If you’re just joining this series, I suggest starting from the beginning. It will make more sense.
Today I’d like to talk about two things related to competence. One is working environment, and the other is another hallmark of Competence. No one does well in a bad work environment, but sometimes it looks like a good environment and still deters competent people.
When I finished grad school, I went out into a technology boom, and wrote my own ticket with a little IT consulting firm that placed me at a large pharmaceutical company. I worked in a drug manufacturing facility as a UNIX administrator and Oracle DBA. So I tossed big (at the time) Oracle databases around on early, primitive, “high availability” systems to keep drug manufacturing lines running. And I learned about corporate America. It was a good learning experience, in a friendly group of geeks.
My biggest accomplishment there was contributing my first of two scenarios to Scott Adams that became Dilbert cartoons. More practically, I also learned a lot about regulated technology environments (FDA in this case). I learned to be woken by pages from computers (actual pages, on my pager). I put to use what Jo and others taught me. Particularly, that computers are sturdy and not to be afraid of them. I was appreciated and well-liked, but I didn’t care for the bits of my soul I was leaving in the circular file by working there.
Looking back, I see that I was lucky to work in a very thin layer of reasonable competence there. Not enough to make it a good place to work, but I had a handful of direct co-workers who knew their jobs well and were congenial lunch companions. I didn’t really understand at the time what made that such a poor work environment, since the folks around me were nice, the pay was fine, the hours were good, and the work was challenging. It should have been ok. This wasn’t a situation where people didn’t know their stuff, the people I worked with surely did. I learned a lot, it was a good team.
But the general malaise of a top-heavy company with such poor executives, no mission to speak of, other than to rake in cash, and where “climbing the ladder” was the main sport just isn’t a good place to be even if your little workgroup is ok. I was young, new at professional work, and idealistic. But talking with people who had worked there when things were different was eye-opening. They described a mission-driven place where people worked to find cures for things (which is different than finding treatments for things). A corporate change shifted all of that.
With hindsight, what I recognize now is a pattern. Organizations with good missions attract a lot of competence. People like to work for something that matters. That attracts everyone, but competent people get to choose who gets their help. When culture changes, and the goals become “make the executives rich,” the competent people leave. But that takes a while. Lots of otherwise-competent people like to save things. It makes them stick longer than is good for them.
Where I worked in that company was a disconnected little pocket. Providing servers and applications (what we now think of as technology “services”) to the main business didn’t really change when the company did. They treated tech people well because hiring new ones was iffy and expensive. So that little group still had people who knew their work and did it well. I reported to a good manager. All of the things people say make a good job, on the surface seemed to be there. I didn’t know why things were bad, why I wasn’t happy there, why I wanted something different, but I knew to get out.
So I checked the want-ads (for newer people, companies used to publish job ads in newspapers, which were printed sheafs of news that got delivered to your house every day). I applied for and then decided against a job at a newish innovative little company called “Red Hat” because being a sysadmin for people who write the operating system sounded like less fun than smacking myself with a hammer, though I bet it would have been a fun place to be. A company with a mission.
Instead I took a job at UNC-TV, the statewide public television network. There I met some truly competent people, and that’s where I went from “hopeful newb” to “entry-level-competent” (far from Big-C Competent) myself. Two months after I was hired, my boss quit. Leaving an IT Manager job open. They also decided at that time to in-source an IT Department. Before I was hired, other than a couple of on-site temporary staff, most of the work was done on contract by programmers and other IT staff from UNC Chapel Hill. The need for dedicated technology support was growing. So they created a Director position and made a department.
So first a little background. When I say that UNC-TV was a statewide television network, what I mean is several things: 1. UNC-TV produced original programs that were used in different ways. 2. UNC-TV broadcast through a number of transmitters covering 99% of the state. and 3. UNC-TV was associated with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It supplied original programs to the network, making them available to other stations and state networks, and used other PBS-distributed programs in its own lineup, along with programs provided by other producers and networks. So “UNC-TV” was a broadcast network in the same sense that CBS, NBC, ESPN, and CNN are networks, only geographically focused on one state.
Not surprising then, UNC-TV had a whole lot of “Transmission Engineering.” Sending signal from an origination facility, across microwave transmitters to a set of broadcast transmitters that was each a “TV Channel” over the air and on local cable systems. UNC-TV also had studio production facilities with some of the best video and audio capabilities anywhere. Not big, but high-quality. If you think about the quality of some of the best PBS programs, UNC-TV was producing at that level. And UNC-TV had an origination or “broadcast operations center” facility that put together the program lineup to send out to transmission, to air. There were also remote production capabilities of many kinds. So the technology there was enormous.
When UNC-TV created an IT Department to handle the “little” stuff, like donor services (a “CRM” system coming in-house from the homegrown mainframe-based one UNC Chapel Hill supplied) and the most rudimentary of web sites, and email, that was just some offhand stuff really. So while this may seem weird now, or in almost any other industry, then and there it made sense that the IT Department was created within the broader Department of Engineering.
