| interesting thought, are human relations within the Digital corporate
culture different from those in most companies? From my experience
I'd say that they very well might be, especially in the area of
job-related interactions, and that could affect other aspects of
interpersonal relations.
the focus of .0 probably does belong more to the topic of DIGITAL.NOTE
(kp7/Select gets you partway there) but it seems that a lot of what's
involved is how people interact so maybe we should continue this
discussion here.
My understanding is that a major tenet in the Digital philosophy
is the intent to push responsibility and authority down to the lowest
possible level. In other words, each of us has a great amount of
autonomy. The "Oral History style and fragmented goals and objectives"
mentioned in .0 are part of this, because it goes with individual
autonomy that there is not a great organizational unity. Thus each
part of the company may have its own distinctive character too,
since there is organizational as well as personal autonomy.
What this means to me as an individual is that I have a great deal
of freedom to do my job in what seems to me to be the best way that
I can. If I am right I am successful. If not, my management will
take steps to guide me in improving my performance, but it is
ultimately my personal responsibility. How well my efforts fit
into the group around me and the corporation as a whole is a reflection
of my own success in perceiving the company business and my
contribution to it, and of my management chain in communicating
and adjusting the basis for that perception and contribution.
Different parts of the company reflect the different managers
responsible, so specific incidents shouldn't be viewed as
representative of the entire corporation. For example:
.0> I am constantly confronted with issues such as " I have what you
.0> need however I am not chartered to give it to you", or "MY GROUP
.0> is not funded to do that task so although we can, and have the
.0> resources necessary we wont".
I am not constantly confronted with this sort of thing, so my
generalization corresponding to .0's would be that this is not typical
of Digital. Obviously from .0 it is typical of some part of Digital,
but from my experience not all.
There may be more to it than the superficial interpretation. I have
refused to give requested support without some careful consideration
and justification, because it might have hurt my own job performance
even if it helped someone else. I might like to, and even feel
it is useful or valuable, but so is the job I'm supposed to do.
Part of my responsibility with that autonomy is to be self-managing
to a large degree, and I need to make sure I stay focussed on my
job. Yes, we all work for Digital, but my performance review and
salary action reflect my individual contribution not the overall
corporate results. So if my being helpful outside of my direct
job responsibilities hurts my performance of those responsibilities
I'm wrong, even if it helps the company. And whatever the distraction
might be, it is either someone else's responsibility (in which case
I should let them do their job and tend to my own) or it is no-one's
responsibility (in which case it either should be assigned, or is
unassigned because it really isn't justified) - either case is
something to be worked through organizational channels rather than
on an individual basis.
It's a truism that the most important problem to each and every one of
us is the one we own. Issues such as funding (putting up money says
it's important, how much tells how important) and charters (assigning
ownership) are ways to resolve that when dealing with people in
different parts of the organization. I've been told by one of our
consulting engineers that one of his standard negotiating techniques
when dealing with other groups is to ask "how much funding will you
supply?" Even if they won't need to fund it this tells him how
important it really is to them. It's a matter of learning how to
deal with the people and organizational issues in a decentralized
company.
All that really gives is a background perspective. Now, the thing
that is important is for individuals to successfully use the power
that we each have along with the responsibility and autonomy. If
you need something and the person who has it isn't chartered to
give it to you, how can you get it anyway? Well, is there someone
who might be chartered? Or, is there someone who might give it
to you anyway? why is there concern about giving it to you? Often,
it's because you might become an ongoing commitment once you got
it, asking questions, needing support, or passing it along to places
outside the control of your source. So if you understand the issues
involved, maybe you can figure out how to get the people who have
it to give it to you.
A big part of it is you yourself. Because you have autonomy and
responsibility within the Digital culture, you are expected to make
a lot of your own decisions. The quality of those decisions will
reflect your own perceptions and understanding. Particularly if
you are not known to the people with whom you are dealing, there
may be concern about your doing "the right thing" (which is the
semi-mythical guidepost for Digital culture). For example, if you
support customers the "right thing" for your customer might not
be the right thing for a particular product, so developers of that
product might be hesitant about trusting the quality of your
decisionmaking until they're confident of your understanding of
all the issues involved.
Yes, it may seem very fragmented and chaotic, it often is. But
having a centralized management structure to resolve the issues
is a lot of overhead (maybe more, maybe less than the existing
structure), has its own problems (adaptability and flexibility may
be less), and most important, isn't as enjoyable for many of us.
So we learn to minimize the problems of our existing structure,
and to live with the consequences we can't avoid.
