On Herding Cats

[nemorathwald]

I'm bringing this up on my personal blog rather than my blog about Lojban because its lessons are broadly applicable to things that a lot of you are interested in, so I'd like to get your feedback.

Do you like my new icon? I made it after camgusmis talked me into being the cat-herder for Lojban's language debugging committee. (Yeah, a speakable human language has a debugging committee, is that not neat?) I don't possess expertise in linguistics or logic. I do not intend to arbitrate disputes over language, discuss linguistic issues, or even possess voting rights in the debugging committee-- just keep it moving. The Lojban word for "captain" is "jatna", pronounced "zhat-nah", but "Shatner" is my mnemonic device. Scotty, Spock and McCoy are the ones who know how to do things; I just keep them from sitting on their butts.

The job of herding cats is what I do with the vast majority of my free time, so I feel uniquely qualified. I define "herding cats" as "coordinating any project whose workers are true volunteers, are not obligated by compensation". (I feel the phrase is inappropriate to refer to paid employees, no matter how catlike you think software engineers are. You are not a cat herder if you have the power to fire or penalize someone. But that's another matter.) Cats show up only when they want to and are motivated by friendship and/or personal fascination.

What I am not qualified to do is design a constructed language. Just as in running a science fiction convention, my role is limited as follows:

1. Understand what tasks await doing, not necessarily knowing how to do them.
2. Assign tasks and track who is assigned to what.
3. Set deadlines and warn of their approach and arrival.
4. Keep current with everyone's contact info and preferred means of communication.
5. Talk to the volunteers a lot, asking for reports to check if they're active.
6. Seek replacements for the ones who went inactive or lost motivation.
7. Motivate active volunteers with vision, encouragement, small gifts, public thanks, or incentives tailored to their unique motivational drives.

And that, my friends, is herding cats. However, in the current traditional structure of a science fiction convention, there is a lot more that goes into being conchair, which is why I am not a conchair. It really is two totally unrelated jobs, which could be split. The second set of conchair responsibilities is:

8. Set the budget. ($$$)
9. Negotiate the hotel contract. ($$$)
10. Make long-term strategic decisions. What constituency to extract money from. What message to use to extract it from them. Where to best invest money to attract them. How to reduce the expenditure of money. ($$$)

"Oh, Matt, you can easily be conchair!" quoth he and she who have smoked crack and uttered a counterfactual statement.

The reverse side of that coin, to speak candidly, is that deeply savvy and wise decision-makers (tasks 8 through 10) do not always have sufficient personal availability to create and nurture a concom (tasks 1 through 7). Vital concom slots go empty, and we sort of coast along because we can't afford to have a leader who can create an active concom only to lead it right off a cliff. I am not speaking of any convention or any year in particular: it's fairly common.

In spite of being a cat herder, the reason I am not, have not been, and do not want to be conchair, is that I do not have opinions on 8 through 10 and money bores me. Paying attention to such matters would drain all interest out of me and make me want to GAFIAte. I would stab randomly in the dark at budgets, contracts and strategic decisions. I would be held responsible for the resulting failure, and I would be rightly blamed for having asked people to fail along with me. I will not, and constitutionally can not, evangelize anything that I don't believe in. When I mentioned this to Sal and Heather of Aegis Consulting, Sal remarked, "You don't like guessing, do you?" If I were to find out that those I trusted had staked my time and energy on a guess, I would be livid. So no, I can't evangelize guessing.

You may have noticed by now that my trust is of vital importance to me, and its dissappointment (to put it gently, I will not say "betrayal") is a recurring theme of this blog. I hear horror stories from avt_tor about conrunning politics in other regions, in which people actually compete to be in charge, and yet what an embarrassment of riches that must be. By contrast, in Michigan nobody wants to do anything. This is our harmonious blessing and lethargic curse. One issue with conventions in Michigan is that the number of people I trust enough to recruit as concom workers dwindles every year. You can't successfully build a concom if you say to people "Where have you been?" and "Have you gotten anything done?" as if to say "I don't have confidence in you." But it's true, I don't. As Head of Programming, there are two individuals to whom I say almost nothing but those things, every time I see them, because the success of my responsibility depends on it! I even tried adding someone to the "team" to shore up the task, and this third individual is doing nothing that I can see. (Don't worry, the vast majority of the programming team is completely present and it's going great overall.) Meanwhile I'm fielding inquiries about these tracks of the schedule and am helpless to do it myself since I know nothing about the topics. I feel I'm doing all I can as a cat herder, but at the end of the day, the cats are really in control.

I just keep reminding myself that the dysfunctionality is a necessary tradeoff for what I like so much about cat-herded groups.

Comments

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

I hear horror stories from >lj user= avt_tor"> about conrunning politics in other regions, in which people actually compete to be in charge, and yet what an embarrassment of riches that must be. By contrast, in Michigan nobody wants to do anything.

It can be an embarrassment of riches if everyone is competent, a scary politcal battle if some are competent and others aren't, and a horrible disaster if the ones who aren't competent are the ones who end up in charge.

But having the number of willing volunteers be dwindling is even worse, and usually when that happens there's a reason; you might want to try to figure out what's driving people away.

You can't successfully build a concom if you say to people "Where have you been?" and "Have you gotten anything done?" as if to say "I don't have confidence in you." But it's true, I don't. As Head of Programming, there are two individuals to whom I say almost nothing but those things, every time I see them, because the success of my responsibility depends on it! I even tried adding someone to the "team" to shore up the task, and this third individual is doing nothing that I can see.

