When Water Cooler Chat goes Wrong

Complaining is not the same as being productive

One message I have always been careful to deliver to my employees is that complaining about work is not the same as being productive at work. One might find, with a group of like-minded colleagues, a willing audience to discuss things that could be improved. We have all worked someplace where we have encountered bureaucratic headaches, difficult team-members, unfulfilling career paths, and perceived lack of executive vision. Talking about these things can feel encouraging and allow one to walk away feeling like something has gotten done. But it is important to remember that in truth, nothing has been done. The discussion may feel good, but it is not the same as implementing a solution, increasing revenue, or decreasing costs. 

Worse yet, when employees feel that this behavior is productive, they tend to do it more and encourage it in others. This increases the amount of complaining, decreases the amount of work accomplished, and results in a downward spiral of productivity and ultimately morale.

 It is a manager’s job to prevent this from happening. The first thing one can do is promote an open-door policy. That is to say that the door is always open to criticism, ideas for improvement, and career concerns. Transparency is always a positive thing, and very often ideas are spot on and come with justifications that can help raise them up the flagpole. Secondly, it is important to remind employees that complaining about things to other employees before they have been elevated to those who can act upon them is not only unproductive, but it is unacceptable. This may sound harsh, but it is not. Every company has the responsibility to control its own culture. Organizations have the same right to forbid employer-focused complaining as they do to prevent sexually harassing speech.

But that authority does not have to lead to an authoritarian relationship. When employees know that the things that bug them, the things they want to improve, and their ideas for a better workplace are landing on the welcome ears of an interested manager, the need to complain at the water cooler will be naturally mitigated. 

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (4 of 4)

Putting what we can control into practice

In this series, we have been talking about getting the most out of your sales team by establishing common goals, directing all things that have an impact in the same direction, and holding everyone accountable. In this segment, I am going to list how these tools can be used on a daily and weekly basis to affect behavior in the desired direction. These are just examples, and you should riff on them in your own way. The important thing is to remain consistent in communication and action. If there is a shared goal out there, do everything in your power to make it known and to get your team to reach it. Oh, and you haven’t established your shared goal, then you aren’t doing your job.

All guns pointed in the same direction will get the job done.

• Clearly define and publish the company objective – the shared common goal.
• Management needs to talk about the shared objective at every opportunity.
• Set expectations that individual effort on this goal is expected every week
• In weekly sales meeting, openly ask each salesperson if they have made progress and expect a “yes”
• Be prepared to set activity quotas around the goal
• Recognize that sometimes salespersons are going to make up stuff to fulfill the request – and that’s OK. Everyone recognizes BS when they hear it, and that awkwardness that follows is an incentive to try harder next week. But no one will know if the question isn’t asked. So, ask the questions and suffer the awkward.
• Establish honest dialog with everyone regarding the quality of their efforts – call BS when appropriate.
• Kindly draw attention to failings and work with the individual to avoid them in the future
• Congratulate BDMs who find great new prospects early
• Ask the successful BDMs to share how they are succeeding and use that to train
• Make sure all obstacles to this goal are being removed – remove friction from the sales process. If the salesman’s credo is ABC, the sales manager’s is ABRF (always be removing friction).
• Make sure responsibility comes with authority. Empower your salespeople to negotiate on their own. Ensure they know the product and pricing parameters. It is often good for a process to say, “I have gone as low as I can, but I want to make this work so let me see if I can get my manager on board.” But it is bad for the process when the client feels the salesperson doesn’t have the authority to negotiate to a close. It’s a subtle difference.
• Purchase the tools they need to allow them to hit their objectives. If you have a lot of SKUs, purchase and configure a pricing tool from your CRM provider (back to ABRF). If your team need leads, research lead sources, and buy the list most likely to bear fruit.
• Let them control their method, but always be available to assist
• Hold them accountable
• Help your sales team expand their network. There are always more prospective clients to meet. Let them use your person network, or encourage them to join new clubs, groups, or join a charity board.

