tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51647931804548344792024-03-13T01:11:07.469-07:00miguknomA network madman tackling life's problems one byte at a time.miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-35035282054138640252012-11-28T10:53:00.000-08:002013-01-06T22:39:03.563-08:005 Reasons Process Is Bad<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I once volunteered to lead a "Kaizen" event. (In Lean Manufacturing a Kaizen event is a big get-together re-engineer a bad process.) The event failed miserably. The proposed solutions were larger than the problem, did little to address the problem, and had no hope of being implemented. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Process problems have fascinated me ever since. After years of trying to “fix” bad processes, I have found the solution for ninety percent of them: do not create them in the first place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good processes are designed for work that is highly repetitive and that requires very little thought. If fixed output and fixed quality are the goal, a well-designed process is in order. Where people’s brains are employed, though, process is usually bad, and here are some reasons why.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1. Process Confines Strategy.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A good business leader helps us all understand vision and strategy. Then the rubber hits the road and we have to do something about it. Each time we encounter a new problem, our lizard brain says, “Create a process!” So we do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then we take it a step further. We build a tool to facilitate our process. It might be a spreadsheet or an access database. Maybe we buy a software package and customize it beyond recognition. Now our process is enshrined in a tool.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fast forward. The leader announces a strategy shift. As the shift trickles down through the operation, what do we start to hear? “That’s not our process." "Our tool won’t let us do that.” And so the process, created in response to a tactical issue, threatens our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EO5ttpuIuvg" target="_blank">strategic maneuverability</a>. If you don’t think that’s a big deal, you might be the author of many complex processes of which you are very fond.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2. Process Punishes Innovation.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I once worked for an IT organization that found itself under new management. The new management had a process for everything. The outputs of these processes were predictable. So is the output of a Rube Goldberg machine, but who needs a bowling ball, dominoes, a flame thrower, and a flock of carrier pigeons to flip a light switch? As anyone can guess, the innovators in the IT organization immediately began streamlining or bypassing processes in favor of speed and effectiveness. Question: Did IT praise them for their innovate spirit or condemn them for breaking rules? Answer: They all found their way out of the organization.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>3. Process Rewards Unproductive Compliance.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A new Director of IT once restructured our operation to focus on trouble ticket resolution. It involved new processes, new rules, lots of meetings, and threatening language. Those who closed many tickets quickly were to be lauded and those who did not were to be punished.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazingly, turnaround time on tickets improved drastically. As an added bonus, the number of tickets closed nearly doubled! How did were those results achieved? It was simple. Employees who added little value immediately figure out the new program. They turned every customer call into two or three tickets and closed them fast, whether resolved or not. The gains in trouble ticket management were vapor, and everyone knew it except the IT Director and his SLA charts. Senior, project-lead-type folks were marginalized and bottom feeders were lionized. Compliance trumped productivity. People who thrived on productivity left.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>4. Process Stunts Accountability.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the most subtle, yet profound ways that process impacts an organization is the way that it reduces or eliminates accountability. When you point "A" players in the right direction and empower them, they feel accountable for their results. Process, on the other hand, is a vampire feeding on the blood of the "A" player. It says, “Don’t use your best judgment, employ your talents, or think too hard. Just do what you’re told.” For “C” players, this is a boon, because they can focus on <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/its_not_just_semantics_managing_outcomes.html" target="_blank">output rather than outcome</a>. Maybe it’s no coincidence that “B” players like writing processes and they like to hire “C” players.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>5. Process Creation is a Form of Elitism.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When people create processes, they usually create them for <i>other </i>people to follow. Apparently the creator of a given process is so adept that he or she can outthink everyone else, and the process is so good that it will work for everyone. This elitist view never delivers excellence; it rarely even delivers adequacy. When the process doesn't deliver, it's creator will always blame others for not following it. (Wanna know a little secret? People who create processes have trouble following them, too.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next time you’re trying to solve a problem, if your first impulse is to create a process, ask yourself the following questions:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are you more interested in solving the problem, or implementing your process?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will your process enhance the creative power of those who use it?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do the people to be affected by the process think it’s a good idea? Do you care?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will your process encourage results, or just compliance?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can the process change easily when needs change?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Could you accomplish just as much by merely setting guidelines?</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a>
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miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-46114327701510139222012-02-22T04:03:00.001-08:002012-02-22T04:05:56.436-08:00Today's Providers Look Like Tomorrow's IT Managers<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In "</span><a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-it-needs-to-change-to-survive.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">What IT Needs To Change To Survive</a><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I mentioned some things successful IT leaders need to do going forward. The good news is that IT leaders have a great role model to look to. All we need do is look at our favorite service providers, consultants, and vendors and we know where we're going.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's remarkable to compare the relationships that many senior IT managers have with their vendors to their relationships with their own companies' executives. Let's try it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Our vendors make it their job to know what we are doing, what our problems are, and how they can provide value to us. They are constantly tracking our project wish list and our budgets. They know what our major initiatives and our big challenges are. We, on the other hand, always complain that we're the last to know. We ignore relationships in favor of processes. We would rather comply with ITIL than take our peers to lunch and pick their brains. This is not going to work going forward. Failing to establish relationships will spell doom for IT management in the near future. Companies will not be content to simply dislike IT. It's no longer an all-or-nothing outsourcing proposal--they'll go elsewhere <i>one application at a time</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. We expect vendors to keep us up to speed with the latest options. Especially where consultants are concerned, we expect them to know more about what's out there than we do. Do we provide that same level of intelligence to our companies? Pretty soon (i.e. already) our BUs are going to realize that we don't provide that degree of insight to them. If we are to remain relevant, we need to be fluent in the external offerings that can solve their problems and meet their needs. If not, we'll be like mainframe experts making big data pitches.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. We expect vendors to say, "yes." Better? "Yes." Cheaper? "Yes." Faster? "Yes." Moreover, we expect them to deliver on what they say, despite our constant stops and starts, our frequent changes, our late payments, and our endless griping. Yet to our companies we frequently invoke the "no" doctrine. We want them to pay more, give us more time, and settle for what we can deliver within the confines of our standard offerings. We resent their constantly putting things on hold and then rushing them. We don't like project creep, late budget approvals, and most of all, complaints about our inability to work magic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem is that the time is coming when the cloud will offer them an alternative to us. The same vendors that bend over backward for us will bend over backward for our business units. If we fight it and try to pigeon hole our companies into our "service catalog" and our "engagement methodology," they're going to go elsewhere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wanna be a CIO in 2020? Start acting the way you expert your best vendors to act.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">View Matt's <a href="http://talkbetter.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">language coaching blog</a>.
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</div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-60148691380110969752012-02-13T01:35:00.000-08:002012-02-19T17:47:10.095-08:00What IT Needs To Change To Survive<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A week ago I interviewed for a position at a major Life Insurance/Financial Services company in Seoul. The CIO asked me a lot of strategy-oriented questions. I was thrilled to be able to field this one:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"With all the changes in the technology, how does IT have to change to continue to be relevant?"</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This question is really important. In fact, its one of the reasons that I have questioned whether or not IT is a good place to be developing one's career these days. This is not a good time for IT leaders to have their heads in the sand. I will mention a few things that are driving changes to IT's way of life, and provide some solutions for forward-thinking IT leaders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <i>Disruptive technologies</i>. It used to be Internet access, then VPN, then Blackberries. Now it is smart phones, tablets, BYOD, social network apps, and smart work. By and large, IT hates new stuff. We are still trying to work out the kinks in our old stuff and figure out how were going to get to the next rev. The problem is that companies need the new stuff in order to compete for customers and employees. In the near future our service catalogs will be out of date by the time we can finish negotiating them. If ITILv4 is yet more static IT operations models, it will be DOA. Think about it--we hate deploying a new service just to have everyone complain because their needs have shifted. Soon that could happen to our entire service catalog. How long can we wait to think about that? What are we going to do about it?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. <i>The Cloud.</i> Pretty much everything we do internally today exists in one form or another in the cloud. This means that our companies, or even individual business units, are starting to have a choice. How many more upgrades to your Financial System before your department decides they just want to have it hosted? When will Engineering decide to use hosted resources that can be provisioned on demand? When will our companies decide to evaluate alternatives to our corporate email systems? As more people move to smart phones, tablets, and whatever comes after them, do we think we will be providing the voice and video conferencing infrastructure for our companies? Do we think we will be able to prevent SVPs from shopping our services in the cloud? Would we <i>want</i> to prevent them from doing so? Can we match the level of provisioning time, customer support, mobility, and disaster recovery that the cloud offers? Check out this story on a company that <a href="http://gigaom.com/2012/02/18/how-to-cut-70-percent-of-your-it-budget-in-one-year/" target="_blank">replaced most of IT</a> with cloud-sourced services.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <i>The new workforce</i>. The new workforce is not going to be located where we would like them to be located. They will not want to use the tools we tell them to use. They are highly accustomed to the world of technology addressing their whims, and they are very fast at finding what they want. They do not care what the IT management has to say about it, nor should they.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <i>New IT recruits</i>. The people that we hire over the next decade will be increasingly dismayed with "old-fashioned" IT. Many of them will have come from start-ups or from hip companies that know how to move fast. They don't want a ride in our Oldsmobile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Solutions</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First of all, IT leaders have to understand that they are becoming one source for IT solutions, not <i>the</i> source. Most of our companies are already using salesforce.com and have HR applications hosted who-knows-where. Many of our employees use Skype for video conferencing. Email is beginning to fall. Even <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/customers/index.html" target="_blank">MS Office is experiencing daylight raids</a> from the cloud. Companies are beginning to embrace <i>choice</i>. IT is only one choice, and our menu is shrinking. They're not coming to our restaurant for cold Chinese food when they can order it delivered from a specialty place with the noodles still steaming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we understand that we have become an option, then we need to learn to do two things:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <i>Get to know the BUs</i>. We need to know what the BUs want as soon as they do, if not before. (We should be doing this anyway. See <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2012/01/5-broken-things-that-it-continues-to.html" target="_blank">this post</a>.) Many of us lack the relationships necessary to do so, which is why we always complain about "being the last to know." In the future, if IT is too busy managing its service catalog to know that a BU has an important need, it will be too late. If we don't build the relationships we won't be providing the services. Period.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. <i><s>Know</s>Own the options</i>. In the future, much of our value will be in understanding external offerings and knowing which ones to recommend to our BUs. A CIO or IT Director who can't speak the language of cloud-based applications will not survive. But knowing what's out there and how to put it together effectively will be invaluable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <i>Only do what you do best</i>. Focus on where we can knock the ball out of the park. We may be able to reduce our operations overhead and apply more resources to strategic initiatives. Maybe we're breaking our necks to deliver mediocre satisfaction for a given application. Shouldn't we just let it go? Think about this: the next time the company is complaining about that app, rather than saying we need more people to manage it, why not have a great cloud option in our back pocket?