Influencing Change, Joy at Work and Protecting Mental Health with Eb Ikonne

Transcript

Shane Hastie: Good day, folks. This is Shane Hastie for the InfoQ Engineering Culture Podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Eb Ikonne. Eb, welcome. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

Eb Ikonne: Thank you very much for having me, Shane. I'm really excited to be here.

Shane Hastie: My normal starting point is, "Who's Eb?"

Introductions [00:24]

Eb Ikonne: Yes, that's a great question. Sometimes I wonder who's Eb myself. But, let's put it this way. I'm of Nigerian heritage. I live in the United States currently, just right outside of Atlanta. I work for Cox Automotive, that's a company in the automotive industry. And if you've ever heard of Kelly Blue Book and Autotrader, you might know who I work for.

I'm passionate about product development and software engineering. I'm passionate about organizational life. My hobbies include playing the piano. I also enjoy football. That's the right name for it, football. I'm a big fan of Arsenal FC and Atlanta United.

Maybe those are a couple of things about me that might interest some people.

Shane Hastie: What brought you to leading change without authority?

Leading change without authority [01:20]

Eb Ikonne: What brought me there is probably the culmination of my experience so far. Just a little bit about me, I started off as a software engineer several years ago, a number of years ago, over two decades ago now. And I like to joke, I've probably been writing code since the third grade, so I've been around the computer for a little while.

I got into software engineering and did that for a number of years, and just decided to move into management because I was very curious about how we could get groups of people to work together well to solve problems and to overcome challenges together. And I was also curious about ways we could do that that created a space for people to thrive and flourish as well. These were things that were important to me. I had seen this modeled in one or two leaders that I had had, but I had not seen it modeled or practiced by many leaders.

I've moved into leadership, and I've had some leadership and managerial positions for a few years now. But one of the things I noticed as I stepped into these positions, is that when I would talk to people about why they were not initiating change in their groups, these would be team members, many of them would suggest to me that, "I don't have the power. I'm not in a position. I don't have a team." They'd have all these reasons why they felt they could not initiate change.

And it became very clear to me that a lot of people think that change can only be initiated through force or with coercion, and that's probably because that's largely how they've experienced change. So I said, "My goodness, change happens every day and a lot of it is not coercive, even in our organizations." A lot of it is as well, but some of it definitely isn't.

That's what got me interested about sharing my experiences and some tips and tricks about how to initiate change when you feel like you're not in a position of formal authority in a group.

Shane Hastie: Why would we want to initiate change?

Eb Ikonne: I think because we want to get better, we want to improve. If you're really passionate about doing a good job and if you're passionate about just creating a place where people get to do the best job they can do and grow and have fulfilling and meaningful careers, then whenever you see something that can make your group better, that can help you all out, that can make your company succeed, you should be interested in making that happen. And that often requires some change, for sure.

Shane Hastie: What are the types of changes that we can atalyze, that we can influence?

Incremental vs transformational change [04:00]

Eb Ikonne: There are a number of changes we can catalyze or influence the different degrees of difficulty. But I like to just break up change into two big types. And of course, we can have subtypes for these two. But the big types of change I like to think about... And some people talk about this as incremental change or first-order change, and then the other type of change would be more second order, or some people use the word transformational. I know transformational is not a word that's always popular with some people out there.

But nonetheless, the idea is that with incremental change, you're really focused on doing something different, but that fits the way you see the world already. So, maybe you want to go from one source control system to another, because this new one is better and it has more features and it does things, it supports you in a more productive way, but you're already used to version control. Moving from one version control system to another version control system fits within the existing paradigm that you have today, and so it is a change. You will need to convince people to move, but it's an easier change because you're not asking people to think about the world differently, if you will.

But second-order change or transformational change really starts with telling people or suggesting to people that we need to think about the world differently now, and as a result of thinking about the world differently, we need to practice a brand new set of behavior. An example I like to use here is, if you work in an environment where solo programming is the norm, people get their tasks and retreat to their parts of the office, a lot of us are remote these days, but people just do their stuff by themselves. And yes, you might get together or somebody might ask a question if they're stuck, but for the most part, people are off working by themselves.

And then you say, hey, let's start pair programming, or you can go a bit further and say, let's start mob programming. Right there you're beginning to introduce a change that really challenges the way people think about how work should be done fundamentally. And there's a paradigm shift there, and that's a much harder change. Both changes will require some convincing, but when people need to change their paradigm or their attitude towards something to engage in new behaviors, you've definitely got a more challenging task ahead of you. But again, both types of changes are achievable if we approach them in the right way.

