Technically Speaking
Up the Organization, Redux
by Lee Copeland
Recently I dusted off my favorite book on
management, Up the Organization by
Robert Townsend. Although his book is
more than thirty-five years old, long out of
print, and virtually unknown to today’s
managers, Townsend always inspires me
with his wisdom and tickles me with his
wit. The book describes a number of les-
sons learned as Townsend brought Avis
Car Rental from near oblivion to the
number one car rental company in terms
of customer loyalty. Here is some of his
wisdom and my comments:
The British created a civil-service job in
1803 calling for a man to stand on the
Cliffs of Dover with a spyglass. He was
supposed to ring a bell if he saw
Napoleon coming. The job was abolished
in 1945.
How many of our organization’s
revered processes are like this? They met
a real need and made perfect sense when
they were first implemented. But, over
the years, our organization’s needs and
environment have changed, yet our ways
seem cast in stone, becoming processes
without contexts, rules without reasons.
Some state governments have a “sunset
law” that automatically terminates pro-
grams after a period of time unless they
are expressly renewed by the legislature.
Perhaps we should have that same kind of
periodic review of our work processes.
The world is divided into two classes
of people: the few who make good on
their promises and the many who don’t.
Get in Column A and stay there.
I am continually amazed at the number
of software “professionals” who just
don’t get it. Making and then meeting
commitments is the foundation of our
business. Meeting commitments builds
trust; breaking commitments destroys it.
Whether it’s a commitment to have a
plan defined, to have requirements doc-
umented, to have the code written or
tested, or to have a magazine article
written by an agreed upon date, doing
what we say we will do is vital to our
personal and professional success.
Secrecy is totally bad. It defeats the cru-
sade for justice . . . Secrecy implies either
1) What I’m doing is so horrible I don’t
dare tell you, OR 2) I don’t trust you.
A key symptom of a dysfunctional
organization is the keeping of two sets
of books—one set, which we share with
executive management, paints a rosy
picture of project progress; the other
set, which must be kept secret, shows
the actual project state including slip-
pages, failures, and overruns. Ultimately,
this dishonesty becomes a cancer that
spreads throughout the entire organiza-
tion. After all, if we can lie about project
progress, we can lie about other things too.
Many years ago I was interviewed
for a skunk-works project known as
Fountainhead. After being questioned
for hours, I thought it was my turn to
ask some questions about the project’s
goals, methods, timeframe, and results.
Each of my questions was answered
with, “We can’t discuss that.” I didn’t
understand. If I was good enough to be
considered, why couldn’t I be trusted? I
politely declined the invitation to join.
Before you hire a computer specialist,
make it a condition that he spend some
time in the factory and then sell shoes to
the customer.
At Avis, Townsend required all top
managers to spend a week in airports
each year renting cars to real customers.
The number of really good improvement
ideas that then came from that manage-
ment team was amazing. As the high-
priests (Townsend’s term) of computers,
we know the proper spells, chants, and
incantations to animate those systems,
but many of us understand little about
the business of our own organization
(or even business in general). The more
we understand about our organization’s
goals, practices, methods, and people, the
better we will be able to help it succeed.
In business, as elsewhere, hubris is the
unforgivable sin of acting cocky when
things are going well.
Chances are there will come a time
www.StickyMinds.com
when things do not go well. Hubris tells
us to “stay the course.” Wisdom tells us
we may be wrong. The philosopher-poet
Jimmy Buffet in “Margaritaville” leads
us from “It’s nobody’s fault” to “It could
be my fault” to “I know it’s my own damn
fault”—a progression each of us may need
to make at some time. Recognizing our
fallibilities and dealing with them con-
gruently is one sign of a professional—
and an adult.
If you’d like to improve your manage-
ment skills while nodding and chuckling,
find a copy of Up the Organization. Buy
it, read it, enjoy it. There’s a copy on eBay
for $1.95. {end}
Lee Copeland has more than thirty years’
experience in the field of software devel-
opment and testing. He is the author of
A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test
Design. Lee is the managing technical editor
for Better Software magazine and a regular
columnist for StickyMinds.com. Contact
Lee at lcopeland@sqe.com.
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FEBRUARY 2007 BETTER SOFTWARE 7