Engineering was, is, and surely always will be the technology umbrella in television. Within Engineering (and I think they got this right) were then three areas. Studio Engineering (cameras, audio, the control rooms you see on shows about television, where the director and some crew sit with banks of monitors and switchers, putting the program together, sometimes live to air, other times to “tape.”) which also took care of our broadcast origination control room and supporting infrastructure. Then Transmission Engineering, which took the signal from the control room, and got it the rest of the way to people’s living rooms. And then the scrappy little IT folks, who just put computers on desks and connected them to the servers in the converted photocopy room that served as a “data center.”
Those were the days.
So picture me, hired as one of the first permanent IT employees, two years out of school (though with more years than that doing various forms of tech support), and then two months later the IT Manager quit and they restructured.
I wasn’t (and am not) what you would call “ambitious.” But I had had good mentoring, and knew it’s a good idea to apply for internal jobs. Women too often fail to raise their hands and let management know they’re interested. But I’d only been there two months, in a job about five times more challenging than my previous one. So I planned to let that IT Manager job float and do the job I was hired for.
Enter Carl. All of this was just a lead-up to introduce you to Carl. Carl was the brand new Director of Engineering at the time. He’s the first of several people I think you need to know from UNC-TV. Telling you about television engineering, about the organization he was devoted to, is telling you about Carl.
When Carl decided to restructure and build an IT Department, he was doing that in probably the most challenging time ever to hire IT people. He was working in an industry that thought a whole lot of television Engineers, and had no truck with “those computer people.” Carl was an Engineer. Like an old-school one. He’d started in radio, and worked in radio and television all over North Carolina. Then he went into sales. Selling technology to radio and television Engineers.
Now, Carl is not someone to turn away from a wager. I’ve seen him in Vegas. Carl wins. Consistently. This isn’t a person you want to bet against. When I tell you about Competent people being able to get things done, some of that skill is knowing the odds.
Suggesting that we needed a pack of computer people at all, and trying to hire them when every other industry was throwing money at anyone who had ever seen a computer, was going against the flow. He was doing that for an organization that had all of the disadvantages of being a nonprofit (one that asked for money via telethon every year) and a state agency, in a state that hates state agencies.
Carl started by advertising for the IT Director and IT Manager jobs. I looked on with interest, wondering who I’d be working for, two months into my tenure there. While I was craning my head to see who would apply and be hired, Carl tapped me on the shoulder and told me to apply. I assumed he was being a Supportive Senior Manager of the sort I had heard about, and wanted for me to get some practice aiming for a higher position. Good advice. I did have a fresh resume after all, so I agreed to apply for the IT Manager job. “No,” said Carl, “apply for the IT Director position.”
This, I expect, is what people refer to as “hedging your bets.” Carl knew precisely how hard it would be to hire in that market, and that his budget would be…less than attractive. I just thought it was utterly ludicrous. But it was no harder to apply for both of those jobs than one, and I had the aforementioned resume, so I tossed my hat into the ring for both, as directed. Carl is persuasive, and no skin off my nose right?
It was a clear sign that the late 90’s was a seller’s market in IT that they couldn’t find a more qualified IT Director than a 25-year-old barely out of school. I heard about some of the interviews from co-workers. The barrel bottom was scraped, chopped through, and then the dirt under it was dug. What they found a few feet down was me.
I had no illusions about being qualified. I had never managed a single other person in my life, and this job would involve managing people and managing at least one other manager. By this time I loved UNC-TV. I was attached to the mission, and would have done anything for the good of the organization. (Which begs the question of why I would accept the job I knew full well I couldn’t possibly do.) I accepted it because 1. I knew they had no better option, 2. I knew I would care and would make myself qualified, and 3. Because Carl (and Kip Campbell, who I will tell you about later) told me that I could do the job and that they would make sure I didn’t fail. Failure would not be an option.
I’m going to pause here to talk about how society puts weight behind some people. I didn’t know anyone at UNC-TV when I applied. But I came with writing built by an English degree that went into my application materials, an MSIS from the best school in the country, mentoring from previous managers, a family support structure designed to show me what competence looks like and provide any resource needed to achieve it. But if IT is a male-dominated industry (it is, don’t even, I have stories) it is nothing compared to television engineering at the time.
While in that job, not one but two different Engineers, nice guys both, made a point to tell me that I should be staying home taking care of my family, not out working. When carrying equipment (an essential part of my job) men would just materialize to try to prevent me from lifting things. Though many of those engineers couldn’t type more than five words per minute on a good day and tended to do things like drop AC units on their laptops (not kidding) they routinely made bold to tell me my job.
But something you should know about Carl is that he’s a believer in meritocracy. Carl has spent his entire career using his leverage as a respected, brilliant, capable person who climbed ladders as if they were elevators…to bring other people with him. Carl spots talent. This sounds like a brag, which I guess is unavoidable, but over his career he’s mentored hundreds of other people. And Carl picks winners. Few people have done more to help others succeed in broadcast jobs than Carl has. And Carl helps people who want to learn and contribute. Their age, gender, race, physical abilities…well, Carl picked me where his colleagues saw only too-young and way-too-female.
