by Jim DuBois
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Use AI to stay moves ahead.
To extend the chess analogy I started earlier, always plan multiple moves ahead. When you see a move, anticipate where it could go next and what plan might be behind it. Look for anomalies in regular behavior. All of this is a great problem for AI to rationalize across billions of actions to alert you to where security experts need to spend their precious time in analysis and response.
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Prioritize security and great user experience.
Don’t view these as a tradeoff. Find ways to do both. When security gets in the way, some users will actively try to work around security. Make doing the right thing simple so everyone will more easily help keep you secure. Capabilities like single sign-on and elimination of passwords are examples of strong security measures that also provide a better experience.
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Simplify technical debt with every release.
When simplification becomes a mantra, when it is encouraged as part of everything you do from design to release, the complete portfolio of services run by IT gets less complicated over time, even while you are adding more and more capabilities. Simplification allows you to go faster AND drive more appropriate security.
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Eliminate duplication to simplify compliance controls.
Another great place for simplification is control testing. GDPR, SOX, PCI, ISO, and other standards each have a set of controls to be tested. A lot of the controls overlap and you can simplify to test each control once, applying the test to all standards. Further, you should consider redesigning your controls to overlap more, allowing better consolidation and simplification.
Chapter Nine
Optimism and Persistence are Force Multipliers
I learned optimism from my mom. She’s probably the most positive, outgoing person I’ve ever met. Everybody likes my mom, and our house was continually full of people stopping by to see her. She welcomed everyone and was always excited to see people, no matter what else was happening, how bad she felt, or how crummy her day had been. I watched how people responded to her, and wanted to take part in anything she did. I determined that I would at least try to emulate her positive view on life.
I learned persistence from my dad. Dad was the youngest of sixteen children from an immigrant lumberjack and his very busy wife. None of my dad’s sisters and brothers went to college, and my dad wasn’t on a path to do more before he met my mom. When I was born, he decided to go to college. I don’t remember that most nights we ate rice with tomato sauce, but I do remember that dessert was a saltine cracker. I was four when my dad graduated. I saw that no matter what challenge was thrown at him, he didn’t give up. He persevered working in construction to pay his way through college, working through issues to become a partner in a regional tax practice, and starting his own company when his partners decided to pursue a direction against his beliefs.
These lessons formed a foundation for who I am today. They taught me to persevere when I hit rough times, working to pay my own way through college, through the tough times and dead ends in my career, and to even not give up on my marriage after a counselor recommended that my wife and I divorce. I also saw my optimism rewarded when I learned along the way and didn’t give up, such as recently celebrating our thirtieth wedding anniversary. The lessons also taught me to have fun with work as you go, and never wish your life away as some people can do just trying to get through demanding situations. Embrace the adversity, learn and find ways to enjoy the ride.
Make sure that your teams also have fun with you. A sense of humor is important. When appropriate, contrive events where you can include friends and families. Thank the families for their support of your employees.
If I could do my whole life over, the only thing I would change would be to apply some of these lessons earlier.
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Accelerate by building optimism with persistence.
Healthy optimism doesn’t ignore reality, but always uses a positive lens. People don’t enjoy being around negativity. Meaningful purpose and clear vision drive out negativity. When you hit bumps, learn, then keep going to drive progress. Persistent progress builds optimism. Lead by starting with optimism and never showing discouragement. People are watching you, and how you react to challenges.
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Identify the negativity holding you back.
A toxic environment is rules-focused, uses guilt to control, prioritizes the urgent but not important tasks, is not respectful of other teams you need to work with, and plays the victim role when anything bad happens. For the culture and speed you need to develop, do not tolerate these traits. Kill them wherever and whenever you see them. Have fun and make sure your team can balance and integrate their personal lives with their work.
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Rescue yourself. Don’t be a victim.
Ensure that you aren’t the one holding back the team. If you can’t be positive, at least don’t be negative. Learn to trust people, knowing some will fail you. More will trust back. Confront failure and learn. If you feel like a victim, it isn’t too late to change. Holding onto hurt only impacts you. Forgiveness frees you to move on without meaning everything is better. Forgive and move on.
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Believe first. Deal with doubts later.
It is OK to believe in the future and still have doubts. Work them out as you go. Keep past negatives in the past. Learn from them, but always assume positive intent in others. When you see something that looks wrong, ask before going negative. Most of the time, you will find good intentions. A quick conversation can resolve misunderstandings.
