Bill Higgins (he/him)
@BillHiggins
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trying to make a positive impact; VP watsonx Platform Engineering and Open Innovation at IBM
Raleigh, North Carolina
Joined May 2007
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Pinned Tweet
The best advice I received in the past half decade of my life was to follow people who can teach you about life experiences different than your own.
Consider curating your timeline for diverse perspectives.
Special thanks to
@justkelly_ok
@polotek
@ThisTechGirl
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🧵 I’ve been unpleasantly surprised that some people seem to condone the public criticism of employees and/or the public firing of an employee for responding to this criticism.
Here are my thoughts on these topics, which I hope would be obvious to any decent leader. (1/22)
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@AGoudsward
Wish he would have paused, put his mouth close to the mic, then slowly said:
“My occupation is: Stephen Fucking King”
… then switched off the mic to await the next question.
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This implies that if work associated with them is sub-par (e.g., poorly performing code), your 1st thought is “what systemic problems are holding them back?” and then you proactively and carefully seek to find and fix these problems, seeking feedback all the while. (3/22)
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Assume brilliance.
When you encounter a new person, especially a new employee, assume that they are intelligent, capable, and well-intentioned. (2/22)
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“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
–Stephen Jay Gould, 1979
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Never criticize a person, esp. publicly.
Where to begin.
The ostensibly positive goal of criticism is to urge people towards higher performance in some task. But since people are people, not robots, there is almost always collateral damage of hurt feelings, and … (4/22)
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@AnandWrites
The thing that gets me is when folks in the media—not just Fox News but everyone—say “the economy is strong” and everyone just nods as if it’s a basic, obvious fact.
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PS - For anyone in my IBM Watson Core org reading this, this was the basic rationale that caused the leadership team to give you the month of November for self-directed time, after the pressures of the release of our first wave of 3rd-gen tech on Oct. 25th.
Thank you. 🙇🏻♂️
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@AynRandPaulRyan
@soledadobrien
Non-sarcastic question: Had Trump heard of Susan B. Anthony before 9am this morning?
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Not only will they trust/like you less, but they’ll also start to think you’re a bozo boss who doesn’t understand how the world works.
In any case, you were unfair on a human level and, from a purely selfish perspective, you just made your job as a leader harder. (8/22)
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… reduced psychological safety.
Seeking higher perf. is not a bad thing, it’s a good and necessary thing, so how to do this without criticism of people? Focus on the desired outcomes, and inquire which concrete behaviors and systemic factors hold you back from them. (5/22)
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*A* solution would be to publicly criticize the team lead and senior engineers, in a team meeting, in an all-hands, on Slack, on Twitter. It doesn’t matter. They will (rightly) feel unjustly maligned because you haven’t sought to understand the underlying systemic factors. (7/22)
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… ask them what you personally can do to support them to try it. 9 times out of 10 it’s that the management team hasn’t prioritized time in the schedule to do such work, crowding it out with more tangible/visible feature work. Own that. Take responsibility, either … (12/22)
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Don’t immediately suggest the countermeasures that seem obvious to you (e.g., “better/more test automation”) but rather ask them how they would fix the problem(s) if they had infinite time to do so. Once you understand the basic shape of their solution approach, … (11/22)
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An alt. approach is to assume brilliance and talk to the team lead and senior leaders, initially individually, to ask them their assessment of the situation. Do they even agree it’s a problem? (probably) Since we assume brilliance, what systemic factors contribute to it? (9/22)
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Afterwards, publicly *praise* the team for:
1. Deeply understanding systemic problems
2. Having a strong sense of ownership and craftsmanship
3. Successfully addressing the problem(s) when given the breathing room to do so
(17/22)
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As a concrete example, imagine we have a software component where we unintentionally break API contracts from time to time. This hurts trust and productivity with users of the API and creates stress and embarrassment as we have to rush out fixes. (6/22)
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@SteveOsunsami
No snark: For me your tweet is just factually inaccurate—I broke off quite a few friendships when things like putting children in cages wasn’t a dealbreaker for them.