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <i>Think "service."</i> How are we doing at onboarding new employees? How useful is the training that we're providing on new applications? Do we provide service with a smile? Or to the contrary, do we wait for new employees to ask us where their laptops are, constantly invoke the "no" doctrine for new "gadgets," and resent that we aren't appreciated? Do we strive to delight our internal customers, or do we believe that a good SLA report means that they should be satisfied? How does that compare to the way the cloud treats them?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The IT paradigm of 5 years ago is becoming out-dated. In 5 more years it will be old-fashioned. Many of us are still clinging to it. We have to change if we are to continue to be relevant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow Matt on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/miguknom" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.</span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-8989569674027319382012-01-20T00:47:00.000-08:002014-02-25T08:39:03.501-08:00Challenge Norms: Movin' and Shakin'<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No more email. Unlimited vacation. Offices designed to keep employees away. I've been reading a lot of articles lately about companies that are overturning sacred apple carts. In each case it turns out that the only serious justification for the status quo was that it <i>was</i> the status quo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Atos <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_162-57336411/it-firm-bans-email-will-your-company-be-next/" target="_blank">banned email</a>. They've decided to know as a company what we all know individually: email stinks. Last year decided to delete all email that wasn't critical, without reading it if possible. I turned off my inbox notifier, too. After a few months I found that nothing bad happened as a result. So then I set up rules that wiped out about 80% of my email before I ever new it was there. Still, nothing bad. People use email as a file system and as a CC weapon. Atos decided to employ social networking tools that are appropriate for the task instead.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Red Frog has an <a href="http://www.inc.com/joe-reynolds/give-your-employees-unlimited-vacation-time.html" target="_blank">unlimited vacation</a> policy. As an organization they chose to understand what we all know: good employees want to work and don't abuse time off. Most of us don't use our 2 or 3 weeks as it is. Even when we do, we make sure that all of our work is done before we leave and we stay late catching up when we get back. Somewhere an HR policy guru is twitching and drooling in the corner over Red Frog's policy, but why? Really, why?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plantronics wants their employees to work from home. They <a href="http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678967/an-office-designed-to-keep-employees-working-from-home" target="_blank">designed their office</a> to keep employees away. They seem to have figured out that if they hire the right employees it really doesn't matter where they work. Of course we all know that, but Plantronics chose to know it as an organization.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's what's so interesting about these and similar situations: the companies decided to believe in the aggregate what they all knew individually. They chose to replace traditional thought with contemporary facts. That should seem like a no-brainer, but for some reason it seems that we have to know things for a long time before we are willing to believe them as a group. There is something comforting about structure that keeps us clinging to it long after it ceases to be beneficial. Kudos to these companies for taking off the blinders.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is what movers and shakers do. They challenge things. They don't do it for sport or to breed contention. They just aren't afraid to ask, "Why?" when something doesn't make sense.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've written about a few things in the IT realm that generally don't make sense in their current form (see "<a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2012/01/5-broken-things-that-it-continues-to.html" target="_blank">5 broken things that IT continues to embrace</a>") including:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">many IT processes</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">most IT documentation</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">corporate IT SLAs</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">team silos based on skill sets</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HR's performance review process</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also have talked about rules and why they are generally ineffective in numerous posts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've found a few other things that simply don't seem to be necessary:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <u>Voice mail</u>. I've been in Korea for a year and a half. I've received 3 voice mails during that time. Each one was preceded by an email and included a followup email. The voice mails were unnecessary. People in Asia don't use voice mail. They use text messages and they're always concise. I wonder what would happen if a company decided to ban voicemail! You're probably reading this thinking "Heresy!" But hey, Atos just banned email, right? Just think about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. <u>Big, centralized offices</u>. With video conferencing capabilities, why have one big office in the middle of the city and force everyone to commute in? You're not paying people enough to live close to the office, and that office costs a fortune. Why not have three smaller, strategically-located offices and let people go to the nearest one? The leases would be cheaper. You'd get "green" press. You might get green tax breaks depending on where you're located. You could probably offer lower pay to new applicants since they would save two hours each day on their commute. Having worked for a globally-distributed company that relied on video conferencing for day-to-day business, I know that it works. Plus, if worse comes to worse, you're only an hour away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So here's a request: I know that you have ideas about things that we all know don't work. Yet corporate consciousness hasn't grasped it yet. Please leave your ideas in the comments. I'll write another post aggregating them and I'll even do some research to see whether anyone has addressed them yet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's move and shake a little. Hope to hear from you...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.
</span>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow Matt on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/miguknom" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.
</span>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.</span></div>
miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-79394119424723660182012-01-09T19:01:00.000-08:002012-02-19T17:27:37.377-08:005 Broken Things That IT Continues To Embrace<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For fifteen years I've been watching IT departments cling to things that don't work. No matter how many times they get overhauled, they still don't work. Maybe some company, somewhere, has these nailed, but I've not seen it. Furthermore, I don't think that most of them are even possible in a large company. Here's my short list along with my solutions.</span><br />
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Processes</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT has all kinds of processes. Processes for dealing with outages. Processes for configuring systems. Processes for filling out forms. I even found a <a href="http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/creating-processes.html" target="_blank">process for creating processes</a>. Two facts exist about most processes:</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1) they are constantly being modified;</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (2) people aren't following them correctly. Sometimes #1 is caused by #2.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why are processes such a train wreck? Here are a few reasons:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unlike manufacturing processes, IT processes are highly non-linear.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People usually create processes so that other people can follow them. However, those other people don't care or don't understand the need.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Processes usually are not intuitive. In a crunch, one must either look them up or have them memorized, neither of which is likely without a punitive threat...</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...which is why processes usually carry punitive implications for people who don't follow them. Red flag?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Processes stifle innovation.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Process creators love their processes, no matter how much everyone else hates them. Fixing them often requires an ego-bruising Kaizen event or something akin to it.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>My solution:</i> Rather than create a process, create tolerances within which people work. Inside of those tolerances, let them figure out how they'll deal with things as appropriate given the priorities and variables that they face in real time. Also, give them the tools that they need.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This approach, while bumpy, will lead to three things: (1) a much better understanding of the problem; (2) a more distributed sense of ownership of the problem; (3) more innovative or relevant solutions to the problem.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Documentation</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Documentation in IT network and systems environments is horrid for the following reasons:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Documentation requirements are often arbitrary. Documents are created without regard to their value in order to satisfy a process requirement. (See Processes above.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most people are not good at creating documentation that is useful to others.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Documentation is often audience-agnostic.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You don't really budget time and money for documentation in your projects, do you? </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Documentation has a very short half life...</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...because documentation focuses on pictures and paragraphs, not on data points. Thus the same IP address or device name exists in a dozen documents, and when that IP or name changes, they can't all be found and updated.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>My solution</i>:</span></div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make things intuitive so that a competent systems admin can assume how a particular system goes together. That way you don't need as much documentation.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make things consistent across systems. Same reason as #1.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make things internally or intrinsically documented. Systems people should take a clue from software developers. Put your documentation inline in your configurations. Use comments. Better yet, use conventions in your configurations that reflect what the configurations are doing.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Use dynamic systems as documentation sources. DNS, DHCP, AD, monitoring tools, and other dynamic repositories can be used to provide most of what documentation seeks to achieve.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once you've done all those, you might still want some documentation. Stop and ask yourself whether the documentation will be used. If so, how frequently? If frequently, for what? Taylor your remaining documentation accordingly so that you're adding value.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>SLAs</b></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ITIL notwithstanding, SLAs generally do not reflect the value of IT, nor the level of satisfaction that IT delivers. I have never seen IT SLAs that were worth the electrons required to generate them. IT SLAs are mostly a scam and a waste of time. Here are the reasons why:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT SLAs are created primarily to tell the executive staff why they should like IT. Guess what? If they hate you the SLA's won't do anything to help. (See "Statistics vs. Value" in <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/12/9-reasons-control-is-bad.html" target="_blank">9 Reasons Control Is Bad</a>.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT SLAs are usually <s>lies</s> inaccurate. Everybody games SLAs. People close multiple tickets for the same issue. They change the severity of a ticket to push the date out. They think of creative ways to get credit for meeting the SLA <i>without necessarily providing value</i>...</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...which is why SLAs don't reflect IT's value, and therefore why the business can hate you even though you're touting stellar SLA conformity.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the business keeps complaining, what does IT do? They revamp their SLAs and go through the whole exercise again.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SLAs don't measure project delivery. You provide huge value in delivering major projects that align with executive vision and your SLAs don't measure them...</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...which is why you constantly allow your top resources to be distracted from high-value projects in order to be SLA-compliant.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>My solution</i>: First, build relationships. If you are a CIO or a director, you should have relationships with the business units and the executives. Those relationships will allow you to cater your services to their needs. They'll allow the business units to come to your organization when they have concerns rather than screaming to the executive team.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, poll your most important users and ask them opposing, up/down questions like:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think it's time that we make management changes in IT. T/F.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think it would be a disaster to replace IT management. T/F.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think that IT management is focused on promoting the company's strategic goals. T/F.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think that IT is mostly reactive.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT solves my most important problems quickly and thoroughly. T/F.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT fails to resolve my most important problems in a way that satisifies me. T/F.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT is staffed by experts. T/F.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT needs to go recruit people who know what they're doing. T/F.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forget those fluffy surveys that you can interpret to mean that you're doing ok when the barbarians are burning your city. If you have the right relationships and you poll often enough to get ahead of any major concerns, your SLAs won't matter much.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Silos</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT is almost always broken into teams by system type. You have network teams, Windows server teams, Unix server teams, security teams, desktop teams, etc. The result is a lack of end-to-end ownership of virtually anything. These teams routinely throw their problems back and forth over the cube wall at each other. "It's a network problem." "No, it's an firewall problem." "Wrong, it's a DNS issue." It's like watching tennis.