harry … the ASIC guy

It was 1992 and I was supporting the Motorola Iridium project in Chandler, AZ. There was a project lead named Steve who I was tasked to work with. My job was to get certain elements of our DesignWare library working properly to support his ASIC design team.

Steve was a bit of a control freak. Whenever there were technical decisions to be made, Steve wanted to be the one making the decisions. And once he made his decision, there was no changing it. You see, Steve had a big ego and did not like to be wrong, much less wrong in front of his team.

Unfortunately, his decisions were not always the correct decisions and I had no problem telling him that. You see, I had a big ego too.

As you can imagine, Steve and I did not get along very well.

Fortunately, I had a boss who had dealt with Steve before and who gave me some advice that I carry to this day. He suggested that I bring the relevant facts to Steve and present them in such a way that the decision was obvious. Then, I needed to say these words, “I’m not sure what is the best choice. What do you think?”

As hard as it was for me to relinquish control of these decisions, it turned out to be the right way to handle Steve. Instead of feeling like he was put on the spot to win a debate with the local AE, he felt like a respected authority figure. With this pressure removed, Steve usually ended up making the right decision (i.e. the one I would have recommended).

Steve was happier. I was happier. And we got a lot more productive work done as a result!

__________

The soft skills that I describe in the story above do not come naturally to most engineers. A matter of fact, I’ve often heard it said “he’s a great engineer, but I’d never take him to a client”. So I was very interested when I came across a press release describing how Mentor Graphics and RTM Consulting collaborated to develop a soft skills training class for Mentor consultants. I sent an email to Paul Hofstadler, VP of Consulting at Mentor, requesting to talk to him about the class, and he graciously accepted.

According to Paul, Mentor’s Services are typically focused on deploying to their clients new working processes around the EDA tools that Mentor sells. That is, they are teaching their clients to fish, rather than selling them fish. As you can imagine, it requires a great deal of influence and political savvy to effectively implement these types of changes in a client’s organization. Unfortunately, these skills don’t necessarily come naturally for most engineers. Indeed, when Mentor went back and examined the projects that had challenges, they discovered that the core issues were not technical, but rather involved corporate politics and communication issues.

Paul decided that he needed to increase the soft skills of his consultants in order to be more effective on projects and to recognize opportunities for more business in a tough economy. “More than half the work in consulting is finding and growing people”.  Rather than building a training program internally, or piecing one together from existing off-the-shelf classes, Paul engaged with RTM Consulting to develop a customized class to meet Mentor’s specific needs. “We didn’t want to pull our best consultants off of time critical customer projects to develop the class. They are the ones guiding our customers through complex projects. In addition, we wanted the outside point of view that RTM brought to the situation.”

Most of the course material came from RTM Consulting . The specific case studies and industry specific material came from Mentor. Paul had senior consultants help with the development of the material, especially the case studies which were based on real experiences. The result is a 3 day course that is very hands-on. There is standard lecture time and also several 5-6 person role play case studies. “The collaboration with Mentor Graphics was key to honing in on customization of the training to give the them the best chance at gaining the right skills necessary, and providing a solid return on their educational investment”, according to Randy Mysliviec, CEO of RTM Consulting.

Paul Hofstadler particularly praised the case studies. “The case studies were the most interesting part of the course. I never knew what was going to come out of them. Each group solved the case studies slightly differently using the skills taught in the class.” Even so, Paul resisted the urge to let the consultants bring real customer situations into the class for fear that the entire class would end up working on one real customer case. Instead, Mentor asked consultants to present real case studies after the class, several weeks later, and present them to the internal team. This served as a reinforcement of the material and helped to put the course material into practice.

A 3-day training course for the entire consulting team seems like a big investment. “Ironically, the cost of soft skills training can often be offset by just a single large project overrun or a collection of overruns”, according to Randy Mysliviec. Fortunately, the timing of the class coincided with an end of year lull in delivery, so Mentor was able to implement the training class with minimal customer project impact as well.

Since the training was administered just a few months ago, it is difficult to definitively measure the value. However, there is strong anecdotal evidence that it is working. One senior consultant, who was very skeptical at the beginning, used the techniques in the class to turn around a difficult customer (similar to my story at the beginning of this post). Paul has indicated that “consulting orders this quarter are a lot better than last quarter” and he attributes that in part to the training, particularly the parts that help consultants recognize potential follow-on opportunities for more business.

“In this economy, it is more important than ever to understand the customer’s needs, communicate effectively, and deliver excellent solutions on every engagement” said Paul in summary. “It is clear to me that our projects are running more smoothly after the training. As a bonus, our repeat customer order rate is up indicating that we are continuing to deliver high value to our customers despite the ‘interesting’ times in which we find ourselves.”