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… of real human beings, which they will then pay forward to those close to them, both in work and personal spheres.
This, in my opinion, is a very good thing, and a privilege and duty as a leader. (22/22)
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Don’t allow finger-pointing at other team members nor any manager between you and them. Ask them if you, as the person who prioritizes their work, need to budget more time for countermeasures that would improve the situation. (10/22)
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In my experience it takes at least several people at least one to two sprints to start to make a dent in a systemic problem. Give them the time and space to do something meaningful, even if not complete. The goal is progress, not necessarily perfection, and to … (14/22)
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1. They’ll be scratching a long-standing itch, which is motivating
2. They’ll want to prove that when you give them breathing room to identify and address systemic problems, (surprise!) they do so and the systemic problems get less worse, or (sometimes) go away entirely
(16/22)
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That’s great, but there’s one thing even better: You, as a leader, will have increased psychological safety and taken some amount of stress away from people who are under a tremendous amount of stress because of challenges at work, in their personal lives, … (20/22)
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Then, make it clear to the org. that you desire to be a champion for other proactive identification of systemic problems and giving people breathing room to address them.
If this modus operandi is new to you, you will be stunned at the brilliance that pours forth. (18/22)
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… and in the world.
In the grand scheme of things, even powerful leaders have a vanishingly small amount of power for a vanishing small speck of time, but when this power is used for good, you can contribute to better mental, physical, and emotional health … (21/22)
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… demonstrate to the team that not only are you not a bozo, but you will spend your own political capital to advocate for the team to do a more holistic good job.
Most likely, not only will they do a good job, they’ll do a great job, because: (15/22)
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Over time, the collective organizational default mindset and default behaviors (i.e., the “culture”) will become more proactive and seeking to identify and address not just problems to fix, but potential opportunities to innovate. (19/22)
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… for yourself or your predecessor, without throwing your predecessor under the bus (useless / potentially harmful). Work with the team to understand what chunk of schedule budgeting / assignments it would take to perform a first meaningful experiment. (13/22)
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The stories today on IBM’s adoption of Slack give a sense of closure to a long journey.
My favorite part though was the very beginning: discussing the idea with
@stewart
and
@iamcal
at
@timoreilly
's Foo Camp.
For the record: Stewart was skeptical 🤣
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@yohosiefgc
@justkelly_ok
Power-up: You only need to read these two books:
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@orlandosentinel
Uh, not once in a lifetime, more like “as good as it gets for the next 100 years until/unless we grapple with the very real consequences of climate change.”
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@Comey
Sweet! 🙌🏻
FYI, if you get tired of that one and need some variety, there’s a stylish and high-quality “DEAR GOD PLEASE HELP UNDO MY HISTORIC FUCKUP!!!” mask on Etsy.
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@EricFrohnhoefer
Hi Eric, I wrote this long Twitter thread in response to your situation, though I don’t reference you directly. I’m sorry you and your friends/colleagues are facing such a toxic situation.
🧵 I’ve been unpleasantly surprised that some people seem to condone the public criticism of employees and/or the public firing of an employee for responding to this criticism.
Here are my thoughts on these topics, which I hope would be obvious to any decent leader. (1/22)
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Some job news: I’ll be moving from IBM’s Software division to IBM Research to continue my engineering leadership of IBM’s core Watson (AI) technology.
Our 2022 focus areas will be trust, language, automation, and run anywhere, working with IBM product teams and select ISVs.
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This
@karaswisher
interview with Parler’s CEO is a masterclass in insightful, logical, pressing inquiry; tolerating no BS.
This sort of interviewing skill would be such an upgrade for
@MeetThePress
or
@ThisWeekABC
.
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This interview by
@SykesCharlie
of ret. Gen.
@MarkHertling
was by far the best analyses I’ve heard of the Ukraine war from both a geopolitical and military strategy perspective, and one of most thought-provoking interviews I’ve heard.
