My son read lately in reddit about Scrum, an agile way of project management in IT. He asked me some questions and finally, he said there is also a certification about that. I agreed, and asked back: Does the certification makes me a ‘good’ Scrum Master? Here are some questions I’ve given my son to think about. I’ve seen those situations in several companies I’ve been to and I’m sure that some or all of them won’t be unfamiliar to you.

The product roadmap is driven by sales. and the development teams cannot cope with it. How the roadmap can be made so that it gains acceptance by the teams?

Friday afternoon comes in a burning bug from a big customer and it’s an escalation. It concerns different areas of the product. What would you do as Scrum Master (SM)?

Two persons build the same tool, each one in their ways. In the end, we have two different implementations of the same thing and we are confused about which one to use. Those persons have talked but couldn’t find a common ground. What would you do?

A team works with an external partner and complains that the partner doesn’t satisfy the agreed service. They want to change the partner but the upper management is reluctant. What would you do?

The Product Line Manager and the main stakeholder refuse to come to review. She thinks her presence there is redundant. She says she has given already her specifications to the teams. What would you do?

The same problem comes all over again in the retrospective. what would you do?

The product is dimensioned for small customers. Its performance suffers enormous out of this scale. One day the Product Line Manager comes and says “Great news we’ve already sold it to a huge customer. they will launch in 3 months”. The developers are frustrated. What will you do?

The Product Owner leaves for vacation and when he returns he finds that he’s been replaced by his stand-in. What would you do?

The team has planned an essential refactoring already a year ago and it never has time to execute it. There is always an urgent feature to be delivered. What would you do?

An experienced colleague has criticized the management for a long time and finally, he is asked to quit. What would you do?

Those and much more came to my mind as I discussed with my son the theory of Scrum. Yes, you take an orientation with the theory, yes you take a basis with the certification. When you go through to implement those things in a middle-sized company it’s like you’ve gone to a jungle with a kid-knife. Don’t interpret my message as pessimistic. The knife grows as you walk through. However, be prepared for unexpected issues, conflicts, and chaotic interactions. Be prepared to face the amazing nature of human beings.

Sunday afternoon. I start my meditation with one thing in mind. ‘What is the right thing to do?’ I thought of Leo Tolstoy’s story ‘The emperor’s three questions but I couldn’t take it in my heart. I’m surrounded by many people and it’s me as well present. Who to make happy first when there are conflicting interests?

I let the thoughts floating, the eyes half-closed and then I’ve got a visit. A visit from the future. It was a man who introduced himself as my grandson.
“Grandma”, he stated, “I was a baby when you died but I was there, I saw you in your bed. Everybody you loved was there, Mapa, Papa, me, uncle Chris and auntie Penny, aunt Helen with her dog Snoopy and your friend Leon. You were smiling, you died in peace and you’ve lived in peace and harmony. You had respect and forgiveness for yourself and you taught respect and forgiveness to your children without realizing it. Because of your inner peace, you did appreciate individually every person close to you. You made them feel important ’cause you felt important yourself. This is how you lived and I’m glad I have you for grandma.”

I was smiling now, my mind was clear, I was instantly happy. I knew the way to follow. It’s the way in me, knowing, respecting, acknowledging, and forgiving myself. I’m glad the future has invested in time travel. What can your visitor from the future tell you, that makes you happy?

When I was in the 6th grade I bought a beautiful pencil with a sharp tip. I saved it for a special page in my notebook and I continued writing with my old one in the class. Then a boy sitting next to me asked me to borrow my pencil. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t say ‘no’. So I gave him my beautiful unused pencil and my heart was broken.

During my life, this situation has been repeated with different faces. In the group of friends, I’ve never suggested a movie or a place to hang out, even if I had a wish. At the work, I didn’t dare to drive a project, even if I knew very well the area and at home, I considered myself a bad mother when I was tired and I wanted to go to bed earlier than the kids.

The kids became young adults taking care of themselves, so I had not only more time for myself but also my very own space in the flat. I was enjoying taking care of me but I missed also the people around me. As I was dedicated to consider my needs more I decided to make my old childhood dream true and I took a puppy. I gained back a lot of happiness but also a lot of work. Slowly I’ve given up the things I did for myself, my morning jogging, the meditation, even the restroom-privacy. I’ve started feeling empty of power. I fell back to the same situation as when my children were babies and I postponed all my needs to be there for them. I felt guilty to admit that I was more tired than happy.