Due to the success of the training, Mentor is looking at extending the training to other parts of the consulting organization and to other organizations in Mentor. In the meantime, RTM Consulting is offering the course for other customers, minus the Mentor specific material, of course. “The soft skills needs at Mentor are certainly not unique in the professional and consulting services world”, says’ Randy Mysliviec. “Most technology and pure services companies do a good job of teaching their teams about products, services, and technologies they need to know to effectively serve clients. What is most often missed are the soft skills necessary for consultants to effectively interact with their clients.”

Thanks to folks like RTM Consulting, these soft skill aren’t hard to learn after all.

harry the ASIC guy

Coffee Shop

This past Saturday I went to grab a cup of coffee at the local mom-n-pop coffee shop that I really like. There were no stirrers so I told the server that they were out.

“Yeah, we’ve been out for a few days. You can use a straw”.

“Why don’t you just go to the Smart and Final or the Von’s 30 feet away and grab a box”, I asked.

“I’m just the server, that’s not my job”.

Electrician

On Sunday I was talking to Chuck, one of the other parents at the YMCA Adventure guides induction ceremony and boat regatta. Chuck works as an installer for AT&T and also does electrical jobs when he gets a chance.  He’s a hard worker, putting in six 12-14 hour days each week.

As we talked, I suggested that he could set out on his own, make more money and work less hours. Like Joe the Plumber.

“I don’t need the headaches. If something goes wrong on a job today, it’s not my problem. It’s my bosses problem. If I own a business, then it’s all my problem.  I’d rather someone just give me the job and I do what I’m told.”

My Client’s Large Company

I was trying to install Office Communicator the other day and there was something wrong with my account on the server. I called IT and the woman on the line tried to help me but could not figure out what was wrong.  So she closed my ticket, the one with her name on it, and opened a new one for a specialist in Office Communicator to look into it.

About a week later, someone else in IT called me up to help me with my issue.  He was able to figure out what was wrong, but lacked the permissions to make the fix.  So he closed out my ticket, the one with his name on it, and opened a new one for the person with permissions to fix the problem.

A few days later, I rebooted my laptop and Office Communicator was now working.  Later that day I got 3 emails from IT requesting me to fill out a short survey regarding the resolution of my issue.

A Person I Work With

The other day I urgently needed help to run an analysis on a chip I’m working on. So I asked one of the people on the team who knows how to do it quickly.

“That’s  not one of the things I’m responsible for.”

______________________

Am I the only person not afflicted by the “not my job” disease? Has this really become such an ingrained part of American and corporate life?

I’m sorry, I just don’t think that way. If I see a problem, then it’s my problem.  Maybe I’m anal or a perfectionist or neurotic and maybe I need to let go.  But I’m just not wired that way. And I don’t understand people who are.

harry the ASIC guy

The prime directive drummed into me as a freshman AE (Applications Engineer) was to ALWAYS get back to the customer in a timely fashion.

Even if I did not have the answer…

Even if I was already working on the problem…

Even if I was not the person who could help him…

It’s practically no effort to return an email or a voice mail and just let your customer know what’s going on, so he’s not sitting in the dark.  A matter of fact, I’ll write the email for you and you can just fill in the blanks:

Hi <customer name here>,

I got your email regarding <problem, issue, question>. I’m going to <look at it tomorrow, send this on to R&D, ask my boss to handle it, etc>. I expect to have an update for you <in an hour, tomorrow, next week, etc.>. If you need an update sooner, please feel free to contact me directly.

Regards,

<your name here>

Simple, right?

I’m sure I’ll get little argument that this is the right way to treat real customers.  But, what about our internal customers?

In my job, I’m amazed at how long some people will “Delay the Game” without responding to an email, without a simple 1-minute acknowledgment that they would get back to me. Instead, I’m often left wondering what is going on, sometimes sending follow-up emails, voice mails, dropping by the office…all just to find out what is going on.

Look. I know you’re busy and you have more important people and issues to deal with than my little request. But, just realize that everybody that sends you an email asking for something (a question, a file, a meeting notice) is your customer. If you keep them in the dark by not responding, and you do this enough, you’ve lost your customer.

harry the ASIC guy

As I stated in my previous post, I’m starting a series of posts on “Email Penalties”…football style.  For the first penalty, to get into the swing of this, I thought we’d warm-up with one that happens every day and we all can relate to…

Too Many Men on the Field (5 yards)

More directly, too many people on the cc: list.

Several months ago, I came in to work to an email from Payroll that had been sent to a long list of distribution lists, informing us of new timekeeping processes.  Only one problem … I did not use the timekeeping system in question, but another one altogether. So, I did what any sane person would do … I ignored it.