Thank you gents! 🙇🏻♂️
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@EricFrohnhoefer
PS - Thank you for your courage in speaking truth to toxic power. Really, really admirable IMO. 🙇🏻
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@Amy_Siskind
Thank you Ms. Siskind. Civilization owes you a debt that cannot be properly repaid. 🙇🏻
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@JJohnsonLaw
@nytimes
Someone should recreate historic NY Times front pages of historic event, if framed using modern NY Times headline writers.
Example: “Japanese airplanes make surprise appearance at Hawaiian naval base.”
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@sachee
Google layoffs, translated.
“Team, today we made the hard decision to lay of 6% of our workforce. If we’d done this earlier, we could have made $73b 2022 PROFIT instead of a mere $69b, which would have improved Larry/Sergey/Sundar’s standing relative to other U.S. oligarchs.”
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I’ve been a developer for 20 years, but last year I jumped into the deep end of the AI pool with a leadership job in Watson AI.
In this new Medium post, I share my learning journey in the hopes it might help other developers and development leaders.
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I think this was my best week at work in my 20 year career. 🎉
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@ananavarro
It will also be safer not to have Trump people around the inauguration since they tend to be significant spreaders of COVID-19 (not being snarky, just factual).
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Great blog post from
@huggingface
’s
@julsimon
on our recently-announced IBM watsonx <-> Hugging Face partnership. There is strong value alignment on the importance of open source, trustworthy AI and we’re better together. 🙌🏻🤗
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@MiaFarrow
Serious answer: So she can attend VERY IMPORTANT MEETINGS even if she adds no value or distracts with non-expert commentary
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Paraphrased Arthur C. Clarke:
Any sufficiently terrible management is indistinguishable from sabotage.
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First day back in the office tomorrow in 15 months for a meeting with our head of software.
Is this where I make my stand to try to make sweatpants socially acceptable in the workplace as we in the U.S. emerge from the pandemic?
Like if “yes,” retweet if “yes.”
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Although I am not a Republican, I am so proud of my high school classmate Sarah Longwell’s efforts with Republican Voters Against Trump 🙌🏻
“Longwell,
@RVAT2020
’s founder, believes hearing from [R voters opposed to Trump] will show waffling conservatives that they’re not alone in their dislike of the President, and encourage them to break away.”
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@mcuban
Thank you Mr. Cuban. This sort of leadership and citizenship is really inspiring. 🙇🏻♂️
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@tapisseriefille
@joelockhart
@MollyJongFast
Appreciate you knowledgeable folks calming nerves. I am ignorant on these topics and initially freaked out.
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Really happy to see this
@IBMwatsonx
ad in the New York Times, celebrating our strong commitment to open source AI and our excellent
@huggingface
🤗partnership. 🙌🏻🌟
cc
@ClementDelangue
@jeffboudier
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Happy fact: As of this minute, if you binge watch all eleven
@starwars
movies, when you finish the last one, Donald Trump won’t be President.
May the Force be with you.
Cc
@HamillHimself
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So happy to share that my oldest child Alexander got into his university of choice, Elon in North Carolina, where he plans to study computer science! 🙌🏻🍾✨
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@morninggloria
@charliekirk11
I regret the 30s I spent exploring the Twitter timeline and thoughts of Charlie Kirk.
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Happy birthday
@SarahLongwell25
! 🎉
Here’s to another year of you being awesome in general and a happy warrior for principle. 🙌🏻💜
—proud former classmate
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My mom died a week ago, at the age of 85, after an amazing life and a short illness.
I feel so incredibly lucky she was my mom and to have had her in my life for 44 years.
The pain of her loss is by far outweighed by the warmth of her memory and love.
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@choiski
In my experience, there is a continuum from very healthy to dumpster fire. The goal of my post was to talk about “most healthy” as I know it.
I hope:
1. This is helpful / reassuring to folks
2. I hope it will elicit feedback that will help me learn and become a better leader
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I'd like to give a public kudos to
@aunder
for teaching me about the importance of intentionally modeling good, ethical behavior to reinforce the right cultural norms in your areas of influence.
Here’s the story, which I don’t think April will mind me sharing.
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As a leader, it’s liberating when you accept that there are some things for which you’ll never be very good, but you can use your position and your reputation to raise up folks who are very good at those things, and achieve better outcomes.
