Tag: consulting

A product development epiphany

At the beginning of the year, I announced Authentic Engine, my new consultancy.

I’m going to share a rather honest update about how things are going, and I plan to do so with some regularity. This gives me some trepidation. Visibility nearly always makes me feel vulnerable, even if the attention is subjectively positive. And general business wisdom favors secrecy and possessiveness above transparency and sharing. Instead, I’m making a deliberate choice to muster courage to favor intimacy (which requires vulnerability) and community.

Perhaps some of you reading are potential clients or customers and in reading about my uncertainties and missteps you’ll decide not to work with me. I’m okay with that, for if my writing here turns you off then we were never going to be a good match. What’s gained, I believe, will be far greater than whatever’s lost. Some will be enriched reading about my experience. Others will appreciate my candor and that I’m willing to do the scary work of making mistakes, sharing those mistakes, and trying again. Some of you will be motivated to work with me explicitly because of this writing.

So here goes it!

A raison d’etre

While I have a great deal of open source tech experience (my first tech job was in 1997 at UC Davis’ network operations center), I have almost no experience consulting in the way I’ve set out to do now. I’ve worked at start-ups and well-established companies. I’ve started and ran non-profits. I ran my own programming shop under CK Web Development. All those experiences have been immensely valuable, but my experience with them has limited applicability to what I want to build now.

I’ve gravitated towards consulting because I want to apply my experience as a programmer, a technical project manager, a developer advocate / technical evangelist, a non-profit manager, a small business person, and an open source community organizer to help folks working in those fields have better work experiences.

By better work experiences, I mean a few things:

  • authenticity, presence, mindfulness, and empathy in day-to-day work;
  • empowered, adaptive leadership;
  • effective navigation of organizational life; and,
  • the building of meaningful and fulfilling careers without burning out.

This isn’t just about making people feel better at work. Whatever your current role in tech, these are practices which will make you better at your job. The production of software, the governing of open source projects, the evangelizing of technology all requires building and maintaining relationships with people. The better your people skills, the better you can effectively apply your technical skills.

By focusing my work on individuals, I intend to contribute to a cumulative effect of improving our technical and open source communities. The more the folks that make up our communities practice and cultivate the above “people” skills, the more inclusive, sustainable, resilient, and commons-serving they will be.

So that’s my raison d’etre for starting Authentic Engine, but how am I actually going to make a living?

What appeals to me about “consulting”

Before I announced Authentic Engine, I did a lot of reading on what it mean to be a consultant and how to run a consulting practice. Some things I read resonated with me deeply: consulting as a calling, humble inquiry, being a trusted adviser, process consultation and the helping relationship. Other things I couldn’t connect with at all, especially the nature of the marketing and sales processes many consulting business books (such as this one) espouse. I don’t want to have a ton of annoying pop-ups soliciting your email for watered-down content, or resell someone’s proprietary organizational trait assessment. Moreover, many books are scant on details about how to actually develop customers if you don’t already have a base established.

Finally it occurred to me to start thinking in terms of answering the question, “what is my product?” The consulting books say you are your product. Okay, I get that to an extent. But it doesn’t feel very sustainable or scalable to me. Nor does it have the depth of experience I want Authentic Engine to bring to others. I want many teachers, and coaches, and trusted advisers, with all their varied histories, experiences and backgrounds to inform and create what we bring to others.

If I am not my product, what is?

So now that I’ve rejected that I am my product, I have to find out what is. That has me researching and learning all about product development. Working in technology as a programmer, project manager, and developer advocate means that I’ve been on the periphery of product management and development most of my career. Now I’m embracing the role officially, which means learning and practicing a new way of thinking.

I’m in the middle of Steve Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which focuses on a kind of lean product development for startups that Blank calls Customer Development. So far the framework is making a lot of sense to me. It centers upon developing a deep understanding of your customer and their needs and using that to inform your product development.

Learning deeply from my customers

So that’s what I’ll be doing next. I’ll be thinking about my customers — starting with folks who hold the jobs I’ve had before: technical evangelists (aka developer advocates) and their managers, software developer and their managers, technical product marketing managers (which I’ve worked for, producing events), and open source project stewards.

Actually I’ll be doing more than just thinking about them. I’ll be reaching out to as many of them–as many of you–as possible to listen and learn what their pain points are, what those pain points are costing them, and how they’d like to solve them. I’ll use this information to validate and improve my hypotheses about the Authentic Engine products that will help them.

Exciting and scary

I’m finding this approach very exciting. I love connecting with people, learning about them, building connections, and figuring out ways . But it’s also terrifying because I know this will take time and our financial reserves are dwindling. While I’m developing my customers and products, I’m also going to have to find income, either through consulting or contracting.

How you can help

So, if you or someone you know is needing help with planning a community-focused technical event (like Open Source Bridge, which I co-chaired for 5 years), or managing a technical project (like creating a localization platform for Firefox OS App developers, which I did at Mozilla), or revitalizing a community contributor platform (like I did with MozillaWiki), or improving open source governance (Stumptown Syndicate), or anything else about which I have subject area expertise, please get in touch or book a meeting.

