Human Aspect Of Work — Part 1, Need for Achievement

So, it has been a while since my first article on how to lose talents in companies.

One of the subjects I always wanted to tackle, is the human aspect of work, and as a subsidiary, Tech.
I received once an email from one of my wisest colleagues and friends, explaining that we spend more than 8 hours at work daily, which is much more than the time we spend at home. 
Thus, how we deal with our tasks, our colleagues, the problems, the conflicts, the challenges, at work, will have a long lasting effect on us, an effect that we don’t often think of. 
Have you ever had a day where you came to work (let’s say it s a Monday, because Mondays suck), got upset because of a problem (it s a Monday after all!), went home, and had a bad mood for the rest of the evening, or longer, because of it? Take a minute, and try to remember.
Have you ever been very happy at work because of an accomplishment or a praise, and went home very happy, and it reflected nicely on your evening or bought yourself a ‘well-done-chocolate’? Take a minute, and try to remember.

Disconnecting your emotions from work as you leave your office is not as common as you think. However, reaching a level where you are capable of it, can (not always) be via desperation and losing faith in your daily job, and your capability of ameliorating things at work. There is a big difference between disconnecting your feelings from work, and not caring for work anymore. The first is super rare to achieve and is unfair to your awesome talents, as you lose passion for the job, and the latter will inject desperation in your head and character, while changing you into a very passive person.

Work is not everything in life, but work is at least 50% of your lifetime while you are awake, and neglecting its importance and how it reflects on you, is neglecting 50% of your life, which is unfair for such a unique person, full of talents, as YOU!

In the following series, I will be talking freely, based on my own experience of working on site in 4 different very distant countries, supporting remotely many more, with more than 6–7 teams, with different cultures, causing trouble with a positive attitude, asking questions, and saying what many are thinking and scared of talking about. This created many haters whom I love as they motivate me to keep pushing forward, and gladly, many more supporters who motivate me when I am feeling a bit low. 
I might be missing many ideas, miss communicating others, wrong about many more, so feel free to raise a flag whenever you see is convenient (I just had my shot of caffeine after a long time, and It might have a bad effect!).

Now, let’s talk about the Need for Achievement.

Definition

According to wikipedia:
Need for achievement (N-Ach) refers to an individual’s desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. 
In simpler words, it is doing an effort, resulting something you are very proud of.

Your History

A question, I always ask during interviews to the candidates: tell me about the project or activity that you are mostly proud of.

Now, take a minute and think of it yourself. It could be vary from donating 1 euro to charity, to spending an overnight studying for a very hard exam, and A-cing it.

It can be solving a very hard problem at work, or simplifying a very complex system.

It can be discovering a bug that could ruin the whole flow right before deployment introduced by others.

It can be speaking up your mind in a meeting where your whole department is, with a different opinion to theirs.

It can be an article you wrote and sent around to your managers, or a piece of art of yours, that people enjoyed so much.

Now, let’s ask ourselves the following:

• How did that feel?
• How excited were you?
• When was the last time you felt it?
• When do you think you will forget about it?
• Do you miss that feeling?
• How often do you feel it now?
• Does your work allow you to feel that? How? if not, why not?

This feeling, is a key factor in people’s success. Successful people become addicted to the feeling of achievement, and it empowers their days and nights. 
Ambition, is not related to whether or not you have a need for achievement. If you are a system reliability engineer, you will feel it every time the system gets disrupted and you keep everything running smooth. If you are a CEO, you will sense it every time the stocks go up, and the shareholders smile.
However, your need for achievement can be on a lower level, depending on how big your ambition is.

Need for Achievement is related to the difficulty of tasks people choose to undertake. Those with low N-Ach may choose very easy tasks, in order to minimise risk of failure, or highly difficult tasks, such that a failure would not be embarrassing. Those with high N-Ach tend to choose moderately difficult tasks, feeling that they are challenging, but within reach. (Wikipedia)

One of the very nice values I have read in amazon principles, is: deliver results, and thus, accomplish:

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

As a Manager

In my personal perspective, the Need for Accomplishment should be a culture from Top to Bottom. As a manager or decision taker, whether you are a C-level or a team lead, you will first need to be honest with yourself about this need, and admit its existence.

Later on, you will need to put milestones for yourself that will guarantee having that feeling often. The higher in the hierarchy you are, the less frequent it will be, but each achievement will have a bigger impact, and a bigger joy. A CEO should feel that, every 3–6 months. A manager has to feel it within 1–3 months. A team lead has to feel it at least once every other week. A good example of such a milestone I have seen, is creating the KPI of the month, in the monthly newsletter.

On your team level, you will have to sponsor that need and make it grow inside your own team members. It is very important for each person in your company, in your department, in your team, to have a feeling that, at the end of the week (or month, or quarter), feels that he accomplished an awesome thing. The last people you will want in your team, are people doing the job for the sake of changing the status of a ticket, from pending to done. I have worked in such environments before, and it ruins your team, product, and eventually the whole company. I cannot find a reason why a leader cannot, within every sprint, add one or two tickets boosting the feeling of accomplishment. Team members with high sense of accomplishment, will surely be more productive, and most likely you will be able to accomplish more during that sprint, than any other sprints.