And everything else you can think of! When shared objectives are clear, identifying ROI on an investment that furthers that goal is an easy task. Spend what you need, support your team, hold them accountable, and keep all the guns pointed in the same direction. If the shared goal is achievable, this is the best, fastest, and most positive way to reach it.

Knowing is not enough, we must apply.
Willing is not enough, we must do.

Bruce Lee

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences.

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (3 of 4)

Understand what is not in your control

In this series, we have been talking about getting the most out of your sales team by directing all things that have an impact in the same direction. But it is also important to know what is not in our control and not waste energy or sleep over it. Broadly speaking, things outside of our control, belong internally to a person and are developed and influenced outside of the organization. Here are my top five.

When things are outside of your control, accept it and work around them.

• Feelings: Everyone is responsible for their own feelings. Some people are more susceptible than others to outside stimulus, but there is no standard. You as a manager should not worry whether a team member is happy, sad, angry or remorseful. Your job is to deliver information honestly and treat them fairly. Furthermore, sometimes people are not happy in general. That doesn’t mean they can’t be a great at sales. A top producer can be going through a divorce and still be excellent at opening doors and closing. As managers, we want everyone on our team to find their happiness, but that is out of our control and not something to worry about.
• Productivity: Some folks are super productive, and some aren’t. You will always have a spectrum on your team. Productivity tools may improve everyone’s performance, but they will not eliminate the gap between the most and least productive. As they say, a rising tide raises all boats.
• Motivation: As with productivity, some people are motivated, and some aren’t. Sometimes motivated people go through periods when they are not motivated. You never know what is going on in a team members head. What you do know however is that if you are honest with them, set their goals fairly, and give them eth tools they need, they will get there or suffer the consequences.
• Philosophy: As I mentioned above, you can’t get into your team members’ heads, and you certainly can’t change what’s there. So don’t even try. You can lead by example, you can make sure they have what they need, but the way they think about sales is up to them.
• The ability to mind read: Manager’s simply cannot hold people accountable for things that are not articulated clearly. If you aren’t getting what you want, ask yourself if your requests have been delivered in precise, honest language.

An important note: The one-time sales managers do have control over these things is during the hiring process. In an interview we can search for those who think the way we want and pass on those who think differently. So, make sure you identify the traits you value and craft interview questions that will shed light on personality traits important to you and your organization. This is a good time to review your company’s Core Values.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences. In tomorrow’s post, the final in this series, I will share examples of putting all these tools into practice.

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (2 of 4)

Core values are the most powerful tools in your belt

In this series, we are talking about getting the most out of your sales team by establishing common goals, pointing all things that have an impact in the same direction, and holding everyone accountable. But when we talk about everything pointing in the same direction, a few of the things in our control have special significance. These are your most powerful tools.

Shared goals. They can take many forms including account growth, retention, speed of closing, and new business development. I liken these to the Eiffel tower, a destination in the distance that we can always lift our head up and see to ensure we are heading in the right direction. But they are also powerful motivating tools. We all know that sales guys are competitive and will strive to maximize their performance. However, what makes a professional athlete happier, achieving his personal best or winning the championship. Andre Dawson won the MVP in 1989 while playing for the last place Cubs, but he would trade that award for a World Series Ring in a heartbeat. Fortunately, being part of a team chasing a shared objective allows individuals to follow their personal interest and participate in the excitement of team victories.

Honesty as a Core Value. When you are not honest with your staff, they know immediately, and they create a narrative as to why you are lying. These explanations often veer towards the extreme and lead to speculation about impending lay-offs, interpersonal affairs or loathing, or illegal activities. Always answer honestly, and if there is something that is proprietary to the executive team, just say that isn’t something we are talking about right now if asked.

Consistency. Advancing from a manager to a leader is hard and one of the things it requires is consistency of message. All the things I talked about yesterday (concepts) and will talk about on Friday (examples) need to be done every day – and many times every day. If there is a shared common goal (and there always should be), it should lead and end every discussion you have with your team. You will hold your people accountable if you want to succeed, but you will also do it all the time – privately and in front of the team. Everyone must know that what you expect of them is the same thing they can expect of their peers.

