Modern Management: Use Your Integrity Even if You Fear for Your Job

Susan, the Platform Director, was worried about ProductA—still in development. The company received about 75% of its revenue from that one product. Worse, VeryImportantCustomer, VIC, accounted for half of that revenue. And from the demos, Susan could see the teams were not going to meet their desired release date.

She spoke with her colleagues, the other directors—Middleware, the App layer, and QA. They all agreed the desired release date was at significant risk.

As a group, they approached the VP of Engineering, Dave. Susan was the spokesperson. She started, “We're not going to meet the release date you want—”

“Well, you'd better!” Dave yelled. “And, you'd better tell VIC that we will! You call them today and tell them you'll meet the release date.”

“But, we won't. Why would I lie to this customer? I understand you're under pressure.”

Dave sneered. “You can't possibly understand my pressure. Call VIC and set their mind at ease. Tell them we're on track. Then, crack the whip on those teams and make it happen. Or, your jobs are all at risk. This meeting is over!”

Maybe you didn't have a meeting about impossible deadlines or calling customers to “set their minds at ease” while lying to them. Instead, maybe your boss or a colleague asked the team(s) you lead and serve to do “just one more thing.”

Regardless of your experience, I am sure someone, often senior to you, challenged your value-based integrity. The circumstances usually meant putting the perceived organization's welfare above any person or team.

While you might receive some short-term gains, reality always wins. Over the long term, we need to balance what the organization needs with creating an environment that helps the people succeed.

Even—maybe especially—if you fear for your job.

What can you do?

Acknowledge your fear(s).
Use those concerns and risks to create more options to solve the problem.
Use those options to define and work towards a common overarching goal.

Acknowledge Your Fears

If someone says, “your job is in jeopardy,” how do you feel? When my managers said that to me, I felt afraid. It took me a while to understand, but my managers felt the same fear as Dave. I'm pretty sure that anyone who ever asks you to do “more with less” might feel the same fear.

That kind of fear rolls down the hierarchy.

If you, too, feel that kind of fear, pull that fear out into the open. (See When Do You Suffer from FEAR? to see Fear Expressed As Reality.)

I find that the more I acknowledge my fears—especially my work-related fears—the sooner I can create options based on risks and challenges. IME, as soon as you expose the fear, you remove the power of the fear.

Look for Risks

Susan and her colleagues spent the next hour reviewing their options based on the risks of not finishing ProductA when the VIC expected it. The generated these options:

Tell the customer now and reset their expectations about what the customer could expect.
Work with the product people to ensure the teams stayed focused on the most valuable work for this release. Create a specific overarching goal and explain that goal to everyone.
With that goal in mind, focus the teams on small chunks of work to achieve that goal. Measure the teams' cycle times and their overall Work in Progress to complete work as early as possible. The managers would remove impediments to the goal.

That overarching goal was critical to their success.

Create an Overarching Goal

When Susan and the other directors reviewed the product goals with the product people, they discovered:

The product was supposed to “focus” on three kinds of customers, who all had different needs. VIC didn't need those new features.
Because of that lack of focus, the teams laid the groundwork for next year's work. However, that groundwork delayed this year's product work—and what VIC needed.

Susan convened a meeting with the product people and all the directors. Together, they agreed on a short-term actionable goal that would allow the teams to release almost everything the VIC wanted. Once they got this release back on track, they needed different strategy meetings to decide on future products and customers.

A Modified Release Succeeded and No One Lost Their Job

While senior management wasn't happy with the directors and product people, the teams released almost everything the VIC wanted at the desired time. Susan and the directors insisted on a retrospective so they could avoid a repeat of the situation. They learned:

Senior management pushed the product people to add more to the backlogs. Why? The VIC pressured senior management. VIC insinuated they would find a new product. Senior management worried about losing this valuable customer without enough additional customers. (This was a failure of company strategy.)
In addition, senior management told the VIC to expect all those extra features. (Senior management placated VIC.)
Since the teams worked as component teams, the cycle time was longer than management wanted. (Their agile “transformation” had focused on each “team” without considering the need for cross-functional product-focused teams.)

These factors created a system with too little integrity. The directors changed the environment to create a system where they could use their integrity.

In my experience, when we use our integrity, we are more likely to keep our jobs—even if we fear we will lose them. When we use all seven principles of modern management, we are more likely to create an environment where we can all succeed. And keep our jobs.

This principle is from the Modern Management Made Easy books. Have you used a different approach to maintain your integrity? Let me know.

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Till next time,

Johanna