I guess I was not the only person who had received this email in error. But apparently I was one of the few sane ones.

Throughout the morning, I received 3 or 4 emails from others like me, protesting that this did not apply to them and asking to be taken off of whatever email list had incorrectly tagged them. Fair enough, but only one problem.  Instead of replying directly to the sender only, they had hit “Reply All”, so I and everyone else on all these distribution lists now knew that Joe Smith (name made up) did not use this timekeeping system. What a waste!

The emails stopped around noon and so I figured this was over. I was wrong. This was only the tip of the iceberg and there was much more to come.

You see, a totally unrelated event had occurred that day.  There was a Blackberry outage so all the Blackberry users without email access had not seen this email. About 5pm the outage was resolved.  And thousands of Blackberry users checked their email and discovered this erroneous email sitting in their in boxes. And so, with fingers furiously striking tiny keys, they started to “Reply All”.  Peter had wandered into my office to discuss a technical issue, but every few seconds another email would interject from someone else that they “did not use this timecard system and please take me off the distribution list”.

This had become an event.

It was obvious after 15 minutes and dozens of emails that “Reply All” was not a good idea. There were numerous individuals sane and brave enough to admonish others not to “Reply All’ … in an email that they sent by hitting “Reply All”!!! Duh.

One person sent a “Reply All” that said “The Yankees are going all the way this year.”

Another said “Greetings from Virginia” to which came the reply “Greetings from Florida”.

“I’m not like all those others.  ADD ME TO YOUR LIST!!!!”

“I haven’t seen a reply from President Bush yet–or did I miss that one?  Go Sabres/Bill”

“Hi”

One person referenced the despair.com poster on Idiocy, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

I packed up to go home, a 20 minute drive, and found 200 more emails waiting for me. Eventually, the torrent subsided.

The next day, the entire company received an email from the CIO informing us that the previous day’s email “generated 15 million unnecessary emails” throughout the company.

harry the ASIC guy

There’s no debate that email has become at once a valuable tool and a misused and overused communications medium. Seth Godin recently posted an extensive email checklist of do’s and don’ts for marketing email. I’d like to do something similar for corporate and business email, the kind of day to day email we use at work.

I’m also big football fan.

(The American kind … my apologies to the international folks).

I won’t tell you which college and pro teams I root for, but their initials are USC and NYG

So, with the football season coming up, I thought I’d address the corporate email issue by suggesting some new penalties that need to be added to the game of “email”.

Starting Monday, I’ll be posting one each week, up until the football season begins. And I welcome your contributions as well, especially good stories and anecdotes that help to illustrate the new penalties.  Feel free to email them to me (harry at theASICguy dot com) or post them as comments.  And let me know if it’s OK to use your first name, full name, or no name.

harry the ASIC guy

“Offshore drilling?”

That’s what a puzzled ASIC designer would have asked with bewilderment if you mentioned the term “off-shoring” 10 years ago. But today the world is flat and off-shoring means global teams, working ’round the clock in 6 cities on 3 continents in 4 timezones on 1 chip. And it’s not just off-shoring and out-sourcing driving this globalization. Design teams for complex chips can have 100 - 150 designers doing tasks ranging from RTL design, verification, physical design, software and firmware development, mixed signal design, and so on. You just can’t find all the designers you need with the right expertise in one place or even in one company.

There are economic factors causing us to work remotely as well. Last week, American Airlines announced that they would start charging for baggage and other airlines are also raising their fares due to record oil prices. Companies, already watching the bottom line, are encouraging their people to travel less, just as they did several years ago after 9/11. Telecommuting has become accepted, even encouraged in many companies as a way to promote better employee lifestyles, save on office space, and be more “green”. As a result, for most of us, the days of the co-located design teams are as long gone as Hillary’s campaign.

Of course, these same ASIC and software design teams have designed and continue to design the technologies that enable effective collaboration between these dispersed teams. The high-speed networks that are the backbone that make it all possible. The IP routers. The graphics and specialized processors.

And let’s not forget the software applications that run on this hardware … Wikis for collaboration … WebEx, Sametime, and NetMeeting for remote meetings … Skype and Vonage for cheap global conferencing … video-conferencing … instant messaging … Twitter … Second Life … social networks like LinkedIn and FaceBook.

These technologies are impressive. Several years ago, I worked out of my home in Southern California, managing projects with team members in Silicon Valley, Arizona, Colorado, Washington State, Vancouver, Texas, Florida, Ottawa, and Bangalore. We conference called and held WebEx meetings. We worked on the same hosted environment through secure VPN. When necessary, we got up early (5 AM) or stayed up late (1 AM) to collaborate with team members half-way around the world. And these teams were able to get the job done as a result of their strong skills, hard work, and the technology that allowed them to work together. But, something was still missing and thanks to my sister-in-law I now realize what it was.