I am a big fan of Core Values having experienced how powerful they are when brought to a team that was working without them and over time I may add to this list.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences. In tomorrow’s post, I will talk about the pitfalls managers encounter when they try to control things over which they haven’t any power.

Getting the Most Out of Your Sales Team (1 of 4)

Pointing all your guns in the same direction

Getting the most out of a sales team can be a struggle. Even the best salespeople struggle to open doors even when qualified leads are presented. And management teams know that successfully incenting behavioral changes can be an elusive goal. Still some teams seem to get it right, and those that do almost always follow the same two simple principles.

When I talk about guns, i am doing so metaphorically. Still, this image is cool.

• They ensure that BDMs have all the tools required to be successful
• They hold each salesperson responsible for the achievement of assigned goals

We all understand the concept of accountability, even if sometimes we have a hard time delivering on it. But what on earth is “tools required”? It’s more than a CRM, or an targeted comp structure but those things are on the list. The actual list of tools required is EVERYTHING we, as managers, have at our disposal to influence behavior in a desired direction. And when all are lined up, behavior is guided salespersons are better prepared, and holding people accountable becomes much easier.

What is in our control?

The list of everything can be long, but here is the top dozen:

• Shared Common Goals – the single most powerful tool at a manager’s disposal. More on this later.
• Compensation – a program which favors the behavior we desire and penalizes all others.
• Incentives – perks which support the behavior we desire in a nonmonetary way.
• Reprimands – pointing out (privately for god’s sake) when an employee does not live up to expectations.
• Culture – one that is psychologically safe and encourages sharing and ideation. It is the size of the pie that matters, not the size of the slice! When the pie grows, everyone’s slice can grow also.
• Training – Ensuring the team has all the skills needed to hit their goals.
• Process – process removes confusion from sales and allows greater focus on the relationship.
• Tools – CRMs, Pricing tools, technology, fashion consultants – whatever they need to maximize their efficiency and eliminate friction.
• Performance measurement – count everything and show it over time and relative to success.
• Core values – This is 50% of why people stay or leave. The trinity of Trust, Honesty, and Accountability is a good start. More on this tomorrow.
• Reinforcement – When someone does a great job, let it be known!
• Expectations – Salespeople will pursue exactly the goals they are given. When management is clear and desired numbers are written, incentives align.

If the world wants the product you sell, and all guns are pointing in the same direction, the team will hit its target.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Make sure you read the ones that accompany it, and please use the comments to tell me what you think or to share your experiences. In tomorrow’s post, I will talk about a couple of the items on this list that have significant power.

Why I Changed the Name of this Blog

When I started this blog 6 years ago, I had a clear mission to share common sense ideas positioned to the right of many of my Chicago peers. As my bio states, I am an economist at heart and that perspective often unearths challenges with otherwise well-meaning progressive policy ideas.

Back then, the term conservative fit. It didn’t mean right winger, zealot, or evangelist. Those far right of center subscriptions each had their own labels, and conservative was a term with which I was comfortable – at least when it came to non-social issues. I still believe that the cost of big government is personal freedom, that building one’s station through personal productivity is one the clearest paths to happiness, that contemporary unions are wolves in sheep’s clothing, that history matters, and that there are just too many darned laws.

Because everything that works, happens in the center.

But the former President and his attention-drunk followers co-opted the word conservative into something else. Now it leans toward anti-maskers, isolationism, good-old-days, and social justice insensitivity – concepts just as dangerous as their left wing counterparts: hyper-maskers, pandering to our international enemies, the tyranny of woke, and defunding the police. Idiots on both sides of the spectrum are equally in need of a slap.

My gut feeling is that there has never been a more equitable, more just, and more opportunity-filled time to be an American. The foundation of society, as we come out of this rule-breaking shut-down, is more pliable than ever before. It’s an unprecedented opportunity to make changes for the better. But we’ve been through a boiler of a year and it’s bubbled a lot of nasty things to the surface. These things need to be addressed openly and without fear and I look forward to exploring them on this site.

So welcome to my site, A Card Carrying Centrist. Same content, same mission, new and improved name.

