Posts Tagged best practices
it’s the culture, stupid!
image by syamastro, flickr artist
blog. Â wiki. Â ms excel file. Â ms project plan. Â ms sharepoint page. Â basecamp project.
they’re all tools. Â while people may prefer one tool over another, whichever tool it is will not take hold unless the culture there supports it.
i see a lot of proposed changes to current work streams and business processes fail because — even with support from leadership — the user base rejects those changes.  there could be a few reasons why:
- it’s not simple. Â if the change is convoluted, adding extra steps to the workflow process or time to complete tasks, people are going to reject it – even if they agree in principle that the proposed new method is “right”
- they don’t understand it. Â if you make a change that people don’t understand the reasoning behind, they will have a hard time accepting and implementing it. Â #1 sign that you made boo-boos? Â hearing employees say, “uh.. why are we doing this again?”
- it doesn’t fit. Â if your changes contradict the way you do business, it’s only going to lead to confusion and frustration, and ultimately it will be abandoned.
if you’ve tried making changes to the way your team or organization does work in the past and failed, check the process again. Â look at what you’re trying to do, and see what your people think about it. Â when new tools don’t take hold, don’t discredit their use.
it’s the culture, stupid!
keep the tools and fix the culture.
important words if you’re being arrested, or a consultant
“anything you say can and will be held against you…”
those are some important words of warning to heed if you’re being arrested… or a consultant.
as client-facing staff, it’s hard to balance honesty, integrity, and some good old-fashioned self preservation. Â during the meeting i referenced in my previous post, a senior associate shared with me a lesson that i learned all too well earlier this evening on the day this post was authored: give the least amount of information you can, then move on.
you can use a hammer, but can you build a house?
for some reason, people think that because they know how to set up an account on twitter and facebook that they can use social media. Â but just because you can use a hammer, does that mean you can build a house?
social media isn’t just the tool. Â blogs, microblogs, wikis, forums, are all just the hammer. Â you can’t build a foundation, much less an entire house with just a hammer. Â there ought to be a plan, or a blueprint before you start using social media. Â understand what it is, and what it’s about before setting out on this journey of ‘modernizing’ your organization.
don’t set up a blog because you want comments (first!1!!! lolz!), and don’t set up a twitter or facebook account because you want the most followers [seth's blog]. Â you should be setting up a blog and twitter account to communicate with your readers and followers. Â remember that the whole premise behind social media is the social aspect of it.
before you start building, you should have an overall communications plan or strategy (your foundation), and know what your end state is (the blueprints). Â what are you trying to accomplish? Â an increase of 10% in your sales? Â an increase of 20% in brand loyalty? Â to increase your workforce by 5% in each region?.. to decrease your workforce by 5% in each region?
just like any good construction firm, you better have inspections along the way. Â identify the metrics you want to follow, and measure them throughout the process so you can tell if things are actually working or not. Â not getting the results you expected? is the third bathroom costing too much money? Â it could be time to change your approach (or at least lower your expectations).
you can’t show up to the job site with nothing but a hammer — and you can’t integrate social media into your organization just because you ‘know twitter’.  a lot goes into building a house, just like a lot should go into your social media and enterprise 2.0 plans.
wanted: information
never assume that information you have is unwanted.
this isn’t a poker game in the wild west. Â you don’t need to guard your hand from the eyes of everyone else. Â it only hurts your organization.
just because someone sent you an email, or someone told you in a conversation, or you saw it on the internet — that doesn’t mean that you’re the only one who will find value in that information as well.
in this knowledge based economy the world is growing into, organizations need to manage their information better.   knowledge management seeks to answer the questions of who has the information, who needs it, and how do you bring those people together.  that’s the premise behind enterprise 2.0: collaboration is key.
at other times, the value is simply in that someone knows that you know it.  if you need help in decomposing that sentence, just think of yourself as a project manager or task lead.  quite frankly, they probably don’t care about what information you have — but it’s important to managers to know that you at least have information.  it’s there.  it’s out in the open.  it’s available.
i’m not sure why it is, but — much like the card game at the local saloon in the wild west — there is a lot of information guarding that happens in organizations.  we get split from our main team into smaller project teams with a specific focus.  then, we put our heads down and start working, looking around to share information only when asked for it.  but when we do this, we’re leaving out the knowledge, expertise, experience, and diversity of thought and opinion of a large portion of our own team, and an even larger portion of our entire organization.
