by Pat Bodin
If you were in the elevator with them, you would have just witnessed a language breakdown, almost as complete as if the conversation partners were speaking in completely different languages with no translator present. What would be the result? The CEO would stop truly listening—though he may continue to look attentive just to be polite—and would become quite ready for the elevator to reach his floor. The tactician has created boredom rather than a positive impression. When the tactician’s department asks for additional funding a few months later, the CEO is predisposed to regard his request as irrelevant to the goals of the business: “Why can’t we just outsource the whole thing?”
Instead, the tactician was coached to translate his work into a benefit: “I work in communications. If I do my job right today, your New York City sales office will be operational tomorrow.” Those simple words positively impact the strategist’s perception of his company’s tacticians. Tacticians can learn to communicate like that. It’s not easy and requires a behavior change, but it’s doable and it’s important.
In the example of the elevator conversations, the first interaction was missing an interface. Tacticians can make an Ethernet connection and a T1 connection interface—but they seldom realize that language requires the same thing. Jargon must be translated into the strategist’s language, thereby communicating value and reducing friction. Strategists really do want partners in the lead boat. If the tactician can demonstrate how they contribute to the company and make the strategist’s job easier, the strategist will eventually invite the tactician to get in the boat. Low friction enables rapid response; together in the boat, they can see the upcoming rapid and work in unison to avoid it. Reducing friction between the three tiers inherently reduces risk and increases opportunity.
SECTION II.
HOW PEOPLE WORK
Chapter 4.
The Color of Business
Some years ago, I realized that I needed an easier way to communicate about the people in the different business tiers. So, I color-coded them Red, Blue, and Green. There is no hidden agenda in the colors I chose.
Tactical is Red
Let’s start at the bottom: The tactical tier is home to the Red person. Think about electricians for a moment. Before there was the Uniform Building Code in the United States, there were lots of electrical fires. People were doing bad electrical work then, but implementation of the universal standards fixed the competency problem. Today, a master electrician is extremely competent. “How should I do my work?” is no longer the primary question. A more important one is, “Why do I do my work? What purpose does it serve?”
Imagine the scenario of a builder who has constructed several thousand homes in lifestyle communities during his career so far. He might build 10 homes on one side of a given street and tell an electrician, “Here are 10 homes. Put electricity in them and, oh, by the way, the model home is #5.” To a typical, internally and tactically focused person, that extra bit of information would not resonate. What he would take away from that conversation is “I need to put electricity in 10 homes.” As a linear thinker, he would most likely start with #1, then #2, and so on.
Why would this be a problem?
A finished model home facilitates the sale of the other houses because future homeowners can tour it and imagine themselves living in the space. The sooner that the potential buyers are able to tour the model home, the quicker the other houses can get sold, even if they are not completed with construction.
Red people, the tacticians, are essential for the support function of an organization, whether doing IT or wiring houses. We need them to be highly competent at what they do. Here’s the problem: We also need them to be able to prioritize the work. The Red electrician in the example above is not incompetent at installing wiring, but he is incompetent at prioritizing properly. We need the competency of Red people, but it would be beneficial if they would prioritize their work.
In real life, general contractors address this ahead of time by giving the electrician specific instructions: “Do it this way. If you don’t do it this way, you don’t get paid.” That’s how prioritization is controlled in the construction industry.
Many IT people are internally, tactically focused. If you are in the technology field, you can probably think of a lot of people who are like this. The challenge is that Red people locate their value in the work they do and not the value they achieve. It is as if they are the hammer belonging to a carpenter; they could be used by the carpenter to construct something or to deconstruct something but as long as they take no ownership in the final result, it doesn’t even matter what the result is, because they are just a tool. Because they don’t connect their work to its value, they feel like they work within a vacuum. As for the leadership, they see tools as easily replaceable.
Let me give you an example of how disconnecting work from value can cause difficulties. Walmart has had an amazing track record of delivering the lowest cost to their customers for over 50 years. Their people are constantly trying to figure out ways to reduce their own cost so they can pass that onto their customers. “Everyday low price” is their value to the market. What if one day, a technologist at Walmart went into work and saw an opportunity to provide a tool that would give Walmart, at least in one area, comparable customer service to a business such as Nordstrom’s? Developing and sustaining the tool may cost a considerable amount of the technologist’s and potentially other’s time, but it would provide better service to their customers. What would Walmart’s leaders think of this potential tool? Here is the crux, if it doesn’t reduce Walmart’s cost or even more importantly their customer’s cost, it’s really just waste. Customer service is not their value. Technologists will often use their highly competent skills in areas that are not aligned or prioritized to their company’s value and therefore not impactful to their organization.