NFT Soaring Prices Explained

Did that headline hook you? Well, I was kidding. I can’t even come close to explaining the recent prices paid for NFTs. But I am pretty good at questioning what I see and can perhaps shed some light on their true values. And if you have never heard of an NFT, keep reading. I will explain them in a bit.

This whole quandary started when Nyan Cat (see image) sold for $800,000 in March. That’s right, a digital gif that was created a decade ago and until recently would have been considered absolutely worthless by everyone from a seasoned investment manager to my 9-year-old daughter, sold for nearly a million bucks. In explanation, the Wall Street Journal paraded a crypto expert who explained that much like da Vinci’s signature on the Mona Lisa guarantees its value, a digital file associated with Nyan Cat guarantees that this is the original Nyan Cat sold by the original artist and hence has value.  Many investors bought this pile of cheese. I only saw holes.

This digital file is called an NFT. It is a nonfungible token or blockchain-based digital device that is associated with an asset. This device stores the data about the asset in a permanent and noneditable ledger somewhere. That data will include originator and date of creation as well as records of subsequent ownership and information specific to the asset. The asset is generally but not necessarily digital itself.

An NFT is like a label in a sweater. It tells the manufacturer, country of origin, cleaning instructions, maybe the collection year, and if your mom is doing her job, it has your name on it. It is all valuable information, but if the label comes off, you can still wear the sweater just fine.

So the Nyan Cat sale included the original artwork as well as a permanent record of the date created and the name of the artist. Or that is what we are told. Neither of those things is fully true.

An NFT offers no guarantee that this asset was created by anyone in particular. All it purports is to know is the name of the NFT’s creator, and when the NFT was associated with the artwork. Nyan Cat’s NFT only works because it echoes the pre-existing trademark, something decidedly low-tech.

Second, the NFT offers no guarantee that this is the original Nyan Cat. “Original” is a tricky concept in digital art. Many copies are created and sent around during creation and the final original version is not the same as the one that is optimized and distributed. Furthermore, the internet is rife with authentic variations of Nyan Cat in all sorts of different costumes and situations that predate the NFT. The NFT promises to know when it was created and associated with the artwork, but not when the artwork was created or if it’s the original version.

Similarly, an NFT does not guarantee Nyan Cat’s value. To point out the problems with the WSJ’s example, the true value of the Mona Lisa is a function of the quality of the painting, the name of the artist, and the work’s importance in history, not a verified signature. Nyan Cat exhibits no artistic quality. It is cute and ironic but lacks artistic merit or conceptual depth. And the artist is certainly not as famous, nor has the cultural significance of many artists whose work sells for far less – take Salvador Dali or Frida Kahlo for example.

The NFT doesn’t even solve a needed problem. Like an authenticated signature, Digital art has had a mechanism for guaranteeing authenticity since the late 90s (and a Sol Lewitt wall painting decades earlier). When a video painting by digital artist Jeremy Blake was purchased in 1999, it came with a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist. There are many ways to view and share his work. Some may even be available on YouTube. But only holders of the certificate of authenticity can sell the work. This is an equally faithful guarantee of the artist’s hand and the work’s origin. Unfortunately, there is no stampede to collect digital artwork with a paper certificate of authenticity (said the guy who owns several Jeremy Blakes).

Since we are running out of explanations, one might wonder if the actual NFT and its connection to a rare blockchain has value. Like how gold from an ugly piece of jewelry can be melted down and used to make a nicer one. This is a reasonable explanation until one remembers is that NFT stands for non-fungible token. Nonfungible means it cannot be exchanged, and this NFT, by intent of creation, has no other possible appropriation or value outside of its designated context. So nope.

In the end, I am pretty sure that the price realized by Nyan Cat was a function of NFTs being novel and some unwarranted purchasing momentum for crypto-based assets. In other words, it is a bubble. If you are considering jumping in, beware. Fundamentals might not be the thing that drives an investment’s price in the short-term, but they are always what drives its value in the long term. Understanding the difference is not hard but anticipating when it will pop can be.