Face Time!

Our kids keep us pretty busy, so when Evelyn suggested that we need more “face time” with our kids, Joyce and I were flabbergasted. More face time? Don’t we already spend enough time getting them ready for school, dinner, or bed, taking them to this or that activity, helping with homework? Are there more than 24 hours in a day?

The truth is, although these parenting activities are important, they are not really face time. Face time is not about getting things done … it’s about getting to know one another better. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense if you are a parent, but you’re probably wondering what face time has to do with ASIC design? After all, this isn’t eHarmony or Parenting 101.

Several years ago, I attended a one-day class entitled Managing Virtually: What Works, taught by Lu Ellen Schafer of Global Savvy. Lu Ellen gave great advice on using email effectively, “drive-by-phoning” to stay in touch, collaboration tools, and especially on the difference between cultures (fascinating). But one thing stood out that she said. “Initial face-to-face interaction leads to greater remote communication.” She continued by pointing out that “informal email exchanges often do not happen among new team members until they meet face-to-face”. My friend Ron put it another way, “email is a great way to continue a relationship and a lousy way to start one”. And studies have shown this as well.

As for me, much of my day is consumed by discussions, meetings, and conference calls with co-workers, clients, and vendors. But that’s not really face time, even the face-2-face meetings. Face time is about getting to know one another and what the other person cares about. It’s something I’ve tried to do, but probably did not do enough. Go out to lunch. Go to a ballgame. Take a flight to meet a new person in the organization or on the team. Plan a team-building event and fly in the remote people. I’ve always found it easy to find excuses not to do these things … too busy … no budget … next time. But in the end, I always regret it because there is something missing. Something that feels like “trust”.

As a program manager, I recall three specific situations in which there was not enough trust because there was not enough face-time. In one case, there was some very nasty inter-personal conflict happening, but neither party trusted me enough to share their concerns until the situation was too far along. In another case, one remote team member felt he was being ignored by another remote team member, but he did not want to “bother” me with the issue. In the third instance, one team member decided to overrule another team member’s recommendations because “he knew better”. In that last case, once they met face-to-face, these two designers became a great tandem.

We all have to decide … Face Time or FaceBook?

This is not just a philosophical question but a practical one. I became aware a few days ago of a new social media company called Xuropa. From what I can gather from the website, the Xuropa Tradeshow Platform let’s you attend tradeshows at your desk. There are booths, suites, labs, demos … just like DAC, without the face time. So next year you may have a choice, DAC or eDAC?

As for me, I’m gonna have lunch on Friday with some people I haven’t seen in months. What about you?

harry the ASIC guy

Last Saturday night I went to a family Seder to celebrate the first night of Passover. You know, like in The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. As part of the Seder, we read a story of 4 sons, one wise, one contrary, one simple, and one unable to ask a question.

This got me thinking about some of the contrary ASIC designers I’ve worked with through the years … you know the type:

1. If everyone else wants to take road A, he wants to take road B.
2. If everyone else wants to take road B, he wants to take road C.
3. If you’ve got a plan, he’ll tell you why it won’t work.
4. Once he takes a stand on an issue, he’ll never give up.
5. He doesn’t really care what others think about him.
6. Every battle is worth fighting … to the death.

The contrarian ASIC designer can sap the energy and optimism out of a design team with all his negativity. Obviously, not good. So, why would anyone want to work with a contrarian?

Well, I’m here to tell you that the contrarian gets a bad rap and he can be a critical member of the team. First, some background…

Most law schools use a method of contrarian argument based upon the Socratic Method, that goes something like this:

• A legal decision to consider is chosen
• One student or the professor argues one interpretation
• Another student is assigned to argue the opposite position.

It does not matter what the individuals actually believe. They need to argue their assigned position as vigorously as they can. The goal is not for there to be a winner or loser in the argument. The goal is for the students to get the most complete and thorough understanding of the issue under consideration as possible. And only by giving both sides equal status can this be done. In the end, the law students emerge better prepared.

So, again, why would anyone want to work with a contrarian? In short, because the contrarian keeps the rest of us honest.

Consider the 6 behaviors of a contrarian that I mentioned earlier. Viewed within the context of law school argument, the contrarian is simply holding up his end of the bargain, to represent the opposite viewpoint. He’s the one most likely to find the holes that would otherwise eventually kill the project. Sure, he may find 9 holes that are not real for every real hole. But the one real hole he finds probably never would have been found by anyone else. In that sense, the contrarian is actually the ultimate optimist, because he’s the one trying the hardest to protect project success.

So, when you see that Contrarian on your project the next time, give him a hug…well, maybe not.