A promise to continue sharing and connecting

Meanwhile, I’ll keep sharing here what I’m working on and what I’m learning.

Soon I’ll post about:

  • realizing I need to be talking to lots more people and how I’m following through on that despite how weird and shameful it can feel;
  • what I’ve learned about content-based marketing and how I’m putting it into practice;
  • how Sherri and I are figuring how how to support one another and keep our household functional while we both build new businesses;
  • what I’m doing to manage my workload, replenish my “spoons,” and avoid burn-out; and,
  • learning to be okay with uncertainty, imperfection, and iterative improvement.

Keeping in touch

As I intimated above, I promise to make more, better connections with all of you. And I invite you to do the same. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or a tweet, or give me a call (go to authenticengine.com for phone number).

Announcing Authentic Engine, my Empathy-Based Leadership Development Consultancy

Since I last posted on the subject, I’ve made quite a bit of progress towards starting the next phase of my career. I’m excited to share that with you all now.

One of the things I’ve learned through my 4 years at Mozilla and 8+ organizing in the tech community is that most everyone wants to contribute towards making stronger, healthier, more inclusive and resilient communities. The problem is that they don’t know how and the opportunities to learn and practice the requisite skills are few and far between.

So that’s what I’m going to concentrate on: Providing the leadership learning we need and hunger for.

logo-horizontal-250pxAs such, I’ve founded a consultancy, Authentic Engine, which will focus on providing empathy-based leadership learning and practice opportunities.

There’s a huge emphasis now in our community on improving Diversity & Inclusion, as well as safety and incident response (including Code of Conduct adoption and enforcement). These are important skills our community organizers need help developing and honing. Talented folks are leading efforts here and I look forward to working with them.

I have chosen something slightly different, although complementary. I want to help develop leaders, stewards, and organizers who cultivate wisdom over time and who will be equipped to adapt to the changing needs, stresses, and resources of their communities. I want to teach people how to lead and steward authentically, utilizing their unique combination of experiences, talents, and interests.

With Authentic Engine, I’ll help people develop into the leaders and stewards our communities need now and into the future.

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this year:

  1. Launch 4 (roughly one per quarter) 3-4 hour workshops, each on a specific leadership/stewardship topic. The first will be a guided exploration of what leadership is, what kind of leader you want to be and how to become that leader. The workshops will likely debut in Portland and I’ll bring them to other cities as there is demand. The workshops will not be free, but they will be affordable and have scholarship slots.
  2. Facilitate an on-going community cohort so that folks engaged in improving themselves as leaders and stewards have a support and peer-learning network.
  3. Provide at least 100 hours of one-on-one coaching and mentoring. Anyone who takes one of my workshops will get some amount of free coaching.
  4. Help 2-3 organizations improve or develop their leadership capacity. This could take many forms from counseling an ad-hoc group of conference organizers about how best to take the next step toward formal incorporation, to helping an open source project create a training program for its contributors, to customizing one of my workshops for in-house presentation. (More ideas further down.)

I’m excited about this work because it will bring greatly needed leadership resources to our communities, helping us all to improve sustainability and resiliency. I’m also thrilled because it will allow me to draw upon and apply the varied skills and experiences I’ve developed over my entire career. This includes:

  • managing technical teams and products
  • running a small business
  • serving on the working board of a trade association (501(c)(6)
  • founding and serving on the working board of a tax-exempt non-profit (501(c)(3)
  • developing software
  • writing, publishing, and podcasting
  • organizing communities around open source projects
  • coaching and teaching others
  • documenting and improving systems & processes
  • designing, organizing, and running participatory learning events
  • managing and responding to crises, including: embezzlement, intimate partner violence, food-borne illness, unexpected budget shortfalls, and more.

This is a huge venture to undertake and I’m excited about it. I hope you’ll be part of making my journey successful.

Here are some ways you can help:

  1. Sign-up for the Authentic Engine mailing list so you’ll be notified when I launch new workshops. Register to attend a workshop (once they are launched).
  2. Let me know which leadership/stewardship topics you’re most interested by completing this interest form.
  3. If we’ve worked together and you found the experience worthwhile, write and send me a testimonial I can post to my website (and/or recommend me via LinkedIn).
  4. Recommend me to folks who could benefit from my leadership development consulting services (see above for the list of things I have experience doing).

Most of all, continue to send me your encouraging words. These mean so much to me and really help carry me through the days that feel completely overwhelming.

Life After Mozilla, or My Next Adventure

2015-09-24_08-11-19
Portland in Fall. It’s my favorite season here.