To my rescue came the dog-trainer. The first day he asked me to describe to him our daily ritual with Snowy, my dog. As I talked my anxiety was obvious. The trainer interrupted me and said: “we build here a harmonic relationship between you, the human being, and the dog. If you deny your own needs then it’s not you anymore. The human being disappears and there can be no relation. It’s either the dog or you but never together.”

This sentence was a key to my soul. All those years it wasn’t me in my relations. I’ve kept my needs well hidden, even from me. Why? Being needy felt humiliating in the society I’ve grown up. Accepted was being proud, need nothing, being a rock. I’ve put up the mask of a strong, independent person to gain appreciation. I’ve given myself away while I was among other people and it remained nothing from me. I felt me only when I was alone. Alone and lonely.

After the training, we came home. I was in peace. The guilty feeling because I was tired and I couldn’t prepared the planned thai-food for the evening has vanished. I talked to the kids, I could hold their disappointment and they could understand my tiredness. We made spaghetti together. Now I’m exploring the beauty and the harmony of the place called ‘we’.

The happiest person on earth
An old friend, a psychologist, told me once about a study referring to happiness. He asked me if I knew who is the happiest person on earth. I was eager to hear the answer so he continued. “The happiest person on earth is a child playing”.
As simple as that is happiness. Why is it so difficult for adults to be happy? I was determined to find out what was the difference between me now and myself then, as a kid. What do I miss to enjoy the work as much as I enjoyed a play at this time? I ordered my mind to bring me back to the past, to my childhood. I lived again the games I played with the other kids in the neighborhood, only this time with a critical, analyzing mind.

Freedom to choose
First of all, I was not obliged to play. I was playing because I wanted to. I’ve chosen different kinds of games, depending on the situation and the mood I was in. I played individualistic board games, team games, cooperative games, imaginary games. Each one of them had its contribution to me.
I’ve excited my mind with the board games, trying to foresee the movements of the other players and make a strategy for mines.
While playing team games outside I used mostly my reflexes, running and fast thinking. I felt the power of adrenaline boost in my body and the joy of belonging in a group.
During the cooperative games*, I liked the support we gave to each other. No matter how I performed I had always a chance to retry and win and this chance was made by my playmates.
In my imaginary games, I made me and the world the way I wanted them to be. My fantasy was in a fire.
I’ve enjoyed all the games I’ve played in different ways.

Self-destruction
However, enjoying a game and being really happy are two different things. I was not always happy while playing. Two certain feelings have put a dark cloud over my happiness, low self-esteem and being evaluated. One has enhanced the other.
In our team games, if a player “was a good one” the chances for the team to win were higher. Thus the captains of the teams have chosen firstly the strong players. I was the last one chosen. This made me feel I had to prove I deserve my place in the team. I had to perform better. When I’ve lost I had to confront my own criticizing mind. I felt I let down the whole team, even if no kid had said anything, never. My opponent was not the other team, it was the devaluator in me.

Happiness
My devaluator didn’t find a place to act in all games. The cooperative games were different, no one could win alone, no matter how well they played. I felt free of having to perform, I felt free of evaluation. I played for myself, I supported and got support. I belonged to the group because it happened to be there at the time the game started. No shame, no fear, no anxiety, no worries. Having my mind free of those negative feelings, I could fully concentrate on the game. I was living at this moment, I was disconnected from the rest of the world and its problems. My world was only my playmates and the playing field. Being disconnected from the world, those were moments of happiness.

Happiness disturbances
There was one person though, who could connect me suddenly back to the “real world”. Can you imagine who? Yes, this was my mum. “Come to eat”, “Come to help me”, “Go to the bakery”, “It’s too late”, “It’s too hot”… There is no worst thing than to get interrupted in the middle of the game, but this didn’t seem to have bothered my mum.
Mums were not the only disturbance factor for the game. We had also internal affairs. It happened one kid to disagree with another, “you are touched”, “no I am not” and nobody backed off. Or a kid has cheated repeatedly. In both cases, there was no fun anymore and the game was broken.