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@jamesbzdok
@grateful1gabrie
@3YearLetterman
@RacheKirylo
@elonmusk
Sarcasm so advanced people actually think you’re stoopid. I salute you sir.
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@pmddomingos
A lot of people do “AI for maximum profit, ignoring the harmful side effects.”
I think the “AI for good” moniker raises consciousness that all technical work has ethical implications, and as AI is a powerful technology just now being broadly adopted, it’s important to do this.
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The most thought-provoking, and in many ways the most inspiring book I’ve read in a long time is Professor
@DavidDeutschOxf
’s “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World.”
I really can’t recommend it enough.
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New Medium post: “Tools as a catalyst for culture change.” Some things I learned in the past 2 ½ years.
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TFW you’ve written a lot of stuff in your career, but you just finished writing the best thing you’ve ever written … by far.
IBM tweeps, look for an internal blog post on the future of Watson this Tuesday. 🙌🏻
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Just thought of a good name for Elon Musk since he wants to be Tony Stark but he sucks:
The Toxic Avenger
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A bit of work news: I’ve taken on a new role in IBM where I will be responsible for our portfolio strategy and development for “AI for Developers.” A bit more detail on LinkedIn:
I look forward to learning from smart Twitter friends on these topics. 🙇🏻♂️
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To my fellow executives and leaders: Use *much* more emoji in electronic communication to demonstrate a bit more humanity, and that you don’t take yourself too seriously. 😉🙌🏻💯
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A personal note on this vs. last year.
Last year I traveled for work probably 25% of the days of the year, which meant I was gone a lot and tired a lot.
This year I’ve traveled 0 days, and I feel much closer to all family members.
I think I’m perma-done with frequent travel.
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@AnandWrites
I wish my neighbors would have posted videos of themselves removing their Trump/Pence yard signs 😅
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New Higgins family member. Everyone meet Peace ✌🏻. He’s our new baby Cavapoo. 🥰
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@tedcruz
Contrast Navalny’s courage and willingness to take great risk in order to stand up for Democratic principles with Cruz’s craven willingness to harm American Democracy to advance his personal ambition.
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So impressed and grateful for Mr.
@ylecun
’s leadership on open innovation in the realm of AI.
I did not have it on my career bingo card that IBM and Meta would become critical strategic partners, but we sure are grateful for the partnership.
I testified in front of the US Senate Subcommittee on Intelligences yesterday.
I argued that the rapid and free exchange of ideas, scientific publications, open source code, and trained models is the reason that AI has progressed so fast in the last decade.
I also pointed out…
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What’s the German word for “the tiredness you feel in your soul and in your bones that indicates you’re six months overdue for a long vacation?”
Asking for a friend.
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@marcoarment
*Really* bad take. Reinforces “just the way it is” shrug.
You should check out
@AnandWrites
’s book “Winners Take All” about the insidiousn pathology of this sort of tacit acceptance of toxic culture.
Also
@dhh
’s writing.
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Going through my 2021 yearly reflection, by far the thing that’s most gratifying is that two women in my org earned promotions to more senior, and significant IBM AI technical leadership roles, one a Distinguished Engineer and the other a Senior Technical Staff Member.
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@imteddybless
Ugh. If a classmate of my 7 year-old daughter gave her a valentine, I’d thank them for being a good friend and being kind to my wonderful little girl.
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After extensive recent study of the writings of Edgar Schein on the topic of organizational culture, I’ve come to dislike Peter Drucker’s aphorism “culture eats strategy for breakfast” because it implies that the two concepts are separate, … 1/2
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… whereas Schein makes the case that they are hopelessly interdependent.
A strategy that doesn’t factor in the cultural context is doomed to fail.
An organization’s culture will determine what strategies are considered worthwhile and achievable. 2/2
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Wrote a Medium post on the origin of
@SlackHQ
at IBM. Complementary to today's Slack Enterprise Grid announcement.
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First-world problem: I would like to mute the word “Elon” on Twitter but my son goes to
@elonuniversity
😅
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