Tibco active mentoring day 2

TIBCO
ActiveMentoring™
Day 2 - the dip

Tuesday, December 4, 12

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Recap

Welcome back. I’m glad you are all here.
To recap from our last session.
We talked about the ActiveMentoring program. We talked about the mission.
[mission slide]

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Recap
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We are working to shape how we think about
work, and success

Welcome back. I’m glad you are all here.
To recap from our last session.
We talked about the ActiveMentoring program. We talked about the mission.
[mission slide]

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Mission
ActiveMentoring will help shape how you
think about work for the rest of your life and
will provide practical ideas for things you can
start doing right now that will make a real
and measurable difference in your success,
your contribution to TIBCO, and your
satisfaction with your work and your life.

Be BOLD! Promise the world and you can deliver it.
ENERGY

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Recap
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work, and success

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Obstacles to success, especially with focus and
prioritization

We talked about obstacles
[Obstacles slide]

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Obstacles
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Hard to know what to do next
Focus and prioritization are hard, tactical
interruptions
Don’t know the next step in our career path
Hard work != guaranteed success
Don’t know the org’s goals
Don’t know high value things
No time for follow-through
Don’t know what success means
Stuck in a cul-de-sac


*Hard to know what to do next.
*Focus and prioritization are hard. There are too many tactical interruptions in the way of getting the job done.
*Don;t know the next step in our career path.
*Hard work is not a guarantee of success.
*Not knowing what the organization’s goals are, and how to tie them back to our own goals and activities.
*Not knowing what high value things to grab on to, or how to recognize them when they appear.
*Don’t get a chance to follow through on projects.
*Don;t know what success means to us.
*Stuck in a cul-de-sac and don’t know how to get out.

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Recap
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work, and success

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prioritization

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Success is not selfish, it is our responsibility

Success
We talked about who has responsibility for our success, e.g. Us.
Nobody cares more about our career than we do. And, nobody is in a better position to influence it.
* Success is not selfish, is is our responsibility.
* It is our responsibility in that we have authority and control over it.
* And, it our responsibility in the sense that we are obligated to succeed. That is what TIBCO needs from us, and that is what we need from ourselves.
[SLIDE - The path to success]

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the path to success

The path to success

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We are all exactly where we are supposed to be, right at this moment.
We are all at a point in our lives where we are sitting between a bunch of stuff we are already goo at. And a bunch of stuff we want to be good at.
[draw the line on the board, mark the stuff we know already, the stuff we will know, and where we are in the middle]
This is exactly right.
For all of us, there are things that we’ve learned. And things we haven’t learned yet. It’s a mistake to be dissatisﬁed with that.
If where are are at the moment is stuck is a cul-de-sac (we’ll talk more about this when we talk about the dip). That is a perfect place to be. If we weren;t in that dead end, we wouldn;t have
any motivation to move on to something new. And, if we happen to be at this very moment on a steep path or learning new things, than that’s good too.
We can think of ourselves as on an overall growth path. We are in the middle, between the stuff we learned before an the stuff we will learn going forward.
[title the line “Where we are today”]
The only thing we want to compare ourselves against is ourselves in the future. What anybody else is doing doean;t man anything. There are always those with more, and those with less.
Always.
But, there is something else that is always true. The one person I know who is more successful than you are today. The one person who gets more done with less effort, who is more
successful is the future you.
You are on a continuum. Right here on your trajectory. And, with a bunch of effort, you can get…
[title the line “Where we are in the future”]
Here. This is where you will be tomorrow after all that hard work. You’ll be in between a bunch of stuff you already know, and a bunch of stuff that you are about to learn.
The reason I want to talk about this is because we are going to spend a lot of time talking about changing stuff. But I don;t want this to sound like anyone should be dissatisﬁed with where
they are right now. We are all in a perfect place. Jyst where we are supposed to be.

Recap
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work, and success

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prioritization

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Success is not selﬁsh, it is our responsibility
The system is what the system is


The system
And, we started talking about the system - it is what it is, a big dumb system. And we can make it do what we want.

