Comment by kristianc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristianc | Hacker News Reader

This is a piece of positioning. It's not so much Blank giving any serious solution to the solution of 'no accountability' as him saying 'look at how tough and uncompromising I am.' He literally says he thinks 'creating a culture' is the same as 'I hung a sign on the door.'

Well no. A lot of management thinking (5 Whys etc) has gone into breaking down problems into micro-blockers.

If your graphic designer is constantly sick, then that is a problem, and it doesn't mean that your VP deserves to be fired for failing to open up Photoshop himself. It's not the VP's job to do as it as the VP is not a graphic designer. The VP isn't a hero for having a go- what the VP produces is likely to be shit.

'No excuses' cultures tend to, far from raising accountability, attract the kind of mediocre performers who want to be told what to do, don't want to stretch themselves (as they're frightened of failure) and are looking for the next person to throw under the bus. No thanks.

> If your graphic designer is constantly sick, then that is a problem, and it doesn't mean that your VP deserves to be fired for failing to open up Photoshop himself. It's not the VP's job to do as it as the VP is not a graphic designer. The VP isn't a hero for having a go- what the VP produces is likely to be shit.

Some would say that's the difference between a graphic designer and a VP. Steve Jobs had a similar view:

> Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, "reasons matter." He continues: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." That "Rubicon," he has said, "is crossed when you become a VP.

Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article:

> By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable.

> The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and deadlines, it was to build a culture of no surprises and collective problem solving.

Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.'

Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where people are constantly fearing for their jobs.

Heh, I think it made sense upto the point where he threatened firing people. I agree that is too extreme: you're gonna quickly lose a lot of people who perform best when they're not under constant pressure.

He comes from a culture where nobody is fired and failing upwards is almost a natural law.

I disagree. Strongly.

A common attitude of effective managers as documented by First, Break All The Rules can be summed up by, "I never waited too long to make the right hire. I never fired the wrong one quickly enough." Having the wrong employee is very toxic for your organization and culture.

The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people. They amount to, "Be accountable for what you say, try to make it work, and let people know quickly once you hit a roadblock." It is about effort and communication, not achieving results.

People who don't put in effort and don't communicate can't be made to, and can't stay. But people who do, can. And, on average, this will work out well.

>The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people

To paraphrase what someone else said, "If a person is saying you're pressuring them, it's not your place to say you aren't"

The correct form of that is that if someone says that they are under pressure, it's not your place that they aren't. However people both can be and are frequently dishonest with themselves about WHERE pressure is coming from.

The challenge with Steve's rules is that people have to fight defensive behavior within themselves. If you believe that Steve will use your actions against you, it is really hard to follow his rules. If everyone follows his rules with trust that things will work well, following them is easy and things work well. If you can't trust him, then you don't belong in that organization.

But given what I know about him from years of observation at a distance, he means what he says and says what he means. I do not believe that he will use people's actions against them. And it would quickly not work out for him if he did.

>> The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people. They amount to, "Be accountable for what you say, try to make it work, and let people know quickly once you hit a roadblock." It is about effort and communication, not achieving results.

Just want to clarify: It's subjective perspective. It is pressure and it is about achieving results, but it's not unreasonable or unexpected for any business. I pay you, you do work. Period. Or the company fails.

>> People who don't put in effort and don't communicate can't be made to, and can't stay.

Depends on the personality of the individual. Make sure you work with them first and figure out if you CAN get them to cooperate. If you don't bother trying but just put up the rules and say "follow this", there is the possibility you'll dump a good employee and have to spend the next 6 months getting HR to replace him/her.

Just want to clarify: It's subjective perspective.

Right. Whether there is pressure is a subjective judgement. But the fact that you feel pressure DOES NOT make it an objective fact that someone else is putting pressure on you.

To get to an objective fact, you would need to find fair and neutral third parties. Neither of the two people directly involved can actually judge.

As a neutral third party, my impression of Steve Blank is that he is probably a very good person to work for. I have been in environments similar to the one that he described. And I found them very good environments to be in.

It's not just losing the wrong people, but also retaining the wrong people: A common outcome of management by fear is that people learn survival tactics: Avoiding commitment, shifting responsibility, finishing tasks poorly rather than late, ass-covering, and outright cooking the books.

You missed Steve Blank's point.