Happiness contributors and pitfalls
I think everybody has experienced the frustration of a broken game. And I hope everybody had also moments of complete happiness while playing. Happiness and dissatisfaction were for me like two ends of a seesaw. Some things push happiness upwards some other dissatisfaction. I’ll put them together.

Happiness contributors:
    Freedom to choose: I played because I wanted to do so.
    Safety: I was in the well-known environment of the neighborhood.
   Playmates: All the kids wanted to play together.
   Rules: Clear, understood and followed by everybody.
   Competence: I had the capabilities needed for the game.
   No fixed starting time, no deadline: The game started when we were in     a mood and ended when we got bored or tired.
   Concentration: I didn’t play in two games in parallel. I put all my effort       into this one game at this one moment.
   Belonging in the group: I was in the group because it happened to be     there.
   No evaluation: I played as I wanted to play and that’s fine.
   Support: There was no wrong action because everybody could give the     game a new twist.
   Living at the moment: Nothing else matters, no negative thoughts, no     worries.
   Succeed a challenge: I liked to explore my potential and took the     confirmation I can.
   Laughing: Because of all of the above.
Happiness pitfalls:
   Low Self-esteem / Self-devaluation: Having the feeling of not being good enough to belong to the group.
   Persons with authority: Interrupting the game
   Playmates: Arguing non-stop or being unfair.

Is work a free choice?
My trip to the past has given me enough food for thought. I let my mind come back to the present and to my question ” What do I miss to enjoy the work as I enjoyed a play?”. I looked through the list and I got caught by one point. Freedom to choose.
Have I chosen to work? When I’ve got my first job I wanted to exert my mind and get challenged. I wanted to play. On the way, I backed off because I couldn’t cope with the complex human interactions and the floating rules of the game. Now. 25 years later, I say, I work because I want to. It’s the same inner impulse calling me to work, as it had called me to play as a kid. And this hasn’t to do either with playmates or rules, the wish is in me.

Work as a game
I’ve been in several companies. I’ve played/worked in individualistic games where the rules were closed doors and hero-players. I’ve been playing a game I didn’t want. I had playmates/colleagues arguing steadily with each other, not allowing the game/project to roll. I had conflicts with the colleagues because everybody interprets differently the rules of the game. I had authority-persons interrupting our game. Sometimes my knowledge fell short of what the project needed. I had deadlines I haven’t chosen. All uncomfortable situations for me.
Can those factors tilt the seesaw towards dissatisfaction and escaping? Yes, they can. BUT I’ve learned what is the main weight to keep the seesaw with the happiness side up. My self-esteem. I work according to my values: support, inclusion, quality, challenge and I stand for those values in the game, I shape the rules. If I still feel I’m in the wrong game, I own the freedom to choose.

You belong to yourself or not?
Whatever your happiness factors are, the freedom of making a choice is critical for our well-being. Keep this freedom alive in you and shape the game the way you want it to be. Your own values are equally important as the values of your playmates. Nevertheless, you could come to a disconnect with your colleagues. Do you want to disconnect from yourself or from the group?

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* Farmers and hunters: a cooperative win-win game

This game was my favorite one when I was a kid and I think it is worth explaining its rules. It is kind of a tag game. The farmers were chasing the hunters. The game starts with only one farmer. They take their power from the “bottle of life”, standing in a circle. (We used an empty tin can). As far as it stands the farmers could chase the hunters, but when it falls over life is poured out and the farmers become impotent. They have to put the bottle back in the circle in order to continue chasing. If a hunter is tagged, they also become farmers.
On the other side, the hunters live in their safe camp, 4 meters away from the bottle. They try to shoot the bottle down so that the farmers will lose their power. (We used to shoot with flat pebbles, but it’s much safer with balloons filled with rice).  In their try to shoot down the bottle of life, a hunter leaves their camp and undertakes the risk to get tagged by the farmers. The closer the hunters come to the bottle the higher the chances to bring it down with their shot but also higher the risk to get tagged.
If several hunters attack the bottle at the same time the farmer would run to one of them and the others could bring down the bottle. When the farmer was powerless, they stop chasing and the hunters could go back safe in their camp. This was the fun of the game for me. Supporting each other and making strategy. Even if I missed my shot somebody else could bring down the bottle and then I had another chance to get back my pebble and shoot again. Even when I was tagged and became a farmer, I was still in the game. Finally, I could win either as a farmer or as a hunter :-).

