Category Archives: Mentorship

Mentorship Matters

I did a talk on Coder Cruise last year called Mentorship Matters. It’s called that because I truly believe that mentorship matters and the talk is about the matters of mentorship. The agenda for the talk is:

  • How mentors have shaped me
  • How to pick and approach a mentor
  • How to be a good mentor

The original abstract for the talk is as follows:

In this, ever challenging world, having a strong set of mentors is key to your success. Building on the experiences and knowledge of others is the only way to even catch up, much less get ahead. And you need to think beyond career management and think about technical, personal growth, growing your network and all sorts of dimensions as you are thinking about mentors.
Secondly, mentoring someone else can be the most rewarding experience in your life. When should you take on mentees? What are the questions that you need to be asking them? How much of your time should you give up? And so on…
In this talk, we’ll dive into why you need mentors, how to select mentors, how to approach them and how to work with them with case studies from real life. Then we’ll dive into the other side of the coin and how you should work with others when approached to be a mentor.

I hope you enjoy the talk and I’m looking forward to your comments!

Doing the wrong thing…

There are times that your customer will ask you to do something so you do it. But did you stop to ask them about why they need that done? The story here is an old one that you might have heard but recently someone gave me an addition to the story and it blew my mind.

If someone comes to you in the hardware store and asks for a quarter inch drill bit, what do they actually want? Quarter inch holes. A drill bit is just a tool and if there’s a better way to give them the quarter inch hole, give it to them.
The addition was, now ask why they want quarter inch holes… Turns out they are hanging a ceiling fan. Ask them why they are hanging a ceiling fan. Turns out they are trying to sell their house and they were told that a ceiling fan in the bedroom would help. Ask if you could come take a look… Turns out that the paint outside is faded and cracked so the reality is that when they asked for a quarter inch drill bit, really they needed 5 gallons of paint and a ladder and in all honesty, they should slap you for selling them the drill bit.

I’ve been reflecting on this a while and I’ve come to the following…

I’ve long had a philosophy that I’d like to

“Do something, anything, even the wrong thing, learn from it and iterate.”

This has been my guiding light and has helped me keep from getting stuck in analysis paralysis and drives the analytical people around me absolutely nuts (Looking at you Gary Sweeting…) 🙂
That said, I was talking to my new friend that I met at Collision Conf this week, Bas Wouterse (CTO at http://telm.nl), and I realized that I’m slightly off there. It was an aha moment for me as I realized that I’ve been voicing my actual process wrong for years.

Here’s my new motto

“I’d rather do the wrong thing than solve the wrong problem”

The original motto still applies once I figure out what the problem is that I’m solving but it’s not enough to just start doing stuff. I was out with a young developer who asked what’s the difference between an architect and a developer. My answer was “An architect is an experienced developer who cares about the requirements phase of the project.” And that’s the case. I care about the requirements. I’ll investigate until I get a grasp of the problem. Then I’ll start doing stuff in that direction. I’m normally wrong in my approach the first several times. However, as I get more experience, I have gotten better about being less wrong about my direction even in those early phases. The trick is to quickly realize that I’ve made a mistake and fix it. I don’t try to make mistakes, however I’m not scared to make them.

The biggest mistake though, as I’m learning from my previous mistakes, is to solve the wrong problem. It doesn’t matter how correct your solution is if it’s the wrong problem. This goes from macro to micro.

At the macro level, I’ve met a ton of startups who are solving the wrong problem. Normally this means that they are solving a problem that their users have but not solving a problem that their potential customers have. Noodle on that a bit… 🙂

On a micro level, customers always tell me that X is not responsive enough or something very generic and sweeping like that. Rather than digging into the speed testing and all that, I ask them what they mean and start unpacking “responsive” means to them specifically. Often it turns out that you and your customer have very different definitions of responsive. Once you figure out what responsive means, anything that you do to solve the responsiveness issue has a much higher probability of being a step in the right direction.

Summing up, spend the time to ask that next question that will get you closer to solving the right problem.

Following your passion…

There’s a video and cartoon that go through Alan Watts’s little speech about “What if money was no object”. The summary is that he challenges students to forget about money and focus on their passion. You can watch the whole thing on “The Mind Unleashed” ->

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/06/money-object-everybody-including.html

There is a part of this that I agree with and a ton of it that I vehemently disagree with.

The part that I agree with is that if you are simply chasing money, you’ll never be happy and fulfilled. The flip side of that is that if my son exclusively followed his passion, he’d be turn 30 still living my basement playing video games. And if expanded and everyone just followed their passions, who would build sewers, collect garbage and so on.

Passion Pay Potential TriangleThe best manager that I’ve ever had, Nathan Hancock, once drew a triangle on the board with the corners labeled Passion, Pay and Potential.

What you want to do is be dead centre of that triangle.

For example, I’ve got a tremendous amount of passion around playing soccer. And the English Premier League pays really REALLY well. But I have little to no potential.

I also have a lot of passion around being a vintage motorcycle mechanic. And I’m pretty good at it. But it doesn’t pay well enough to support my family.

I have zero passion around politics as a whole. At the higher levels it pays well and I’d be really good at but I’d hate my life.

Programming, for me, is something that I’m passionate about, if I’m on the right projects and working with the right folks, that pays well and I’m good at. What pays just as well that I’m more passionate about is software architecture and teaching people. Architect evangelist make a great job for me because it’s pretty close to the centre of that triangle.

There are lots of people who at really happy handing out on the right hand side of the triangle. This includes artists, people who run charities, the good teachers, clergy and so on. We need those people in our lives. They make us better as a society and enrich our lives in amazing ways. But that’s not everyone and it shouldn’t be anyone with responsibilities such as kids.

You don’t have to look far to see people on the left hand side of the triangle. Watch any of the reality TV shows such as “The Voice” or “America’s Got Talent” to see people who have a lot of passion and are trying to get into something that pays well but have zero potential.

There are people who choose to hang out at the bottom part of the triangle. These people have made money their passion and mistakenly think that it’ll make them happy. There are professions that are more full of these people than others. A tremendous number of lawyers for example, have done this. There are definitely lawyers who are passionate about helping people in need and serving the law is how they do that.

If I had followed my passion exclusively, I would be in a theatre somewhere and would have never tried programming to be honest. Following the money helped me find something that was in the centre of the triangle. But I didn’t just go become something that I thought would pay well. I looked for something that I love doing and continued to refine that over and over again until I found what I’m doing now. I’m going to continue to refine that over time as I continue to endeavor to be in the centre of the triangle.

In short, life is not black and white. It’s not one and only one thing that you’re passionate about and you should pursue that without regard. If you honest with yourself, you’re passionate about a lot of things. Find one of those things that pays decently and get good at it. If you do that, you’ll be in a good place.