the person who may be able to help break open the case might not be on your immediate team; they could be halfway across the nation (or the world). Â but you may never know, because you’ve been guarding your information from the eyes of anyone who hasn’t asked for it.
business isn’t a crazy game of poker; put your cards on the table. Â why? Â because it may just surprise you who has the winning hand.
to get where you’re going…
image by elvez40, flickr artist
… they say you have to know where you’ve been.
i say, to get where you’re going — you have to know where you’re going.
stupid, right? Â or is it?
whenever you start some sort of new venture, you have to know what the end state is. you have to set some sort of goal. otherwise, when do you know that you’ve gotten to where you want to be? when do you call it quits and move on to the next challenge?
5 reasons your presentations suck
image by HikingArtist.com, flickr artist
my first “5 reasons..” post seemed to be fairly popular, so — ever the entrepreneur — i figured i’d capitalize on that success with my second installment. this particular list takes a look at your presentations.
if you’re a consultant like me, you live in powerpoint. you may even begin speaking in bullets. you turn everything you touch into simple, easy to read, easy to understand outlines of information.. even when it’s probably better to choose some other form of communication.
hey! we all do it (don’t lie. just fess up already). the problem is that many of us were never given the proper training, or the education that we did get on giving presentations was a bad one. so i hope that you take a look at the reasons after the jump here and make the necessary adjustments for your next presentation.
“the frank sinatra rule”
image by Matheus Van Lobatos, flickr artist
as i see it (that sounds familiar [looks at blog title] oh yeah!…), there’s one rule of management which trumps them all. it’s what i like to call “the frank sinatra rule.” it’s very simple. Â it says: “if you’re going to delegate, be sure that you delegate all the way.” many managers struggle with this key capability. people in power want to have all the power, but share the responsibility.
quite frank-ly (see what i did there?) — that situation is hardly ever going to work.
when you delegate, there has got to also be a delegation of authority as well as responsibility. if you don’t empower those folks underneath of you to make their own decisions, then you’ve only come half-way. not to mention, from a strictly business and financial perspective, you’re paying someone many thousands of dollars to be a “deputy project manager” or “functional lead” when you could have saved that money and gotten yourself an administrative professional or intern at a far lesser cost to handle things like scheduling meetings and organizing status reports.
5 reasons your meetings suck
photo by tiarescott, flickr artist
i couldn’t tell you the number of times people have said to me, “i wish i wasn’t in meetings all day; i’d be able to get some actual work done for a change.” if i had a nickel for each time someone moaned or groaned about having to go to a meeting, i’d have easily paid my student loans off by now. it’s no secret: meetings suck.
but they don’t have to!
if a meeting you’re in is ever boring, or uninteresting, or leaves you totally disengaged — you’re doing it wrong. read through these 5 reasons your meetings suck, and learn from them. Read the rest of this entry »
priorities don’t work. period.
photo by stress-relief, via flickr
in my experience, setting priorities doesn’t work.
ever.
why? for one simple reason: 98% of the time, the priority is set arbitrarily. “we need you to take care of this. karen says it’s urgent.” so should you stop what you’re doing and take care of what karen asked? it depends.
“is this task on the critical path?” — whether yes or no, this answer should be the primary metric for driving your efforts. often times a manager, or the client, or someone else who may not be involved in the finer aspects of a project will ask for you to do something that doesn’t reflect the core goals of the project. just because someone “wants” something doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing for them. the critical path is a map of current tasks and their interdependencies. if one task on the critical path slips, you’re now looking down the barrel of a loaded gun called schedule creep.
more after the jump.
stories: they’re not just for bedtime anymore
photo by JoeyChong, flickr artist
one of the most important communication tools is storytelling. we tell stories to entertain. we tell stories to enlighten. Â stories help us in so many ways.
here are just a few ways that you should use stories to help achieve your goals…
tell stories in your presentations!
when you have presentations, nothing drives home your point(s) better than stories. always build up to something. lay the foundations for the information you’re talking about. show the progression and how one idea builds upon the other, then — in the end — bring it all together.  ”here we take a look at the individual units. next, we’re able to compare the information for those units for a single point in time. now that we have information for one point in time, we can combine those points to create a trend and forecast out the future.” create a commentary and find a voice track that supplements and enhances your story. and above all else, use metaphors! there’s no better way to introduce a concept that’s foreign and may make no sense to someone than through relating that information to a concept they do know.
more after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »