The Regenerate Web

This continues my conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
Can you talk about the necessity of integrating marketing elements with operational reality to drive new ideas into existing and emerging customer segments?

Jaynie:
Our research shows that 95% of companies are not focused on the things that matter most to their customers and so their resource allocation is not aligned operationally with delivering what matters most to their customers.

A tour operator spent lots of time and money chasing industry awards only to learn that it matters last on a list of 20 attributes to their clients. But would-be travelers wanted solid knowledge delivered by their destination specialists. This company invested in everyone who sold a “continent” to make sure they had traveled to the countries sold and had extensive ongoing training relative to the vendors used. Cross training, then became the next operational investment. This company is booking at a better rate than nearly all of their competition even in a down turn.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

Next Monday, we kick off our next Subject Area in Working Leadership Online, Managing Time, Managing Yourself.. Based on David Allen's Getting Things Done, we will explore ten Time Management Disciplines. You select the one or two that work the best for you.

Working Leadership Online is growing. For our Friends and Family, we are holding fifty slots available for our Free Introductory Membership (and 22 are already filled). If you would like to secure one of these slots, just follow this link.

Working Leadership Online Free Trial

Here is what we know about our community.

1. Our participants have a day job, as a manager.
2. Our participants are really busy.
3. Our participants want to be more effective, now.

This is Real
Working Leadership Online is practical. There are no quizzes or tests. There is no make-work. This is not extra work. The Field Work is real.

At Your Pace
Participants login on their schedule.

Unforgettable
The problem with most training programs is they stop. After a few classes, it's over, good luck. Working Leadership Online goes year-round. It changes the way you think about your role as a manager.

How This Works
Your first Subject Area is on us. Then you decide. We are holding the next 50 slots. Word is already on the street, so we expect to close this offer in the next few days.

Here's Some Feedback

This program is anti-matter to today's barage of costly management solutions. The program covered a great deal of critical leadership material that managers can immediately benefit from. -Cathy Darby

Some people live online and I'm not one of them. I'd much rather be in a human presence. Having said that, after Tom's first response he won me over. His honesty and feedback is invaluable. -Jane Hein

There's a lot of valuable information in this course that isn't easily available elsewhere, and the coaching from Tom in addition to accountability for actually carrying out the assignments makes for a solid learning experience. Keep up the good work. The online format makes the course accessible, and makes it easy to put into practice directly in a work environment. -Erik LaBianca

www.workingleadership.com

Here is the schedule for the coming year.

2010 Subject Area Schedule (Total 15 Subject Areas in 2010)

• Jan 11 - Planning - Your 2010 Business Plan - COMPLETED
• Feb 1 - Goal Setting - The Essence of Time Span - COMPLETED
• Feb 22 - Decision Making - Time Span of Discretion - COMPLETED
• Mar 15 - Managing Time - Managing Yourself
• Apr 5 - Spring Break
• Apr 12 - Communication - Mineral Rights Conversation
• May 3 - Delegation - Leveraging Time Span Capability
• May 24 - Control Systems and Feedback Loops
• Jun 14 - Team Problem Solving - Time Span Inside a Team
• Jul 5 - Summer Break
• Jul 12 - Coaching - Bringing Value as a Manager
• Aug 2 - Coaching Underperformance - Time Span and the Employment Contract
• Aug 23 - Coaching High Performance - Time Span and Maximum Capability
• Sep 13 - Fall Break
• Sep 20 - Managerial Authorities - Time Span and Accountability
• Oct 11 - Managerial Authorities - Time Span and Hiring Talent
• Nov 1- Time Span and Effectiveness
• Nov 22 - Break (Thanksgiving USA)
• Nov 29 - Bringing Out the Best In People
• Dec 20-Jan 9, 2011 Winter Break

Reserve your spot today - Working Leadership Free Trial

This continues my conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
As companies expand their product and service offerings to fill holes in the market, created by retreating competitors, or even retreating suppliers, what should companies consider now to update their expanded strategies?

Jaynie:
A company should focus its resource allocation, future strategies and internal accountabilities on what the customer thinks is most important. A commercial real estate client of ours has 200 buildings in which they lease office space. Research showed tenants seeking office space overwhelmingly wanted “security” above all else. My real estate client was floored… This means, maybe they take a few bucks from, say landscaping, and add it to the security systems budget. Research often catches companies off-balance when their previously held belief is turned upside down. This real estate client was certain that the number one attribute valued by their clients was “location, location, location”….it was important, but not, first, second or third. It came in fourth. Times they are a-changing.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

Brad Egeland has a post about status reports. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, along with many others. Brad has a nice list of items that should be in a status report.

