Interlude - Index of

112 | Turbulent Adolescence
to one owner, seek group consensus, or even seek unanimous
agreement. The trick is to use all the styles, as appropriate,
and not just one. My coach suggested that we have a decision
drive. Everyone on my staff could list up to five decisions that
were festering, and my homework assignment was to respond
to all of them. I didn’t have to decide them myself, but the
assignment was that for each one, I needed a process to close
the decision in relatively short order. Dealing with such a big
list at once forced me to use a variety of techniques, and we
cleared up the backlog.
In this particular case, Dan’s advice was not so useful.
He said, “Never make a decision before you have to.” That’s
probably good advice for someone, but not for me. Advice is
funny that way: what’s perfect for one person may be awful for
another.
My coach’s advice went from subtle, like the decision drive,
to simple. I sometimes struggled to escape from one-on-one
meetings that were running over. Little hints didn’t always work.
Isabella’s simple advice: “Stand up. Then they’ll stand up—it’s
only natural. And then you can both walk toward the door.”
I remembered some other management lessons from my
life before NetApp. Bill Horton, a director back when I was
at Auspex, taught me the importance of early milestones. It’s
common to throw a party when a product finally ships, but
that’s not very motivational because by then the engineers who
did initial design work may have already moved on to other
projects. So Bill looked for things to celebrate early in the
development process. The instant we met the goal, he would
make a big announcement and open a bottle of champagne,
whatever time it was.