It’s been a while since I blogged on any topic. One of my friends kindly suggested that I deal with a topic that I have good knowledge on, and which is quite dear to me. So I decided, I would tackle that perennially problematic aspect – how to improve productivity. While there’s no hard and fast formula to this, I feel I can point out some steps that I have followed, and which have worked for me.
I have an entire development, testing, devops and support team to manage, so this topic has huge relevance in my career graph. These are my “Ten Commandments” to enhance Productivity.
- Empowerment
- Structured Style of Working
- Prioritization of Work
- Work Life Balance
- Learning and Training
- Continuous Feedback
- Team Bonding
- Continuous Optimization and Automation
- Appreciation and Rewards
- Fairness and Acceptance
- Questioning
We can look into each of these in some detail. You may not fully agree with what I see as fundamental aspects governing productivity. It could be that in the environment I worked in, these worked. In another work place, some other measures might be required.
- Empowerment: While leading large teams, it’s very important that we have a very strong tier immediately below. This tier should be capable resources who manage specific disciplines within the work structure. One area can have only one leader, else it leads to ambiguity. One resource should not handle too many disciplines, that would lead to overwork for some and less work for others. I believe in hiring people who know more than me, about the area they are supposed to manage. For example, I have Technology managers for Java, .NET, DB Technologies etc, and each of them have to be masters of their trade. They have full control over decisions in their area, and I get involved only to the extent of taking updates, and helping resolve any issues that they are not able to handle. This of course means I get time to focus on other important work, and I would like at least fifty percent of my time to be spent on deriving strategies to improve the working methodologies. The other fifty percent is spent on tracking, reporting, checking how the strategies implemented are shaping up, and most importantly, checking how many issues are there in each area, reported by the frontline. Often, this is a key indicator of how stable work is. I also encourage the managers to experiment with new technologies including cloud technology adoption within their teams, and while some rise to the challenge, others take a more conservative approach. This kind of a pyramid structure ensures that there is no bottleneck or single point of failure, and the manager takes the right decision for the team, being an expert in his/her area. The manager is also able to form the right team structure and define the right roles. All these naturally enhance productivity.
2. Structured Style of Working: I have seen several top notch resources who are excellent in their fundamentals, but fizzle out when it comes to critical junctures in their career. More often than not, this is due to lack of overall awareness of how their work fits into the scheme of things, how important it is, and what are the various dependencies. All these point to a lack of structure in the way one approaches work. On the other hand, I have seen several resources who are not so brilliant, but who go around to meetings with a notebook or laptop, take down stuff, ask lot of questions and ensure their work is finished on time. They are very dependable. I won’t say they are all we need, because unfortunately my experience has taught me that the former skill is also required, however difficult it is to carry such a person along. These people might prove their mettle in just five minutes when a troubleshooting is happening. Rest of the time they might not contribute much. But, that’s their role.
I personally have tried several organizing tools, starting from small notebooks, to digital diaries, to Evernote, to that magic book and recording pen (forgot the name, but it was too difficult to manage for me). Now, I have kind of settled in on a combination on iPad and One Note. I am able to sync One Note across laptop, iPad, Mobile etc, so it’s easy to have a single list of tasks/notes even when I am in different situations.
There is no substitute to working in a structured and organized manner, however junior or senior we are. It really enhances productivity by keeping us on top of our work.
3. Prioritization of Work: This is the third commandment. Often, we find ourselves swamped with work. We of course do our best, but finally, it ends up with most tasks started and incomplete. There’s a finite limit to what any superstar can achieve, so I believe as a leader, it’s important to understand the capability and bandwidth of your team, and ensure work is allocated accordingly. Recently, I had the experience where one of my technical managers put his hands up and said he had too much to do and is not able to finish anything. I told him to discuss his list of activities with me. Soon, we were able to prioritize the activities into Top Urgent, Urgent and Less Urgent. Based on this, he was able to approach the tasks. For the tasks that would be taken up later, he communicated to dependent stakeholders the new timelines. It went without any major issues. Sometimes, it’s as easy as that. Sometimes, it’s not so easy, still it needs to be done. While prioritizing tasks, we also need to look into whether all these can only be done by that resource. I was able to move almost a quarter of the workload away from another manager, by making him delegate the work to his team members. They did fine.
While prioritizing the work, we are bound to make several discoveries. Some would be that the work can be done by another resource, some could be that the work needn’t be done at all, because it’s not aligned to our strategy. We have also come across several cases, where the work was already done in some other area, and if we hadn’t looked into it now, would have been done again. The reason for these discoveries being, we do a deep dive into understanding the criticality of work, and as a result, multiple options open up. So, even if there is no need to prioritize, it is a pleasant exercise to ask your managers to share their work with you and review it.