Shane Hastie: How do I bring people on that change journey with me if I've got this great idea? Maybe it is one of those transformational, I want to experiment with ensemble programming, pair programming, and the organization is worried about utilization and cost and all of those things. How do I go about that?

Bring people with you on the change journey [07:02]

Eb Ikonne: That's a great question, and I think the first way you go about that is finding people who are supportive of the change. You'll be surprised. My experience is that often people don't express how they're feeling or what they want to try because sometimes we don't want to be the person who goes first. There's always this power in saying, "Who is interested in going along this journey with me?"

There's this African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." And I've reframed it to say, "If you want to go fast and far, you definitely need to go with other people." So, inviting people to join you on the journey is very important, and get a sense for who might be interested in this change. It's also very important to express why you think this change will be beneficial and how the change can help the group.

While it is true that logic is not always the thing that gets people to move, and that's true, you still don't want to ignore just putting out there, here's why I think this is going to be beneficial to us, and sharing with people if you've had experiences in the past where it's worked or you know of other situations where it's worked, pointing them to those experiences. But start with people who are interested. Look for your allies is maybe another way to think about it. Who are my allies here?

Because you had said there could be so many things that work against what you're trying to do, and that's true, but once you get momentum and get a number of people who really want to do this thing, it might surprise you how that can get things going. I think Margaret Mead suggested, "It can surprise you what a small group of committed people can do to change the world." In fact, I think she says it's the only thing that can, and I think that that's true here as well.

Shane Hastie: Shifting topics a tiny bit, you have a YouTube channel about "Joy at Work". What is joy at work? Isn't work supposed to be serious and busy?

The importance and value of joy at work [09:11]

Eb Ikonne: Yes. Joy's an interesting word and we could probably spend 30 minutes unpacking joy. I chose joy intentionally because I think it's... Unlike happiness which is really a temporary emotion, if you will, or temporary feeling, joy, at least if looked at from a particular perspective, is something that is enduring and lasts and can actually exist even in difficult situations.

I've shared this story on the channel, and I'll get back to what the channel's about, where growing up in Nigeria, I would go farming with my grandmother. And this was very, very hard work. It was using not-mechanized tools. My grandmother would always be singing and she'd be joyful about it. And that experience has stuck with me since then. Was she giddy? I don't think she was giddy. But even in the hardness and the difficulty of what we were dealing with at the time, she was still content, serene and joyful.

The channel is really about how can we have that kind of experience in the workplace? And what I've found is, we spend a lot of time at work. We spend a number of hours, I can't remember the hours that we generally spend across the years, but it's a large number. For most of us, it's more time than we spend anywhere else in our lives, aside from potentially sleeping at night. How do we create an environment where we can experience joy at work and really take ownership of the things that are within our control?

I often will talk and interact with people, and when I talk with them about this topic, they point to the 15 things that are completely outside of their control. And they're right, there are so many things outside of our control that press upon us. But yet I often wonder, and I know because we're so focused on the things outside of our control, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us, the things we could do a little bit differently to influence and change the situation.

That's what the channel is about. It's a little bit of a challenge for people to own a little bit more, the best of their ability, the things they can do to experience joy at work.

Shane Hastie: One of the things that I know that you've addressed on the channel is mental health. How do we take care of ourselves and take care of our others in this era where change is fast, pressures are high and, honestly, there's a lot of turbulence going on around us?

Maintaining mental health in turbulent times [11:53]

Eb Ikonne: There is a ton of turbulence going on, and it's definitely a challenge. But I think we start off by recognizing that we are responsible, to a certain degree, for our mental health. I'm a systems thinker. I like to think of myself as a little bit of one. So again, I'm very sensitive to the fact that there are other factors outside of the individual that affect our mental health.

And yet, I think if you're in a situation where you cannot do anything to protect and work on your mental health, that's a very difficult situation to be in. And I first start off by saying, "If possible, look for another place where you can work. Try and change your situation, if possible." I know that's not always the case for people.

But when it comes to being in a place, you need to create boundaries, for example. You need to be able to at some point say, "This is going to wait till tomorrow and I'm not going to look at it tonight. I'm going to take a break." I spoke to somebody recently and the person shared with me that they had not looked at their work phone for a period of time. They had not been on vacation for a long time, and so they had not taken a break from looking at the work phone. And in my view, as we discussed, it seemed like they had gone a little bit too long without that break.

