop per child project. It satisfies most of my philosophical gripes about technology and is directed squarely at the digital divide in the third world.

Worldchanging.org has an update and mini-review of the laptop development in progress.

Any fan of Victor Papanek should be in love with this effort.

Free book for startups: special offer

Posted on in The Art of PM bookby Scott Berkun

(This is offer is closed – thanks for playing)

Are you, or is someone you know, currently working full time at a start-up company? Do you like free copies of bestselling books? Then read on.

I’m trying to learn if anything I said in the art of project management applies well to start-up environments. While some chapters don’t work as well as others, my hypothesis is that much of it holds together for any kind of organization. Decisions, leadership, and chaos are part of all projects, startup or not.

But I want to test the hypothesis instead of pretending I’m right.

I have 5 copies of the book ready to go – if you want one, here’s how you qualify:

1. Leave a comment with your name, or contact me here.
2. Include a link to your start-up’s website. No website, no book.
3. Give me an address to send the book.
4. Swear on your favorite person that you’ll read 4 or more chapters in the next month and send some feedback.

That’s it. I’ll sign each one personally for you and send it on it’s way.
Of couse if you’ve read the book already and work at a start-up, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Depending on what I learn, perhaps there’s an “artofpm for startups” edition in the future.

(This is offer is closed – thanks for playing)

Great management in progress: NBA playoffs

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

I’m aware of the risks of stretching topics to the point of transparency, but I have to note the high quality of what’s happening in the NBA playoffs right now, at least from a team and management perspective. The best lessons I’ve learned about teamwork, leadership and success come from my experience in competitve sports – especially basketball. And right now some of the best basketball the NBA has seen in a long time is being played.

I’ll hold off on the treatise comparing sports teams to design or management, but I can say this: Every one of the four teams still in the playoffs plays like a team.

  • They have shared goals
  • They help their teammates
  • They check their egos at the door
  • They work hard
  • They play to win
  • They love what they do and show it

Typically the NCAA tournament, where amateur athletes play every game like it’s their last, is the most exciting event in sports, with every game coming down to the last minute, or the last shot. Well this year the NBA playoffs have seen more lead changes, game 7s, and last second turns than any year I can remember.

The coaches of these teams set a high standard of leadership and management. Pat Riley, Avery Johnson, Flip Saunders & Mike D’Antoni have all earned solid reputations for building great teams and managing them with a sense of balance, integrity and professionalism. Given the size of the egos and sallaries of players, it takes a masterful manager to keep a sense of team together. I’m a particularly strong fan of Avery Johnson, a former point guard, for how open and honest he is about what’s he’s doing and why.

Steve Nash, Dwayne Wade, Ben Wallace & Dirk Nowitzki, four of the biggest stars from each team, approach the game in the old school, fundamentals way. The way I was taught to play. None of them are flashy, show-boat, trash talking players. They leave it all out on the floor and let their games and work ethics speak for them. There is nothing more exciting than watching a great talent who isn’t isn’t in love with themselves as much as they’re in love with with the game, and profession, they’re in. These guys play with respect and make you want them to win.

The result of all this is some excellent, high excitement, team based basketball. It’s a throwback to the NBA of old. And the best news is that there are still two rounds of playoffs left – If you want to see great teams in action, tune in to watch Miami vs. Detroit, or Phoenix vs. Dallas, and see for yourself.