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Healthy conflict is a progress accelerator.
When everyone assumes positive intent, it is easier to have healthy conflict. No one is afraid to ask the hard questions. Small misunderstandings don’t grow to mistrust. Small issues are resolved quickly and don’t grow to become big issues. Eliminating this waste helps teams go faster, allowing every-one to focus on delivering what your company needs.
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Eliminate ownership issues to avoid competition.
Ownership disputes are a common conflict that lowers productivity. When another team, either unknowingly or purposefully, does something that is your responsibility, you can fight about it, or you can choose to work together. Assume they have the right intentions. Figure out the best way forward together. The goal is to benefit your company and your customers, not who gets credit.
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Learn from failure. Look for opportunities.
Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” What do you look for? Do you manage risk by looking for difficulties in opportunities? It is all about how you approach life. You are more likely to succeed if you look for ways to succeed, rather than trying to find reasons something will fail.
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Perfection is the enemy of great.
If you wait for perfect, you won’t just avoid great, you will fail because you were too slow. When is good, good enough? The answer is when there is something higher priority that you should do instead of improving on good. There are too many huge opportunities today to waste time perfecting everything. Reward progress, not perfection. Progress builds optimism.
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Optimism and persistence improve executive presence.
People want to follow leaders who know they can succeed. People want to follow leaders who aren’t going to give up. Executive presence is something that you know when you see, but can be hard to describe, let alone teach. A useful book to help improve executive presence is All the Leader You Can Be by Suzanne Bates.
Chapter Ten
It is All About the People
People are the most important asset in any company. I needed to start this book talking about culture to set up any transformation, so I made this chapter on people the finale. Attracting, developing and retaining the best people and then molding them int
o a team is the most important part of what any leader does. I believe these lessons are some of the most important I had to learn.
For seven years before I started at Microsoft, at the company now called Accenture, I worked in different industries, learning not just how to implement big IT projects, but how different company cultures impact how we work. While at Microsoft, I ran multi-national teams, living in Tokyo and London for two years each. Trying to move quickly to consolidate processes, applications and data centers, I learned the hard way about the impact of many diverse cultures at work.
Once in Tokyo, I had a great idea how to streamline the local helpdesk. My direct reports were spread across Asia, but the leader of the Japan team, Tatsuya Arase (Tats), brought his helpdesk lead in to discuss the idea. This person didn’t speak English, so Tats translated my idea. I should have noticed his facial expressions, but Tats told me he thought it was a clever idea. I was thrilled and asked how fast we could make it real. The next day a team-building event called a shinbokai was scheduled for the whole team of people based in Tokyo. Soon after I arrived, Tats brought the helpdesk leader up to me, drink in hand. He’d figured out a bit of English, and told me, “Your idea for helpdesk? Not so good for Japanese people.” I was stunned, but Tats explained to me the importance of respect for hierarchy in their culture, but alcohol is an accepted excuse.
I now understood the purpose of shinbokai, and determined to always find people for my team who would tell me when I was doing something stupid. I learned to value the diverse perspectives and cultures on my team, and how to set expectations around using judgment to do what was right.
That was just one of the lessons about people. It made me curious about how to bring out the best in people. My wife taught me that psychologists define performance as a function of ability, motivation and environment. This book is intended to stretch your thinking about attracting and developing people with the abilities to work at the new pace, motivate them with a vision and a sense of purpose, and create the environment (culture) for them to be their best.
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People are your most important asset.
These lessons started with culture on purpose, and need to end with the people involved. As a leader, you are only as successful as the people who surround you. Invest in them as individuals, and as a team. For building healthy teams, I highly recommend following Patrick Lencioni’s practices in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
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Every hire should be an upgrade.
Never hire someone who doesn’t have the potential to pass you. Consider this with every hiring decision. Look for attitude, passion, and drive as more important attributes than the specific expertise that can be learned. When interviewing, ask them to describe situations where they’ve had to handle conflict. Ask what they liked most about their best boss ever and about the best company culture they’ve ever experienced.
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Find and develop learners not knowers.
Learning is better than knowing. As everything speeds up, the ability to learn is more and more important. The half-life of expertise is getting shorter, and the value of expertise is shrinking. To thrive, seek and grow people who can learn quickly and value learning over knowledge. Knowers slow you down by focusing more on who is right than on making progress.
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Find and nurture judgment and courage.