Leveraging COVID-Created Opportunities

COVID has sucked. If you are involved in the hospitality industry, supporting workers in their offices, or in a face-to-face service role, it is likely that your position has been upended or eliminated. Many of our favorite restaurants have not been able to weather the reduction in cash flow and closed their doors. The dry-cleaning industry, only recently recovered from the impact of municipal smoking-bans, has seen 50% of its stores shutter. And elegant office buildings cannot give away office space.

A telling, if bizarre, poster hung outside one of our favorite COVID-closed restaurants.

Yet there are opportunities in COVID. Many companies are rethinking the changing needs of their customers or identified emerging markets and making clever pivots. The element that most success stories have in common is the elimination of intellectual obstacles.

The more common physical obstacle does not care about COVID. The speed of light has not changed. Trucks cannot carry any more than before. Solar and wind energy have not gotten any more efficient. And the human body still breaks down in the same ways. But obstacles that existed because people believed they should exist have been turned on their heads.

The most obvious example is the previously maligned and decades old video-meeting industry. Sales managers used to be adamant that a face-to-face meeting should never be replaced with a phone call. Executives were certain that zoom-meetings were unreliable and ineffective. Yet now both have been forced to learn, embrace, and acknowledge the efficacy and efficiency of phones and computers to conduct live meetings.

Tele-medicine is another example of an industry that has taken advantage of the removal of intellectual obstacles. The American Medical Association and government regulators consistently blocked this industry’s advance on the grounds that face-to-face medical conversations and state-specific licensing of doctors were superior and required. But both of those written-in-stone objections dissolved like Berry-Blue Jell-o in a swimming pool once it was realized that patient visits spread the disease and placed doctor and patient at risk.

Intellectual obstacles have fallen in the medical industry in the past. Once the idea of a home pregnancy test was opposed. It was well-regarded that a positive test needed to be accompanied with a conversation on prenatal health and best practices. But a private little revolution happened in the early 80s and health experts came to realize that early pregnancy detection was more important than informed pregnancy detection. Still, most tests that can be done at home are not allowed. Expect advancements in COVID home-testing to pressure the elimination of that obstacle across the field.

Another observable example of the elimination of intellectual obstacles is the relaxation of laws surrounding outdoor dining. Restaurant owners and politicians once accepted the agreement that sidewalks should never be blocked by tables, bus stations or any private business’s object of necessity. Table distance, property lines, and fencing were written into law and fiercely regulated.

But with COVID came the upset of that intellectual obstacle. Even the fiercest regulators understand that haphazard outdoor dining may be the only chance most restaurants have to survive – and they agree that their community is better off with restaurants! The creative things restaurants in my neighborhood have done would have been unthinkable a year ago. Plastic igloos completely block sidewalks sending pedestrians into the street or they sit in the street sending traffic around. Others have placed tables on land they don’t own or was inappropriate for dining. Non-code garden sheds, portable cabanas, and makeshift tents now house space heaters, picnic tables, and cute wintery decorations. In some cases (i.e., Camp Lottie’s) what restaurant entrepreneurs have come up with is better than what they had before COVID!

These examples do not just represent a few specific changes to age-old ways of doing things. They represent a change in the way business leaders should think about improving sales, efficiency, and finding new markets. Almost every rule that was once sacred is now open for discussion. 

What should you do? Question, Try, Invest.

Successful leaders will not pass on this opportunity. Look at your business model, the way you produce, and the way you sell. Where are the intellectual obstacles in your system? What rules might not matter any-more? Engage your regulators and learn where they have moved the lines. Then consider challenging them to move the lines further. Think about how once unacceptable technology interfaces or automation can be implemented.

Once you have identified potential soft spots in the metaphorical walls limiting your operation, try to pierce them. Build a cheap app that avoids face-to-face contact and coincidentally also reduces costs. Try an automation idea that prevents COVID transmission even if it displaces a job. Test the waters vertically and horizontally. Throw a picnic table onto the sidewalk. Break some rules. See what takes.

And finally, make bets on what you have learned. The successful companies are going to come out of COVID with a business model that takes them in fundamentally different directions. They will discover that once half-baked acquisitions are now clever. They will learn that the time until positive ROIs, once measured in years, can now be measured in months. 