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Agenda for today
• Ofﬁce Space
• Byron Katie
• Columbus
• Seth Godin
• Take-away exercise

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The TIBCO-Career system


The system is the system.
It is perfectly designed to do the things that it is doing. It is what it is.
We need to work with the environment that we have, not pretend we are working in the environment we wish we had, or think we should have.
There is no fair. There is only reality. And reality wins, exactly 100% of the time.
It’s in our hands
Our goal is to understand the system, the WHAT of the system. WHAT it does. Not WHY, not WHY NOT, not what it SHOULD do, not even HOW it works. We just need to know WHAT it
does.
Then, we give it the right inputs so we get the results that we want.
Later, if we have the motivation, we can work on changing the system. But for now, that’s not our job.
[Group Exercise]
2 groups. Need a list of 10 things we know about how the TIBCO-Career-Success system works.
Work on them in a small group. Then when you have them, put them on the board.
Last week, Rajeev suggested that the best thing to do with a system we want to change, it to hack it :-)

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Hackers

All of these movies have one thing in common. They are about Hackers.
Discussion - what is a hacker? What is hacking?
These ﬁlms are about someone who comes across some sort of system that behaves one way, and they want it to behave in a different way.
Maybe because the system is maladapted and going to destroy the world, maybe because they want to make a bunch of money.
But, in all cases they want to change the way the system works. They want to give it their own inputs, and get the outputs that they want.
In Ofﬁce Space, this hack works on two levels.
* The characters hack their clients banking system to collect the rounding error on transactions and transfer it to themselves.
* The main character hacks his career by reinventing who he is and how he approaches work.

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Hacking is the process of changing how an
existing system works so that your inputs
generate the outputs that you want.
What makes it hacking and not programming
is that you don’t need the permission of the
system, or the system’s owner, to do it.


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Hacking your career


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Hacking your career
• Your career is a system

Your career is a system
Your career, TIBCO, your life, your happiness and satisfaction - these are all just systems that have inputs, they process those inputs, and they have outputs or results.
These systems are complex, and arbitrary and dynamic. They are not easy to ﬁgure out. There are often long delays between inputs and the resulting outputs, and those delays make it
hard to ﬁgure them out. They are a big black box.

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Hacking your career
• Systems behave in predictable ways

Systems behave in predictable ways
But, the fact that these systems are complex and arcane doesn’t matter. It doesn;t matter how they do what they do. It doesn;t matter why they do it.
The only thing to understand is what they do in response to an input.
We will talk about a lot of behaviors or inputs to our career-TIBCO system.
And we will talk about how we can change those inputs, and what outputs are likely to result.
It doesn’t matter how or way the system is the way that it is. It’s a dumb system, even if complex. And, that’s the good news. Because we can control the system.
The good news is that if we do certain things, we will get the results that we want. There is no way to avoid it. Nobody can stop us. And we don’t need anyone’s permission.
If we keep doing the things we are already doing, we will continue to get the results we are already getting.

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Hacking your career
• Reality wins

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Reality Wins
No matter how much we wish the sytem were different. No matter how strongly we feel that the system would be better if it gave different responses to the current inputs, the fact remains
that it won’t change. Existing inputs -> existing outputs.

Hacking your career
• Reality wins
• Good news, we’re in control

Good news
But, again, that’s good news. The system will respond to different inputs. No matter what. It has to. It’ a machine. It has no choice. New inputs or behaviors will yield different results.
This is why it is a hack. We don’t need the system’s permission, or TIBCO’s permission, or our manager’s permission, or Tom’s or Vivek’s. They don’t even need to know.
Nobody will stand in our way, and the system has no security against being hacked!
It is all up to us.
New actions > new results

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Hacking your mind

The Thinks You Can Think, by Dr. Seuss
You can think up some birds. That’s what you can do.
You can think about yellow or think about blue…
You can think about red, you can think about pink.
You can think up a horse, oh the thinks you can think.
But, before we talk about hacking the system, we need to talk about hacking our mind
Our mind is a system, like any other.

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Hacking your mind
• Great servant

Our mind is a terriﬁc servant. We can ask our mind to think of all kinds of things.