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>My solution</i>: Encourage natural collaboration and watch to see how your teams reform themselves functionally around projects and issues. It will probably gravitate to a more horizontal model than your current vertical model. You'll have teams based more on seniority and expertise than on system type. In fact, some of you have senior people doing this behind your back already. They aren't telling you because they think you'll co-opt it and screw it up. Natural collaboration almost always trumps anything that you can create, because whatever you create is too static for what people are dealing with <i>right now</i>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Reviews</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is really where the rubber comes off the wheels. Imagine for a second if your output was one-tenth as bad as your HR department's review process. You'd be out of a job (unless you work for Intuit or a handful of other US companies with meaningful review programs).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your review process has some--maybe all-of the following problems:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The objectives that your employees set at the beginning of the year are arbitrary and meaningless. You and your employees know it. These objectives will not last any longer than your tentative project list. Your employees know that, too, which contributes to their setting of arbitrary goals.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your employees do have some professional goals that they would like to accomplish and be recognized for. Your review process doesn't facilitate them well. It might not even allow for them.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will not follow-up on your employees' objectives during the year in a meaningful way, i.e. in a way that helps to ensure their success.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your review process is not designed around a career advancement path. You don't have a way to push people along a technical track versus a PM track versus a management track because you're using HR's one-size-fits-all process.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You're not going to get budget to provide training to facilitate your employees' objectives.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You're not going to be able to reward everyone who excels, because your HR department has already determined that only 10 percent of people can excel. If you really focus and inspire your team to achieve, you can't reward them accordingly.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>My solution</i>: Tell HR to pound sand. Seriously. Everybody gets to dump on IT at the slightest hint of something not working, right? They even threaten to create their own IT teams, right? Why should HR be any different? Try something like this:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Dear [VP of HR], The annual review process that we are using right now doesn't work for the following reasons: [list]. My employees and employees in other business units have been complaining about it for years. We've decided that IT will not participate in the process this year unless it facilitates creation of a meaningful, personalized program for each employee and rewards them based on their individual performance, not on a statistical distribution. Sincerely, [the CIO].</span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What, you can't do that? Seriously? Business units can violate security policies, trample on your budget, abuse your systems, and then tell you that they're going it on their own, but you can't do the same to HR? Why not? Seriously, why not? Show your people that you're leading them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are just five examples of things that don't work in IT and haven't for a long time. If you're a leader, you need to get control of these things. Stop trying to conform your department to broken practices. Build a foundation on relationships of trust and then free your people to succeed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What other broken things have you found IT to be embracing?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span> </div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow Matt on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/miguknom" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. </span> </div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.</span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-84744494853853946792012-01-08T04:31:00.001-08:002012-02-19T17:27:25.914-08:00Do Something, Even If It's Wrong!<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Don Casey was frustrated because things weren't getting done, he would yell, "Do something, even if it's wrong!" He didn't mean it. He just said it.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By contrast, some IT leaders don't say it. They just mean it. An executive yells, the CFO demands a budget by day's end, a user complains that "the Internet is down again," or an exposure is discovered. IT panics. They put everyone through the paces. Projects come to a screaming halt, best practices are violated, and everyone gets exercised.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I call this "reaction bias." I call it that because it sounds worse than "action bias." (People think that action bias means having a "get it done" mentality. In fact this is incorrect. Bar-Eli et al describe action bias in their <a href="http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4477/" target="_blank">study of goalies</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In soccer penalty kicks, goalkeepers choose their action before they can clearly observe the kick direction...given the probability distribution of kick direction, the optimal strategy for goalkeepers is to stay in the goal's center. Goalkeepers, however, almost always jump right or left. We propose the following explanation for this behavior: because the norm is to jump, norm theory (Kahneman and Miller, 1986) implies that a goal scored yields worse feelings for the goalkeeper following inaction (staying in the center) than following action (jumping), leading to a bias for action.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In other words, "Do something, even if it's wrong!" because of the perception or feeling associated with doing nothing.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is how the TSA came to be what it is today. TSA has an <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/budget_bib_fy2011.pdf" target="_blank">$8 billion budget</a> to protect you from terrorists. Did you know that you are <a href="http://newsblaze.com/story/20090221100148tsop.nb/topstory.html" target="_blank">9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit</a> than to die in a terrorist attack? Yet (a) we do not have a "CTDOYOVA" and (b) the TSA budget isn't doing much to make us safer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an IT leader, you need to be able to withstand the urge to look like you're doing something. Failing to do so reaffirms your employees' belief that there are no real priorities. It leads to <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/12/disproductivity.html" target="_blank">disproductivity</a>. Are there times when everyone needs to drop what they're doing? Sure. Is that usually the case? No.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are some ways to avoid doing something, even if it's wrong.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1. Don't overreact.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe it's really important--maybe not. If you have to drop your entire operation because someone said something urgent, you don't look like a leader. Don't assume that the Internet is really down, or that the numbers really have to be in by CoB. It usually isn't as bad as it sounds. Frequently it's nothing at all. Know what you'll say to calm people down and reassure people that you're taking a sane approach to handling their concern.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2. Don't spray and pray.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not the time for a machine gun. Be a sniper. Find out who needs to be involved and get <i>only them</i> involved. Make sure that you understand the impact on your priorities before you let them go too far. Try to keep everyone else working on your priorities. Just because you had an emergency doesn't mean that deadlines have been extended or that your people can move in and out of high-value work without any impact. Assuming that you have set the strategic direction for your troops, try to keep them moving in that direction.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>3. Don't immediately revamp your procedures</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time something bad happens, some management teams respond by overhauling their procedures. It's part of "telling the executives what we're doing to ensure that this doesn't happen again." The problem is that next time will be different, and even if it's not, your new, improved process will still fail because it wasn't designed by the people who will use it, or because it was insufficiently socialized. If you really plan to overhaul procedures, make sure that you have a way to test the new procedure and make sure that everyone understands and buys off on it. Don't do all that work just so that you can say you did something. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>4. Know about real emergencies before they do.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't use your user base as your monitoring system. For your critical IT resources, ensure that you know first when there is an outage. That way if someone screams, you will (a) know what to tell them, or (b) know that their complaint is overstated. Consider making a customized console, or perhaps a ticker, available so that executives or users have a simplified view of what's going.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>5. Know how much things cost. Provide ranges.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Start to build a table of what things cost. That way when you're asked for a budgetary quote (which you KNOW will be referred to as if carved in stone tablets) you won't have to scramble people to put together the same pricing info that they scrambled for last time. Know the full IT cost range for building a new facility per user, per square foot, etc. Know the range of costs for circuits. Have a working figure for how much consultants will cost for a generic project. Provide a range. When they try to pin you on a number, the answer is "it depends on details that aren't available yet."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>6. Build relationships that will get you information.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You don't have to be the last to find out that someone is building a project budget. BUs don't have to complain about IT to their SVPs. You and your people can start to become a HUMINT organization. Gathering intelligence and building rapport through relationships on the ground is much better than relying solely on technology and SLAs. If you're panicking when someone complains, is it because you know that you and your organization don't have the relationships necessary to win you the benefit of the doubt?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next time you feel your reaction bias kicking in, stop and ask yourself why you feel it. What are you afraid of? What will it take to be able to breath deeply and apply a measured response? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do something, even if it's wrong? That's not leadership. Don't choose your action before you know which way the ball is being kicked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow Matt on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/miguknom" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.</span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-58259197596890647842012-01-01T07:57:00.001-08:002012-01-04T17:32:12.002-08:00My 2012 Goal: Get the worst job in America<div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/slideshows/gallery/dirty-jobs-mike-rowe-dirty-1-625x450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="230" src="http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/slideshows/gallery/dirty-jobs-mike-rowe-dirty-1-625x450.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oh, yes I did!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are you listening, Mike Rowe? </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had just about every kind of job in my early twenties. I trimmed trees, ironed shirts, pounded nails out in the snow, moved boxes from this side of the room to that side, sold my soul to a telemarketing job... You name it, I did it. Then, in the 90s, I jumped into the tech craze like John Travolta into disco pants. Straight into network engineering. Then security. Then architecture. Then finally I decided that I should move into management. Well, here it is 2012 and I'm starting the year with one goal.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My goal is to get the <a href="http://itmanagerdaily.com/it-manager-named-most-hated-job-in-america/" target="_blank">most hated job in America</a>: <i>IT Director</i>.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That has only been my goal for a couple of days. Before I saw that article, I was gunning for one of the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2010/full_list/index.html" target="_blank">top 20 jobs in America</a>: <i>IT Director</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Doh!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can IT Director, with unusually high pay, and with a projected <a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos258.htm" target="_blank">17 percent growth</a> rate by 2018, be the most hated job? The article had some ideas about that. So do I:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your boss, the CIO, might be replaced, and the new guy will prefer his own yes men.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If he isn't replaced, he will continue to confuse priorities with "emergencies" on a daily basis.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will continue to get the green light on projects <i>after </i>budgets have been established and deadlines set. Only then will you be asked for budgets and lead times. Then the BUs will resent you for costing too much and taking too long.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your people will continue to get no credit for pulling off magical project wins because executive expectations were not managed.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The realization that you never want to be a CIO will become clearer and your career path will turn darker.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will continue to attend meetings and produce documents that have no value because someone north of you has a whim.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will continue to place significant emphasis on generating SLA metrics that prove that the company, which hates you, actually loves you.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So here's the deal: You want to be a great leader. You have a philosophy that allows you to tap the hidden potential in your people and produce great results. You are constantly honing your ability to motivate, to avoid micro managing, and to protect your folks from the stuff that's rolling downhill. But you're still an IT Director.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So if you're an IT manager with aspirations here are some questions worth asking yourself:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Can Leadership Prevail In Your Environment?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had one peer who, when everyone else was jumping ship after an acquisition by the Borg, insisted that he wanted to stay and fight the good fight. His a sharp guy with a lot to offer and a lot invested in that environment, but he's basically mud-wrestling with pigs. By pigs I mean people who exist for the purpose of promoting themselves at others' expense--"yes men" who would rather look good than be great. What they lack in competence they make up for in maneuverability. Remember Wormtongue?