In managing technical teams, an IT leader will routinely be in a position of making decisions between two or more competing technical views, systems architectures or proposed solutions. As “the decider”, you may consider yourself fortunate to have multiple choices presented to you by your staff, as >1 options would seem to increase the likelihood that the most appropriate decision can be found among the competing views.
An unfortunate situation experienced too often by IT leaders is the overwhelming “need to be right” among certain staff members, and that behaviors’ negative impact on the decision-making process. Whether a product of the times or something unique to the IT field, this need expresses itself similarly to what one might find within a political discussion on cable TV, or a heated religious argument. Does any of this behavior sound familiar:
- A polarization of the language used, with words such as “right/wrong”, “its clear”, “its simple”, “its self-evident”.
- Presented views are long on opinion, short on facts/research and don’t appear to be data-driven.
- A strong need to convert others to one’s views.
- If that fails, a discounting of another’s views, or even the person.
- Its a zero-sum game, and someone has to be wrong/lose. Its important to identify the winner and loser before everyone leaves the meeting.
- All individual ideas attached to the losing proposition are also considered invalid.
- Working with a team member who presented a differing (losing) opinion would water-down the (winning) solution, or otherwise render it useless.
Close inspection of this behavior may show that the passions presented during the decision-making process say much more about the specific staff member and their needs, than they do about the decision being made. In fact the staff member may be perfectly willing to alienate every co-worker (they will need in the future) to walk away with the knowledge that they won the battle. The perception of being right may even be more important than getting you the information you need to make the best decision for your organization.
This behavior is obviously detrimental to the decision-making process, the morale and performance of your team and your interface with your business partners. It may be easy to pass it off as just a passionate interchange among passionate staff (normally a good thing), and not see it for what it really is.
When anonymity is more likely, as it is online, this behavior is apparent in every technical discussion board. Alex Payne recently expressed his frustration on the absence of reasoned technical discussion on the net; his checklist is a good one both for the office and online:
The next time you’re thinking about engaging in a technical discussion, run through these questions before you hit the “post” button:
1. Are you responding to facts? With facts?
2. Have you read any primary source materials on the issue you’re discussing?
3. Do you have any first-hand experience with the technologies or ideas involved?
4. Do you have any first-hand experience with those technologies operating at the scale being discussed?
5. Have you contacted the individuals involved in the discussion for further information before making a assumptions about their findings?
6. Are you falsely comparing technologies or ideas as if there was a zero-sum competition between them?
7. Are you addressing your peers with respect, courtesy, and humility?
8. Are you sure that what you’re posting is the best way to promote your self, product, project, or idea? Does it demonstrate you at your best?
Et cetera, et cetera. Or, essentially, a brief reintroduction to logical thought and civil society.
Unfortunately, great technical talent often comes along with a good deal of behavioral baggage as described above. Why are so many IT decision-making processes skewed by this behavior? Perhaps with years of IT staff shortages and the desire to hire the best technical talent, we have lowered our standards for other traits our HR partners would label as emotional intelligence.
My point is that we need to grade on this item, just as we grade our teams on their technical prowess. If our teams are to be successful internally and as partners with the business, it will not be enough to have brilliant technical people that cannot be relied upon to respectfully collaborate in the decision-making process.
As leaders we do need to make tough decisions, and sometimes they really are between very different options. However, my experience has been that we often frame decisions in a polarized fashion when they needn’t be, when there may be a valid middle-ground, or even a successful third-way that incorporates aspects of multiple options. Identifying and actively filtering for this “need to be right” behavior can often result in a better solution for the organization.
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