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We can ask it to remember stuff for us, we can ask it to do some calculations, pay attention to stuff and let us know when something changes. We can ask it to come up with new ideas. We
can ask it how it feels about things.
And, we can ask it to predict the outcomes of various events. We can ask it to model complex systems and predict what result will come from an input.
But, our mind is a terrible master. We can’t let our brains tell us what to do. We can’t react to everything our brain tells us as if it was true.
We control our minds, we don;t let our minds control us.
When we learn this lesson, we are more powerful than 90% of our peers.
So, what does it mean to control our own minds?
We have to identify the models that our minds have created for the systems around us. Then we have to challenge those models. Not all of them, just some of them.

Hacking your mind
• Great servant
• Terrible master

But, our mind is a terrible master.
We can’t let our brains tell us what to do. We can’t react to everything our brain tells us as if it was true.
We control our minds, we don;t let our minds control us.
When we learn this lesson, we are more powerful than 90% of our peers.
So, what does it mean to control our own minds?

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what we know about how the
system works

Byron Katie
There is an author named Byron Katie who does a lot of writing on mental models, and how they work. She is well known for her research into how and why we create mental models that
interfere with our understanding and interpretation of the reality around us. She teaches that understanding these models is the ﬁrst step to changing the models. And her research shows
that changing these mental models is actually pretty easy, it’s powerful, and it’s permanent.
One of her exercises is challenging reality by spending some time exploring what the opposite of the reality might be.
For example, “If you work hard then you will be successful.” is a pretty widely held belief about reality.
But, what if the opposite were true. What is the opposite?
* Work hard and you won’t succeed
* Don’t work hard, and you will succeed
* Work hard and someone else will be successful
* Get someone else to do the work for you and you will succeed.
* Becoming successful just means that you have to work harder.
Note that just because the opposite is true, doens;t mean that the original thought isn;t true. It just means that all of these self-contradictory things are all simultaneously true. And, that
means we can pick the ones we want to be our “reality”

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Discussion

• What is the opposite of the things we
know about the system?

[Discussion]
Review the 10 things about how the system works
Discuss the opposite. What is the opposite? What if the opposite were true? Can we ﬁnd examples where the opposite is true? Can we challenge these models?

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Mental Models

Why does the mind have models?
The advantage of a mind model is that it let’s us react to stuff without a lot of effort or having to think about it, or to test reality to see if the model is correct.
See a speeding train coming at you > Model predicts that it will hurt a lot to get hit > jump out of the way. Very easy and helpful.
But, a flawed model gets in the way.
Think about flying > Mental model says planes can crash and kill everyone on board > don’t get on the plan, miss the job interview.
When we are a servant to the mind, we can react to a flawed model and do the wrong thing, or fail to do the right thing.
When we master our mind, we can change the model.

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Changing models
• Easy
• Powerful
• Permanent

The good news is that changing models is easy. It’s powerful and it’s permanent.
[Draw the map and the trade route to India and china]
Columbus
At one point in time, everyone know that the earth was ﬂat. There was no way to think about it in any other way. The ﬂat earth was a very powerful mental model. And people made
decisions based on that model. Trade between europe and india was limited because it was hard to get to.
Columbus proposed a new mental model, that the earth was round. And, based on that model you could get to India by sailing west.
It was hard for even the very intelligent to get it. The idea of a round earth was actually thousands of years old by the time Columbus showed up.
how come people don’t fall off?
How come it doesn;t look round?
What does this mean about god?
The reason it was hard for people was that they tried to understand the How and the Why.
But the how and why don’t actually matter. Just the What.
* Sail west and you’ll eventually make it back where you started, stopping in india on the way and trading stuff for a lot of money.
Columbus loaded a bunch of guys in a couple of boats, and headed west. And it worked, more or less.
At the time, even the smartest couldn;t get it. Now the average 3 year old understands the system. The earth is round. They don’t understand gravity, and how it keeps you stuck to the
bottom of the sphere, but they know it does and act accordingly.
So again, once you understand the model, you can change the inputs and get different outputs.
So, hack your mind. Understand what the system does accurately, decide on the inputs and get the desired outputs. It really is that easy.

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Our plan
• Your career is a hackable system
• Your mind is a hackable system
• Inputs drive outputs
• Choose the right actions, get the desired
results

It really is that easy.

