4 ms·

I've recently found myself in a leadership role as well, and I don't think it has to do with whether people are business types or not. Humility is necessary to

by dmoney 13y ago

I've recently found myself in a leadership role as well, and I don't think it has to do with whether people are business types or not. Humility is necessary to fit in with peers and to get along with superiors. Confidence is necessary to influence people (be they peers, superiors, or subordinates), and you can't manage without influence. A piece of advice I've seen in a couple places is to focus on service, whether that's service to your organization or to the team you manage, or the customer. The idea is that it takes your focus off you and your communication skills, and lets you argue from what the company or team needs.

lsc 13y ago
Edit: Yes, I know this sounds kind of... angry and juvenile. Bitter. That is what I meant when I said that I clearly don't have the correct solution. a big part of the problem is that I don't even know what most of these words I'm using mean - And honestly? I think it's "confidence[1]" that other people say they do. Of course, I know I'm not competent enough in that area to know that for sure. >I've recently found myself in a leadership role as well, and I don't think it has to do with whether people are business types or not. Humility is necessary to fit in with peers and to get along with superiors. Confidence is necessary to influence people (be they peers, superiors, or subordinates), and you can't manage without influence. But when you are dealing with less-experienced Engineers, your accomplishments are that influence. And when you are dealing with more-experienced Engineers, well, you should be giving them requirements, and listening to them tell you what should be done. I mean, yeah, sometimes emotional bullshit intervenes, but it's bullshit I can mostly deal with. As an example, I came in conflict with my apprentice a while back... I am fairly certain the conflict was caused by the fact that he had learned enough that he was, well, better than me for some of the parts of his job, and that wasn't the deal when he hired on. (I mean, it also wasn't true when he hired on; he worked here for a while, and he learned a lot.) I don't know how much of it was him not adjusting to our new roles and how much of it was me not adjusting to our new roles (and how much of it was me just not being able to pay him what he was worth; he ended up getting a much better job elsewhere.) I mean, I didn't understand how to /fix/ the emotional bullshit, but I had a pretty good idea of what it was about. that's the thing about dealing with people who are primarily engineers; I'm not saying that I am good at managing Engineers? but when I screw it up, I usually have a pretty good idea of how or why I did so. The problem is that when you deal with normal folks, they are influenced by what looks to me like empty arrogance. It's like they have no way of judging actual skill, so they say "Why don't we do what the tall guy says?" you know, they focus on things like posture and voice and how you dress... which really have nothing to do with anything that matters. My other problem is that I've always been way better at managing down than managing /up/ - that's the primary reason I started my own company. If you always focus on what you think is best for the company and/or the customer? you are going to come into serious conflict with the management above you. [2] >A piece of advice I've seen in a couple places is to focus on service, whether that's service to your organization or to the team you manage, or the customer. The idea is that it takes your focus off you and your communication skills, and lets you argue from what the company or team needs. Yeah, well, it's my company, so I think I do keep my 'eyes on the prize' as it were. But that doesn't really help when it comes time to negotiate that big new bandwidth contract (or get them to interpret that contract in my favor, after it's signed.) I mean, that's the thing. when you are negotiating with professionals, it's their job to take as much of the surplus value out of a deal as possible. It is, by definition, 'surplus value' - the difference between the highest price I'm willing to pay and the lowest price they are willing to give me. (the other thing about negotiating with professionals that is not fun is that they usually don't have the attention span or the knowledge of their product offerings to negotiate other than in the emotional manipulation way. I'm very flexible, and very willing to line up what I buy to what they have surplus. I'm also