• Project title
• Project description
• Contact information for key project personnel
• Quick view high-level status on project, budget, and schedule
• Recent tasks completed
• Tasks in progress
• Upcoming tasks
• Status of all change requests
• Detailed budget status
• Issues status
• Risks status

Here's my experience in a variety of project domains, ranging from Enterprise IT, heavy construction, defense and space, industrial projects, and other domains.

Fundamental Reason for a Status Report

A status report should do just what it says - report the status of the project. So what are the primary elements of the project status?

• Are we on schedule?
• Are we on budget?
• Are the deliverables we said we would deliver compliant with their technical performance measures?
• Do we have all we need to stay on budget, on schedule, and meet the technical performance requirements?
• Do we know the risks and do we have a plan to mitigate or retire them?

This is the status of the project.

Here's the real problem with Status Reports

Status reports should report progress to plan. Tasks and the execution of tasks are not measures of progress. The production of deliverables are the measure of progress. So Brad's list of tasks in progress, upcoming tasks, and completed tasks are no measures of progress.

This is a common mistake of confusing effort with results. "We're completing all these tasks, so we must be making progress."

It's results that measure progress, not the effort.

So the status report must state in clear and concise terms, what results were accomplished during the period of measurement. But not just any results, but the Planned Results. So this means we must know what results were planned. This means we must have a Plan. A Plan that says what is "planned" to be accomplished.

Steve Berczuk has a lovely discussion of Manage Your Project Portfolio. You can see his review here.

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Geoff Crane of Paper Cut Project Monitoring described his TwitterView with Jhaymee Wilson. I had not heard of a "TwitterView" before this. It seems to be an interview over Twitter.

I've been interviewed twice this year (2010), once by PMI for an upcoming article and other time for a commercial Blog. Both times were around an hour on the phone and an editorial session after to do the "fact check" and final edits of the interviews.

What came to mind with Geoff's post is doing an interview with two tuna fish cans and a string.

We did this as kids. It's half duplex, low fidelity, highly distorted. Fun but not very effective.

Endless studies have shown that communication between people is largely through body language and expressions. Then comes tonality, and finally the words themselves.

Now I enjoy Geoff's Blog very much and the people he points us too as well.

But I still have not gotten my mind around the notion of Twitter as a communication channel for anything other than exchanging short - almost context free - messages. 

I live on IM with our field staff. It's a way to see who's in, a quick check up on something that can be resolved in a very few sentences - like ONE. For example - "who's using the WebEx account?" "Hey Matt, I'm headed to 59th facility, you gonna be there for lunch?" "Hannah, you coming to Breck this weekend with your roommates?" "Honey, stop by Safeway and get two bunches of green onions." Stuff like that.

Serious adult communication seems to require a wider channel.

Managing projects requires an even wider channel. In narrow channels we have, no hand waving, no doodling on the reports, no looking at multiple pieces of paper at the same time, no sensing of the facial expressions to see if we're actually exchanging information rather than just textual characters.

Someone please tell me what am I missing here, where the PM2.0 advocates claim this is the "next big thing," in the domain of Project Management?

I like to work with recruiters. I’ve used them in the past. I refer people to them. But I am missing something here.

I just got off the phone with a recruiter. He was using some kind of a phone, either VOIP or a cell phone, but it cut in and out. I had to spell someone’s name for him twice. He didn’t hear me. I finally stopped the call because I couldn’t stand it. Stupid recruiter trick #1: Use a phone that makes someone unable to actually converse with you.

The other trick happened last week. A recruiter emailed me, looking for an “agile developer.” He said “rate is based on velocity.” This is so wrong in so many dimensions, I thought I had misread the email. I asked him. Nope, that’s what he meant. His reply, “Our client is not basing the rate on experience, but on how well and efficient the candidate’s code is.  Velocity = Productivity. ” Stupid recruiter trick #2: not understanding agile and pushing the hiring manager to explain what the manager is really looking for.

OMG. I thought that with the depression/recession, stupid recruiters would be unable to keep their jobs. I guess not.