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDiBwCoZOxFwEnHhg4QKqxWkN9HLBDmjiBOuLj5R3uHOsZNeWWcBh67PqCvo9BJR1winSQO2D5MLQ1WNLyKJryKZovU7cklP9acueZ2UAPjReLk1gtezzkz4ObYRPRKAOtcU8N3E_qgAA/s1600/TheTwoTowers_WormtongueAndKingTheoden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDiBwCoZOxFwEnHhg4QKqxWkN9HLBDmjiBOuLj5R3uHOsZNeWWcBh67PqCvo9BJR1winSQO2D5MLQ1WNLyKJryKZovU7cklP9acueZ2UAPjReLk1gtezzkz4ObYRPRKAOtcU8N3E_qgAA/s320/TheTwoTowers_WormtongueAndKingTheoden.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How much time do you want to spend competing with him?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Solution</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">: Take a serious look at your company. Does it reward the results that real leadership produces, or does it reward manipulators and yes men? If the latter, don't waste three more years of your career. Else, if there is a pocket of your company that is driven by (or even susceptible to) strategy and leadership, do some great work for that VP, learn his/her business, and work yourself into that department.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Is IT Really The Place To Be Anyway?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe it's time to pull the plug. I have a close friend who was a senior director and is now looking for a CTO-ish role in a smaller company. That's pretty smart. Why stay in a reactive IT department if you can do something that actually helps drive the company?</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://blasianton.com/sites/default/files/matrix-pills_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://blasianton.com/sites/default/files/matrix-pills_0.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tough choice?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Solution</i>: Network with people who got out of IT. Learn how they did it, what mistakes they made, what they learned, whether they have any regrets, etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>What If I Want To Stay And Make It Work?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now we're talking. You're not going to accept defeat. You've put your heart and soul into this and you're going to see it succeed, by gum!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Solution</i>:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Be a leader first and foremost. Each time insanity is imposed on you, look at it as a challenge. What outcome could an ideal leader create in that situation? What ability do you lack that is preventing you from creating that outcome?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Eliminate distractions for yourself and your team. In order to stand your ground, you need results. Make sure that your people are working on home runs, not foul balls. Don't let the panic of the day prevent you from delivering on things that will put you beyond reproach.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. Build relationships with the BUs. Don't wait for them to go to their SVP and for their SVP and your SVP to dream up a DOA solution. Work with the BUs to define and prioritize what they need and then go champion it with your respective bosses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. Start doing your boss's job. Free him up to do his boss's job. This is critical. Whether you stay or go, whether you get promoted or not, you need that experience. Moreover, give as much of your job duties to your best subordinates as possible. This will free you up to do your boss's job and it will make all of you more easily promoted, whether with your current employer or a future job.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. Communicate. Become a master of communication. Learn how to give excellent presentations. Perfect your email communication. Develop an understanding of which communication medium is best for which people and under which circumstances. Don't fail because people were confused, overwhelmed, or starved by your communication.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6. Start writing. Keep a journal or a blog of things that you've learned. Review them and reflect on them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for me, I'm still optimistic that the "most hated job" in America has the potential to be immensely rewarding as a personal growth opportunity, but some positions have more to offer than others. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fact that IT Directors "hate" their jobs, combined with the prediction of 17 percent increase in IT Director positions by 2018, says that there will be a lot of turnover during the next few years. Voluntary turnover rates could reach <a href="http://compforce.typepad.com/compensation_force/2009/03/2008-turnover-rates-by-industry.html" target="_blank">2008 levels</a> or even higher. Learn all you can, document and review what you've learned, and know when it's time to leave.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow Matt on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/miguknom" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.
</span>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">View Matt's <a href="http://talkbetter.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">language coaching blog</a>.
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</div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-67608744568717221912011-12-23T22:14:00.000-08:002011-12-25T00:19:25.606-08:00Disproductivity<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>More posts on leadership can be found <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/search/label/leadership" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm going to venture an estimate. I'm thinking that I've wasted somewhere around 75% of my employers' time on average during my career. My entry-level jobs were not so bad. Working the phones meant that I was actually doing something, albeit low-value, most of the day. But as I progressed from task-taker, to individual contributor, to positions of influence and leadership, the amount of my time wasted increased to include, well, most of it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Matt, you're telling the world that you're a drain on your employers!" No, I'm not. I've always delivered value many times greater than the cost of my employment. What I'm saying is that I've had to do it in about 25% of the time allotted. The other 75% of my time went to things that were not just unproductive, they were <i>disproductive</i>. They were worse than doing nothing because they caused stress, wasted time and money, and impacted worthwhile activities. Here are some of those things that caused disproductivity:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Spinning up disproductive projects</b>. I'd say that, on average, four out of five IT projects that have hit my radar have had no potential to be completed. Some reasons for this are:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were knee-jerk, "Yes" reactions to an executive whim.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were committed to before costs and duration were understood.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were legitimate projects, but they didn't survive subsequent waves of prioritization.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They seemed important at the time, but the stakeholders lost interest.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My solution? </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In recent years I've gained the ability to foresee which projects will actually go to successful completion (with almost 100% accuracy). </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've made a practice of killing disproductive projects as quickly as possible. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Doing so has reduced my disproductivity a fair amount. When confronted with a new project, I ask qualifying questions like:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who actually wants this project?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When they find out the cost, will they still fund it?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will it survive resource reallocation for acquisitions, new sites, new product launches, management swaps, bad earnings reports, etc.?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do we have the support, the funding, and the ability to make the project a win, assuming that we complete it?</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I don't like the answers to these questions, I apply a choke hold, poison, or starvation to the project as aggressively as I can. It works.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Attending disproductive meetings</b>. Everyone knows this, but nobody does anything about it. Disproductive meetings are meetings where (a) too many people are invited, (b) the agenda is weak or null, and (c) the follow-up expectations are unclear. These meetings are disproductive because:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They distract people from otherwise valuable work.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They frustrate people.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They cost a lot of money and don't provide much benefit.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My solution? I love Tim Ferriss's advice in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Anywhere-Expanded-Updated/dp/0307465357" target="_blank">4-Hour Workweek</a>. Among my favorites is asking the organizer what he needs from you in advance so that you can give it to them via email and skip the meeting. Usually they don't know what they need. They plan to let everyone do their thinking for them in the meeting. If the meeting doesn't have a clear agenda, ask for one or don't attend. Also, don't attend the whole meeting. Ask if you can get your stuff out of the way first and be dismissed because you've got "another commitment."</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://getfile8.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-11-19/uiFBIwFBcdizdjJqEhrIurzuiaiippIgcwJAhBFcpxhBbbkbaFtkHifckhtG/meeetings.png.scaled500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://getfile8.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-11-19/uiFBIwFBcdizdjJqEhrIurzuiaiippIgcwJAhBFcpxhBbbkbaFtkHifckhtG/meeetings.png.scaled500.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Disproductive email</b>. I noticed <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_162-57336411/it-firm-bans-email-will-your-company-be-next/" target="_blank">this story</a> about Atos banning email. I don't think that email should be banned, but I agree that people should use the most effective means of communication available. Email is generally ineffective and often disproductive. People use email incorrectly in at least the following ways:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They use it like IM.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They CC way too many people.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They don't drop people from distribution once they're not needed.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They use it as a data archive.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They turn on the inbox alert to distract them every time they get a new, useless email.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They use it to say things that they would not normally say.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't have any of these problems when I use LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, or Blogger. They have rough email capabilities, but they don't get abused. Moreover, they never involve large groups of disinterested parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My solution?</span></div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't send email.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you do send email, avoid CC.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Turn off your inbox notification.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Create aggressive filters. Filter sources, people, subjects, and anything else that you don't really need to see. Yeah, you might miss something important, but they'll call back, and you'll avoid wasting your time.</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Reading management's minds.</b> Leaders are supposed to set direction. In most cases, IT management fails to do this. They flounder, they react, they panic, and they drag everyone else along with them. It's impossible to focus on important or complex work when management is driven by urgency.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My solution? Determine the priorities for myself and the people I lead. (See the qualifying questions under "Spinning up disproductive projects" earlier in this post.) When management panics and wants to change priorities, buffer it as much as possible until the questions above are answered. Don't let it impact everyone else until you know whether or not it's important.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Usually management doesn't know why they're panicking. In a few days the dust will settle and they'll be glad that someone held the course.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Things that are <i>not</i> disproductive</b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Here are just a few examples of things that employers should value over the aforementioned disproductive activities, but don't for some reason:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Chatting with a coworker</i> in the hallway usually is not disproductive. It is a frequent source of innovation and idea generation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Training</i> is not disproductive. If you are not training your employees because your volume of disproductive work won't permit it, your organization will never be great.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Reading</i> is not disproductive. Reading on the job should be mandatory. Employees should be able to expense any book on the condition that after they read it they share what they have learned with the team.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Brainstorming and whiteboarding</i> sessions are not disproductive. They lead to great ideas and they encourage people to share information that is highly relevant. If you're people are too busy doing disproductive work to think, tinker, and experiment, you will never be great.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Working from home</i> is not disproductive. I did it for a long time. My productivity increased tremendously, as has the productivity of others who have done the same. How?</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commute time is recuperated.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are fewer interruptions.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no need to look busy when between important tasks.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Personal needs (laundry, phone calls, etc.) can be intermingled here and there, freeing up time after 5pm for the employee to keep working on important stuff.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sleep and diet improve.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Complaining</i> is not necessarily productive, but it isn't necessarily disproductive, either. It is an indicator that something needs to change, even if it's the complainers. Letting things fester is disproductive.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I would love to see a company wage an aggressive war on sanctioned disproductivity. In a business climate where most companies are still grovelling for marginal efficiency gains, why allow this stuff to continue?</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contact Matt <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html" target="_blank">here</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow Matt on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/miguknom" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Connect to Matt on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/miguknom" target="_blank">Linkedin</a>.
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>View Matt's <a href="http://talkbetter.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">language coaching blog</a>.