very willing to share what I would like, and what I can be flexible on. A professional? generally speaking, wants to collapse that down to a linear type deal, where we pick a product and hammer eachother on price until someone is exhausted. Their secrecy destroys any possible gain in value from negotiation.) Of course, now I'm conflating negotiation with influence in general, while I probably ought to think of those things separately. [1]Confidence as in "a confidence game" - I don't think anyone understands human interaction the way you can understand, say, how a program works. The meaning of a word someone used early in a conversation changes towards the end of that conversation. This is where I'm lost with verbal communication. The line between "saying nice things to give someone a good feeling" and "outright lying" is... I don't even see it. I have no idea where that line is or if it even exists. Does a professional think it's even possible to lie in a medium that isn't recorded? [2]some of the things my apprentice and I disagreed about would have fallen under this. The really funny thing, for me? was that I remember having nearly exactly the same fight with my boss when I was his age, and was working in a similar role. Things... look different when you have to balance the business end. But, fundamentally, I think I can learn to deal with those conflicts, because I understood where the guy was coming from.
- dmoney 13y ago
  It's like entropy: the emotional bullshit in a closed system only increases. Until one person leaves, or you bleed off the pressure outside it. With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. All the nonverbal skills are just used to hide the math layer of the exchange. Assuming you can't dump the shady opponent for one who thinks win-win, but even then having more information can't hurt.
  - lsc 13y ago
    >With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. You say 'shady' - I say 'professional' because this is what the big guys do. the bullshit isn't nearly as thick when you are dealing with a smaller company, generally speaking. They are less interested in wasting time. Even when dealing with professionals, information is essential, but it doesn't make the emotional bullshit irrelevant. It's irritating, as first? I don't know if I want to do something unless I know what it costs. The negotiated price is generally 30% to 50% of the list price (but that varies a /lot/ both by vendor and by industry.) And the only real way to get prices is to negotiate with a vendor. So, yeah, I'm looking at a /lot/ of work to just find out if a business that, say, requires more bandwidth makes any sense at all.
    - dmoney 13y ago
      So the business wouldn't make sense (but just be less profitable) if you had to pay the list price?
      - lsc 13y ago
        some businesses, it makes the difference, like re-selling bandwidth or co-lo; the margin I get on that sort of thing is usually between 10-50% so if I negotiate badly from my supplier, yeah, I'm losing money on the deal (or charging above-market rates, which considering that I'm bad at negotiation, means I'm losing even more money because the space sits empty.) - usually you have to get commercial style leases on those resources, too... and so you have all the problems of commercial leases 'Oh,' the landlord says 'you are doing well... now that your lease is up, of course, the market rates have gone up!' even if there are empty units on either side of you. So yeah, for co-lo? it makes all the difference in the world. Other things, like VPSs? it's just a matter of profitability... the margins on VPSs are pretty good if you don't count labor, so it'd be a matter of just not raising my bandwidth quotas like I ought and maybe spending more money on hardware. Sometimes, there are two substitute products, one where it's traditional to negotiate, and one where it isn't... for instance, if you buy pre-assembled servers? if you aren't getting 50% off list price, you are getting it in the shorts. But, if you are buying the parts used to build said servers? generally speaking, the lowest price on the internet is pretty close to the real lowest price. This is the primary reason why I do my own assembly; assembling computers is way easier than negotiating Dell down to a reasonable price. So yeah; this is starting to shape what businesses I want to get into. I mean, co-location only has margin if you own the building. (I'm working on that part, but I don't have an ETA.) - so yeah, if the 'owning the building' deal doesn't work out... well, I'm not going to dump existing customers, but I am not taking more at the moment.

