Refactor Your Communication: 3 Tools to Engineer Buy-In and Commitment

I have found these communication tools make my job as a software engineer far easier. They allow me to foster buy-in and focus my efforts. Let’s dive right in.

1) The key risks list

I once had a leader challenge me to always know the top three risks my team and business were facing. The moment he asked for this, I knew I didn’t have an answer. While I could list areas of concern, I couldn’t say with certainty which one was the top risk and why. And this is the power of the exercise.

If you can rank order all the concerns facing your business and name the top three risks, you immediately:

• Focus your efforts.
• Have more fruitful conversations with stakeholders.
• And can get buy in on addressing the risks.

This is a great place for data driven insights to help tell the story of why something is risky, to quantify the risk, and build a case for why investment is necessary.

Take note: this is how you prioritize fixing tech debt with shared buy-in from your stakeholders. When you can show the real risk of a problem, it becomes much easier for others to support you in addressing it.

Day-to-day, not much will change. But month-by-month, you will notice far more progress on solving problems that matter.

2) The options list

Most software engineering problems have many possible solutions. By documenting reasonable options and weighing the pros and cons, you can help your business partners and peers:

• Understand what you’re thinking and what you value.
• Have confidence you understand the problem and are making an informed choice.
• Support your recommendation.
• Identify opportunities for collaboration across business units.

I have written more extensively about a template you can use for this approach.

3) The weekly update

When you have a group of people with a vested interest in your work, communication typically happens in one of two ways. Either they ask for it. Or you offer it. (There is a third option, they may hear about it sideways, as a rumor. This is unhealthy and can be avoided with this approach.)

Say your business leader comes to you and asks for a status update. They are often concerned about something. The first time they ask, this is a positive signal that you can add value by addressing their concern. Take note. Is this information they need on a regular cadence? Then don’t make the mask for it again. Repeated asks are a signal you are not communicating enough. This is where the weekly update can help.

The best kind of communication is when you can get ahead of the problem. Proactively answer their question before they ask.

• Set expectations around cadence (for example, weekly). This is one less thing they need to ask about, because now they know you will take care of it.
• Focus on the key areas of concern and what you and your team are doing to address them.
• Celebrate wins as your team accomplishes them.

If you have primed this with the top three key risks, as discussed above, you will have established a trusted communication loop that allows you and your team more freedom to operate.

Wrap

Being intentional about your patterns of communication is essential. Your leaders, stakeholders, and peers will all have more awareness of what you are doing and why. With a shared why, you can foster buy-in and align your problem with theirs. This opens up doors to collaboration and allows everyone to succeed.

7 Other Things

1. I remember hearing about water powered cars when I was a kid. It’s exciting to see people exploring water-power automotive tech and making it real.
2. If water powered cars are optimistic and exciting, this is draconian and depressing. Ford has patented an in-car system that will listen to you so it can play you ads. I can’t imagine how anyone working on this project believes this is a good idea. (from Motortrend.)
3. Scientists gave mushrooms . . . legs? According to this article, mushrooms were able to act like a brain and control robotic legs. Fascinating. And horrifying.
4. What I am learning: HTMX. I haven’t been this excited about web tech in a while. Here is a great article on security with HTMX.
5. Great reflection on the value of human writers versus genericized AI-generated slop, from the LA Times.
6. An example of why it is important to think through the holistic design of your technology. From a company’s perspective, it makes sense to design technology with the assumption the company will always be around. From the customers’ perspective, it makes sense that the technology will continue working as long as the individual unit they purchased still exists, regardless of whether the company still exists. Story: electric vehicles stop working when the company stops doing business.
7. The FBI recommends using an ad blocker. Why? “cyber criminals are using search engine advertisement services to impersonate brands and direct users to malicious sites that host ransomware and steal login credentials and other financial information.” I may write an entire post about this at some point, but I have almost completely eliminated ads from my online life with strategic application of ad blockers on my desktop and phone. It is hard to overstate how good this has been for my mental health. And now, evidently, for my online safety too.

Parting thought

“One minute of exercise buys you five minutes of extra life.”

A reminder to all software engineers and knowledge workers, those of us who may sit for hours on-end: prioritize exercise. It will change your life for the better.

The above quote is from Euan Ashley. In this article/podcast she expands on her research,

. . . it did indeed map that one minute of exercise at a brisk walking sort of pace would buy you five minutes. In fact, if you exercised at a higher intensity, you could get seven or eight minutes of extra life. So it is a stunning statistic, and it’s just not really the way we normally think of it.

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