Recently I read this joke: James went to the canteen on the 24th of December and the cook served empty dishes. “What are you doing there? he asked. Where’s the food?” The cook answered, “Today it’s a half-day holiday, so I’m serving but haven’t cooked”.
As an end-to-end tester, I feel sometimes like James. Here is a situation I’ve experienced once.

Our product gained its whole functionality through several microservices. The teams were divided according to the microservice they developed. Once a customer had complained that they were waiting for 10 minutes for their dashboard to get loaded. The support forwarded the problem to the UI-team, “a clear UI-case”. The team investigated and refactored their code and finally delivered an optimized version. Then a colleague did an end-to-end load test before deploying to the customer’s site. After the test, he came back and said: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the frames on the dashboard are loaded now in one second. The bad news is, it takes again 10 minutes to see something in them”. Oops, the data comes from the backend.
I was embarrassed and angry that we were so divided and isolated that we couldn’t feel anymore that we contribute to a whole eco-system where you cannot exist without the other teams. Autonomy is absolutely necessary but what it was missing from us was the glue keeping the parts together. What this glue is made of, I found it in my favorite management lesson, Star Wars Episode VI Return of the Jedi.

The rebels want to destroy the Death Star (I call this the product). A big Assembly is called, where officers, commanders, and crew participate. The leader of the rebels explains to them why they have to do this “product”. Then the officers analyze the plan of the attack, what they have to do. One team has to go to the moon of Endor and deactivate the energy shield of the Death Star (microservice Shield-deactivation) and a second-team should be prepared for an attack on the reactor of the Death Star (microservice reactor-destruction). Their dependency is clear. Lando Calrissen volunteers to lead the fighter attack to the Death Star and Han Solo undertakes the mission to disable the energy shield on the moon of Endor. The Who is clarified and the teams are set. Han Solo offers his spaceship to Lando with the words “You need all the help you can get. She’s the fastest ship in the fleet”. The mission goes on, and instead of the impediments, Lando trusts that Han Solo will deactivate the shield and thus he doesn’t quit. They were divided in smaller teams but they were not conquered. What has led to their success?

One leader
They all have the same leader. Can you imagine what could happen if Han Solo had a different leader than Lando and those two had to agree before and during each step of the mission?
One vision
They all understood why it is important to destroy the Death Star and what is the cost for it.
One communication layer
They talk directly to the leaders/officers. There were no intermediates delivering commands one to the other (as it happens with the emperor).
The people who do the work are in the meeting.
All-people-game instead of one-man-show
They started synchronized. Lando knew about the mission beforehand but he didn’t gather his people and leave. He waited for the joint Go.
Help & trust
They help each other. They trust each other.
Working & appropriate infrastructure
They have working ships (hyperspace activator works)
Supportive leaders
Their leader and officers do not run away to the next project but they are standby for support while the mission develops (aggressive scrum).
Focus on the product
They are focused. There is no change in target in the middle of the mission. What would have happened if the officers have changed their mind in the meanwhile and called the teams back “You know, now the most important thing is to go to Tatooine planet. Come back”.
Their mission is appropriate to their skills
They have the experience they need for their operations.

Think of how the projects run in your company. Do you miss any of those ingredients in your glue? Your mission is to determine how you wish to work with others and believe you can do it. If you put some glue to the smaller parts they can be divided but they are not conquered.

The last four weeks before Christmas I feel I’m a driven machine. My kids ask me to go together shopping, baking, walking around the Christmas market, buying presents, bring them to basketball, help them for the school, my friends ask me to go out for a Gluehwein or to the cinema, my colleagues organize Christmas evenings and all these extra to normal work and housekeeping. I do all those things because I love my kids, I love being among people and I don’t want to say no, but the time is rushing. Instead of creating spiritual time and place for thinking, I push myself to her limits. What do I do for me? For my faith? I felt I needed urgently to slow down and to build up myself in a stable way. Stable means I know what is important for me and what can I omit.and to hold out the unpleasure to say no. Only then I’ll be satisfied with myself and can be really present to what I do at that moment.