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</div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-39949610395598735312011-12-12T17:59:00.000-08:002011-12-14T03:22:40.613-08:00Trust--THE Critical Leadership Attribute<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Quote: "There’s an expectation that you can work anywhere and be highly productive and engaged."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is from an </span><a href="http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678967/an-office-designed-to-keep-employees-working-from-home" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">article about a new Plantronics office</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. They designed an office to be just unappealing enough that people would prefer to work from home. Never mind that they'll save some money, or that this is forward-thinking. Consider the implication: their trust level is so high that they enshrine it in architectural plans.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've written a few articles about leadership traits. (See </span><a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/12/9-reasons-control-is-bad.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">9 Reasons Control Is Bad</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/11/5-great-leadership-tendencies-that-ive.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">5 Great Leadership Tendencies That I've Actually Seen</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.) One of the common themes is </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">trust</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. I'm now going to explain why trust is THE leadership attribute.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, trust is the source of your power as a leader. Leaders derive <i>authority</i> from the people who appoint them, but their <i>power</i> comes from being followed. If people refuse to follow you, you are powerless to lead them. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">True, you can coerce people. That's a kind of power, but dragging people behind you in chains is not the same as leading them. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To the extent that you sew fear you will not harvest inclination, initiative, or ingenuity. If you're bad enough, your subordinates will start plotting either their own exit or your demise.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To lead and be followed, a relationship of trust must exist. Someone has to extend and engender trust first. It must be the leader. (In fact, whoever extends that trust first <i>is the leader</i>, whether it's the boss or not.) Extending and engendering trust involves convincing followers of three things:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can and will do what needs to be done as a leader.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your primary concern is their personal success.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You trust them to fulfill the responsibilities that you give them.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you can't do these three things, you have to fall back on some degree of coercion.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do locate your position on the leadership-coercion scale? One way is to look at your </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">rules</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. What is the fundamental function of a rule? <i>To shore up a lack of trust! </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(I'm not talking about an immutable law, like "Don't touch the stove or you'll get burned." I'm talking about a rule that </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> make to get the results that </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> want.)</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rules reflect an assumption that people are not inclined to do what is right or best. When you make a rule, you are implying a lack of trust. Moreover, i</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">f you make a rule, there must be penalty, whether implicit or explicit. Otherwise the rule has no effect. Threatening penalties is coercion, not leadership.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, "No Running!" is a coercive way of saying, "Running is dangerous and may result in injuries." The natural penalty for running is the potential for an injury, but the coercive rule has an arbitrary penalty, namely being kicked out of the pool area. If you tell your people, in effect, "No Running!" you force them all to live under a threat, even if they're disinclined to run in the first place. What might you forego as a result? Creative new ways to make running safe, new surfaces that prevent injuries for people who run, etc.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do you start to trust more? Begin by questioning your rules. A story will illustrate:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once I was tasked with creating a Suggestion Box for an IT department. When it was done, we had a stakeholder meeting to review it and to craft a welcome email to all of the IT personnel. The first suggestion made was this: "We need to tell them that the suggestion box is for constructive feedback, not for complaining." Everyone agreed, except me. I asked why we needed that statement. "Do we have reason to believe that people will use it to complain? Will we still get frank feedback if we start with a rule that assumes the worst? Do we want real feedback, or just positive feedback?" We all agreed to forego that statement, as well as several additional rules that, for some reason, seemed intuitively necessary to several people. (As it turns out, feedback to the Suggestion Box was professional and constructive.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another story involved a team that was complaining about senior management frequently. Then something happened. Someone on the team was blamed for a major incident that really wasn't his fault. Everybody knew it, but he was about to take a hard fall for it anyway. The damage to morale would have been irreparable. At that time, a senior director stepped in. He called a meeting with the team and forcefully apologized for what was happening, ascribing all of the accountability to himself, and swearing that this sort of thing would never happen again. He then scheduled a series of meetings to just listen to the team. Almost overnight, the trust that he created increased his power to lead the team several fold. Rather than minimally complying, people were actively trying to support him and going out of their way to praise him behind his back.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He build relationships and harnessed their power. Relationships are based in <i>trust</i>, and thus inspire our best action. They foster respect, admiration, and camaraderie. Rules foster resentment, indifference, and fear.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you genuinely trust your people and you are sincerely inclined to their welfare, your only limit is the upper bound of their best synergistic output, which you have the power to help improve! If you don't trust them, though, you are restricted to whatever you can force them to produce. This is why, whether your a senior director, a parent, or even an individual contributor, trust is THE critical leadership attribute.</span></div>
</div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-10589479487488297802011-12-08T22:59:00.001-08:002011-12-12T17:23:48.097-08:009 Reasons Control Is Bad<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Fifteen calls in the queue holding four minutes!" He would belt that out every ninety seconds or so. He was my manager at my first IT job. My job was helping customers. His job was reminding me. Never mind that my customer service rating was <i>perfect</i> for six months. My average call length was above threshold by a few seconds. Whatever-his-name-was kept reminding me. I left, doubled my salary, and launched my career. He probably hired someone who was better at following directions and wasn't so worked up about "happy customers."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For years I swore I would never get into management. Every new boss I encountered only bolstered my resolve. Management, including senior management, seemed to be about enforcing mediocrity. They did things like:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">noticing what time people showed up to work</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pouring over reports <whatever>looking for potential 0.5% improvements</whatever></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cracking the whip to make sure the hamsters run faster</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pretending to be SMEs when lecturing actual SMEs</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I did what any good engineer learns to do: I got important work done in spite of them. I built valuable relationships with business units. I avoided meetings, ignored pointless forms and procedures, and generally was a prima donna.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well something happened. I went to work for <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-case/1/901/515" target="_blank">Dan Case</a>. (I talk more about Dan <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/11/5-great-leadership-tendencies-that-ive.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) Working for a leader made many things clear and forever altered the trajectory of my career. I've spent the ensuing time pondering and studying what makes great leaders, and in the process I've learned much about what makes bad managers. The bottom line is <i>control</i>. Leaders lead because they have followers. Managers control because they don't.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are seven reasons why control is bad for business:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <u>Coercion versus inspiration</u>. When you control your employees, you employ some degree of coercion. Coercion breeds fear. People who are afraid of you will not be inspired by you. They won't even be inspired in spite of you for very long. If you have to coerce people, either you have hired the wrong people or you are the wrong person.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Compliance versus excellence</u>. To control your employees, you have to enforce arbitrary standards. Most employees will respond with compliance, not excellence. Excellence involves converting the unique skills, abilities, and passions of your employees into valuable contributions. In many cases these contributions cannot be measured by your standard. Employees who try to excel will either get into trouble or find their way out of your department.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <u>Subservience over ownership</u>. When you mandate someone's output in any fine degree, you strip them of ownership. Their job goes from challenging and engaging to perfunctory and uninteresting. You lose their innovative and creative potential as a result.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <u>Conformity over spontaneity and intuition</u>. When the "right way" is set in stone, a feedback loop is erected. People will focus on "doing it right." "Aha!" moments will go unharvested because there is no benefit, and perhaps some risk, in pursuing them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. <u>Statistics versus value</u>. I once met with a CFO who was unhappy. He had lost money and IT was arguably responsible. We showed him a network SLA report with 4 nines. He said, "Bull. You're lucky if you have 80% uptime." Of course that statement is absurd. So what?. You can't prove to the company that they like you using charts. Attention CIOs: you don't need SLA reports. <i>There is no such thing as statistical happiness</i>. You need one question in a management survey:</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"How would you feel if IT management was replaced and why?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6. <u>More versus better</u>. If you are controlling people and you need improvement, you ask for <i>more</i>. More hours, more tickets closed, more calls handled, more comments written--just more. That is different from <i>better</i>. Better means that people, processes, and output are continuously improving. Try calling USAA sometime to see what I mean.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7. <u>Satisfaction vs delight</u>. The result of controlling always seems to be a satisfaction survey of some kind. Designed by IT, these surveys are rarely as meaningful as water cooler talk. Even more rare is the survey that is interpreted correctly and acted on properly. Try asking questions that use superlatives. Stop giving five options, and switch to yes/no, like this:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Are you amazed at how easily your iPad works on the company network? [yes] [no]"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">8. <u>Tactical versus strategic</u>. Managers use the word "strategy" a lot to describe tactical things. Control is tactical. Control has nothing to do with envisioning the future, setting direction, or getting the very best out of your people. Tactical work is for managers. Leaders focus on strategy and evangelism. Their tactical work consists of clearing hurdles and facilitating the work that their people need to do.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">9. <u>Rules versus relationships</u>. People who control make rules. Rules dictate how people will behave. They limit and constrain our interaction, our mutual understanding, and our sharing of knowledge. Relationships, on the other hand, do just the opposite. Even if you're a controlling manager type who has a rule for everything, you still go to conventions in hopes of networking--yes, that's right--building relationships that will help accomplish what you want. You do the same thing in any number of social settings. Why is it that as soon as you're in charge of something you torch relationships and start making rules?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the end of the day, letting go of control means leveraging <i>trust</i>. You can lead when your people (a) believe that you can and will do what needs to be done, and when (b) they know that you believe the same about them. If those two things are missing, you only have control left.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, do you simply stop telling people what needs to be done? Not exactly, although if you do they'll figure it out. Setting direction, though, is what people look to leaders for. Thresholds are beneficial for some people. Some people need to learn how to stop being supervised. When such guidance is offered as a means of cultivation it is empowering, unlike the stifling influence of control.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Take a minute to ponder and question. Are you comfortable letting go of control? Do you trust your people to do what needs to be done? Do you believe that they trust you?</span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-78496586396076180762011-12-02T05:39:00.001-08:002011-12-05T17:07:19.296-08:00Strategic Plan vs. Aggregate Tactical Plan<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Matt, we need your input into the 3-year strategic plan." I was a network security engineer. I configured firewalls and tried to stop intruders. The question didn't make any sense to me. "Could you please tell me what you mean by that?"</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The CIO is putting his 3-year strategic plan together. We need to know what projects you think we'll need to do over the next 3 years."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"What will you do with that?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We'll roll it up with everyone else's input and turn it into a strategic plan."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"So let me make sure I understand: you're going to take my ideas about security projects that we might need, add in other peoples ideas about projects for their teams, and then the CIO will use that to make the strategic plan?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Yeah. We need it today."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you aren't laughing yet, you shouldn't be reading this post. Unless you're wincing. That counts.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, I began using the term "Aggregate Tactical Plan" on that day. For the rest of the time I worked there, whenever someone mentioned the "Strategic Plan" I would say, "You mean our Aggregate Tactical Plan?" They never liked my name for the plan.