Sending the right kind of message
I have recently had a number of colleagues tell me about their work environment. I find tech culture fascinating and rarely miss out on a chance to get first hand details.
One of the companies I was told about, had a well stocked kitchen area with an LCD monitor looping through various dashboards. Sales leader boards, news about deals getting closed, social media and tons of other sales related material. Occasionally it would also display pics of people who had birthdays coming in.
This may be be a good point to mention that the friend who told me this, had been working at a branch which consisted of mostly R&D and some product, few to none sales people whatsoever.
This setup made me think.
Dozens of software engineers and researchers walk by the LCD monitor in the common area every day, numerous times, and get an excruciatingly detailed view of the names of the sales persons who made the most sales, how many places they went up or down that week, the number of deals closed that month, number of pending deals, the whole shebang.
This LCD monitor was showing no dashboards whatsoever detailing the build status, build times, system metrics, system health or anything pertaining to technology or the R&D for that matter.
To me, the message that was being sent to the R&D sounded much like "here we are, at heart of the compay's R&D center, and the only thing that matters is sales".
Don't get me wrong, sales is the bloodline to every company. And in many ways, sales may very well be all that matters, just not to people whose passion is technology (or research), a.k.a., the R&D people, who mind you, were the majority of the headcount.
Software engineers may want to see dashboards that reflect their field of interest and passion. Even more so, they would probably like the higher management who sighed off on the expense report for that LCD monitor, to acknowledge them and their effort building the system whose vitals go unmentioned on the LCD monitor.
While the people who designed the sales centric LCD monitor may have had no intention of dismissing the R&D, essentially it was exactly what they did. It's the management's responsibility, however, to pay attention to these nuances and subtle messages. It's the management's responsibility to demonstrate the kind of behaviour they believe in and want to see in every employee.
Unless dismissing the R&D is a company value, redesigning some dashboards seems like a cheap price to pay to make amends.
One of the companies I was told about, had a well stocked kitchen area with an LCD monitor looping through various dashboards. Sales leader boards, news about deals getting closed, social media and tons of other sales related material. Occasionally it would also display pics of people who had birthdays coming in.
This may be be a good point to mention that the friend who told me this, had been working at a branch which consisted of mostly R&D and some product, few to none sales people whatsoever.
This setup made me think.
Dozens of software engineers and researchers walk by the LCD monitor in the common area every day, numerous times, and get an excruciatingly detailed view of the names of the sales persons who made the most sales, how many places they went up or down that week, the number of deals closed that month, number of pending deals, the whole shebang.
This LCD monitor was showing no dashboards whatsoever detailing the build status, build times, system metrics, system health or anything pertaining to technology or the R&D for that matter.
To me, the message that was being sent to the R&D sounded much like "here we are, at heart of the compay's R&D center, and the only thing that matters is sales".
Don't get me wrong, sales is the bloodline to every company. And in many ways, sales may very well be all that matters, just not to people whose passion is technology (or research), a.k.a., the R&D people, who mind you, were the majority of the headcount.
Software engineers may want to see dashboards that reflect their field of interest and passion. Even more so, they would probably like the higher management who sighed off on the expense report for that LCD monitor, to acknowledge them and their effort building the system whose vitals go unmentioned on the LCD monitor.
While the people who designed the sales centric LCD monitor may have had no intention of dismissing the R&D, essentially it was exactly what they did. It's the management's responsibility, however, to pay attention to these nuances and subtle messages. It's the management's responsibility to demonstrate the kind of behaviour they believe in and want to see in every employee.
Unless dismissing the R&D is a company value, redesigning some dashboards seems like a cheap price to pay to make amends.
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