The same “got driven” feeling I have also at the work. Most companies I’ve been, put first new features and postpone to have a look inside them. They are driven by the customer demands the same way I’m driven by the demands of my family and friends. They are focused to sell new features, even features that are not developed yet and they don’t take the time to consider their structure, to feel their pains, to plan their internal growth. They don’t invest time in meditation the same way that I don’t. Personally I noticed that this way was not sustainable, it was only a short term pleasure for the people around me. I’ve seen the consequences, personal dissatisfaction, arguing, and the way open to burn out. I hope that companies that do not meditate will realize promptly where they’re heading to, dissatisfaction among colleagues, technical debt, customer complains. How long can this last?

I hope companies will include meditation in their new year’s resolutions and at the next Christmas party, I will hear not only the usual “how we’ve performed and what projects are planned for the new year”, but also which problems we had and what we are we going to do to mitigate them. This will give me confidence that the company can break traditions and does care about its people, about its body.

Caring about my body and knowing myself is also my new year’s resolution. I’ve started already by re-scheduling my calendar. I set appointments with myself which I keep consequently until they become a habit. It’s difficult for me to break my old rituals but if I succeed to break them, I’ll be free to design the life I really want.

A dry tester

When I started my career as a tester 20 years ago in a telecom company I used to dig into several specification documents before I start testing. I saw my duty as a tester, was to find out the points where our services (roaming, data transfer, video calls) do not conform to the standards. What I didn’t consider at all was how the people will use those services and how they would feel if the service fails. I had no empathy for the user. Testing was for me a thing for the lab. I was a dry tester.

An empathetic tester

This started to change over the years and the peak came when my company introduced Scrum as the new way of working. The biggest change for me was that the colleagues didn’t produce functional specifications documents anymore. For me, it was like a hangover. An empty space in my testing brain. I had lost my test oracle. And the Functional Specifications document was not only an oracle for me. It was the 10 commandments. How am I going to find orientation now?
Our agile coach told me that the test oracle is now the end-users. I have to compare the test results with what a user expects from the service. I had to get on the shoes of the user in order to find what they expect. But the word user was very impersonal for me, so I thought of my friends. How do they use video calls for example? I ask my manager how he uses it with other managers. By interviewing persons from different areas I’ve got a good understanding of what scenarios I needed to test. Being an end-user by myself has given me the empathy I lacked before.

A curious tester

Since then I have changed several companies. The first thing I do in the new company is to learn the product through the regression tests. Then I use it by myself and in parallel, I find other people who use it and get to know how do they utilize it and how they feel. I collect in this way scenarios and bottlenecks from the user perspective which I transform in test cases.

An agile tester

Well, I would have been happy if I would have done so but I didn’t. I lied. In the agile era, I use to work on several test levels and different test techniques, mostly automation. My sprint calendar, as an agile tester, is like this:

Automate tests for new features
Automate tests for customer bugs
Fix older broken tests
Setup simulations
Write performance tests
Write Unit tests
Support Backend if needed
Setup metrics
Setup tools like Jenkins/Grafana/Redis

In the agile era, as a tester, I have lost my focus on the product as an end-user. I have no time for that. I became a dry tester again. Instead of the empathetic tester, I used to be, I am now a tester under pressure to reach a release.

A tester as an orchestrator of quality

In the #agiletestingdays I had an aha effect. Yes, it is possible to gain back my stolen fun. The conference made the following things clear to me.
I am more than just a tester.
I can get out of my box and orchestrate a team.
I can talk the way the strong POs and C-level can understand.
I can keep different statistics than only the critical bugs.
I have to clear or to fix the broken tests otherwise nobody cares anymore.
I can make the broken pipeline an issue for the team, not only for testers.
I can look beyond the functionality and think of security and ethics.
QA is a battle, after the strategy we need a plan.
Every agile tester is also a test manager.
AI, why not?
Test strategy can be useful if it is tailored to the person who reads it.
Gamify the tests by interviewing the product
Synthetic Monitoring: a replacement of acceptance tests or an indication?
Shadow run: testing directly in production.
All those aspects have revived in me the spark of joy during testing. I can be an empathetic tester again. However, in order to achieve that, I need to be an orchestrator, so that the whole big thing of testing will gain the significance it deserves besides the development of new features. It’s all about how I perceive myself. Am I just a tester or an orchestrator of quality?