I could not be more grateful.
And over my career, more often than not (by a lot) I’ve seen mediocre candidates hired over better ones because other senior executives couldn’t see what Carl sees clearly.
So let me explain the genius of what Carl bought for UNC-TV with a skimpy little salary. He bought fierce loyalty and dedication. He bought someone with zilch experience, but proof that she could be trained. Someone with initiative, enough technical experience to know the industry (it was a much smaller industry at the time). Someone with basically boundless energy (ah, to be 25 again). And someone who could communicate with anyone and everyone. Writing, speaking, however.
The rest, he had to build. Carl knew that. To buy UNC-TV the IT Director he knew they would need in an increasingly computing-centric industry, he committed to doing his own job, and probably 80% of mine until I could. At the time I was only aware that I had a lot of questions, and that Carl took the time to answer every one of them.
I had learned a lot from previous mentor managers, I’ve told you about Jo and Merijoy particularly. Carl kicked that up to graduate-level mentorship. I worked for him for almost fourteen years. I can’t convey anywhere near what I learned in that time. Much as I’d like to. Carl really needs to write that book. But I’d like to highlight a few ways Carl behaves that show what Competence can really do.
Did I mention that Carl was in sales? Carl could sell anything to anyone. Looking back, I realize how much harder he was working to get me to learn how to manage and lead than most people would. Rather than just telling me what to do, Carl was subtly selling me on how to properly manage people. I don’t remember Carl ever specifically telling me to do anything. Carl showed incredible confidence, and gave me autonomy, while providing much more safety-net from failure than I realized at the time. The amount of air cover he provided with General Management must have been immense. He always encouraged me to think through alternatives as good practice, but also because I had stupid ideas sometimes and things didn’t work out. Maybe most of all, Carl exemplified an unassailable brand of integrity that made it seem impossible to be other than forthright and to try my best. If I had to pick a single word for Carl, “integrity” would be that one actually.
You may be wondering why I started with that whole description of the pharmaceutical company when this is about Carl at a later job. I did that for contrast. I told you I would be describing two things today. Environments that foster or shed competence, and an attribute of Competence. I described the exodus-of-competence problem happening even at a place where people were congenial and the pay and working conditions were fine. The pharmaceutical company paid well. Jobs were not more than people could handle. It was on paper, a good place to be.
UNC-TV was a state agency/nonprofit where people worked insane hours. Some of the worst management I’ve seen anywhere was also there. No one was paid what they were worth. On paper, only someone bonkers would want to work there. But mission will pull in competence. UNC-TV served people who needed it most. It educated small children in a state where poverty and deplorable deprivation are everywhere, getting them prepared to start school well. UNC-TV was a lifeline for homebound people. It was free enrichment for everyone with a television. It was a window to the world. At any given time, hundreds of people who could work anywhere believed in that mission enough to work there.
Case in point, UNC-TV lured Carl out of lucrative work in sales to be Director of Engineering. Carl is someone who punches so far above the weight class that a public-television network should be able to attract. Carl came because Competent people are mission-driven. Most people are mission-driven. I was only a decent sysadmin at the time, but could have doubled my salary at another industry job (the pharmaceutical company tried hard to keep me). But mission will pull competence.
Some background on Carl and what drew him to that place. I told you that he’d come up in broadcasting in North Carolina. But he also loves this state. There is no bigger fan of his Alma Mater, East Carolina University. Carl can tell you astonishing stories about the people of North Carolina, it’s history, every square inch of its geography “from Murphy to Manteo” as they say. Carl is a people person. A people-person’s people person really.
Carl is exceptional in sales because Carl listens first. He doesn’t push whatever he’s selling, he learns about the person he’s selling to, forms a relationship, and then tries to help them using the resources available. More than just whatever product he happens to be selling, but also his network of people, and his own resources. In the case of UNC-TV that resource was more than a dozen years of his life doing everything in his power to give the people of North Carolina the best public television anywhere.
A whole lot of people (if they were to read this) would recognize Carl. And most who know him would have stories about how he helped them. Many, through mentorship like mine, others by connecting them with “just the right person” when they most needed help. Advice about next steps in their lives.
The second thing I promised to tell you here is another hallmark of Competence. Those skills that make someone able to create success. Carl could illustrate a lot of those skills. But the one that sticks out is that Carl creates success for himself and the people around him by shrewdly assessing the odds. Playing blackjack or planning a major network overhaul, predicting how vendors will behave or what products will shine, or putting dark-horse candidates into positions in the hopes of a win-win for employee and organization, Carl illustrates that Competent people know the odds.
That might seem like a random skill to put in the Competence portfolio. But consider it. Being decisive means evaluating the odds of success. Doing it well enough to create success means getting those odds right far “more often than not.” You don’t beat the house in Vegas unless you clearly understand the odds and know you aren’t winging it. Lawyers say “don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to.” Carl can predict those answers to several decimal places, because he knows people, and wants the best for them.