My interpretation is he's simply advocating that if someone is aware of an issue that will set a project deadline back, don't keep it a secret and surprise everyone when the deadline isn't met.

Instead of "management by fear", build a culture where missing meeting deadlines is OK as long as a valid reason was communicated to the stake holders BEFORE the due date (no surprises). If a someone who's a project dependency had a family member pass away which will likely lead to a project delay, Blank is suggesting that's something that can be communicated honestly + transparently to a superior (and very much understandably - should be no fear involved). The upside is the superior can potentially reallocate resources to keep the project on track while not be getting caught off guard with a project unexpectedly derailed.

My interpretation is he's simply advocating that if someone is aware of an issue that will set a project deadline back, don't keep it a secret and surprise everyone when the deadline isn't met.

If this is his point, he's a lousy writer.

He clearly stated this more than once.

Then why rely on interpretation?

In reading the article I also had the same interpretation as cj.

Blank is talking about acknowledging and dealing with risks early.

> Blank is talking about acknowledging and dealing with risks early.

True that. He also mentioned firing people for not complying with his new rules several times. And also that he did. Those seem like the more substantive acts of his reign, as communicated in this post.

It does seem harsh and it's possible that some part of employee obligations are done from fear.

However, we don't know the exact circumstances behind the firings. I'm giving Steve the benefit of the doubt that he didn't fire folks who slipped deadlines just once, but removed though who consistently didn't deliver or acknowledge risks early.

Effective policies need teeth. Particularly if your company is in a lean position (emerging from bankruptcy). It reminds me of the "War time CEO" chapter from Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing about Hard Things".

I suggest this message: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13846800 which sets out Steve Blank's behaviour in practice. He appears to work by making demands he doesn't understand.

Further than that, the manager tells their employees "I've made myself too busy to ask you about what's important to me, so it's now 100% on you to do so."

That's like expecting your relationships to go well with no upkeep on your side, only a "tell me if I'm doing something wrong"!

If you aren't afraid of losing your job, you either work for the government or have a strong union.

For the rest of us, setting clear expectations produces the opposite of fear, it gives you confidence in what you are expected to do.

Then he should call it, "a culture of no surprises and collective problem solving." Calling it "no excuses" is part of the management problem he has identified.

My experience is, there are often other dimensions to the issue of commitment.

There is a conscientiousness that comes from being an owner of a company. It's rare to have an employee who maintains the same level of attention as an "owner." That's just how things are. Demanding that employees increase their attention to their work won't change this, or at least not for long. As the article suggests, you can work on developing a culture where people are more likely to be forthcoming and cooperative, but that only goes so far.

There are some employees who do attend to their work the way an owner would, often to their own detriment. Overwork is a real problem for their own wellbeing, and their overall ability to grow and change. It can be a problem for the employer as well, for lots of reasons, including an over-reliance on a few key people.

You can make sure that everyone has enough of a stake to consider themselves an owner, as in a co-op, but co-ops don't seem to scale. That's fine for plenty of businesses, but not for the kinds of businesses that venture capital wants to invest in.

EDIT: The clip art illustrating the article, Pinocchio, suggests a moral element in the author's world view, it conflates lying with missing deadlines and making excuses and not keeping people informed. If people are lying to you as a manager, you should ask yourself why.

Agree with renaming the article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13846741) - but I'm glad Blank posted this rather than not posting for fear of HN attacks for not wording things perfectly.

> There is a conscientiousness that comes from being an owner of a company.

The examples Blank uses in his article is VP-level (highly paid, large equity grants, etc). I think a lot of people are interpreting his advice in the context of someone who isn't managing people.

> It's rare to have an employee who maintains the same level of attention as an "owner."

Agree. But if you are a manager, you are the "owner" (and responsible) for the work of your direct reports.

The examples Blank uses in his article is VP-level (highly paid, large equity grants, etc). I think a lot of people are interpreting his advice in the context of someone who isn't managing people.

Ahistorical and naive. If a VP in this organization thinks they might fall under the blade of "no excuses," he will sacrifice any number of his "isn't managing people" people.

There is another case - where an employee really cares about the company and percieves some risk or problem. If he brings up the issue and it is either ignored or dismissed it causes the employee to become more cynical about the management.

If your VP is unwilling to pitch in to help team members they aren't much of a leader. If they can't do design work their job is to find someone who can help.

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