It’s been 2 months since my last day at Mozilla. Hard to believe that much time has past and yet it feels like it’s gone by so quickly. Rainy, gloomy weather has arrived here in Portland, for which I’m very grateful after such a long, hot summer. My plan for my first weeks away from Mozilla, most of September, was to spend as little time on the computer as possible and to intentionally not think about my next career steps. I give myself a B at following this plan. At first I did great. I did a lot of work around our house, mostly in the form of tidying and organizing. I made a bookshelf from scratch and am very happy with how it turned out. I played a lot of Civilization. I read. I slept in. I played with the dogs and took photos.

Bertie
Bertie is always around to remind me of the value of play.

And then I started reading & responding to my email.

More that a few of you were interested in how I was doing, what I was planning to do next and maybe I might be interested in this or that. It’s been amazing to hear from you, to know you value my skills and experience and want to be a part of helping me find what’s next. Not only amazing, but unexpected. Often I struggle with recognizing my own value and how I contribute to others and so explicit feedback is really helpful. Thank you everyone who’s reached out. (And know I’m still working on replying to you all.)

As good as it was to hear from everyone, it also meant that I started thinking about “what next” much sooner and in greater detail than I was ready for. I started having some conversations about projects that were exciting, but also left me agitated and unsettled.

Earlier this month I had a follow-up with my doctor that left me feeling down and depleted. It wasn’t a bad visit and was actually rather uneventful except that I left with an even longer list of asthma-related tasks to do. Pull up the carpet in our daylight basement (where my office is), have the air ducts cleaned, make the bedroom as sparse as possible, do this breathing training program, etc. And my blood pressure is a tad on the high side (in the right arm, but not the left?).

As my lack of accomplishment and I left the doctor’s I decided to stop by Powell’s as a way to cheer myself up. (I almost always want to browse books and it nearly always cheers me up.) I did a quick scan of the ‘careers’ section — which is a bit of gamble because there is so much there that’s either irrelevant (“You’ve just graduated, now what?”) or cheesy (literally, “Who Moved my Cheese?”) or just not applicable (there’s no “The Tech Industry Burned Me Out but Then I Found This Awesome, Life-Fullfilling Vocation and Here’s How You Can Too!”).

I did notice a copy of The Joy of Not Working. Huh, I thought, that sounds nice and bought it after scanning through the first couple of pages. I continued reading at home and finished that day.

What I got from the book was less factual information and more inspiration and permission to pursue the kind of work that would allow me the time to do lots of other things that I’m interested in and care about. The book’s primary audience are retirees and others who suddenly have time on their hands due to lack of employment (voluntary or otherwise). Zelinsky emphasizes the importance of cultivating many interests and community connections, not just ones associated with work. He explores just how much there is to experience in life and how much of that experience we sacrifice when we prioritize the 40+ hour workweek and how unnecessary it is to do so. Reading The Joy of Not Working made me realize a couple of things:

  • I definitely don’t want to work for someone else. Working for myself will give me the greatest freedom and agility.
  • I need to focus on fewer work-related things so that I can do them really well.
  • I need to give myself the time and the space (even if it’s scary) so that I can identity the work I truly want to be doing and how to make that possible.
  • I want to get to the point where my average work day is 4 hours so that I have plenty of do other activities that nourish my mind, body and soul.

Sounds nice, how to put this into practice? First, I identified the work projects that I would stay committed to: Stumptown Syndicate, Recompiler podcast, and whatever “working for myself” turns out to be. I’m either in the process of wrapping up or have already wrapped up my commitments to other projects. I’m not going to continue as a volunteer in any capacity for Mozilla (many feels about that, all for another blog post). Second, I’ve been making the space and doing the work to figure out what shape “working for myself” will take. I’ve thought a lot about what I’m good at and what I love doing and here’s what I’ve figured out:

  • I want to utilize and expand my experience facilitating teams, communities and organizations.
  • I want to apply and hone my aptitude for systems thinking, for motivating people to do awesome things, and for improving processes.
  • I want to apply my knowledge and love of business (nonprofit and for-profit) as well as tech.
  • I want to help businesses and organizations do better work with happier, healthier and more productive teams.

At some point I realized, “this is what consultants do!” And so I’ve been reading every book about consulting I can get my hands on. And things are clicking. I find myself saying, “I can do this. I should do this. I will do this.”

I have a name picked out. I have a marketing plan and continue to improve it as I learn more and more about marketing. I have a launch plan. I’m figuring out how to make the finances work while I drum up business. It might involve some crowdfunding. I’ll be reaching out to a lot of you for support, in whatever capacity you can provide it (hugs, referrals, a loan/gift/investment of equipment or cash, etc.). If you know someone doing this kind of work and think they would be willing to chat with me about their experience, please introduce us.

If we’ve worked together, or you know of my work so far, I hope you’re excited. I am certainly am. I’m excited about bringing the same kind of energy, vision and integrity to this new practice as I have to other projects. I’m excited at the opportunity to partner with all kinds of organizations do their work better, more prosperously.

If you want to know for sure when I launch, subscribe to my TinyLetter.

Meanwhile, I’ll be sure to keep making time for rest and for taking awesome photos of Bertie, Dora and the rest of the critter cadre.

Bertie