4. Work Life Balance: In my career, I have seen two kinds of resources. Those that are addicted to work, and those that are addicted to life. I have rarely seen someone who struck a fine balance between the two. I can count on my fingers the people I know, who set an example with a balanced approach to work. When I say balanced approach to work, I don’t mean coming to office on time and leaving on time. I mean, combining that with finishing the work on time and to quality.
Having said that, when one is young, it’s easy to spend more and more time at office. Even after marriage, this trend continues for many people, especially in the IT field. When we do something regularly, it becomes a habit. So staying back and working becomes a habit. I have felt that if we use the time in office wisely, and work smart, then we will be able to leave office earlier than a person who is not bothered about time.
Personally, spending time with family is always refreshing. I never carry my work home, and to be honest, I never used to take my office laptop home. I would look into emails from phone, but if I had to do some work, I would haul myself to the office. This made me look at work seriously, and organize myself to ensure my week end wouldn’t be spoilt by having to go to office. Having said that, I used to go to office for one hour every Saturday to clear my office emails and start Sunday fresh.
Because my work was always demanding, I ensured that at least twice a year, I took the family on vacation, one short and one longer. That way, I got to spend much needed time with family and also ensured that we saw a new place in this world, opening our eyes to new cultures.
5. Learning and Training: People doing the same things over and over for a long period of time, tend to become complacent and slack off. So, in my view, it’s very important that we keep apart at least some time for learning. The world of technology is evolving, and new paradigms are ruling day by day. This is the era of cloud computing and AI/ML models and Data crunching through Big Data. Enterprise Architecture as a buzz word is very different from what it conveyed six or seven years back. Now it’s all about microservices and granular functions orchestrated through workflow engines to get a process done. If we don’t know the new world, we will keep designing the old solutions. Hence, very important to keep abreast of technology. Development has moved on from siloed models to dev ops and even dev sec ops now. It’s also evident that learning can only enrich us so much. We need to attend regular trainings and keep our skills well oiled. Trainings also add value to our resumes, and puts us in a frame of mind that will push us to constantly improve. For example, when we decided to embrace aws as a cloud service, I ensured many of the team leaders (including me) got certified in aws technologies. If we don’t master an area, we cannot build a high performing, transactional or analytical system using it.
It is upto the managers to ensure there is a training budget, it is set as an objective for staff, and it is completed as well. This is way more important than it sounds, because of several reasons. If we don’t master a new technology, then the organization needs to get someone who can support it and enhance it. So, either we have to hire someone new, raising the opex cost, or we get dependent on some third parties who will try to take over. Either way, we won’t be in a position to control our destiny. My team is a clear testament to the fact that it is possible to learn new technologies and be adept at it to the level of developing superb code. I will give some examples below
a) We had some legacy erp applications, which were developed by a third party vendor. After some years, they stopped working. We had a couple of options, either bring them back or get another consulting firm, or else learn it ourselves. I took the difficult way out. I assigned some creative staff to learn the technology and troubleshoot it. They did the hard work, and now we are completely self-reliant
b) We had some main frame developers from another airline, working as system analysts. Because we didn’t have main frames. They embraced python and RPA, learnt it themselves, and built superb code, the quality of which I haven’t seen for a long time
c) We got ourselves trained in sharepoint, and supported a mammoth implementation, again done by a third party.
6. Continuous Feedback: This is another aspect that has always struck me as simple, yet very effective. Most people respond positively to feedback. Yet, we don’t give it the importance it deserves, and treat it as a simple task. In reality, we need to go in depth, and understand how a person works, what their strengths and weaknesses are and what needs to be improved, in order to give constructive feedback. It also depends on the way in which feedback is given. Some people respond very negatively when given public feedback. Some people are open and accept it. Depending on how open/closed a person is, the feedback mechanism also needs to be different. My team is very young, as a result, very friendly and open to feedback. It makes the whole process easier for the managers as well. However, there are some people who react very negatively, and with them we need to be sometimes strict as well. I have given good feedback to staff who have, as a result improved tremendously. I have also faced cases where feedback didn’t have a good impact. However, it works in majority of the cases, hence should not be discarded.
7. Team Bonding: Work in a software environment is often a chain of activities done by several staff. For the tasks to be done efficiently, the human equation also plays an important role. For someone we know well, we will go out of our way to help and support. Someone who is not so friendly or social will get similar treatment when an issue happens. As managers, it’s important that we keep trying continuously to improve harmony within the team, and keep pushing the team into situations that need them to work together. In my team, we have a weekly meeting which is hugely relevant during this pandemic time, where we are all working from home. This is the only way in which all of us get together and share the experiences of the week. During this session, we celebrate birthdays, we enjoy ourselves through songs, stories etc. There is also a presentation on some new topic, as well as some online games. It never gets boring. I learnt about topics like Suranga (kind of like aquaducts), life stories of people who transformed societies through their actions, travelogues and much more. In the meeting, I see the managers making sure that introverts and laid back people are always asked to speak and share their week. This helps them shed their inhibitions, and become part of the team. When we had normal office, Thursdays would mostly be party evenings/nights where the team would get together and spend the whole evening in a positive and cheerful frame.