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When tactical thinkers get into leadership positions, they don't suddenly start thinking strategically. They start using words associated with strategic thinking, like "3-year Strategic Plan." They say things like, "What's our strategy for getting the phone system upgraded by November?" But they never actually think in terms of, or portray, strategy.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strategy is the result of deep consideration and pondering. For a tactical person to arrive at strategy is possible, but it involves asking "why" a lot. "Why should we do this or that" can lead to a somewhat bigger view of what needs to be done. Continually pushing one's thoughts up that hierarchy of actions eventually leads to the ability to think about vision and direction. Eventually one can resist the urge to plunge into battle details and focus on the war.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT might be the worst at this. IT has some deep thinkers (and not all in management) who understand strategy and don't get recognized for it. Then there is the rest of IT who is either incapable of or disinclined toward strategy.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So for those of you who are going be promoted to IT Management and put your engineers in intellectual harm's way, here are some ideas to consider when you have to craft a strategic plan.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Highest-Level Strategy</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is where you define your overall direction or your ultimate desired outcome.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: What do we produce?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: Delighted Clients. [See <a href="http://stevedenning.typepad.com/steve_denning/2011/01/the-reinvention-of-management-part-2-how-do-you-delight-the-client.html" target="_blank">Steve Denning's</a> article.]</span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engineers who can turn out good products faster.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Salespeople who can sell solutions more easily.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Executives who can execute on strategic goals.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the way, if your focus is on how you're going to report on SLAs so that you can prove that you're doing your job, you are losing. All you have to do is ask the employees a simple question: "Would you be sad to see IT management replaced?" Most SLAs are B.S. and everyone knows it. I've never worked at a company where IT at some level didn't rig the metrics or the reporting.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Also, notice that I asked a"what" question. You should have already answered "Why?" Visit <a href="http://www.startwithwhy.com/" target="_blank">Simon Sinek</a> for more.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Mid-Level Strategic Talking Points</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's where you flesh out at a <i>high level</i> what you're strategy means operationally. Try asking questions.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: How will we <u>lead</u>? [See also <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/11/5-great-leadership-tendencies-that-ive.html" target="_blank">5 Great Leadership Tendencies That I've Actually Seen</a>.]</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: By enabling and facilitating.</span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Clear roadblocks.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mask corporate turmoil.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Provide clarity and prioritization.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Minimize fire drills.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Resolve concerns and be transparent.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Focus on relationships over rules.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Allow employees to focus on delighting the client.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: How will we <u>manage</u>?</span></div>
</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: We will expend 20% effort to get 80% results on things like:</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Measuring</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Documenting</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Policy creation and maintenance</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reporting</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Compliance (with obvious exceptions)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forms</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meetings</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: How will we <u>communicate</u>?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: We will communicate transparently.</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Frankly</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With full disclosure (except where prohibited)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Promptly</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Often</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unambiguously</span></li>
</ul>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: What will we </span><u style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">reward</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: We will overtly reward innovation, creativity, and the extra mile.</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rely on our experts; don't dictate to them.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Foster cross-team collaboration and synergy.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Provide time, incentives, and recognition for <i>valuable</i> behavior</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: What kind of <u>team will we build</u>?</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: Fully engaged and leveraged.</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">horizontal, cross-discipline integration</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">natural collaboration</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">spontaneous and assigned mentoring</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">constant personnel development and promotion</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: What will our </span><u style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">systems and applications</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> look like?</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: Primary features: elegance and simplicity.</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simplify processes and minimize rules.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Encourage risk taking and judgment calls within thresholds.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reduce system and configuration complexity.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make things reproducible, intuitive, and intrinsically documented.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If this list makes you want to define forms, meetings, policies, or org charts, you're thinking tactically. If it gives you a vision of a team that functions with enthusiasm an generates high-volume, high-quality output, you're on target.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, questions like these lead to action plans. Action plans bridge the gap between strategic and tactical thinking. The more detailed they are, the more tactical they are. You need action plans.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, a list of projects that you'll execute on, especially if it was handed to you by the business units, is not a strategic plan. It's a project list. It's the tactical outcome of your strategic goal to delight your clients.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Try to learn to think about the big picture, or at least the medium-sized picture. If your approach to building and running your organization is overly tactical, you will end up spending too much time tweaking minutia and minimizing the ability of your people to do great things for you.</span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-57372794919566992952011-11-23T17:20:00.001-08:002011-11-27T00:15:08.428-08:005 Great Leadership Tendencies That I've Actually Seen<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"People always talk about the difference between management and leadership. I don't buy into that whole idea." -Tom Rabaut, CEO of United Defense and a man widely regarded as a manager.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I used to work for a small </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">bureaucracy that was bought by a big bureaucracy. We went from 5,000 United Defense employees to 45,000 at BAE Systems. The entire management structure started scrambling to figure out how to get ahead in the new company. For what seemed like months everyone would pull out the org chart at every meeting and inform their underlings about how things were developing. They'd throw out names and titles, talk about meetings they'd been in, and in general provide no information of any value to people responsible for producing results.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the end, the people with the best political skills moved up. By and large they were the least competent people. They were type that lobbied to be put in charge of important work, but then seemed to get themselves reassigned before anyone figured out how badly they had managed the actual execution. People with abject failures on multi-million dollar projects moved up the ladder, in some cases by several rungs.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, when I couldn't stand the stench anymore, I left and went to a white-hot Silicon Valley company. Fate smiled on me, and I ended up working for <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=5227937&locale=en_US&trk=tyah" target="_blank">Dan Case</a>. Dan had the most successful team you or I have ever seen. Dan had reached the holy grail of management: a globally-distributed, multi-cultural team that functioned like one person. He had the kind of team that you read about in college text books, but that nobody really believes can be built. He did it without ever <i>managing </i>anything. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dan </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">led</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> his team</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are the top 5 leadership tendencies that I learned from Dan and a few other leaders within the company (and from some managers who provided stark contrast to Dan):</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <u>Leaders don't do what everyone else is doing</u>. Everyone else is jockeying. That means they're doing things like:</span><br />
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">trying to get face time with the boss</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">putting out fires</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">making their subordinates hate their jobs</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">falling back on the work that they did before they got promoted in order to look busy</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">tripping over dollars to pick up dimes</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">etc.</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead they lead. If you're doing what all the other managers are doing then you're not a leader. If you're trying to compete with other managers, you're not a leader. But that's ok, because you probably think this post is stupid anyway, and you'll probably be promoted so that you can hurt more people and damage the company in more meaningful ways. Hope you're happy.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. <u>Leaders lead <i>people</i></u>. Leaders don't lead budgets or initiatives. They don't lead processes and procedures. They don't lead products or services. They lead people. Products, services, processes, procedures, initiatives, and budgets are results of their having led people. People know whether they are your end or your means. If they're your means, they will never follow you. You are their <i>customer</i> at best, and their<i> task master</i> at worst. You are not their leader.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One day in the parking lot after work at a new job, I met a<span id="goog_1820751459"></span> tall, slender guy<span id="goog_1820751460"></span> getting into his Prius. We talked for a bit before I realized that he was the founder of the company. I was completely unfazed by the fact because he was so personable and so soothingly articulate. He blew a half-hour on me right there in the parking lot.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The next time I talked to him was at the Christmas party. T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he CEO was walking around the dinner tables handing out what I termed "complimentary handshakes." He would start to reach for your hand, and as soon as he had target lock he would start looking for the next hand. The whole encounter lasted about a second and a half. Some people gushed at the chance to shake hands with the boss. I wasn't one of them.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later, though, I ran into the founder again. He was playing the piano. He remembered my name and our conversation. We exchanged a few words to maintain continuity. A few weeks later, he happened into the cafeteria for a late lunch and sat across the table from me. He picked up our conversation where we had left off weeks prior. I was so impressed by the contrast between my encounter with him and my encounter with the CEO that I told him about the complimentary handshake and asked, "What's it like handing your company off to a professional administrator?" He smiled.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <u>Leaders</u></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u> make relationships, not rules</u>. Dan Case didn't have rules. True, he would occasionally ask his team to do unavoidable, stupid bureaucratic things for short periods of time, but always apologetically. Other than that, there was only one rule that I ever heard him utter: "If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough." As a result, Dan's team didn't need rules. Each member of the team owned everything related to the team's success. There was no competition, no envy, no strife. Everyone on the team respected and genuinely liked everyone else on the team. Dan went so far as to hire desktop support technicians to be senior network engineers. It worked, because the new hires would apply every ounce of zeal they could summon to their new opportunity, and</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because the team would make them senior network engineers in short order</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was all done with relationships. Everyone on the team knew that Dan would bleed for them. That everything else would fall into place was an article of faith for Dan. He never wavered on this point because it wasn't a management ploy; it was the foundation of his leadership style.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At one of my jobs I was asked to build a suggestion box for IT. They director with whom I was partnered on the project insisted that we tell everyone, "the suggestion box is a place for constructive feedback, not for complaints." I asked him why we would bother to say that. Do we believe that it will be a problem? Do we want to treat our employees like children? Can we get their honest feedback by constraining them before they even see the suggestion box?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was a manager, not a leader. He was trying to figure out how to control people. He needed rules.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dan liberates the creative and productive powers of people. To him, rules are impediments; if he needs them, he has hired the wrong people, but I never saw that happen. People who go to work for Dan become the right people. Fast.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also, relationships imply trust. Dan trusts everyone on his team with the keys to the kingdom. He will always give them full responsibility while retaining full accountability. Thus, if they make a big mistake, they learn a valuable lesson. If they deliberately take advantage of him, he will deal with it. The thing is, that in four-and-a-half years I only saw one big mistake, and nobody ever cheats Dan. One would sooner cheat one's own grandmother than cheat Dan. Why? Because </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dan's team members revere him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dan <i>can</i> trust his people completely because he <i>does</i> trust them completely.