Stay away from empty talkers

Small business fun

I'm in a family now about 100 person startupIt’s been half a year since I started working. compared to before 25 years of experience working in large enterprises——Those companies often have 100,000 employees, and there are two companies with about 4,000 employees. This is almost a completely different world.

In the IT field, there is a very obvious difference between the two sizes of companies that makes me very comfortable:There is almost no one type of person in a small company - a "talker".To be honest, I'm a bit allergic to this kind of person. Seen so many over the years and they always seem to keep popping up. Let’s try to analyze this troublesome type of colleague.

In a small startup,The ratio of doers and talkers is basically 100:0。The reason is simple: someone has to do the work, and the company doesn't have time to engage in various committees, long product documents, thick program reports, or lengthy supplier evaluation processes.For something to happen, someone has to make it happen.

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Talkers VS Doers

An interesting but somewhat ironic phenomenon is:The larger a company gets, the more likely it is to become a breeding ground for talkers.This kind of person usually has some very obvious characteristics:

• Very expressive

• Talk a lot

• Often dominates meetings and discussions

• The proportion of middle and senior management positions is not low

• Very good at "managing up"

• 但 Technical skills are usually average

The most dangerous category among them are those People who lack basic technical understanding. Unfortunately, from the perspective of "organizational evolution", most talkers will eventually reach this point. They spend time expressing, reporting and demonstrating, but rarely actually learning or improving their technical abilities.In their view,Technology is just a "low-level skill"。Anyway, when necessary, you can always let the people below do it.

In contrast, the executor is actually easy to identify:

• they will spend a lot of time Really understand how systems and technologies work

• Usually more introverted

• The most typical performers tend to have a bit of the "social awkwardness" of an engineer - and may even seem a bit "nerdy"

• Once the system really goes wrong and things get out of control, the senior management will eventually come to them to put out the fire.

• For executors, the presence of talkers is often a sign of huge source of frustration

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Why are there more and more empty talkers?

A very realistic situation is:The bigger the company, the easier it is for talkers to take advantage.

The reason is actually not complicated:

1. There are many large enterprises Non-IT executives themselves are not tech savvy

2. they are easily Expressive IT staffmove

3. These people are often empty talkers

4. Business departments will give them positive reviews

5. As a result, they gain more exposure and are more likely to be promoted.

There is another common phenomenon: if a team leader himself is a talker, then the members of his management team will The number of empty talkers will increase rapidly. Because talkers prefer to promote people who are similar to themselves.This has another advantage:You can avoid being asked the really difficult questions by your subordinates. AtYes, a cycle is formed that is almost impossible to break.

Executives often see things clearly, but they are usually not good at organizational politics or expression, making it difficult to change the situation.

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How to break this cycle?

There is a core concept in Agile methodology:Autonomous Teams。

Simply put, let each team act like a small startup:

• Take responsibility for your own output

• Take responsibility for results

But in reality we often see another situation: many large companies are promoting agile transformation, but they Don’t have the courage to really clean up the empty talkers. These people are often protected by business departments and gradually become leaders in the organization. "The Untouchable". Like weeds in the cracks of patio bricks.

They move between the business and the team:

• Boundaries of responsibility are blurred

• The decision-making chain becomes complex

• Ultimately the entire transformation failed

Without cost, there is no real change.If the proportion of empty talkers cannot be reduced,your Agile transformation is basically doomed to fail。In the end, people often blame the agile method itself, but the real problem is actually:Organizations are incapable of driving real change.

Many times, the situation can only change if the following things happen:

• New CEO takes office

• Large-scale organizational restructuring

• Recruiting senior positions

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Advice for small companies

For small companies, the strategy is actually very simple:Try to keep the talkers out from the start.Some studies have pointed out that when the company size exceeds 150 people (so-called Dunbar Number) , it’s easy to start adding more and more non-technical jobs to cope with growth. If you can avoid it, try to avoid it. A better approach would be:From the beginning of the company, a mechanism has been established so that technical skills can obtain the same career returns.

for example:

• Technical experts may also take on coordination or leadership roles

• The upper limit of the technical growth path is not lower than the management path

Ideally:The best engineers in the company should make as much as the CTO, or even more.Otherwise something will happen very quickly: the best engineers will realize that if they want to advance in their company, either Give up technology and become a talker, or,leave.