by dmoney 13y ago

lsc 13y ago

Edit: Yes, I know this sounds kind of... angry and juvenile. Bitter. That is what I meant when I said that I clearly don't have the correct solution. a big part of the problem is that I don't even know what most of these words I'm using mean - And honestly? I think it's "confidence[1]" that other people say they do. Of course, I know I'm not competent enough in that area to know that for sure. >I've recently found myself in a leadership role as well, and I don't think it has to do with whether people are business types or not. Humility is necessary to fit in with peers and to get along with superiors. Confidence is necessary to influence people (be they peers, superiors, or subordinates), and you can't manage without influence. But when you are dealing with less-experienced Engineers, your accomplishments are that influence. And when you are dealing with more-experienced Engineers, well, you should be giving them requirements, and listening to them tell you what should be done. I mean, yeah, sometimes emotional bullshit intervenes, but it's bullshit I can mostly deal with. As an example, I came in conflict with my apprentice a while back... I am fairly certain the conflict was caused by the fact that he had learned enough that he was, well, better than me for some of the parts of his job, and that wasn't the deal when he hired on. (I mean, it also wasn't true when he hired on; he worked here for a while, and he learned a lot.) I don't know how much of it was him not adjusting to our new roles and how much of it was me not adjusting to our new roles (and how much of it was me just not being able to pay him what he was worth; he ended up getting a much better job elsewhere.) I mean, I didn't understand how to /fix/ the emotional bullshit, but I had a pretty good idea of what it was about. that's the thing about dealing with people who are primarily engineers; I'm not saying that I am good at managing Engineers? but when I screw it up, I usually have a pretty good idea of how or why I did so. The problem is that when you deal with normal folks, they are influenced by what looks to me like empty arrogance. It's like they have no way of judging actual skill, so they say "Why don't we do what the tall guy says?" you know, they focus on things like posture and voice and how you dress... which really have nothing to do with anything that matters. My other problem is that I've always been way better at managing down than managing /up/ - that's the primary reason I started my own company. If you always focus on what you think is best for the company and/or the customer? you are going to come into serious conflict with the management above you. [2] >A piece of advice I've seen in a couple places is to focus on service, whether that's service to your organization or to the team you manage, or the customer. The idea is that it takes your focus off you and your communication skills, and lets you argue from what the company or team needs. Yeah, well, it's my company, so I think I do keep my 'eyes on the prize' as it were. But that doesn't really help when it comes time to negotiate that big new bandwidth contract (or get them to interpret that contract in my favor, after it's signed.) I mean, that's the thing. when you are negotiating with professionals, it's their job to take as much of the surplus value out of a deal as possible. It is, by definition, 'surplus value' - the difference between the highest price I'm willing to pay and the lowest price they are willing to give me. (the other thing about negotiating with professionals that is not fun is that they usually don't have the attention span or the knowledge of their product offerings to negotiate other than in the emotional manipulation way. I'm very flexible, and very willing to line up what I buy to what they have surplus. I'm also very willing to share what I would like, and what I can be flexible on. A professional? generally speaking, wants to collapse that down to a linear type deal, where we pick a product and hammer eachother on price until someone is exhausted. Their secrecy destroys any possible gain in value from negotiation.) Of course, now I'm conflating negotiation with influence in general, while I probably ought to think of those things separately. [1]Confidence as in "a confidence game" - I don't think anyone understands human interaction the way you can understand, say, how a program works. The meaning of a word someone used early in a conversation changes towards the end of that conversation. This is where I'm lost with verbal communication. The line between "saying nice things to give someone a good feeling" and "outright lying" is... I don't even see it. I have no idea where that line is or if it even exists. Does a professional think it's even possible to lie in a medium that isn't recorded? [2]some of the things my apprentice and I disagreed about would have fallen under this. The really funny thing, for me? was that I remember having nearly exactly the same fight with my boss when I was his age, and was working in a similar role. Things... look different when you have to balance the business end. But, fundamentally, I think I can learn to deal with those conflicts, because I understood where the guy was coming from.

dmoney 13y ago
It's like entropy: the emotional bullshit in a closed system only increases. Until one person leaves, or you bleed off the pressure outside it. With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. All the nonverbal skills are just used to hide the math layer of the exchange. Assuming you can't dump the shady opponent for one who thinks win-win, but even then having more information can't hurt.
- lsc 13y ago
  >With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. You say 'shady' - I say 'professional' because this is what the big guys do. the bullshit isn't nearly as thick when you are dealing with a smaller company, generally speaking. They are less interested in wasting time. Even when dealing with professionals, information is essential, but it doesn't make the emotional bullshit irrelevant. It's irritating, as first? I don't know if I want to do something unless I know what it costs. The negotiated price is generally 30% to 50% of the list price (but that varies a /lot/ both by vendor and by industry.) And the only real way to get prices is to negotiate with a vendor. So, yeah, I'm looking at a /lot/ of work to just find out if a business that, say, requires more bandwidth makes any sense at all.
  - dmoney 13y ago
    So the business wouldn't make sense (but just be less profitable) if you had to pay the list price?
    - lsc 13y ago
      some businesses, it makes the difference, like re-selling bandwidth or co-lo; the margin I get on that sort of thing is usually between 10-50% so if I negotiate badly from my supplier, yeah, I'm losing money on the deal (or charging above-market rates, which considering that I'm bad at negotiation, means I'm losing even more money because the space sits empty.) - usually you have to get commercial style leases on those resources, too... and so you have all the problems of commercial leases 'Oh,' the landlord says 'you are doing well... now that your lease is up, of course, the market rates have gone up!' even if there are empty units on either side of you. So yeah, for co-lo? it makes all the difference in the world. Other things, like VPSs? it's just a matter of profitability... the margins on VPSs are pretty good if you don't count labor, so it'd be a matter of just not raising my bandwidth quotas like I ought and maybe spending more money on hardware. Sometimes, there are two substitute products, one where it's traditional to negotiate, and one where it isn't... for instance, if you buy pre-assembled servers? if you aren't getting 50% off list price, you are getting it in the shorts. But, if you are buying the parts used to build said servers? generally speaking, the lowest price on the internet is pretty close to the real lowest price. This is the primary reason why I do my own assembly; assembling computers is way easier than negotiating Dell down to a reasonable price. So yeah; this is starting to shape what businesses I want to get into. I mean, co-location only has margin if you own the building. (I'm working on that part, but I don't have an ETA.) - so yeah, if the 'owning the building' deal doesn't work out... well, I'm not going to dump existing customers, but I am not taking more at the moment.