Reset Your Password

Jana came into my office: eyes wary, teeth clenched, brow determined, shoulders back.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure, Jana. I was looking for you this morning anyway.”

She looked surprised.

“Oh, why?”

“We’ll get to that. What did you want to see me about?”

She paused, the determination on her face a little uncertain.

“It’s about Carl.”

“Of course it is. What is it this time?”

She turned her head away, looking back towards the door. I could tell I was pushing her away.

“Wait a second, Jana. Let’s start over.”

She turned back towards me. I continued. “That wasn’t very welcoming. That’s not the way I wanted to start this conversation. I’m sorry. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“Well, I’m not so sure this is the right time for this conversation. You don’t seem in the mood.”

“Jana, my mood is on me. It’s not on you. I want to hear what you have to say. I want you to feel free to speak. You’re our VP of software. You’re the best manager I have and your people, your whole department, are the foundation of this company. I need to know what you’re thinking.”

She relaxed a bit and looked around again, this time setting her gaze on one of my two guest chairs.

“Can I sit?”

“Of course. Please do.”

She took the chair on the right. I moved out from behind my desk and took the chair to her left, turning it so it faced her. I looked at her with what I hoped was a welcoming expression. As she paused, I moved my hands up a bit, turning the palms out and almost open. Ready and eager to listen.

“Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know how much longer I can work with Carl. All my people are concerned.”

“All of them?”

She waited a moment before answering. “Not all of them, no. I shouldn’t have said that. But some of them are, and they’re the most important ones. The biggest contributors. The hardest workers.

“Why are they upset?”

“Come on, Jason, you know why. He doesn’t deliver on time. He makes us wait before we can deploy our test software. He won’t give us access to the test suite until we prove we’re ready, and that delays our testing. We need to iterate quickly, to test as we go, and he just gets in the way. Then when we complain, he tells us to take it up with you.”

“Is that why you’re here? To take it up with me?”

“Yes. I mean no. You’re not going to intervene. I have a different plan. You’ve told us we have to work it out, to work together. But he doesn’t try to work with me. I can’t work with him, and I can’t ask you to go to bat for me every time. I need him out of our way.”

“Why do you think Carl is delaying your deployments?”

Jana looked at me. Now her hands were opening up, palm facing each other the way mine had a few minutes before. She looked at her hands, then frowned and shook her head.

“I don’t ‘think’ he’s delaying our work, he IS delaying our work.”

“Yes, I hear that, but that’s not my question. Why do you”—here I used air quotes—“‘think’ he is doing that? What is his reason?”

“Oh. So you agree his operations people are blocking us?”

“I agree that they’re not doing what you want, when you want it. What I want to know is, why do you think he’s doing that?”

“How would I know?”

“Do you have a guess?”

She looked at me blankly. “I have no idea. But he won’t change, and we can’t work this way.”

“Can you wait here a moment, Jana?”

She looked surprised. “Um, okay, sure.”

I got up, left the office, and picked up an unused office chair from one of the cubicles in the open area outside my office. About half the cubicles were filled, mostly with Jana’s software engineers and a couple with Carl’s operations and dev support engineers. Jana’s office was at the far end.

I brought the chair into my office and set it down facing Jana. “Just one more minute, please, Jana.”

I left again, turning right outside my office and walking down the hall. Carl’s office was at the end of the hall, but he was rarely in it; he was usually in the server room. I found him there and asked him to come back with me. Carl was a big blonde guy with a ponytail. He smiled. Because he was so much taller than me, his walk covered more ground than mine and he was a step or two ahead the whole way back.

I walked into my office. Jana looked up at me expectantly, then Carl walked in. Jana’s face fell.

“Sit down here, Carl, please,” I said, pointing at the empty chair on Jana’s left. But before he could sit, I picked it up and moved it to Jana’s right.

Jana’s face filled with emotion. Carl’s, as usual, was just a smile.

When they were sitting next to each other, I sat in the third chair facing them.

“So let’s talk.”

“Sure, boss,” said Carl.

“About what?” asked Jana.

“A new way of doing business,” I said. “I need you both to reset your password.”

“What?” asked Jana.

“Why?” asked Carl. “What password?”

“Let’s look at what’s been happening.”

I looked at Carl first.

“You have a set of rules. Your rules are important, and they’re strict. You don’t let code into your environment, even the pre-deployment test environment, until you’re sure it’s safe. You have a rich set of build procedures and test procedures and deployment procedures and everything has to go in a specific order. Nothing moves forward until it’s gone past the previous gate.”

I paused, still looking at him.

“Right,” he said.

I shifted slightly to look at Jana.

“And you have a rapid deployment model, new code coming in every day, and you want to use Carl’s environment to screen, test, and roll out this code, even during your daily sprints, long before it’s ready for launch.”