Too many bosses
In a previous company, we had an elderly colleague, Johan. He was the oldest in the company. His job was to go through all the rooms and the labs and certify the power cables for their security. He was everywhere and of course, picked up a lot of discussions.
Once, while we were waiting for the devices in the lab to restart, Johan told me, shaking his head, “On your floor, you have too many bosses.” I thought he’s right. We worked with a SCRUM-like structure so everybody could take a decision. I took his comment as a compliment. As I remembered though the last time we had to make a decision, I could understand his pitty looking face implying “you poor guys, you have too many bosses”.

The worst thing

What I remembered was this: We needed to rebase our backend architecture and met to decide the new way. We were 15 software developers in the room. We disagreed during the whole meeting and everybody had their rights with their concerns. At the end of the meeting we hadn’t taken any decision. We met again and once more and the no-decision-pattern was repeated. Finally, nobody wanted to meet again. Over a year we had kept the old architecture because we couldn’t make the decision about what to change, so we didn’t change anything.
Theodore Roosevelt said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” We did the worst thing and I strongly believe it’s not only us.

Think of any time you need to decide about something, even a simple thing like buying a new pair of trousers. You think of all the odds to fail. Does it fit well, does it worth the money, does the color matches other clothes I have? Some people give it a try, some others are overwhelmed and leave the store without buying anything.

Think of experiences, not of success and failure

When we do nothing, what we try to avoid is a failure. We need success. But what do success and failure mean? We just make experiences. There are experiences bringing more of the expected outcome and others less. If you say “Let’s make a new experience and search for the decision with the lower negative impact”, it’s different than saying “Let’s search for the decision that will bring success”. The last statement increases the stress level of the people while the first brings the team in a mode to evaluate the negative impacts.
The discussion and evaluation of the pros and cons are risk analysis and it is important how to moderate it. When the feelings from the disagreement are strong, a discussion, based on priorities, comparisons and numbers, brings the people back from the emotional to the rational level. At this moment the colleagues are open to compromise and try a new way.

Consensus – Majority or Monarch

Assuming now you’ve moderated the risk analysis and you’ve arrived at the point to make a decision. Will you use consensus? It will take ages if ever you arrive at a consensus. Will you use the majority rule? Some people will be totally disappointed and could go to apathy mode. Will you designate somebody as a “monarch” to decide for the team? Who? That’s again a decision. Every way has its drawbacks but consensus can be the most accepted solution.

Minority is included
A very good example of searching consensus is the film with Henry Fonda “12 Angry Men” (1957). However, it can often be that a consensus is not possible at that moment. How do you continue? I find the following hybrid model as a good compromise. After discussion and first voting, we let the minority express their concerns and vote again. If somebody changes their minds and joins the minority, they explain why they did so and we discuss their arguments. We vote again. This can be repeated until nobody changes sides anymore. At this point, we decide with the majority rule. If you have the chance to define a trial period and then reevaluate the solution is even better.

If we want to avoid the monarch we choose the difficult way of taking a decision as a team. We can make this way easier though if we consider those three things. Think of new experiences instead of successes and failures. Moderate risk analysis in a rational way. Take care of the concerns of the minority after voting. This way takes more time for reaching a decision but it has more chances to be accepted and bring a change.

A full installation service is not that full This summer my husband was determined to change our 20-years old washing machine. We visited a big store and on the advice of the salesman, we bought also the luxury of a full installation service which cost 1/3 of the appliance’s value. I was impatient to enjoy the comfort of doing nothing on myself and the new washing machine would be ready to work. Well, this was the way I interpreted the full installation service.
When the time came the installer saw that the pipe on the wall didn’t fit the size of the flexible tube of the washing machine. We needed an adapter which was in the store and cost 6€. Amazing for me, the installer couldn’t get it. “The full service doesn’t include the material,” he said “so I cannot order it for you even if you pay. You have to go and buy it for yourself and then we’ll arrange another appointment next week.” I was shocked. Alone the name “Full-installation” brings me a feeling of satisfaction. I think they care about my comfort. Unfortunately for me, customer satisfaction was not the focus of the installer.

