Tag - work

I recently had a situation at work where I sent out a personalized fax for 8000 people.

Fax, I can hear you snort disdainfully. Faxes are so … 1970s.

True. I personally hate faxes – both sending and receiving. They’re bulky, they require painful preparatory stages to either composing or replying, and they’re notoriously undependable, relying as they do upon such antiquated requirements as an adequate supply of paper in your recipient’s machine!

However, faxing was one of the first technologies to thoroughly exploit the network effect, and the great advantage of a fax is that when you send one (and it gets through successfully) there is an actual physical piece of matter in someone else’s personal or workspace that cannot be ignored quite as simply as an email.

Plus, if you don’t have email addys for the 8000 people, you’re kind of stuck with what you’ve got.

In any case, I composed the fax, and then circulated it around for some review. Even I’m not quite brash (read: stupid) enough to send something to thousands of people before asking for a few other eyes and perspectives on my work.

One of the respondants did something interesting: she changed all my “you’lls” and “it’lls” into “you wills” and “it wills.” Plus, there were other changes to generally make the fax more correct, professional, and formal.

I hated every single change from the bottom of my passionately informal heart.

People want authenticity. They want others to be real. They want communication to be real. They want to see, read, and hear messages that are natural.

Their bullshit filters snap into place at the slightest hint of corporatese. And so do mine.

That’s why the Cluetrain is so important. That’s why articles like this one are so important.

Masks are boring. Your idea of what sounds “professional” is boring. Your CYA language is boring. Speaking to your boss while writing to me is boring.

Worse, at some level, people perceive it as deceptive. And it is.

Be real. Be authentic. Be genuine. Be heard!

A long time ago, I wrote about the first cardinal sin of project management.

Well, now I’m in the interesting situation of managing an enormous project which has grown from a pilot to an official launch to a company-wide multinational initiative, and along the way we’ve (necessarily) had some inefficiencies as we’ve scaled it increasingly bigger. But, frankly, there have been good strategic and tactical reasons for increasing scope as much as we have.

Which has lead me to consider another cardinal error of project management:

“There is nothing so inefficient as doing exactly the right things in the right order in the right way … at the wrong time.”

There is always going to be someone who will tell you that you are screwing up. Spending too much money. Doing things in improper order. Not going through approved channels. Involving too few people and departments.

However, the reality is that when the time is right, you need to MOVE. And speed ensures that you’ll make some errors.

But good timing covers a lot of sins.

I recently went through some Lean Transformation training provided by Simpler Consulting, and one of the facilitators said that “best is the evil enemy of good.”

I was a little surprised by that, because I’ve always thought that good is the enemy of best … people are satisfied with ‘good,’ and so they don’t put out the extra effort for ‘best.’

But Steve explained it this way:

We’re so mesmerized by the best system, the best process, the best solution that we often fixate on that and don’t even start. The ultimate solution is too far out there – it’s unattainable. So, because we don’t want to fail, we don’t go for the brass ring.

That rings true …. projects that I’ve delayed and delayed and delayed, because I knew we couldn’t get where we wanted to go.

But the point is, if you try, and you achieve 50% of what you tried to do, you’re still better off. And next year you can improve another 20%. And the following year another 15%.

The idea is continuous measured improvement, instead of staking everything on quantum leaps of improvement.

I kind of like that idea.

As ongoing readers of this blog may or may not know, I’m starting up a new piece/division/value stream/part of Premier, the company I’ve worked for over the past 11 years.

I knew this going in, but I know it now: starting up is not easy to do.

Vision, research, product development, marketing strategy, marketing collateral, communication strategy and execution, training, more communication, finance, operations, demand forecasting, capacity planning, and general nursemaid, nanny, and bottle-holding mommy to anyone who needs information/help/etc. througout the process …. these are only the things I can think of right now.

Which is why my workday just ended and I’m turning the computer off now.

(As challenging as it is, it is also a huge, huge, huge, huge opportunity, and a lot of fun. It’s the chance of a lifetime, and I’m going to make the most of it!)

I’m doing some consulting work for The Linguist … mostly blogging at the Linguist blog, and I’ve been thinking about money-back or risk-free trial offers that make sense.

Here’s one at Bigha. (I recently blogged about their Starseeker chair.)

It’s for a revolutionary bike – a very expensive bike. And there’s a money-back guarantee. But you’ve got to have given the product a real test – 240 miles of riding in 60 days. And there’s a speedo on the bike, so they can tell.

See how they justify how they’ve set it up – it makes sense, it’s defensible:

We ask only that you commit to giving the bike a real try. Averaging four miles per day is not hard to do. By trying the bike over a two month period, you can really get to know the bike and see how well it fits into your life. Then you can make an informed decision.

Since at the Linguist we know what people are doing on the site, we could do a similar thing.

I think it’d be worth trying.

I was recently asked for resume advice by a developer who is applying for a new position that requires some management skill and experience, and thought that it might be interesting to a wider audience.

Because even though you’re a technical person, and you do technical work … your resume should not necessarily be technical. Especially if you’re going up the food chain a little into – ugh – project management.

What you are trying to do is sell yourself to $boss. When you are selling something, it’s always a good idea to understand the product, but it’s a better idea to understand the customer.

In this case, understanding the customer means understanding what matters to $boss, in what order of priority. To understand that, you have to both put yourself in $boss’ shoes, and you have to ask questions.

I can speculate about what $boss wants, and I’ll list a few things, but your best chance to is get in touch with $boss when you can, and spend a few minutes on the phone with him. Just ask questions, and listen. This also gives you a personal connection with $boss that will stand you in good stead as you enter the interview process.

Some of things that I think will matter to $boss include:

– how does your past history indicate that you have managed projects and people before?
– how will this department work with other departments in the future?
– why is hiring you not a risk for me?
– what management style will you adopt?
– how global is your sense of all that $this_company does?
– what does it mean to you to no longer be coding all the time and instead managing at least part-time?
– can you communicate technical things to non-technical people?

It’s all about crafting a story that is truthful, hangs together, and compellingly presents the case that your history, your experience, and your personal attributes all together add up to a package that will blow $boss’ mind in terms of performance from this department. If you’re any good, you have the elements of a compelling story, but you need to present the things in each project you’ve worked on in order to SHOW that.

Not that my resume is the be-all and end-all, but take a look at my resume online:
John Koetsier’s resume

Notice the focus on accomplishments, and the presentation of everything in terms of business objectives and achievements. So, an example of this might be that “networking an office” is not in your resume, but “building a network to allow computers to exchange business information, enabling employees to have access to needed data quicker and easier.”

This is just an example. And you have to be careful that you don’t talk about “digging implements” when you’re actually talking about shovels. It’s got to be real.

But you have to speak the language of business. $boss is a businessman. $boss doesn’t know, and doesn’t really care, about technical mumbo-jumbo and languages and protocols and networking and so forth. What $boss wants to know is: can I rely on this person to run this department efficiently and effectively?

And, if I hire this person, will it turn into a problem for me later?

I hope this helps.