Taking an interest

This week I'd like to share a few thoughts on motivation, particularly how to motivate and encourage more technical staff. I'm not going to discuss the thorny topic of pay (another time perhaps) but focus on the human side of interacting with development and analytic teams.

Engineers and data scientists are typically highly intelligent, logical and disciplined people. They have to be to succeed in a field that demands precision and has exacting standards for success. They live in a world that is full of unforgiving tests (it works or it doesn't) and hard facts. Their passion is problem solving: taking a new challenge and working out how to overcome it. Developers will spend many many hours, often on their own time, trying to figure out why a piece of code doesn't work or an algorithm produces the wrong results. It's almost an obsession, with the accompanying joy of finally figuring out the answer, like completing a tricky crossword puzzle.

The opportunity to solve new hard problems is, in my experience, the greatest motivator for technical colleagues. And yet, all too often, managers in large organisations seem almost determined to deny them these opportunities. Instead of opening up on their challenges they seem determined to constrain their interactions with the technical community to 'just build me that'. This failure to engage the best problem solvers on the hardest issues is a chronic waste of talent. In my experience behind this behaviour lies a belief that they are engaged in a zero-sum game, i.e. if I open up on challenge A they'd take their eye off challenge B. In my experience if you explain your priorities the opposite is true, you'll get some excellent analysis and ideas on problem A (almost) for free and still keep B on track.

Engineers like to show off. In a good way. They are rightly proud of the problem they have solved and how their solution works. Too often managers stop and at the 'What' of the solution and take little interest in the 'How'. This deprives engineers from showing how difficult the problem was and how clever their solution is. Often the degree of complexity behind the scenes is significant and disinterest can make them feel like hard work is unappreciated.

Taking an interest in how their system works, asking questions and giving them a chance to explain works wonders. This is especially true for those who work on systems without a user interface who don't get the opportunity to 'demo' their work. Sure watching a script run on a black screen isn't very interesting so find another way to show that you value their work in the backroom just as much as those presenting a flashy new user application. As I've mentioned before a little effort to learn their technical language is often greatly appreciated and helps you to ask good questions and appreciate the choices and trade-offs they have to make.

Technologists often don't get the chance to see their work in action. For good reasons they are often at arms-length from the production version of their code and spend their days in a mocked up fake world. This means they can be deprived of the opportunity to see how what they have done is being used and how it makes a difference. Development teams love the opportunity to hear directly from their end users on their successes and particularly on how they couldn't have been achieved without the system/code they worked on. Taking the time to present real-life stories with meaningful outcomes is hugely motivating. It's important here to look beyond the user-facing application team and give the supporting teams behind the scenes the chance to see and hear what the end product of their labours has been.

Creating the right environment to support their work is a significant motivator for technical teams. Design and development is deep work demanding intense concentration, focus and patience. A conventional work environment, optimised for administration and information exchange doesn't suit them well. Quiet space and whiteboards (with pens that work!) are worth the investment. Similarly hygiene factors such as having a decent laptop, screens and friction-free access to enterprise computing resources is an important sign that their work is appreciated. The ability to compare notes with experts in their field is as important for technical staff as it is other professions in the modern enterprise so let them out of the office (or the basement) to go to conferences - very often they'll make up the time at the weekend of their own accord.

The challenge of the modern enterprise is to solve problems for customers, quickly and seamlessly. Taking an interest in some of our best problem solvers, in what they do and how they do it, will help retain their talent, find solutions for your customers and keep your organisation in the lead. It's well worth the time.

(View in this article are my own)