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• our ﬁrst hack

Ever notice that there are people who seem to get a lot done without working as hard as other people, without working as hard as us?

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That’s who I want to be.
The issue is our mental model for how we think about our career, and work, and projects, and parts of projects. And this is our ﬁrst hack.
CORE Values award
Has anyone here gotten a core values award? Anyone on anyones team?
Discussion
What is the core values award. What do you get if you win one?
What are the things that people do to get a CORE values award? List them on board.
I don’;t want to disparage anyones work, or effrot. But, I hate the CORE values award
The nomination usually goes like this …blah blah
The idea is to reward people for doing more, for going above and beyond. To reward people for caring a lot about something and doing more. For taking on a priority of the organization and
doing more. For doing more, and then doing more for a long time.
Does the core values nomination ever end with a discussion of how that person is going to get ahead? Their reward is actually the chance to do even more work.
The CORE values award is based on a shared mental model of how we do our jobs and how we manage our teams to do their jobs. This model is shared by us, our executives, our
managers, and our teams. We all agree on it.
It goes like this...

The bell curve

The Bell curve
The bell curve is a concept from statistics. What it means in statistics is not that important. Basically it has to do with the chances of stuff happening, or what statisticians call standard
deviation.
What we care about is the shape of the curve.
It has a beginning that starts out small, a middle part that is big, and an end part that is small again.
[Discussion - ]
why do projects miss dates? List the reasons on the board

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The bell curve

[Do this part on board]
This bell curve model can be used for thinking about projects or any work that we do.
* Before you start the real work, you are not doing much. Then you do a lot of stuff. Then you are basically done. (A)
* The curve can be squared off some, like this (B)
* Maybe it looks like a little shelf at the end, like this (C)
With this model in place, it’s easy to plan resources and schedule things. Let’s make this a product release with a GA date.
* If a project is big, then add people, like this (D)
* If you want it done even faster, then add even more people. (E)
* The total amount of work stays the same.
* If a team loses resources, then it takes longer and you miss your date (F)
* If you want to move the date forward, you can cut some scope (G)
* If that isn;t enough, you can stretch your resources (H)
* If that doesn’t work, you can rush the release and push some of the effort post-GA into quality release, and we start alternating feature releases with quality releases. (I)
[new board]

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The bell curve

[new board]

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With this model, it’s easy to plan projects and resources for large teams, like an engineering organization. (J)
* Just picture a big pile of your resources, line up your projects so one begins when one ends, and you have an efﬁcient, productive organization. This is how MS project works. Just a bunch
of resources and tasks that have beginnings and ends. Track the various tasks or projects, and rearrange the timeline or scope or resources to keep things on track.
How does a management team make sure that everyone is productive?
You just compress the work expectations as much as possible so that people are always “busy” and that way you eliminate the gaps.
This about how PSG works. There are billability targets which are all about this gap model. They call these gaps “bench time” and the system works very hard to minimize bench time.
With this model we can make sure that everyone is busy, that as many hours as possible are spent working on stuff, and that there is as little “wasted” time as possible.
[Discussion - What’s wrong with this model?]
“How many lines of code are written over the course of a product release that are not in the GA product.” How much of this was important work, like valuable idea testing or research, and
how much was just a waste of someone’s time.
[Discussion - what are examples of work done on a product release that was wasted effort?]
If we think of the project grid as all of the tasks that need to get done for a product release, how many of them are not necessary? How many could we have skipped if only we knew better?
• Features that got started but got cut from the release
• Stuff nobody actually needed
• Stuff that got built but had to be redone to “get it right”
• Changes in direction or spec
• Stuff started by one person, and taken over by someone else
• Stuff that was supposed to be POC code that got rushed into production without proper architecture or QA and has to be redone in an emergency.
How much stuff do we do that is the result of something that went wrong earlier?
E.g. How many of the tasks in the grid did not need to be there?
“What could we do with all that time”
* More stuff for the GA
* More time not working