We need to build in those breaks into our routines, those short breaks during the week, those long breaks. A lot of people I know have established rituals, and I have as well, where when you're working from home, it's very easy to just continue working and have your work bleed into your home situation. Establishing a ritual on how you start the day, establishing a ritual on how you end the day, can really help with taking care of your mental health.

And then there're the basics as well. Good diet, getting sleep, exercise, these are things that all of us need to do to work on our mental health. And I also think, again, I had mentioned this before, when we focus too much on what's outside of our control, it's unhealthy. Work on identifying what's outside of your control, and sometimes you just need to let it be, let the chips land or fall where they may, and focus on the things that are within your control and how you can influence them in a way that positively impacts you.

Shane Hastie: What are some of the things that are in our control that people often don't notice?

Eb Ikonne: I gave an example. A lot of places give you an opportunity to take some time off, and people find it so hard to take some time off and truly disconnect. They remain connected even though they should be disconnected for a little bit. I will say this, some companies are actually very good at providing mental health resources, by the way, that people can take advantage of to learn more about mental health. Because sometimes we're just not informed enough about mental health, and one of the ways we can help ourselves is becoming a little bit more informed. Because when we become more informed, we become more aware of the things that can help us or the things that can hurt us.

I think it's also important to maybe not get caught up too much in impression management in the workplace. Sometimes we think things matter when they really don't, and we think people are going to care about something beyond a particular time when that's not really the case. I've often told people, "We're making a big deal out of this situation, but maybe we shouldn't. Maybe this is not as serious as we're making it out to be."

Some people, and I know I'm giving you a certain thing here, some people are all about perfection. If it's not perfect, they won't move on from it. Again, that creates a lot of stress, that creates a lot of pressure on us. That's an area that says excellence is great. Perfection may be damaging to your health, might be a way to think about it as we go forward. These are some of the things I think you can do.

Just one or two last things I'll share is, your community in the workplace is extremely important. Who are you surrounding yourself with? That's an area where if you have the right kind of friends and support system in the workplace, they can help you as well. When you're not feeling your best, when you're facing challenges, when you ask somebody you want to talk to about a problem, you talk to them. It said somewhere, "A problem shared is a problem half solved." Or something like that, if I'm quoting that correctly.

Those are little things, in my view, that people can begin to incorporate in their lives to improve their mental health. In the middle of the day, get up, take a walk, step outside, get some sunshine if the sun shines wherever you live, just step away. So, small things that can make a difference.

Shane Hastie: One of the things we touched on in our conversation before we started recording was the, "You're empowered" conversation that often happens in organizations. A leader wants people to do things and yet sometimes the least empowering statement is, "You're empowered." How do we shift that?

Moving past "empowered" to truly having power [17:21]

Eb Ikonne: The initial response that came to my mind was, "Good luck." And that's funny, since we were just talking about change a few minutes ago. This is another big paradigm shift. And how do we change it? I think it's by being intentional about not using that word. I believe that many people who use that word are well-intentioned, they just don't understand the oxymoron that's found in the word.

When we hire people to do a job, from day one they should have the power to do the job. We should not be “empowering” them after hiring them to do the job. For me, it's less about empowerment, and I wish that word would be retired in many organizations, and really more about liberation and freeing people to do the things we've hired them to do. And that's often where I see the opportunity.

Of course, liberation evokes strong emotional feelings. Who wants to be that leader that is, quote, unquote, copping up to needing to “liberate their people?" Because the implication there is that you made it difficult for them to do their job. But that's really what it is, more often than it is empowering. Again, when we hire people, we hire them to do a job, so they should be coming into the workplace with the power to do the job. Any further empowerment, to me, just seems a little ironic.

Shane Hastie: How do I step into that stance as a leader or manager who wants to remove those obstacles for people?

Eb Ikonne: Ask, "What's getting in the way of you doing your job?" I often say that one of the biggest responsibilities of anybody with positional authority in an organization, maybe besides providing some insight on where the organization is headed and what goodness looks like, is to follow up with the question of, "What can I do to get things out of your way? How do I make it easier? How do I reduce friction in the enterprise?"

Every leader, in my view, should be assessed. A part of their assessment should be, how do they make it easier for people to do their jobs? Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. But if I had my way about me, this would be one of the things that leaders are looked at. "How do I make it easier for you to do your job?"