That act may not be as positively perceived by Wal-Mart leadership as you think. Wal-Mart’s value proposition is low-cost, not necessarily customer service. Therefore, you are wasting resources when you spend your time promoting a value which the organization does not prioritize.
You may know a lot about a certain technology, but that is not enough. You must understand what your organization’s value proposition is. What benefit does it deliver and to whom?
I used to work for Lockheed Martin running a component of IT infrastructure for the F-22 program. We would see military colonels around all the time, but one day, a general walked in. He asked me, “Son, what do you do?” I replied, “I build military aircraft, sir.” He smiled and responded, “You’re going to go a long way.”
What did he mean? He was saying that perspective—how you view what you do—matters a lot. Because I didn’t actually build military aircraft. The guy sitting next to me had a PhD in aeronautics from MIT and he didn’t build military aircraft, either. The people on the manufacturing floor in Fort Worth, Texas actually built the military aircraft. They are the ones assembling the parts, but I still told the general that I built military aircraft, because my job contributed to that value and that was the ultimate purpose of my job.
What you perceive that you do matters. Even if your job is tactical, you don’t work in a vacuum. Do you want to be a leader and an enabler? You need to understand how your role impacts the rest of the organization. Figure out why what you do matters. How are you relevant to the people in the lead boat?
“I build military aircraft” was a natural reply for me. If you would never have answered that way, don’t lose heart! I believe this way of thinking can be learned. You can grow to see yourself as an integral part of a larger whole. That’s how all Red people deserve to think of themselves.
Operations is Blue
The people in the operational tier is Blue. Their job is to enable the organization. They are like a general contractor who makes sure the electricians do their job right. Blue people connect what the strategist does—which we might call mission or business alignment—with what the operators
need to do. Blue people look at the strategist and say, “That’s the target? Okay.” Then they look at the tactician and say, “Here’s the target. To achieve it you need to do xyz.” Blue people focus on being enablers.
You can be a Blue person in any role. In fact, I believe that if you are a technology leader, being Blue must be your goal. You must be an enabler because you will not be relevant to your organization before then.
Blue people are the interface between Strategy and Tactics. That means that they are interfacing in two different directions: toward Strategy, to enable the business mission, and toward Tactics, to direct their job. If you are Blue, you need to mitigate noise and friction while reducing risk. Additionally, you need to work incredibly well cross-functionally, because your job is to enable not only the strategist but also the other people you work with.
If you are an IT leader in the private sector, your goal is to enable the person who runs sales for your region. How do you give them the data they need to be more effective? That strategist may need tools or data or any number of support features. Your job is to get those things from Tactics for Strategy. You enable the organization.
Strategy is Green
The final color is Green, the color of Strategy. The Green person provides direction to the business. As the captain, he controls the rudder: “Turn that way!” Green sets trajectory and vision and culture then gets out of the way.
Green people include Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Sales Officers (CSOs), Chief Operations Officers (COOs), Managing Directors (MDs), Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), and others. No matter their title, their job is to provide direction to the organization.
Chapter 5.
Fulfillment in Your Job
In 2007, business speaker and writer Patrick Lencioni published a book called The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, a narrative about a fictional, retired CEO and his quest to be useful. The CEO, Brian Bailey, quickly realizes that a life of retired inactivity is not for him. Instead, he becomes part owner of a small restaurant and tries to turn it around—even if the employees aren’t on board. In fact, none of the employees like their jobs. They’re miserable.
Anonymity
Throughout the story, Brian discovers the three root causes behind job misery. First, anonymity: People are dissatisfied with what they do if they do not know the people with whom they work, especially their supervisor. That’s a sign of a miserable job. Back in the 1950s–1970s, MBA professors taught students (who became leaders of many companies today) to distance themselves from people in the workplace. Why? They thought psychological distance would make it easier to fire someone and thus be a more effective leader, able to do what is best for the company without emotional involvement. The problem is that distance prevents trust. It raises questions: “Are we in the same tribe? Are we in this together?” The first sign of a miserable job is anonymity.
Immeasurability
The second cause of job misery is immeasurability: people, whatever they do, need to be able to achieve many small successes.
Reaching a goal or winning a contest releases testosterone and dopamine to the brain. When we frequently feel successful, our brain’s structure changes, making us confident and natural winners.8
Likewise, employees need to be measured (or better, to measure themselves) daily for successes. Otherwise, they will not feel fulfilled. Annual reviews fail miserably at this—I’m willing to bet your last annual review actually had little impact on your daily work.