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <u>Leaders don't view "working the system" as the path to success</u>. Leaders are competent and are not afraid to let results speak for themselves. Managers are afraid of their results, so they're always looking for a way to maneuver. (Remarkably, that obsession with maneuvering reduces their ability to generate real results.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you go to a leader with a political concern, they look at you straight in the eye and say, "Yeah, whatever." Then they go back to doing something important. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Managers start maneuvering.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From a leader's point of view, the org chart is largely horizontal with names of highly competent people in bold. Managers, by contrast, focus on the hierarchy and attach themselves to whatever bosses can help them climb the ladder.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. <u>Leaders model achievement</u>. Leaders know what kind of results they want, and they teach their subordinates by <i>showing them</i>. George Washington crossed the Potomac River with his men. Dan Case would clean toilets before he would let anyone on his team do it. They would be the cleanest toilets in Silicon Valley when he was done. Then he would give his team credit for the sparkling toilets. If someone on his team ever had to clean a toilet, they would instinctively try to make them cleaner than Dan's toilets because that's the kind of performance that Dan inspires.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bonus: <u>Leaders have a philosophy</u>. Leaders ponder and contemplate their decisions, their actions, and their beliefs. They hone them over time. Life to them has little to do with quotas, budgets, and presentations. It has more to do with discovering how to better unlock the potential to do good in the people around them. Their values and their practical pursuits go hand in hand and shape them over time. Managers, by contrast, often don't have time for that kind of "nonsense."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back to BAE. They took an immensely profitable United Defense into their collective and destroyed it. I wonder how often bureaucracy kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. I don't know what it is about people that makes them want to be in charge even if they can't lead, or why their decisions to pursue careers in management don't include personal commitments to become true leaders. That seems to be part of the dark side of human nature. It's a shame that it's so prevalent, but it makes it much easier to compete if you really want to be a leader.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-40138307470445989342011-11-21T00:08:00.001-08:002011-12-05T17:57:22.457-08:0013 Excellent Habits That I've Kind of Learned<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was so mad that I cried. I had built a chair that wouldn't stand up. It had everything a chair needs: 3 legs (albeit of different lengths and positioned randomly), a seat (a square piece of plywood), and a nail to fasten each leg to the seat. I was maybe ten years old.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mom still mentions that story once every few years. I was a perfectionist back then, before I got lazy and easily satisfied. I was certain that my chair would work, and I had intended to gift it to my dad (as I vaguely recall). Alas it was not meant to be.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had no idea what I was doing beyond "building a chair." I didn't know the principles involved. Worse yet, I <i>thought </i>that I knew; I brought "<a href="http://www.billthelizard.com/2008/11/on-learning.html" target="_blank">second order incompetence</a>" to the table... er... chair. Having failed, I blamed the "stupid chair" and abandoned furniture making forever.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the end (a) I didn't have a working chair and (b) I was unhappy. The reason?<i> I was not tooled for the job</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life has turned out to be a lot like that. I turned 18 on my high school graduation day. Both by age and social reckoning I was an adult. Ha! Again I found myself inadequately tooled for the job.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few years--err--decades later I have figured out a few things. Some of them I have mastered--others I am still working on. (If I left out your favorites, feel free to mention them in the comments.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <u>Be happy</u>. This is supreme. If life has a purpose (and I believe it does) then being happy must be central to it. Being happy is hard for most people. Some confuse happiness with pleasure. Others think happiness is not their lot in life. Most people who are unhappy don't know the root cause. Figuring that out and fixing it should be priority 1. If you're unhappy, get happy as quickly as possible.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/artists/images/mcferrin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/artists/images/mcferrin.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at me--I'm happy...</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. </span><u style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eliminate stress</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Stress prevents happiness. Not all stress, mind you, but the kind that weakens you or leaves you with dull, pervasive of anxiety. The kind that makes you avoid the solution, only to get more stress</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. If you have that kind of stress, you can't be happy. That kind of stress doesn't give way to emancipating accomplishments. It just sits in your stomach generating acid. You have to get rid of it to be happy. Get help if you need it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <u>Get sufficient, regular sleep</u>. People don't sleep well for many reasons. Stress (#2), entertainment, work, apnea, insomnia, and physical ailments all threaten sleep. If you don't sleep regularly and sufficiently, you cannot be healthy and you won't be happy. (I know because I tried it during a decade of encroaching sleep apnea, which I finally remedied surgically.) Sleeping well, however, is strong medicine. Some benefits include:</span><br />
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">losing weight</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">thinking better</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">reducing headaches and other pains</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">preventing or shortening illness</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">reducing stress.</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you aren't getting enough sleep, nothing else will go right. Fix it today.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <u>Be healthy and fit</u>. Along with getting enough sleep, being <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/11/setting-direction-healthy-and-fit-5.html">healthy and fit</a> is necessary to be happy and productive. If you've ever gone from being a slob to being healthy and fit, you understand the qualitative difference. (Ask me how I know.) You might feel like you're doing well even though you're overweight, badly nourished, and out of shape, but you're nowhere near your potential. Life with out sore knees, injuries, and root canals is bliss compared to life with them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. <u>Fix yourself</u>. Finding the root cause of unhappiness requires being open to the truth. The truth is that you are the reason for most of your unhappiness. Many people see themselves in terms of what others do to them or what happens to them. They fall back on "why me?" Here's the good news: if you're in debt, unemployed, on the verge of divorce, and watching your kids meltdown, congratulations! You might be humble enough to explore yourself honestly. It's not easy. In fact it's brutal. Still, frank introspection during this time will empower you to improve your emotional, psychological, and spiritual health. If you make the most of it, you won't find yourself back in this position again later. For those who haven't hit bottom, don't wait until you get there. If something isn't right in your life, fix yourself. You can't fix the world, and even if you could, you're probably the one who needs fixing anyway.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6. <u>Meditate daily</u>. For life to be meaningful, you need to improve constantly. Maybe you need to develop better character (we all do), be a better spouse or parent, or improve your employment. Perhaps you just need to keep your brain lubricated or understand the world around you better. In any case, make time daily to ponder on the weighty matters of your life. Record your best thoughts and try to act on them. Don't live a static life. You'll regret it later.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7. <u>Don't confuse your ideal with your benchmark</u>. This is where I've been very weak until just a couple of years ago. I have been very into #5 and #6 for over a decade. The problem was that every time I found a solution to some life problem, I started setting goals. (I wrote previously about why this is a <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/10/goals-are-bad.html">bad idea</a>.) I would expect myself suddenly to live according to my new ideal, as if my capacity would magically, instantly increase. When my prevailing habits and weaknesses prevented me from instamagically performing at that new, ideal level, it was like building my chair all over again. Discouragement and frustration would set in, and I would "fail." These days, when I see a life tweak that will make me happier, I factor it into the <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/10/succeeding-by-setting-direction.html">direction that I've set for myself</a>, so that it will become part of my long-term lifestyle instead of a short-lived goal. If you know where you want to go, give yourself time to walk or run there. Don't insist on tele-porting.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">8. <u>Respond rather than react</u>. So if I were Goliath, this would be the stone embedded in my forehead. Reacting involves testosterone, adrenaline, your brain stem, and your major muscle groups. It requires no consideration and is tactical in the extreme. It doesn't factor in everything that needs to be factored in. Trust me, I know. When your pupils have dilated and your heart rate has increased, be quiet and take your hands off of the keyboard. As my grandfather used to say, "Put it in your hat for two weeks." Then, if it's worthwhile, <i>respond</i>. Responding, not reacting, will bring your full analytic and intuitive powers to bear on your situation. You'll win respect and probably get the results you want.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goliath never perfected "bullet time."</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">9. </span><u style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Treat everyone the same</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Living in Korea has made this more obvious to me. Even more than in the US, people here give great deference to people higher than themselves in the food chain, while neglecting people "beneath" them. You cannot be happy if you don't treat people as people. What goes around will come around. The more attention you get from people north of you, the more attention you should pay to people south of you. Otherwise you're a beggar. You can be a beggar or you can be a benefactor--your choice. If you chose to treat people badly because you think that they're not as important as you are, life will make you pay for it someday. My grandfather used to tell me that in life "there are givers and there are takers." I feel very fortunate to say that I did not learn this the hard way.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10. <u>Read</u>. Spend time reading things that will improve and inform you. My most recent boss, Dan Case, had an evil trick. He would put a book that he thought I needed to read on his desk. When I came into his office, he would be "busy" for a few minutes, so I would have time to rifle through the stuff on his desk. I always ended up "borrowing" the book that he had planted there. Even once I found out what he was up to, I would still go along with it because it was the best mentoring I've ever had. The books he tricked me into reading honed my mind and shaped my character. From him I learned to read as a primary means of fixing myself. (See #5.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">11. <u>Prize the early morning hours</u>. Learn how to go to bed early and capitalize on the hours between 6 am and 9 am. You will be king of all you survey. (Make sure you get enough sleep though--go to bed early. See #3.) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My dad told me years ago that these are <i>the </i>productive hours of the day.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He was right. Most of my peers work from 9 to whatever, which gives me three hours to get the jump on them. After that, it's the corporate distraction machine.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">12. <u>Say and do important things</u>. I learned this from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Should-Boss-Listen-You/dp/0787996181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321887353&sr=8-1" target="_blank">James Lukaszewski's book</a>. (It was one of my boss Dan's cunning plants.) People spend most of their time doing stuff that doesn't matter and then chattering about it. If you say and do important things, you get results and respect. Initially this means you'll be quiet and idle because you're usual agenda is stupid and useless. Then you'll figure out that you have a main event every day that will make you succeed even if you don't do anything else. Focus on that. I talked more about this idea in my <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/11/top-5-tips-from-4-hour-workweek.html" target="_blank">review</a> of "The 4-hour Workweek."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">13. <u>Embrace "No."</u> Two letters can free you from the Matrix. By learning how to say "no" you can eliminate most or all of your effort that doesn't actually produce value. "No" takes a lot of forms. Sometimes in involves delegation. Other times it involves postponing. Often, though, it just involves saying "no" (in the most appropriate way possible). You can't say and do important things until you learn how to embrace "no." It's better to spend an hour figuring out how to say "no" than it is to spend that same hour doing stupid work. At least you will have developed your ability to say "no." Say "no" to 80 percent of the stuff that comes your way, and you'll be much more successful and have much less stress. (See #2.) Nothing bad will happen as a result. Try it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So those are some of the tools that I wish I had acquired before I became a "grown-up." They've served me very well to the extent that I've incorporated them into my life. I never have gone back and tried to build a chair. I think I might just do that. With four legs. No nails. Maybe a back.</span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-2593974548995299962011-11-02T01:04:00.000-07:002011-11-25T03:45:05.298-08:00Top 5 Tips from "The 4-hour Workweek"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I recently read "<a href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/">The 4-Hour Workweek</a>" from Tim Ferriss. It had some really good ideas that I've started using and that seem to be paying off. I'm really only talking about three chapters. The book frankly has a lot of "You too could be lying on a beach in the Bahamas" kind of hype that sells to somebody but not me. That said, it was worth the price just for the information that applied to me.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <u>Most of what you do is a waste of time</u>. I can see some people reacting badly to this, but I've always known, even when I've been most productive, that I spend the majority of my time in worthless meetings, yacking with people, and multitasking between stupid email, stupid IMs, and stupid social media. Tim expresses it in terms of the 80/20 rule--you generate 80 percent of your value in 20 percent of your time. The other 80 percent? Wasted dealing with stuff that barely matters.