There is no substitute for good judgment. To successfully move fast, leaders will need the ability to develop rational points of view and make decisions, often based on weak signals. If they always look to you for answers, you are the bottleneck. Find people who handle ambiguity well and can apply good judgment to these situations. Encourage healthy debate to develop these skills.
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Find and reward people with grit.
Dr. Travis Bradberry, author and expert on emotional intelligence, defines grit as making mistakes, looking like an idiot, and trying again without flinching. It is trusting your gut, making calls you are afraid to make, keeping your emotions in check, giving more than you get, taking accountability for your actions, and being kind to people who are rude to you. Anyone can develop more grit with focus. Stronger teams will display grit.
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Build diverse teams to improve results.
I learned this lesson the hard way, early in my career. Teams that all think like the leader are at risk. They may seem faster at first but fall short by missing out on ideas and perspectives to improve outcomes for your business. Seek out people who will tell you when you do something wrong. Listen to all perspectives to improve the team value. Leverage individual strengths to balance team weaknesses or gaps.
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Interns and college hires bring energy.
Another form of diversity is hiring people who aren’t stuck in legacy IT practices. College hires or professionals from outside of IT don’t need to unlearn the way it has always been done. Their energy can also motivate the rest of the team if your culture supports it. A strong intern program helps you find the best college hires.
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Don’t treat every person the same.
Make sure you are fair and respectful. Recognize unconscious bias to improve. But know that people are different. Differences are good. And this also means that not everyone is motivated by what motivates you. Ask what people are passionate about, and what makes them feel appreciated. Leverage their passions to motivate them, and show appreciation in ways that are meaningful to them.
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Repeat for clarity. People hear differently.
You think you are clear, but everyone else heard what you said through a lens based on their own experiences. Sometimes they hear what they want. Often, they hear what they expect, which may be different than your intent. Understand this reality. Repeat your message to build clarity. Use different channels to build clarity. Ask others to repeat the message to build clarity. Listen to validate.
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Use judgment to avoid unintended consequences.
Leaders need to be clear on their intent. Anytime you design a process, or have a side discussion, consider what could go wrong. I remember someone stopping me in the hall to explain an idea. I told them it was interesting, only to find weeks later dozens of people working on the idea, “because Jim said to.” If it doesn’t seem right, it may not have been the leader’s intent even if someone claims it is. Encourage all to use judgment to avoid people doing something just because.
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Remember to re-recruit your best people.
While finding great new talent, don’t forget to regularly re-recruit people you already have. In recruiting, part of the process is taking time to explain why they should want to come work with you. This isn’t an activity only for recruits. Tell your people why they are valued, and make sure they understand why they should continue working with you.
Acknowledgements
I would be nothing without my faith and the people who molded me into the person I am today:
First, my wife, Shannon, who gave up her career for a while to raise our three children and support me, before returning to get her doctorate in Psychology (and teach me a lot about myself as a test subject).
My parents, Harvey and Sonia, who first introduced me to a deep, grace filled Christian faith as a foundation for everything.
All three CEOs of Microsoft, Bill, Steve and Satya, who all challenged me to view IT within Microsoft from the lens of an enterprise customer, and drive feedback into our products.
All the previous CIOs at Microsoft who taught me how to better measure and achieve success.
My mentors, Craig Mundie and Qi Lu who helped me navigate Microsoft and think outside the box.
Professors Dr. James Cash who invested in me long before I became a CIO, and Peter Weill who taught me that Digital Transformation is a CEO/Board topic rather than an IT topic, years before it was.
Authors: Patrick Lencioni, Peter Drucker, Clay Christensen, John Wooden an
d Steven Covey who gave me ideas to get out of predicaments so often that I quote them without realizing it.
The 13 different managers I had in my 24 years at Microsoft who all pushed me to do what I often felt was impossible.
And finally, I want to thank all the people I got to work with over the years. The biggest reason I enjoyed my job so much was getting to work with such high-quality people every day.
About the Six-Word Lessons Series
Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story using only six words. He responded with the story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The story tickles the imagination. Why were the shoes never worn? The answers are left up to the reader’s imagination.
This style of writing has a number of aliases: postcard fiction, flash fiction, and micro fiction. Lonnie Pacelli was introduced to this concept in 2009 by a friend, and started thinking about how this extreme brevity could apply to today’s communication culture of text messages, tweets and Facebook posts. He wrote the first book, Six-Word Lessons for Project Managers, then started helping other authors write and publish their own books in the series.