There are people who are capable of doing a good job, but who may not be the best at time management, and who need the occasional kick in the butt to make sure that things are getting done on time; that's an extra job for their management, but essentially workable. Then there are people who end up not getting their jobs done at all. They need to be helped (if they are in over their heads) or replaced (if they are flaking), and it's a tough call for management to figure out which it is, and if it's the latter, to replace them in time for the replacement to get the job done.

[rachelann1977.livejournal.com]

In terms of the dwindling of volunteers, I think that may be more a function of the state of Michigan than it is of any particular con in this state. People in Michigan are feeling run down because our economy sucks, and most people are not doing the job they would ultimately love to be doing. Unhappy, overworked, underpaid people do not usually enjoy volunteering, even for something fun like a con.

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to Michigan in particular, but my experience with conrunning in general has been the opposite: that unhappy, overworked, underpaid people often *do* enjoy volunteering, specifically because they can get a lot of the satisfaction that they aren't getting from their mundane work lives from volunteering at cons.

Now I'm curious as to whether areas with poor economies find it easier or harder to recruit volunteers.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

I guess I have collected some of the worst examples over time.

[bardicwench.livejournal.com]

Eh... I hope I'm not one of the people who doesn't do anything...

*sigh* My biggest problem now is tracking down Randy and getting him to reply to any of my emails... he's been so busy lately!!

[rachelann1977.livejournal.com]

Don't take my word for Matt's or anything, but I'm almost positive it's not you. Chuck thought the same thing, lol.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

This is going to sound like a lecture, but I haven't really tried to convey this in writing before, so bear with me. In the spirit of your LJ's name, I'm going to criticize your trust/betrayal thing. There's a management concept here that you might not have encountered yet, and it's especially important because volunteers are a limited resource. The fact is, different people are good at different things, and if you can learn how to identify what people are good at, you maximize use of your resources. This sometimes has to be done through trial and error.

If you dismiss someone as untrustworthy across the board because they didn't deliver everything they should have, then you lose that resource. If, on the other hand, you think in terms of "what is this person actually good at, or what do they actually deliver on, and how can I put them on those tasks" then you may be able to turn a problem volunteer into a very useful one.

It's very satisfying to look at things as black and white -- "X is untrustworthy; I will have no further dealings with him" -- and there are people who would agree with that approach. But the fact is, few people are completely useless, especially smart people. Almost all of them are good for something, even if they're really bad at other things. A good manager identifies what those things are and puts the people to use.

Another aspect of this (and I think you've figured some of this out already) is that different people need different levels of structure -- reminders, organization, and/or supervision. You may find that some people who are awful performers with the hands-off supervision you probably prefer for yourself can become great performers if you put a little bit of pressure on them. Similarly, micromanaging some people will actually make them do less (or quit), but for others, it's necessary. There's no such thing as an effective one-size-fits-all management style; the only way to ultimately make it work is to be an asshole and sack anyone who doesn't work well with your chosen style. That's fine (though still wasteful) if you're Donald Trump and have applicants lined up outside your door, but it doesn't work if you're trying to put on an all-volunteer event.

Finally, some people can become great performers if you work with them a bit to develop their skills or organization. This isn't always practical in a volunteer context -- I didn't learn all of this working on cons -- but it can be depending on the situation. Cons often do this through formal or informal "apprenticeships", which for example is how some of the ConFusion chairs have been trained up. There are other ways of doing it too.

Now... all of this said, there are some people who really do prove themselves useless. Maybe they're basket cases who can't deliver on anything, or they require so much of your energy you'd be better off without them, or they're so dysfunctional that their presence on your team chases away other volunteers. Ditch them gently (because they're probably also potential con members). But don't write people off simply for failing to deliver on something. The failure may actually be -- and often is -- a failure of management.

And don't use the "herding cats" metaphor as an excuse not to manage. Remember that you often can get cats to go where you want them to, you just have to make them want to do it. Most people who volunteer for something want to do it right. They just may need some help.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's long. Sorry. I've usually done this verbally.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I should clarify that I have a completely different standard for a leader who convinces me to join the team, and those whom I've convinced to join the team. I take it personally when I'm actively sold a spurious bill of goods by a leader, and dread the possibility of passing it down the chain, but toward the reluctant volunteers I don't feel resentment, just frustration. Some of them are only in it to do me a favor because I begged them to, after all. I've been in their position-- heck, I still am half the time-- and I know what it's like.

By the way, no, I do not like to be managed in a hands-off style. I want to talk about what I'm doing incessantly for heaven's sake. If nobody is checking my progress, my work must not be important to anybody, so that makes me care about it less. This is especially true if I'm doing a favor to solve something which I consider to be fundamentally Not My Problem. I'm only a good Head of Programming or program book designer because I dislike seeing those jobs done badly. While helping Rachel scrub her new apartment last weekend I realized that on most tasks, if I do a bad job I don't even know why it's bad.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

By the way, no, I do not like to be managed in a hands-off style. I want to talk about what I'm doing incessantly for heaven's sake. If nobody is checking my progress, my work must not be important to anybody, so that makes me care about it less.

In that case, why don't we schedule a marketing coalition summit at ConFusion -- when we'll have most of the people we need in one place anyway?

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

That would be unfortunate, since my time at a convention is extremely precious. But I see the reason for it. Let's keep it short.

[temujin9.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this, by the way. It (and our discussions) have given me a better handle on what I need to be doing for Braingumbo. Which I swear I will be getting back to today, now that the fan has finished dispensing its fecal matter.

Which reminds me: got anything for a logo, yet?