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tim's whole idea is to eliminate that time so that (a) you build a reputation for churning out only high-quality, high-value work and (b) you have the remainder of the time to do with as you please.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He reverses the 80/20 idea as well, encouraging us to eliminate the 20% of stuff that causes 80% of our problems. To sum up, just get rid of it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. <u>Interruptions must be eliminated</u>. He has several good ideas for eliminating interruptions. Just to list a few:</span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Get rid of inbox notifications of every kind.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Put IM on do not disturb or turn it off.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When someone calls, tell them you have another call in just a few minutes, and ask them what you can do quickly to help them.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let calls go to voice mail.</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Actually I can't remember whether these are all his or whether I added something. In any case, I applied these suggestions liberally and nothing suffered as a result. Almost all interruptions are not time sensitive and most of them are not even important.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <u>Block out high-value time in the morning</u>. During the most valuable hours of the morning, put everything on "Do Not Disturb" and turn off alerts and indicators. Use that time to pound out your most valuable contributions. Don't let anything of low value invade that time. Make sure that your highest value job for that day is done when you're finished. Doing this consistently will make you shine as your work is done well and early every time.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <u>Artificially constrain your time</u>. This was the most original concept I found in these chapters. Tim reflects on assignments that he's had to complete at the last minute. We've all experienced this: something is due now that requires days of work. Somehow we get it done, complaining and stress not withstanding. How did we get it done? Tim says that we focus only on the critical pieces, throwing out everything that isn't necessary. We don't waste time on tangents, satisfying curiosity, or dilly dallying.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is important because it is the exact complement of what we are after in the first place. We want to focus on important stuff to save time, but constraining our time helps us focus on important stuff.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I really liked this idea.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. <u>Dang, I don't have a #5</u>. I accidentally combined two things earlier on. In any case, I recommend the book highly as a fresh way to approach time management and productivity, even if it only means reading a minor portion of the book.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you've read the book, let me know which of these ideas worked for you.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-53116952537931798192011-10-09T08:14:00.000-07:002011-11-25T03:46:12.478-08:00Goals Are Bad<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Goals are bad. Maybe not all goals, but most goals are definitely bad. I spent 20 years failing at goals <i>by definition</i>, i.e. "A goal without a deadline is not a goal, it's a wish." Okay, so my goals have been wishes. I've still failed at them. That all ended a few years ago, though. I'll get to that.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right now people are preparing to make New Year's resolutions. By preparing I mean eating a lot more and exercising less during the Holiday Binge. I read in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/fashion/01change.html?pagewanted=all">NYT</a> that "Research shows that about 80 percent of people who make resolutions on Jan. 1 fall off the wagon by Valentine’s Day." Of course that's garbage, because it's more like 95% by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/">Groundhog Day</a>. Worse, they're the same goals that failed last year.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't drive angry. Don't drive angry!</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why do we fail at goals so badly? Were you paying attention? GOALS ARE BAD. That's why. They're like drugs. We feel good when we're setting them. Then we finish setting them and the misery sets in. Soon we hit bottom and the the only thing that will make us feel good again is some more goal setting. We should have an anonymous group for goal-setting addicts. Or we should just quit, cold-turkey, which is what I've done.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"So you just do nothing?" No, I do a lot. I just don't use goals to manage my endorphin and serotonin levels. "But it's impossible to maximize accomplishments without goals!" No, it's impossible for most people to succeed <i>with</i> goals. I'll explain why.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the way, I'm an expert on this topic. For ten years I failed royally at the Franklin Day Planner system. It's brilliant, and it's leather. It works like this:</span><br />
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Determine your core values.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Set long-term goals to achieve your core values.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Set medium-term goals to achieve your long-term goals.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Set short-term goals to achieve your medium-term goals.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Create Daily Tasks to achieve your short-term goals.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Knock out your Daily Tasks consistently.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thereby achieve your short-term goals.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thereby achieve your medium-term goals.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thereby achieve your long-term goals.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thereby become a values-oriented, successful, happy person.</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can chuck the whole <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus">chiasmus</a>, though. If you miss a daily task, simply forward it to the next day. That was the part that they designed for me.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are six reasons that goals are bad:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <u>Goals are largely arbitrary</u>. We pick numbers and dates that have nothing to do with our desires and capacities, which will determine our ability to deliver.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. <u>Goals are rigid</u>. They don't allow for our priorities and interests to shift, or for us to get bored or lazy.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <u>Goals are cheap</u>. The ambition required to set goals is significantly less than the ambition required to accomplish them.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <u>Most goals are negative</u>. "Stop eating garbage." "Stop yelling at the kids." The problem is that, like magnetic repulsion, the farther you get from the problem the weaker the motivation gets.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. <u>Goals cause imaginary baseline shift</u>. Our goals represent an ideal; they depict how would behave if we weren't behaving the way we do now. But once we set a goal, we treat it like it's our new baseline. Of course we can't sustain it, or we would have been doing so already. Eventually we come up short and feel like losers.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6. <u>Goals report progress as failure</u>. When we miss a milestone on the way to accomplishing our goal, we think that we've failed. This saps our motivation, weakens our resolve, and sends us on the path to abandoning our goal entirely, which happens around Valentine's day if you believe the NYT.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That last reason is the very worst. Imagine that you decide to do 100 sit-ups every day. You do great for two weeks.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Then, in week three, you miss Wednesday and Friday. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> If you didn't have a goal, you would be 500 sit-ups ahead for the week. You, however, have a goal. You are 200 sit-ups in the red, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">YOU JUST FAILED. Your motivation will wane, and by Valentines day you won't be doing any sit-ups at all, chocolate abundance notwithstanding.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://petitemarieorganics.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/chocolate.jpg?w=229&h=300" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://petitemarieorganics.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/chocolate.jpg?w=229&h=300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nom nom nom.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the way, in Korea, women give men chocolate for Valentine's day. 대한민국!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few of you are thinking, "Matt, what are you, some kind of loser? Where's your positive mental attitude?" If you're the A-type folks who can do anything through brute force of will, I salute you. (Hi Mom! Hi Danny!) If you're just self-improvement seminar junkies, you need to believe that you can have your accomplishments without beating yourself up and without spending a fortune to learn new jargon once a year.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: With what might one replace goals?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A: Setting direction.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I determine the direction I want to go in key areas of life and I do whatever I can reasonably do, whenever I can do it, to nudge myself in that direction. I'm talking about daily, deliberate, introspective refinement within the bounds of reality. This approach yields long-term lifestyle change as well as understanding and satisfaction. I'm going to blog on this topic for a bit. Somewhere out there some guy is getting an ulcer because he just forwarded eleven tasks in his day planner and I hope I can get to him before he has to order a page refill.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Update:</b> The post on Succeeding by Setting Direction is <a href="http://miguknom.blogspot.com/2011/10/succeeding-by-setting-direction.html">here</a>.</span></div>
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</div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0Jamsil 2(i)-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea37.511245174176608 127.0873723782882537.505251174176607 127.07435387828825 37.517239174176609 127.10039087828825tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-31532619917180493192009-10-22T20:41:00.001-07:002011-11-25T03:50:40.868-08:00Regarding Bridges<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A bridge burned is a bridge crossed.</span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-73268198963918953702009-10-22T20:32:00.000-07:002011-11-25T03:50:59.529-08:00Winners and Quitters<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Winners never quit, until they win, and then they'll probably quit.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Quitters never win, except, at least, in the aforementioned case.</span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-13606885252938832382009-01-26T12:34:00.001-08:002011-11-25T03:50:24.729-08:00The Gambler<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI'; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The gambler gazed heavenward.</span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Lord, help me win this hand,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And I will NEVER gamble again!"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">His take he did publicly attribute</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To his newfound "Lucky Prayer."</span></span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-55311727399864389032009-01-26T12:30:00.001-08:002011-11-25T03:51:22.739-08:00The Optimist<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Half empty, or half full?" he asked.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mind fixed on his glass.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I might have merely answered him,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And let the moment pass.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this simplistic query has</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That sophomoric hue,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And thus my mouth began to speak</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What my mind began to do.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Your glass grows somewhat wider, sir,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As t'ward the top you go.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suppose you mean by volume and</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This formula you know:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One-third pi times r-squared h</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Less the portion left unseen.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And thus your line made halfway up</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Does not quite lie 'between.'</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Or if perchance your measurement</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is from the table up,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A closer look will help you see</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The thick base of your cup.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus if your half-way line is found</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By simply halving height</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You'll need the ruler in the glass</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to get its placement right."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not amused, he thus reproved,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Don't trifle with equation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm set to learn your view on life</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From this interpretation."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I added water, 'til it spilled,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then I poured some more.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"My view on life, my kindly friend,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is a cup that runneth o'er."</span></div>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-20971584732631172292007-11-19T23:36:00.000-08:002011-11-25T03:51:38.868-08:00Attention Money Changers<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please stop putting my coins on top of my dollars.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-41919462504114192672007-11-19T23:34:00.000-08:002011-11-25T03:51:50.071-08:00Regarding Bullets<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A bullet dodged is a bullet fired.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-32604225171725408332007-11-19T23:33:00.000-08:002011-11-25T03:52:22.409-08:00Regarding Incompetence<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Working with incompetent people is like having a water balloon toss, except that instead of water the balloons are filled with diarrhea, and you never get to throw first.</span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-15229526430385057722007-11-19T23:30:00.000-08:002011-11-25T03:52:41.924-08:00Matt's Theory of Infinite Force<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An infinite amount of force applied to a nearly empty toothpaste tube will produce an infinite amount of toothpaste.</span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164793180454834479.post-67104152141588318342007-11-19T23:25:00.000-08:002011-11-25T03:53:09.903-08:00Matt's First Law of Probability<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A coin dropped in front of a vending machine will tend to bounce under the vending machine.</span>miguknomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03993843329294957708noreply@blogger.com0