8. Continuous Optimization and Automation: I mentioned this before, there is a lot of repetition and redundancy in our jobs. It is very important that we work Smart. If it’s something that needs to be done the same way multiple times, it’s a candidate for automation. Now, we have so many options of automation. Automation can be in various forms, the end result is to save time. It can be for email management, log analysis, deployment activities, the list is endless. For each of these, routines that help automate tasks are available in plenty. Even outlook supports rules, quick steps etc which help us do several chores fully automated. Now AI engines are available, Robotic Process Automation is available, these all help us in automating tasks. I have used an RPA tool, to automate a simple task that I do daily. The task consists of logging into Splunk, and opening some fifteen dash boards that remain open. I automated it using the tool, and it must have helped me save at least five minutes daily. Similarly, I get so many unnecessary emails that fill up my inbox, I have rules that allow me to delete them. I have rules to archive as well. Each of us can do so much more.
Optimizing a process is equally important. I have seen in several places, people do something because that’s how it has been done always. No one questions the logic at this point of time, maybe some of it is not even relevant. So, this is another opportunity for us to think smart and see if we can optimize the process. Optimization helps in speeding up the process as well as fine tuning it so there is a much higher success rate. An example I can think of in this regard – my apartment had this sensor to lift the parking barrier, and we were all given a chip which we had to show in front of the sensor. The sensor was kept rather low, and people driving cars could easily reach it where as people driving taller vehicles couldn’t reach so easily. It was becoming a pain, so one day I thought of something to ease this. I found a selfie stick at home, and i fixed the chip to the end of it. When I reach the barrier, I extend the stick with the chip fixed at the end, and show it to the sensor. No hassles of bending down, sometimes reversing and re-aligning the car etc. I think of this as a neat optimization, not necessarily the best one, but better than what I was doing.
Obviously, when you automate and optimize a process, there’s a significant increase in productivity.
9. Appreciation and Rewards: Who doesn’t like being appreciated and rewarded? And, once done, doesn’t want it to happen again and again! It’s very important that we celebrate victories, and appreciate performances and reward high performers. Of course, the reward could be just a certificate, it could be an announcement or email, or it could be monetary. While some rewards would b established at an HR level, I have found that it’s always good to have an internal rewarding initiative which keeps people happy and motivated. Motivated staff work better and productivity jumps high.
In our office we have Champions’ certificates which we give to teams that perform exceptionally well, and also to individuals. We have a gathering in our cafe with pizzas and stuff, and dish out the certificates.
10. Fairness and Understanding: Where there are people, there are feelings. There are favourites. All men are equal, but some are more equal than others. It is very important that we keep the team motivated by demonstrating fairness and understanding towards all. I have seen some high performing managers who solely look at project success, show a very different face when a key resource needs some leaves. This puts pressure on the staff who needs the leave as well. Maybe there was a time when I was also behaving the same, but I can confidently say that now whatever be the reason, I put the staff before anything else. My best resource took one month long leave, and I used to call him regularly to make sure he was OK, and whether there was any way in which I could help him. Especially during this time of work from home, we really need to admire our women staff who manage home and work seamlessly along with schooling as well. When they need some support, we need to give it. Timelines are important, but people are more important.
In any team, there are always people who perform well, and people who are average. We owe it to the average performers also, to give them lots of time, and encourage them to keep up the work and point out areas to improve. Everyone should feel that their manager is a fair person, and they can approach their manager with any issue. I have helped my staff with school admissions, home rentals, hospitalization among many other areas. Other managers are equally or more diligent with their team. This kind of an attitude will definitely improve productivity. Everyone’s productivity goes up when they work with someone they like and respect. They will give their best, like I give my best for my team.
11. Questioning: I have seen staff who question anything and everything. Sometimes, it feels very irritating. But work has taught me that this is a very important trait to have, how we use it is of course upto us. When we ask questions, people think. Scenarios that were never thought of, come out. Code breaks, and runtime exception trace starts filling up. I have seen my boss ask four or five questions before a key system goes live. And in the earlier days, we wouldn’t have considered those questions. Some of them could be with load on the systems, some could be about monitoring and alerting, some could be with performance. It doesn’t need a technologist to ask the right questions, it just needs experience. We have learnt a lot from these, and now the architecture and design is excellent. So, asking questions is something we should always encourage. It opens up new avenues, and helps us improve our work in the next run.
Of course, ten commandments actually have more than ten commandments!. It could be many more than ten, depending on the environment, eco system and the organization. However, productivity is a key metric of a performing organization, and we need to give high importance to tracking, reporting and improving productivity.