March 2025

  • Henry’s first performance review

    I’m a big believer in delivering feedback early, and often. So, with Henry approaching his first birthday in June, I thought it was time to start putting in place a more structured feedback loop and delivered his first official performance review. It was different than other performance reviews, since he’s currently navigating a pre-verbal communication phase. Naturally, I had to leverage my training in Situational Leadership and adapt my style to his maturity and ability. Based on his current role level and life tenure, I decided to limit my focus to a few key takeaways.

    I spoke with him about two key areas I’ve identified for improvement: trying to avoid shitting on one’s own private parts, and physically abusing the family canine, Frankie. I consider both to be serious subjects, so I was disappointed when he started to giggle as I raised these.

    On the other hand, I commended him on his negotiation skills. Julia is a tough boss but I’ve noticed Henry escalate situations rapidly at times of disagreement through the use of physical force and vocal expression, almost always allowing him to achieve his desired outcome. I complimented him on his strategies and may try to leverage these learnings the next time I am dealing with a challenging client.

    For his professional development plan, I’m hoping for enhanced mobility skills with an annual objective of independent bipedal movement without faceplants and refined mealtime execution, with a goal of 80% food-to-mouth. I offered up a stretch goal related to personal hygiene and diaper awareness, while acknowledging that may be ambitious at this stage.

    He did not participate in a 360-degree review component for this cycle, but I am expecting a constant feedback stream for the rest of my life.

    Overall rating: Good boy

    Hope everyone has a good April 1st tomorrow 😊

  • Being held to a higher standard

    The other day, I was in the final stretch of a run and coming North up the street near my home. Coming South towards me were three ~12-year-olds riding scooters, spread horizontally across the sidewalk. As I was coming towards them, I was expecting one would make way for me to pass. But they didn’t and because there were cars parked along the street on one side and a building on the other, I had to awkwardly squeeze myself between a car and the sidewalk to avoid hitting one of them. And I kind of got the sense these kids were aware of the situation and purposefully not moving out of the way because they thought it was funny. Naturally, my first thought was “what a bunch of little pricks” and I briefly fantasized about having just barreled through them. Fortunately, it was only a fleeting immature and petty thought. I was then thinking if I had acted on that impulse, how pathetic a grown man would look in that situation. Because even if those kids were being little shits, adults are held to a higher standard, and rightfully so.

    It reminded me of a situation at Avanti that happened many years ago, when we first started using Microsoft Teams. There was an employee who routinely posted snarky, sarcastic, and ‘know-it-all’ responses in public channels. Mostly in response to other people asking for help or clarification on product related topics. He was older and had significant subject matter expertise and was working in an individual contributor role. It would have been apparent to anyone reading that he was being a jerk. His Manager, who was a newly minted and first-time manager, started posting public and snarky retorts in reply. And even though the Manager was clearly in the right, by mirroring the employee’s poor behaviour, it reflected even more poorly on him than his employee. It reflected poorly because we expect more from our leaders. We hold them to a higher bar. And that feels appropriate; a leader should be held to higher standards.

  • Find someone worth handing it off to

    Like most people, I started my career in a junior individual contributor role. Initially, everything was new and hard. I struggled through tasks as I built my competency. But over time, like all things new and uncomfortable, I learned and improved. Eventually, I began to master those tasks and skills, which lead me to receive new assignments and to restart the learning cycle.

    One of the unexpected challenges of taking on a new role or responsibility set is it means you often must (and should) give up many of those same tasks you’ve become an expert at. I’ve always found this to be initially uncomfortable. If it’s a mundane task or something you dislike doing, it can be a great feeling. But when it’s something you enjoy and are excellent at, it can become surprisingly difficult to hand off. Particularly the first time, when you’re handing it off to someone who is going to do a much worse job at it. Of course, this is part of the process and as you were at the start, this new individual must struggle through so they can learn.

    What I’ve described is a very common pattern people experience as they progress in their career. It’s a commonly referenced topic. But there’s one aspect of this pattern that I haven’t seen referenced often, and that is how much easier it is to hand off an accountability to someone you believe can not only own the task as well as you, but eventually do it better than you. I believe finding those individuals and filtering for that criteria is key to: a) identifying a potential successor, and b) finding leaders who will ultimately give you more leverage.

    I know now if after a reasonable amount of coaching and training, I’m still uncomfortable handing a task off, it’s usually a concern worth taking note of. And when I can quickly establish complete trust with handing something off, it’s also a sign I’ve found someone worth investing heavily in.