Would you order ice cream in a pub?
When speaking about customer sastisfaction I cannot help myself thinking of the following story. Once we’ve spent the summer vacations in a small fisher village in Greece. One evening we went to a pub. One of our friends wished to order ice cream, ice cream in a pub. Everybody thought “are you crazy?” but the waiter said in a cool voice “no problem”. He went to the cafe next to the pub and brought the catalog. Here we are, 7 beers and special ice cream. Guess if we were satisfied.

A happy customer is not my job or is it?
Everyone has experienced one or the other situation. Sometimes as a service provider sometimes as consumers. What can we do in order to be happy as providers and make satisfied customers?
Let’s see what is the difference between the waiter and the installer. Why the waiter didn’t say “we don’t serve ice cream”? Here are my assumptions:
The pub was a family business. The waiter was probably a member of the family. If his customers were satisfied he would have a direct profit. He had also the allowance to take decisions and finally, he wanted that we’ll be happy at his pub.
On the other hand, I assume the installer was an employee of the installing department with targets to install 20 appliances per day. If he reaches the goal he would have a bonus, otherwise not. Who cares about the adapter of the customer under these circumstances. It’s not his job to care about the customer. His job is to install appliances.

A vision is not a puzzle
Have you realized what is going on here? The small pub had a customer service vision, even if they didn’t know it, “happy people in the pub”. The big store even if it had a customer service vision it hadn’t brought it further to the employees standing beside the customer. In spite of that, it had probably split the vision to goals and handed out each piece to a different department. The hope behind this is: “if every department reaches its goals we have the customer vision”. The pitfall though is that the single goal becomes the vision of the department and finally nobody remembers anymore what the vision of the company was. A customer service vision it’s not a puzzle. You have to hand it out as a whole from the CEO to the installer.

Live your vision
How? How to deliver the customer service vision throughout the whole big company, so that everybody understands what they need to do in order to come closer to it? Well, our parents have done this and we do this as parents without realizing it. My mom had bought crystal glasses, porcelain dishes and silver cutlery which we were not allowed to use. Only when we had guests they came out on the table. She still had an extra living room with beautiful couches for the guests. Her unspoken vision had been hardcoded in my heart “visitors first”. Whatever your vision is, you get it further only if you live it yourself.

Personalize the word customer
What does it mean for the company to live its customer service vision? First of all the company has to give a face to the abstract word ‘customer’. We usually say ‘our customers’ without knowing who is the person really working with our product and how they use it. While I was working in Vodafone in Greece one of our big customers was the public telecom company. Our departmental manager was arranging twice a year lunch with all of us supporting telecom together with the people of the customer’s peer group. We were about 30 persons. As a technician I discovered the human nature of the other side “the customer”. I knew who receives my services and what they need from it. The abstract customer was now a person, John. My work was now a personal business.

It starts with the managers
Furthermore, for a vision to become vivid the managers need to show us how important it is to provide appropriate solutions to customer problems. The same way my mum did with the “guests-service”. In one of the companies I’ve worked on, we had once escalating complaints from the main customer. The CTO said we have to leave everything else aside and work for this escalation. Afterward, no one from the senior management has appeared in our meetings, no question about the progress, no contact with the customer. This didn’t give me the impression of importance.

Storytelling
A customer service vision is just a statement that means blah, blah, blah, big words. Make it something real, something very close to us by telling stories. Stories from colleagues who really helped the customers. Tell stories formal in departmental meetings, or informal in cafe corners. Stories remain in our brains.

Award out of the box behavior
Praise or award colleagues who overcame the processes when they prevented them to achieve the customer vision. Award colleagues with extraordinary customer-oriented behavior every month, at the Christmas party or in the company’s general assembly. The message will go through.

Pay to suffer? For how long?
In the end under the word customer hides a person who trusts in your service. If they suffer from it they won’t stay for long. If they’re happy they’ll stay forever. No matter if you are a big company or a small family pub, the choice is yours.

A company is a living organism

My group leader has forgotten my name while giving a speech at my goodbye cake event. He vividly confirmed my impression that he cared most of the product but not of the people. Of course, the product gives life to a company so it’s necessary to take care of it but not only of it. The product is made by people. The company is made by people. People who search the market, people who implement products, people in a lot of different functionalities. A company is a living organism made by people in the same way the human body is made by cells.