You know that adage “change or die?” It’s never been truer. There may only be three paths forward: become a change leader, become an acquisition target, or go away. Which road should your company be taking as you navigate your way out of COVID?

If you would like assistance with your business’s strategic direction, email me. and we can set up some time to talk.

Infection Rate, Selection Bias, and Hats

We all know the famous Mark Twain line: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” That and the adage that one can find a statistic to prove anything may suggest that statistics are just untrustworthy.

In fact, measurement and analysis – the fundamentals of statistics – are the only honest way to understand a full story – with the caveat that the numbers and the methods for their collection are understood and sound.

Stand-alone numbers rarely help one understand an event. If I told you that 7 people in the room had hats, you would know almost nothing about the situation I describe.

A nice hat.

But ratios are more descriptive. If I told you that 7 out of 100 (7/100 or 7%) of the people in the room had hats, you would know that most people were not wearing hats. The picture is more clear.

Even better is the time series. If I told you that 7% of the people in the room were wearing hats and that at last year’s event, 14% of people wore hats, you would know that the number of people who wear hats is small and fell year to year. You would have a a story about what was happening with the hats.

But this still isn’t enough. We also need to know how the numbers were collected if we are to trust the story they tell. If the number of people in the room was measured at lunch time one year and during the heart of the event a year later, we would have little confidence in the number of people the room. Similarly, if the hats were counted on heads one year and inside the coatroom the other year, we would not have confidence in the number of hats.

Some fellows have hats. Some do not.

Furthermore, it is important to discount any data that may be biased. If our hat statisticians offered a reward to ensure participation, they likely introduced selection bias (as mentioned in yesterday’s post). They likely missed the number of hats in the room and ended up with the number of hats worn by people who liked the reward. Imagine how different the results would be if the reward was a hat pin (a bias toward those who liked hats) or a tube of sunblock (a bias toward those who do not wear hats).

Back on point, here’s a great example demonstrating how COVID Infection Rate will be impacted by selection bias. As we approach this year’s flu season the infection rate is likely to go down even though the number of people infected with COVID stays the same or increases. The reason is that flu symptom confusion will lead more people to seek out COVID testing. This bias could dramatically increase the number of tests (the denominator) leading the infection rate to fall irrespective of the number of people infected.

Summing up, the clean numbers are, fatality rate, hospital beds (available and filled), and population size. Ratios and time series that include these numbers will help us correctly analyze the situation. However, ratios that include biased numbers such as COVID Infection Rate should be avoided. No matter how often the Governor repeats it, it does not describe the picture we are seeing.

Also, hats are cool.

Before AGILE there was, well, agile

November 2019 marked the publication of a memoir by Ameritrade CEO and Founder, Joe Ricketts, The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get. I led the internet initiative at Ameritrade to the internet and spent many hours being interviewed for this book. Chapter 10 (page 245) highlights some of that story. Following is some more detail.

Like many software development teams in the 90s, we were struggling to keep up, as the internet – rather than floppy disks – became the data delivery method of choice and previously successful development models began to break down. This new paradigm was powerful because we could just update all our clients’ software at the flip of a switch. But it was also fraught with danger as it became very inexpensive and easy to launch new code without appropriate quality control. 

The Egyptians were not Agile

 In the olden days, almost all projects were delivered following a waterfall project management process. Even the pyramids likely started with some sort of primitive blueprint which included every thought and idea that the hoping-to-be-immortalized king might have in his head. As challenges to designing crept-up during construction, they were dealt with via design compromises. As a result, end projects were almost always something less than they were initially intended – even if nonetheless cool.

As people got better at building skyscrapers, ships, and bridges, they got better at estimating the time a project would take. Estimates were created based on the average of past projects scaled up or down to match the one at hand. We can imagine the thinking of an engineer in 1890:

That last bridge took 2 years and was a mile long. This new one is 20% longer so it should take about 29 months.

As our society of builders approached the middle of the 20th century, waterfall project management was very nearly perfected for capital projects. Engineers were aware of the details, pitfalls, and requirements of their projects. They were good enough that we were able to put a man on the moon!