She shook her head. “Not really. I don’t care that much about his scripts. I’m willing to use my own. My team can write our own procedures. But Carl owns the servers. He won’t let us use our scripts.”

I sat back a bit.

“So. Carl, why do you insist on such strict procedures and timelines? Why don’t you let Jana’s team put her code in your test environment, even the sanitized pre-deployment areas?”

“Because it’s not safe.”

I shook my head.

“And Jana, why do you resist following Carl’s procedures?”

“They take too long. We need to move quickly.”

I shook my head again.

“Wrong on both counts, both of you.”

Jana looked a little bit outraged, and Carl’s face actually showed a trace of expression, though I couldn’t guess what his expression meant.

I looked back at Carl. “You insist on strict procedures because you want to look good at your job. You want to impress me. You want me to know that everything you do is buttoned down tight and nothing can go wrong.”

I then looked at Jana. “You use your own procedures because you want me to know that your team is the best, is doing all the critical work, is working long hours and producing great work, and you want me to know that Carl’s dev support team is in your way, is slowing you down.”

“I’m not sure why that’s relevant,” said Jana. “I’m not trying to show them up. They slow us down and it gets in the way. Does it matter why?”

“It does,” I said.

I leaned back again.

“I’m going to ask you two to do something that might make you uncomfortable. Again, to help you reset your password.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Carl.

“Did you wonder why I moved your chair to Jana’s right?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Did you wonder, Jana?”

“I did, for a moment. Then I realized it was some little dominance game. You brought him in here without telling me why to make me uncomfortable, and then you put him in the dominant chair on the right side. You’re making a point, and I don’t like it.”

“Nope,” I said. “And here’s where it might get uncomfortable. Jana, I want you to put out your right hand, and Carl, reach out to her with your left hand.”

Neither of them moved. My top VPs, on the same executive tier with my sales VP but far more valuable to me, and they didn’t do what I asked. I wasn’t surprised. I nodded.

“Please do it.”

“Why?” asked Jana.

“Because I asked you to.”

“This makes me uncomfortable.”

“That’s why I switched the chairs, so you’d be using your right hand and he’d be using his left hand, so you wouldn’t feel subordinate to him. I’m going to talk for another minute or two, but I want to do it while you two are holding hands.”

Slowly, slowly, Jana’s right hand inched towards Carl. Carl didn’t move or react until Jana’s hand was hanging there in space, then he abruptly put his hand in hers. His hand dwarfed hers, but he closed it gently and only slightly.

“This is what I mean by resetting the password. Carl, you are trying to impress me with how perfect and secure and exact your team is. Jana, you are trying to show me how good and fast and flexible your team is. You’re also trying to show that Carl is not your boss, is not more important than you, so you don’t have to follow his rules. Carl, you know that Jana’s team is the top dog here and that your group basically supports them, so you’re repeatedly emphasizing that you can be counted on to do your job right. You want her programmers to know how good your dev support is because you know that Jana’s team gets the top billing. You want to be seen.”

Their hands started to pull apart a little bit.

“I’d rather you keep your hands together just a minute longer.” Their hands stopping separating.

“Neither one of you is trying to make the other succeed. To make the other one look good. You’re trying to impress me.”

I shook my head slowly.

“And you don’t need to. Neither one of you ran a whole department before you got here, before I promoted you. I chose both of you over people who have been here longer, who have more experience. I upset some people when I did that. Georgia left over it. But I did it for good reasons. You’re great at what you do. I trust you both. I don’t want you to impress me. I want you to work together.”

I saw a slight nod of Jana’s head. Or maybe I imagined it.

“Carl, I want your department to help Jana’s succeed. That means understanding what they need and finding a way to modify your procedures so they’re still safe, still secure, but they let Jana’s team move quickly, deploy untested code to a secure environment, use your build scripts, use your test scripts, without risking the production environment. And without slowing the team down. They’re an Agile team. Work with them.

“Jana, you work better, your team performs better, we all succeed more as a company, when you and Carl work together. You can help make his tools better and faster and safer by USING them. You two can be stars together, or we can all stumble and perhaps fail together.

“I will not replace either one of you. We sink or swim together. I believe in you both. If you want to change something in one of your departments, do it. But please: our success depends on you, Jana, finding a way to work with Carl, so your people can code and change and test as you go, as fast as you can. I want your team to do what they do best. And our success also depends on you, Carl, adapting to work with Jana, so their deployments are safe and they can iterate constantly. I want your team to do what THEY do best. Help each other succeed. MAKE each other succeed.”

Carl looked at Jana and waited until she looked over at him. His eyebrows were raised and he had his smile back. She waited, then smiled, a full broad smile. It lit up her whole face. She nodded several times.

I leaned back.

“That’s what I mean by resetting your password.”

“And you can let go of each other’s hands now.”

Both Carl and Jana looked at their hands and laughed. And they did not rush to separate their hands.