Lisa joined an engineering team that had endured five reorganizations and two layoffs in five months. She used the SCARF framework and a physical grounding cue to calm the team, rapidly trained a new Product Owner and Scrum Master, and mirrored communication styles when speaking to senior leaders. When the director left, she took over and stabilized the operation.
Chapters
Sometimes that takes a few rounds, right, before you get them in the mood. But that's a huge tool, right? This is what we have today. Let's move forward from here. So tell the group about your current environment that you're dealing with right now. My current environment makes Dilbert look like an amazing, wonderful place to work. Uh, I joined there 5 months ago. What Lynne didn't tell you was I landed a new job and then left that job and landed a different job. So I joined there 5 months ago, having signed a contract for one thing, arrived to find that the person I was supposed to report to had been moved to another group. All of the managers had been demoted. The director had been also kicked out. All of the other directors had either been moved or demoted. So I had no boss, no boss's boss, no boss's boss's boss. I was reporting directly up to the senior VP along with the entire engineering team and 68 other people. In my first 4 months, we had 5 reorgs. Restructuring, two layoffs, and we got moved to a different board area. Everyone who understood what real strategic product management was had been kicked off the island. So no one understood what my purpose was or what my focus was. No one actually understood the product that I was managing, and no one cared except that they knew they were spending lots of money on it. And everybody, everybody was triggered all the time. They eventually hired a director who unwittingly confessed to me that he had never managed an engineering team, never managed people, never managed a security team, and never been a director. That's the situation that I find myself in. The engineers themselves are so triggered that they are unable to produce. And the director and the senior VPs are constantly mad at the engineers for not producing. And the engineers are constantly mad at management because they can't get anything out of them. So, so that's where I find myself. So how do you navigate this, Lisa? What tools do you use? There's a few key things that I, I rely on very consistently. The first is de-triggering. And in fact, I, I taught my Scrum Master and my product owner— well, the person I made into a product owner, because I was supposed to have a product owner, a project manager, a program manager, and a Scrum lead, and a technical writer, and all I had was a a Scrum Manager who had never done it before, and engineers. So I've created a Product Owner, and I've been training the Scrum Master, and I've taken them through the SCARF process and de-triggering, and we've created a code word so that when somebody is really out of control, we tell them to go put their feet in the carpet. They take their shoes off, And they put their feet on the floor and then we continue. And sometimes it works. It doesn't always work. But that is a big tool that I have been using. I also, I do one of two things, right? You have to be able to mirror when you're talking up to senior leadership as well as when you're talking to your team. But you also have to know when to cross-mirror them. So, When I have someone who's, oh my God, my reaction is to say, okay, let's take a step back. How can I help? Very good. And just that complete opposite tone and the way that I bring myself down, they suddenly go, oh, I don't know. And then we can start to have a conversation. So I do that a lot. Truth be told, I also call them on their bullshit. You know, my director, for example, was refusing to ask for anything that the team was asking him for, whether it was budget or people or tools or anything. And I finally sat down with him and I said, Would it be okay if I made an observation? Okay. I'm observing that. Could you explain this to me? Can you tell me more? And then he went ahead and explained, you know, his reluctance to ever ask for a favor or owe anyone anything or in any way not be fully 100% independent and just say yes or no, sir. And I used my knowledge of him to say, I understand that that probably gave you great dividends as an individual contributor, but you are now accountable for 28 people. So if you don't ask, even if they're going to say no, if you don't at least ask, 28 people are impacted. And there was a little silence on the other end of the Zoom. And he said, I need to think about that. Fast forward 2 and a half months. He went out on vacation for 2 weeks. His boss is also on vacation for the same 2 weeks. And he left and on his way out the door on Friday said, by the way, I'm leaving you at the helm. I'm telling everyone they should send everything to you. Awesome. Lisa, thank you.