The nervous system of a company is its leaders

The needs of the cells are captured by the nervous system. One part of it is the peripheral system covering the whole body and the other is the central system comprising the spinal cord and the brain. Can you imagine how your body would be without its nervous system? The body of a company has also its own nervous system. The peripheral one is built by Team leaders, Group leaders, Scrum Masters, Departmental managers, Human Resources whereas the central by Executives. Can you imagine how your company would be without its nervous system?

Leadership and product management: All in one

Even if most companies acknowledge the role of leadership, a lot of people feel that they are ineffectively led and quit. One reason is that traditionally the companies use the role of a group leader also as a project manager. Thus they put in positions having to do with people persons with high technical experience. Those leaders shift their focus to the product leaving people alone. The agile management has clearly separated the concept of designing a product from that of leading people by defining the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master. If you decide to decouple those roles in your company, you will probably need new persons as leaders. Your peripheral nervous system will be much more effective if you examine what skills a leader should possess. To make more visible which character qualities a leader should have I’ll compare them with a neuron.

The leader as sensor

A neuron is different from the other cells. A neuron is a cell that has sensors bringing in signals from the surrounding environment. The sensors are specialized in what they measure. In other words, a neuron should speak the language of the things it wants to feel. There are specialized neurons for feeling the pressure, others for temperature, others for pain. In the same way, first and foremost a leader should develop their sensory to feel the people. One of my previous departmental leaders told me during a goodbye event, “When I see people passing by in front of my office I think, please go further, don’t enter, it won’t be for good”. Missing sensory and isolation protects you but not the people you lead. Leaders need to leave their Ego in the garderobe. They need to communicate in a non-violent way. They need to listen actively to people. During conflicting discussions, they capture the feeling behind the words. They realize quickly what’s going on because they speak the language of the people they lead. Software developers, marketing, production, finance, executive management speak different languages and they need leaders who understand their language.

The leader as transmitter and door opener

Assuming now that the neuron has captured the signal. Its next job is to evaluate and forward it to further neurons. If the signal is stark enough the neuron propagates it through its axon. This is a long fiber whose ends meet the sensors of another neuron and build a Synapse with it. Synapse is a kind of meeting room. In this coming-together-place the neurons exchange signals between each other. The sending neuron emits chemical substances so long until their concentration in synapsis is so high to wake-up the sensors of the receiving neuron. This is like knocking a door until it opens.
This is the way I see a leader. He opens closed doors. He evaluates the captured signal and if the problem cannot be solved locally, they propagate it further to the next level. I had a group leader once who could catch very well the pulse of the group. However, he couldn’t bring our problems further. We didn’t see any change even if he participated in several upper management meetings. Being a sensitive sensor but a broken transmitter leaves the people fighting with the same problems over and over again.

The leader as interconnector

The structure of neurons in the human body is also crucial for the communication between the periphery and the centers of decisions in our brain. The axons grow and create millions of branches that meet other neurons and create synapses with them. In this way, the neurons cover every single and small corner of our body. If a branch is injured it cannot be regenerated. But there are many other branches to relay on.
This is also one of the leader’s duties. Coming out of her office, finding connecting points with other groups, letting the pain of one group be noticeable to another, interconnecting the whole company.

The leader as decider

We have managed now to set up our peripheral nervous system and cover the body of the company. The other important part is the central nervous system. The nerves in the spinal cord are responsible to transfer the signal to the centers of decision strong enough to excite them. After the trigger, the various centers collaborate to process the inputs and make a decision. In one of my previous companies, the CTO presented the roadmap with all the possible products for the coming year. For us, this was a Utopia. We were not enough people to drive all the products so we suggested to drop something out. Our suggestion was labeled pesimistic and ignored. The result was that after one year we had released one delayed product from the previous year, we had an escalation from the customer side and a lot of frustration among the developers. This center in the company’s brain was polarised by one input signal, “new market opportunities”. However, it failed to evaluate the other input signals and collaborate with other centers. The result was, suffering.

Your company is like your body. To keep it healthy you need a responsive nervous system. For the peripheral nervous system choose leaders acting as sensors, transmitters, and interconnectors. For the central nervous system choose leaders able to combine input signals, evaluate risks and make decisions. Investing in the nervous system of the company pays back to the company’s sustainability.

Further reading: “LEADERS are MADE NOT BORN” by Michael J. Farlow, PhD