Well, this is getting longwinded enough for now. I've tried to
say a little about my own perceptions of the organizational matrix
and the role of the individual. There's still a lot to be said
about how individuals interact within that matrix (which pertains
to the topic of this file) but I'll leave that for someone else,
or for later. Also, I'd like to take that interaction and consider
it in the context of our specific environment, with the network
and computing power that provides a culture unlike any other in
the world - maybe another response, maybe a new topic in this file.
I'll see when I get to it...
|
| 9.2 states:
Yes, it may seem very fragmented and chaotic, it often is. But
having a centralized management structure to resolve the issues
is a lot of overhead (maybe more, maybe less than the existing
structure), has its own problems (adaptability and flexibility may
be less), and most important, isn't as enjoyable for many of us.
So we learn to minimize the problems of our existing structure,
and to live with the consequences we can't avoid.
I must disagree. I've been at Digital only six years, but I believe
the experience of working at Digital is fragmented and chaotic
precisely BECAUSE there is a centralized management structure to
"resolve the issues."
This structure is very noticeable at the moment -- it's budget
time. Suppose I see an opportunity and suggest that the group do
something about it. My manager has to agree, and put it into his
budget request. His manager may put it into his budget request, or
may kill it. His manager may into his budget request, or may kill it.
The vice president may put it into the final budget request, or may
kill it. Now, this is still a budget request, you understand: it
still has to go through some sort of initial budget request screening,
the Strecker Task Force, and the Engineering Management Committee, any
one of which can kill it, before any money appears. The idea has to
get through seven gateways before a feasibility study (Phases 0 and I)
can be started. I have access to only the first of these gateways to
justify the idea.
When a five man year project needs consent from the corporation's
senior vice presidents to become reality, authority has not been
pushed anywhere.
While the budget process is the most visible evidence of the
centralized decision making in Digital, I believe that the real
impediment to "doing the right thing" on the individual level is the
way performance reviews are done. There are two major problems with
the current use of performance reviews:
o They concentrate on what the individual has done for the
reviewing manager's group, not on what the individual has done
for Digital;
o Metrics are based on ease of measurement, not on relevance.
I will illustrate both of these below.
In a previous position I had within Digital, I found dozens of
defects in a field test version of an operating system, using it at
home. I reported these defects to the development group, the
development group fixed them, the customers were happy, and Digital
saved several hundreds of dollars in direct costs for answering SPRs.
(It costs Digital about $2,000 to answer an SPR; more if there is any
engineering work needed). This resulted in a one-like attaboy (field
tested the ___ operating system) in the "Non-Project Related" section,
and a flock of badaboys (did not give his full attention to the
project, did not expend full effort on the project, did not do this,
did not do that, did not, did not, did not, ...) everywhere else.
That was not a happy review. That was not an isolated incident,
either.
In many places in Digital, the performance review comes down to
appraisal of performance on some easily measurable, but not critically
important, metric. In engineering, it has always been elapsed time.
Not number of defects discovered in field test; not ease of use;
certainly not maintainability; always elapsed time. My management, I
know, is measured almost exclusively on whether the products got out
the door on time. Elapsed time is easy to measure, and is important,
but often is not of prime importance. The other product quality
attributes that everyone agrees are important, such as reliability,
maintainability, performance, and evolvability, are also measurable:
just not as easily measurable as time. It is the easy measure, not
the meaningful measure, that gets attention in performance reviews.
Clearly, the above are selected to support my thesis, and may not
be representative of the way Digital actually works. As a
counter example to the above, my current manager shares (or at least
does not oppose) my views on the way Digital should work, and is
willing to give me a good review based on overall "goodness": field
testing some other group's product, finding defects, and taking the
time to report them, is a goodness, even though my project is taking
too long to suit him; beating my project's code into little pieces,
over and over, finding the defects now, is a goodness, even though it
pushes out the field test date. But it took me FIVE YEARS to find
this gem of a manager.
The Digital working environment is fragmented and chaotic exactly
because there is a substantial difference between the "do what is
right" corporate philosophy and the "do what is right for your
manager" corporate reward structure. It takes only one manager with a
hidden agenda, or a desire for empire, or a "not invented here"
attitude, or even a sincere belief is his group's perfection, to make
these goals conflict: only one. And I believe there are more than
one.
There are two major possible responses to this conflict between
the corporate philosophy and the corporate reward structure: accept
the goals explicit in the philosophy, or accept the goals implicit in
the reward structure. Unfortunately, either response causes stress.
If one lives the corporate philosophy, "do what is right," one has the
internal reward of knowing one has contributed to the corporation, to
the customer, to the world at large; but external rewards (good
reviews, raises, promotions, fame and acclamation) are few. If one
lives for these external rewards, one can achieve them, but only at
the price of living with oneself after denying service to others
inside and outside Digital.
Brian Hetrick
|