I think leaders often make a mistake when they ask that question and get feedback. They often think they can sit in their office, virtual or physical, and design how to make things easier for their people without a full appreciation for what's going on. There are many situations where the leader is better served by bringing or engaging the team and saying, "You've given me this feedback, now let's talk about what I can do to make it easier for you to do your jobs." Instead of the leaders designing a solution in isolation and then just placing it on the team and saying, "I've done all these things now. Now I believe your job is going to be easier."

In many cases, that's not really what happens. There are exceptions to everything, but generally speaking, I think it's a better and tried approach to work with your teams to identify how we can make it easier for them to get their jobs done and do the things that they need to do.

Shane Hastie: Another thing that I know about you is, you've published a book, Becoming a Leader in Product Development.

What does good leadership and product development look like today?

What does good leadership and product development look like today? [21:09]

Eb Ikonne: We've probably touched on a lot of those things in general. Everything is context specific, depending on what you're trying to achieve and accomplish. But I boil down being a leader to two things. One is, are we achieving what we intended out to achieve? Of course, in an ethical way because there can be other ways you can achieve your goals and we wouldn't want to do it that way. And, are we creating an environment where people can thrive, flourish and do their best work? I think that's what it looks like for product development.

Product development is a domain where we're trying to discover and meet people's needs, and so there's a lot of unpredictability, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of rapid feedback, there's a lot of change, there's a lot of convincing people as well. A leader needs to step in and ensure that those things are happening, but happening in a way that gets their group, their organization closer to the goals that they have set out before them, but also does it in a way where people are able to do good work, go home every day feeling like, "I've made a contribution, I did something valuable." At least most days, if we're going to be realistic, some days are not great days. But most days people feel like, yes, I'm doing something that's meaningful, is valuable, I'm developing and I'm growing as an individual as well.

We spend a lot of time in the workplace, and I think it's one of those places in our lives that should contribute to our personal development and flourishing as well.

Shane Hastie: A fair number of our audience are people who are probably moving from the individual contributor into their first leadership role in technology teams. What advice would you have for these folks?

Advice for new leaders [23:03]

Eb Ikonne: My advice would be, don't make the mistakes I made. What were the mistakes I made? The mistakes I made were thinking that the things that contributed to my success as an individual contributor were the exact same things I needed to do when I had people that I was supporting. In organizational jargon we talk about direct reports. I'm a big fan of saying "direct supports". I believe the leader's job is to support the people on their team. You might have seen the inverted pyramid, where the leader is at the base, supporting the people on the team. You might have a problem with the visual, but I think the mindset or that attitude is extremely important.

Individual contributors, especially ones that excel, are often tapped on the shoulder to move into management positions because they got things done. But in many cases they got things done working with code and being able to manipulate it and tell it what they wanted to do, or some technology, or something like that. Whereas when you're supporting people, it's a different ball game. It's now dealing with another human being like you. Psychology becomes a big factor. And you really can't push people around, or it's not advisable.

There are some leaders who rely on coercion to make people do things as if the people are bits and bytes, and that's unfortunate. If you want to be a successful leader, and again, back to the point I made about creating an environment where people can thrive and flourish, then you want to recognize people as people, as humans, and engage with them in that way. Consult them, support them, talk with them, get to know them, and get to know the things that motivate them and the things they'd like to do. And then support them.

Be clear. Be clear on what you need to achieve, but recognize these aren't people who you're going to push around, maybe like you pushed code to Git or something like that. This is just a different kind of job with different type of requirements.

Shane Hastie: A lot of great ideas and food for thought here, Eb.  If people want to continue the conversation, where do they find you?

Eb Ikonne: You can find me in several places. I'm on LinkedIn, so I'd love to connect. My full name is Ebenezer Ikonne, so you can search for me there and we can connect there. I'm still on the site formerly known as Twitter, but not as active there. I have the YouTube channel, Joy at Work, so subscribe and share thoughts and give me feedback on what you want to do. I have the book as well if you're interested in the book, so you can get the book too.

Those are the ways to engage with my work, reach out to me and contact me.

Shane Hastie: We'll make sure that those links are in the show notes.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Eb Ikonne: Thank you very much for having me, Shane. It's been a pleasure.

Mentioned:

• QCon London
• Eb Ikonne on LinkedIn
• Joy at Work YouTube channel