Old practices didn’t fit new products

But around the time of Apollo 11, a new generation was coming of age who would challenge the time-tested results of waterfall concerning software development. Capital projects had been physical-resource-based. Metal, factory space, rivets, steel, and labor had gone into building the monuments of the previous two millennia. The new monuments were to be made of information, communication protocol, mental horsepower, and electricity. They deserved a new method of project management that matched their intangible materials.

Taking cues from Japanese manufacturing, their own experiences, and the changing relationship between programmers and users, computer engineers began to advocate for smaller production cycles that were more flexible. They sought to replace the heavy process of waterfall with something lighter. They promised to increase their accountability and transparency in return for a seat at the planning table and the opportunity to honestly manage executive expectations. Enter Agile.

There is a romantic notion within the software development community that in 2001, a group of 17 computer scientists got together in Utah and invented Agile software development. But that is really not what happened. In truth, engineers all over the world had been wrestling with the problems of building software in executive-driven environments and by the 1990s were coming up with similar solutions. The birth of the internet, and the explosion of users demands, really kicked the discussion into high gear.

Ameritrade

I was in Omaha Nebraska in the 1990s. Omaha might not have much of a silicon reputation, but due to its central proximity and favorable demographics, it was an early hub for military, communications, and technology providers. My company was Ameritrade even though it was called TransTerra at the time. Our technology team was part of the greater Omaha tech community. We knew each other, met regularly to discuss issues and share a beer and traveled to the same conferences. You can always spot a traveler from Nebraska because invariably they will be wearing red or have the state name emblazoned across their chest. It helps when they get lost.

 As TransTerra changed its name to Ameritrade and its number of clients grew from thousands to millions, we were under unprecedented pressure to revamp the way we built software. At the time Amazon first bragged about $1 million days, we were already seeing $100 million days. Our development cycles were built around exploding demand, for which our capacity increasing releases were regularly inadequate. And every day we were learning how better to present our interfaces. Clearly, long, waterfall development cycles were not going to work anymore.

In the spring of 1998, following the crush of a few 80-hour/week development cycles, we put a stop to the treadmill and took a step backward. For nearly three weeks, the development team and I locked the doors, sat together, and wrote what was to be Ameritrade’s new software development process. We called it the Cooperative Software Design Process.

I wish I still had a copy of that original document, but it is long gone. What I do have is a PowerPoint simplification, dated a year later (1999), that was presented to executives and new management as part of an initiative I worked on with my buddy, Ronny Gal from Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It is interesting to review and note how many similarities there are to what we now all know as Agile.

I have attached one particularly interesting slide from that deck. Much of it will feel familiar.

• Cooperative acknowledges that the stakeholders were part of the process.
• Concurrent iterations allowed us to deliver features more quickly.
• The overlapping snail-shell arrow that has come to define Agile diagrams
• That spinning idea generator up front was our version of ongoing backlog tasks
• The little note in the bottom of the call-out box “smaller is better”

We missed a lot of important Agile components too. We didn’t think of time boxing, completed software instead of status reports, or daily stand-ups, but those things probably weren’t appropriate to Ameritrade at the time. We were creating a process that allowed our business units – and subsequently the end-users – to understand that they were in control of what we were doing. In retrospect, it was quite appropriate.

The emergence of the internet changed a lot of things in the mid-90s. Companies that didn’t embrace it went away and those that did were forced to re-evaluate the way they did business. Few companies were as shaken and shaped as much as Ameritrade. Every element of the company was put into flux – but nowhere greater than what became the internet development team. We were pioneers out of necessity and lucky that the pre-Agile discussion was one of which we could be a part. These concepts helped our team progress to maturity and paved the road for Ameritrade’s growth and eventual position as one of the largest brokerages in the country.

Additional posts in this series:

• Agile Without a Learning Curve
• Story Points, Agile Estimating, and Today’s Puzzle
• Better Estimating through Fibonacci
• Winning-over Executives with Agile
• Selling Agile, and The Cost of Uncertainty (coming soon)
• Agile and Waterfall: Comparing Unknowns (coming soon)