A good practice mentioned by Richard Sheridan his book “Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People love” is the “show and tell”, that every team has to do weekly, or biweekly, depending on your speed of deliveries. The bigger your company or team is, the more often it should take place, or you will end up with a big mammoth kind of companies. If you notice that you don’t have enough accomplishments for a long period of time, let’s say for a month, then you should question your personal leadership decisions, your product, your approach, your tech stack, and eventually you will find what to fix.

As a team member

Working within a team is a standard nowadays, and working with colleagues of different cultures, backgrounds, opinions and point of views is very normal.

However, make sure to always talk to your report about that need, very explicitly, and as honest as possible. If he is a leader, he will understand and help you along the way. If he is a bad manager, he will take it as a threat to his position and most likely also be proactive and boost you. If he really really sucks, then most likely it s time for you to find a new job!

As per the relationship with the peers, try to boost it slowly. For every small accomplishment they do, speak of it out loud, as often as possible. Sometimes they are during the “low motivation” period due to work or personal reasons, and speaking of that accomplishment will boost them up. Other times, they are in the pre-burnout phase and any good word will bring their faith back.

So hold on tight, and never give up. Talk to your product owner and make sure to bring in at least one ticket per sprint for boosting the feeling of accomplishment. If not possible, boost it yourself by accomplishing more and make sure the team feels proud of these accomplishments, and eager to add to them. This will slowly refresh their mindsets and they will end up slowly getting back in shape.
I have tried several techniques often, and there is no shortcut here. It s a long process and the only thing you should always remember is: never give up.

As a Person

On the personal level, sometimes work is not the best place to always satisfy the need for accomplishment. It is due to various economical and business reasons, and here, you will have to be creative.

Start a new activity, or a side fun project, to make something that you wish you could do in your current job. It can be writing a small framework, or hacking together few lines of code. It can be taking an online course to sharpen your AWS skills, or reading a book about leadership. It can be focusing more on a (new) hobby, such as, running more often per week or going more often for hikes. This will increase the sense of accomplishment in your personal life and will compensate for the lack of accomplishments at work, for a short-medium period of time.

Make sure you have different accomplishments, personal, and professional, and a balance between how much effort you put on each, and how much they boost you. Once your job is only satisfying the need for accomplishment at a VERY VERY low level, put a plan to change that at your current job, or move away from it. It makes no sense to spend all your personal time, making up for the absence of accomplishments at work. It will backfire at you and create some sort of hate for your job, which is not healthy.

Meanwhile, be honest with yourself, and talk to others about how to accomplish things better, at work, and in your personal life. Be creative, be proactive. If your work does not provide you with such feeling of accomplishment for a long time, then most likely it is time to change teams, products, or companies.

Business and Tech

Often, business growth comes with a very high price: the infamous technical debt. It creates a frustration within the teams and at some point, and causes growth to stop and maybe, negative growth. 
This technical debt will stop the business people from accomplishing, and will create a frustration. On the other side, tech people will start wasting their time with firefighting measurements and, while having a look on the other accomplishments of tech companies, will have a bigger need for accomplishment. Without any accomplishments in tech, people will move from pro-active to passive people, and, you can imagine the impact.

As a business person, make sure to sit down with the team, set up a strategy to move away from this debt, build a roadmap, with dates, clear KPIs and targets, and talk on how to overcome it.

As a tech person, raise the flag as high as you can to business people, to allocate resources and tackle this curse. If that fails, make sure to allow a small capacity within the team, to tackle such debts as soon as possible. This works well in a harmonized team.

I have worked with a team that allocated 20% of their time for technical debt, and managed in some time to clean up a big mess. This was a request by the team to their Product Owner/Manager, and when he said yes, he noticed a higher productivity within the sprint, while he was expecting the opposite.

You have also the responsibility as a tech person, to tackle the debts that can be solved with less effort first, and to choose wisely the debt you want to tackle. Some issues are better left alone, untouched, and other issues can be quick wins. Do not wait for the business person to know about tech more than you do, as when this happens, it is always too late (and why would you exist anyways if the business person can do everything themselves?).

Tech people will always want to build the most perfect product with the most polished hypster libraries, to satisfy their curiosity and need for accomplishment, while Business people will always want to finish a feature in a very short period of time, to maintain growth and kick the ass of a competitor, while satisfying the need for accomplishment. As long as you make sure you can the right balance, then you will soon be a leader in your industry.

Conclusion

Long story short, the need for accomplishment is normal and part of being human, and it is great if you can find the perfect balance:

• have professional accomplishments which have great effect on your work days, and boost your personal life
• have non business related accomplishments, which have great effect on your personal life, and boost your professional life.