Seth Godin

Seth Godin teaches us that there may be a different way to think about this.
He presents a different model. He gives us a round earth model to think about tasks. A round earth model that changes fundamentally and permanently how we think about stuff.
This is our first mind hack, and our first career hack. The Dip.
Seth Godin hacks our brain about work planning.
Do more with less effort by working with intention. By choosing what we do on purpose.
This idea of working with intention will keep coming back throughout our time together. It’s a big part of career success. We each need to do more with less to be successful. This is the
first career hack, our first hack of the TIBCO-career system - do more and work less. Work less and get more done.
Every year our budgets are essentially flat. They are either actually flat, like 2013 will be. Or they are nominally flat meaning there might be more $, but there is even more expected.
To grow as a company, and to grow as individuals, we need to do more with the same. We need to do more with the same resources, year after year after year.
We can;t work harder. There is eventually no more harder we can work.
We have to work better. And the people who figure this out are the ones who are successful.
The ones who do more with less are the ones who get noticed and the ones who get ahead. That should be us.
Let’s hack the system!

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the dip

INTRO
People who understand the dip are scarce, and they generate more value from their own efforts and the efforts of their team.

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I saw a project at TIBCO when I ﬁrst started that executive management knew they were going to cancel for 2 months before the team knew it. Two months of work was spent on something
that nobody had the commitment to ﬁnish. Two months that people could have just gone home and played with their dog.
There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to communicate a change in direction. But, this is just a glaring example of something that we all do every day to ourselves and to our teams.
People with commitment are valuable than people without commitment.
But, those with the guts to quit (or say no) are even much more valuable. They have the respect of their management, and their teams.

The dip


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The dip
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The models

The Dip Models
The dip - this one is all over the place at TIBCO. Lots of things get started and never ﬁnished.
The cul de sac - work and work and work and never get anywhere. This is where many peoples careers are, and it’s not a great career strategy.
The cliff - not see this one so much.

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The dip
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The models
The lessons

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The lessons of the dip
Commit - If you commit to a critical priority, then you must stick with it though the dip to get to your reward. If that means nights and weekends then do nights and weekends. I’m doing this
class sick as a dog…
To get through the dip, you must commit. If that means abandoning other, merely important priorities, then leave them behind grateful that quitting them means more time for tyour critical
priorities.
Quit - But, if you’re not going to ﬁnish it, quit. Or better yet, don’t start and don’t put any effort into it all. Quit and don;t look back. Any effort on this is going to be wasted. Use that time for
something else, work on a critical task, or take a nap. And be grateful that you recognize the task as merely important. Quitting is not giving up. It is freeing up time for critical things to do.
Prioritize - use some of the time you are going to free up by quitting something to put some time into identifying your priorities. What is critical and what is merely important. Identify the
critical and make sure you have enough time to ﬁnish those, and get that time by abandoning the merely important.

The dip
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The models
The lessons
The benefits

Key takeaways from the Dip (Benefits)

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“Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny majority of people who are able to push a tiny bit longer than most.” - Notice “tiny”. It’s not about pushing an incredible amount harder for
an incredibly long time. This is because of the second part - “Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something
new.”
* I’d go even further. It’s not about quitting early, though that is important. It’s about not even starting. If it is important, commit to it and get it done, no matter what. If it is not important, don;t
even start. Save your effort for those things that are critical, not just important.
* The idea of quitting early, or not starting is part of an important theme. Successful people focus on a small set of things, These are their personal brand attributes, these are their critical
tasks, ruthless priorities. Identify the critical things that need to be done and do them well.
“In a free market, we reward the exceptional.”
Successful people are rarely good at everything. You remember them for their key successes.

The dip
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The models
The lessons
The benefits
The promise

The promise of the dip
Knowing this model helps you to know what to do.
Quit before you start if you’re not going to finish.
Don;’t quit in the dip or you just do the work and don;t get the benefit.
When you start things with intention, you will have the capacity to finish.
This is the promise of the dip. By not wasting your scarce energy on things that won’t finish, put it into finishing more of the things you start.
More success, less effort :-)
Learn this one thing and you are already more successful than you were yesterday. More successful than most around you.

