When I worked at Signature BioScience, there were ten other software developers, all of whom wrote better and more sophisticated code than I did. Yet I survived through multiple layoffs as Signature spiralled into bankruptcy, and I was the only developer re-hired by MDS Sciex when they picked up the pieces from Signature’s carnage. Seem peculiar?<\/p>\n
It was actually an easy choice for Sciex. At the time Signature went under, I had written the vast majority of the code actually being used by the company. The difference was that the other developers went to the biologists, asked them what software they needed, put together a specification based on what they were told, and coded to that specification. Yet somehow, even though they delivered code that did exactly what was requested, it never did what what the biologists wanted.<\/p>\n
My skill as a software developer was not in my programming skills, but in my ability to identify and fix the underlying problem. When a biologist asked me for software that did A, I’d talk to them, realize that they were actually trying to solve problem B, and give them software that solved problem B by doing C. When I worked as a consultant, one of my clients said in admiring bewilderment, “You never give me what I ask for, but it always does what I need!” Similarly, the biologists at Signature eventually said “Eric just reads our minds!” when asked why they used my software over the software delivered by other developers.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about this recently because identifying and solving the underlying problem seems to be a general concern of management. To take a concrete example, if sales aren’t meeting expectations, what’s really going on? <\/p>\n
Is it that<\/p>\n
As a manager facing this situation, it’s important not to dive into fixing the problem without first determining which of these possibilities apply, because you could end up like those developers at Signature, doing a lot of work with nothing to show for it. It’s also important to not to get too attached to a single solution (like making your people work harder), because that’s the “everything looks like a nail” situation.<\/p>\n