If you are in a commercial, profit-focused organization, the goal is growth in revenue and profitability. The challenge for IT is that, being in a support function, it’s often hard to measure your impact on what matters. You can measure internally, but connecting those measurements to what drives the organization is a challenge. IT leaders need to track two or three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) daily or weekly and update their employees regularly. That way, employees can reach their goals, see their successes, and feel fulfilled. As an example, people who work in sales call centers, a seemingly mundane environment, have always seemed quite happy when I observe them. I attribute this to the immediate feedback they get and the constant incentive contests that are being run.
Irrelevance
The final sign of a miserable job is irrelevance. The actions we take are not the most important thing, it’s how we impact or positively enable other human beings. We must learn how to be relevant. Consider music superstar Taylor Swift or Real Madrid’s Cristiano Renaldo. This might catch you off guard, but Taylor’s relevance is not due to her voice or song-writing skills nor is Renaldo’s relevance due to his footwork abilities on the field. Rather, they are relevant because they impact other people; namely, their fans. That is the secret to relevance. What makes you relevant is how you impact other people’s lives. Not playing songs, not scoring goals, and not completing successful IT projects—impact is the secret.
Sociopaths lack the capability to have empathy for other people, which makes it exceptionally difficult for them to be relevant. You don’t often impact people for whom you care nothing about. But unless you’re a sociopath, you’re wired like all the rest of us and you find relevance in impacting other human beings. That is how you find fulfillment in work, even within the business architecture we discussed earlier. As you navigate your way among strategists and operators and tacticians, you will gain a relevant and meaningful job by impacting others.
Surveying the IT world, I see technology leaders struggling to be relevant with their own senior leaders. The minds of senior leaders are not often like the minds of technology leaders. Senior leaders don’t care about the same things technology leaders care about. Technologists must figure out how to impact their functional leaders in a way that they can relate to, which is normally an entirely differently way than the way the technologists would normally think and speak.
Chapter 6.
CAT: Core
I’ve created a useful tool that I call the CAT: Care-About Tool. As the name suggests, it identifies what Green and Blue and care about. We will explore different aspects of the CAT so Red you can grasp what makes other people tick and learn how to be relevant to them. You become more deeply relevant by identifying and providing what’s important to each color.
Red people are internally and tactically focused. They are often highly competent and provide the support for an organization: IT infrastructure, facilities, warehouses. Though Red people sometimes have difficulty prioritizing, they are absolutely needed, whether insourced or outsourced.
Blue people enable the organization by handling operations: people, process, and technology, driven by applications. If Red is the ship’s hull, Blue is the engine.
Green people are the functional leaders of our companies, the strategists who provide direction, focus, culture, and vision. They are the captains who set a trajectory for the hull and engine.
Speaking of red and blue, it’s an interesting coincidence that I chose those colors to indicate two groups of people who have difficulty communicating, as in the United States, we use those two colors to demarcate the Republican and Democratic parties. Although I did not choose Red and Blue because of that association, thinking about the struggle between the two political parties can be a helpful analogy to understand communication differences. Conservatives and liberals all around the globe struggle to communicate effectively with each other because at their core, they are speaking a different language.
Recently I watched a TED Talk given by Megan Phelps-Roper.9 She is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), whose members are infamous for protesting at soldiers’ funerals carrying signs that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and using inflammatory language toward just about everyone, such as “God Hates You,” and “Thank God for [Hurricane] Katrina.” Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in this environment and believed in its ideology. In her TED talk, she shared how the screaming counter-protestors and online attackers did not affect her stance one
bit. Head-on confrontation completely failed. She only began to question the WBC ideology when people engaged with her firmly yet lovingly. After months of online and in-person discussions, she completely departed from the WBC and now promotes genuine non-hate-filled dialogue.
I doubt the leaders of your organization are anything like the leaders of the WBC. Yet, the principle is universal; to impact someone, you must caringly engage with them without compromising your own convictions.
What is the core of a conservative? Values that include loyalty, patriotism, fiscal responsibility. What is the core of a liberal? Values that include caring for the weak, equality, social justice. People of different political ideologies often talk past each other because they don’t understand one another’s core values and reflect them with their language. Are you a conservative trying to communicate with a liberal or are you a liberal trying to communicate with a conservative? You cannot assume your core ideology as the basis for the conversation. You have to frame your perspective in the terms that the other person cares about: connect government’s fiscal responsibility to equal opportunity, or social justice to patriotism. Use metaphors and parables. Respect your conversation partner’s ideology—not as superior to your own, but as an essential tool for communication. That is the only way political “reds and blues” will be able to dialogue without frustration, confusion, and shouting.