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The Peachey S-Curve
• The model
• The lessons

The dip is actually a chart of what you get back, satisfaction, feeling of success, etc. It’s not about effort.
[do this on the board]
The model
There is a model I like even more, but that’s because it’s mine.
The S-curve models results or beneﬁt from the work over time and assumes that over time you are putting in effort.
It starts off with a bunch of work that doesn;t accomplish much. This is the beginning of the project.
Then you get a lot of value out of your work.
Then you don;t get much value any more.
You can put these two curves against each other. (K)
The learning
Make sure that you have enough effort or resources budgeted to get to the good part, otherwise don’t bother starting.
The effort is the same all along. And, the total effort you have available to you (or your team) is a constant.
Why not put that effort onto things which will give the most results, and the most satisfaction.

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Hacking the system
• We have a new mental model
• When we use that model, we have an
advantage

• Less effort and better results

So, with this model in place, the dip and the S curve, we can approach our jobs differently.
Once the model is in place, it’s hard to think about the old model. The new model just makes more sense, and decisions made using the new model are better decisions. For the
organization and for us and our careers.
Now, we that have this model have an advantage. We are faster, smarter, better than everyone else. We know how to get from Europe to India faster than everyone else. And, with less
work. More with less.
How do we use this new model to hack the system? By changing our inputs to the system and getting the desired output.
Learning to say “no”, or just not doing stuff is the first powerful tool that we have. We will spend more time on this in a future session.
For now, know that when we actively and intentionally choose what we do and what we don’t do, we make better choices. And better choices mean more output with less effort - from
ourselves and from our teams.
* Less wasted effort on things that dont get finished means more effort available to finish other things.
* Not starting things that we are not going to finish means more effort available to finish other things.
“If you are going to do it, do it with intention. Commit to it and finish it.”
“If you are not going to finish it, don’t bother starting. Use that time for something else. Go home and play with your dog.”

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Conclusion
• Change the mental model, get different
results

• 4 done is better than 6 started
• Work with intention
• More with less

Mental models
There is an assumed existing mental model, the bell curve, for how work gets done. Now we know what it is.
The model is ﬂawed. When we use it all sorts of bad decisions get made.
The dip is another model. So is the Peachey curve. These models help us make better decisions.
With these new models, we can get more done with less effort.
4 done better than 6 started
Work on 6 features, cut 2 of them when you run out of time, and have 1 of them be pointless. Release the product with 3 good features.
Or commit to getting 4 of them right. Work on those 4 with intention and get them done. Better result with less effort.
This isn;t just about products, it’s just an easy example.
Work with intention
Working with intention and saying no will make us more effective leaders.
I don’t know what will change for each of us, but something will.
Our teams and families will thank us. Our managers will appreciate us and recognize our sucesses.
We can become one of those people who seem to get a lot done, but don;t seem to work that hard at it.
And, we won’t get a CORE value award :-)

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• Wrapping it up


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Take away exercise
Commit to a critical priority

• Talk to your manager and family/friends
about ActiveMentoring as a priority.

• Declare a commitment to a critical

priority and defend it against the merely
important.

• We will discuss our experience next
week.


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“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any
direction you choose.

You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”

Dr. Seuss
It’s easy to be successful. What is hard is getting there. We study the dip so we have a good model about commitment, and quitting, and knowing the difference.

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Neither is good, neither is wrong. Either can be the right thing, either can be the wrong thing. The challenge is to commit to the right things and quit the right things.

The model helps us to prioritize our efforts, and to say no to our tasks at work.
And, the model is good for us to think about as we focus on our career success.
This whole class process is one big dip. It’s going to start out fun. Then it’s going to become more of a grind. And, if we stick with it, we’ll come out the other end with some great value. This
is true for me. The ﬁrst sessions are going to be exciting to create. The middle ones are going to be grueling, and I’m going to have to ﬁnd ways to prioritize these sessions over everything
else that wants my time and attention. These sessions, and exercises are going to be time conmsuming, and not very rewarding at times.
It’s easy to be successful. That’s where we want to be. That’s on the other side of the dip for all of us.
It’s hard to get there. This is where the commitment and the ruthless prioritization of critical comes in. If it wasn;t hard to get there, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. And the rewards would
already be taken by everyone else.

Tibco active mentoring day 2

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Tibco active mentoring day 2