Recruiters and hiring managers: personal velocity is meaningless, especially on an agile team. The team works together to deliver features. If you persist in measuring people’s productivity, they will game the system by always estimating stories as slightly larger than they are, or breaking stories down into tasks and assigning very large numbers to those tasks.

I won’t be referring people to these guys. TSTL. (In fiction, that’s a character who is Too Stupid To Live.)

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This continues my conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
In an attempt to scratch out precious points in market share, which will multiply during the recovery, what changes should companies design into their marketing strategies?

Jaynie:
Companies should delete the “blah, blah, blah” cliched messages of yesterday and substitute with solid metrics that speak to reliable past performance. Unlike a mutual fund, past performance is the best indicator of whether or not you can deliver in the future. We need to build confidence and remove risk, more than ever, right now, in their buying decision.

So, we don’t say…”we will deliver in 24 hours”, that is a promise. No one believes promises anymore. But if you say, we have measured on time delivery for the last 3 years and are tracking at 98.2% , customers know you hold folks accountable for it, so you have more credibility.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

Nancy Sebring can have a free, signed copy of SWAT - Seize the Accomplishment if she wants it.

I think she could use it.

On Saturday, the Superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools was put on the defensive.  The district is forced to make some unpleasant budget cuts; however, a disproporationate number of jobs cut came from elementary music and fine arts.  (Didn't see a single athletic position take it in the jock strap, though.)

Sebring explained her position of the situation as follows (compliments of the Des Moines Register):

Superintendent Nancy Sebring expressed frustration with having to make the cuts. "Those courses are absolutely essential because they enhance learning," she said.

But, she added, the district also has a commitment to making sure students pass core subjects and meet federal requirements. This year, nine schools in the district were identified as persistently low-achieving schools.

Has Sebring perhaps overlooked the well known correlation that music and art CONTRIBUTE to higher scores at core subjects?  Simple cause and effect.

It amazes me when those in the position of decision-making power fail to see the obvious connections, the proven relationship between inputs and outputs, when they are right under their noses.  It happens in business all the time, so this one isn't surprising either.  Managers make short-sighted decisions because the almighty dollar says so.  There must be other creative solutions to allow their elementary students to continue in the arts and music so they WILL get higher scores in math, English, and science.

If you have 20 minutes, watch the following video.  You'll see what I mean.  If you have children in the Des Moines school district, perhaps you should attend tomorrow's school board meeting and let them know what you think.

(One note:  it is not wholly up to schools to educate children in the fine arts.  Those children whose parents are committed to the arts and/or can afford to supplement the school's shortfalls will do fine.  The others?  Hmmmm.)

And, Nancy, your book is waiting.

If you think we are at the bottom of this recession and can breathe a sigh of relief, think again. Year over year, we may see improvement in sales volume, but even as your revenue builds, there is still whiplash in this market. So, I spent some time with my friend Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
As we make this slow turn from recession to recovery, what are the biggest mistakes companies make attempting to re-engage their markets, the ones, by necessity, they have contracted away from?

Jaynie:
Most companies are delivering yesterday's value proposition, using old messages, and assuming their customers and prospects have the same buying criteria they did two, three and five years ago. Markets change and certainly with this recession, each company has redefined what it values in making purchasing decisions.

For example, we have seen, across the board, in the last year, market research showing that, despite the industry, many buyers want to know the vendor/supplier they choose has strong financial stability. Yet, few marketing and sales messages address this key attribute. We have seen prospects tell our clients, first and foremost, they want to receive easy-to-understand and accurate billing. Simple.

All this makes sense in view of the recession, yet few companies take the time to learn what their customers truly value in today’s world.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

If a profession is to sharpen its skills, to develop new skills and applications, and to gain increasing respect and credibility, then theory and practice must be closely related – Martin Shub

Why is it those starting with theory have a difficult time moving the practice. Book authors with notional diagrams, descriptions of suggested actions in the absence of real examples?

Why is it those starting with practice fail to understand their experiences may in fact be just personal anecdotes, not transferable to other domains or even contexts inside their own domain?

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Hello Sir,
I am doing M.B.A (Finance) in University of Wales, Newport. I need some advice. What are the different ways to improve Managerial Skills? Could you please narrate this topic. I am a very big favourite of this blog.

Thanking you, -Yatish Kumar

Response:
Yatish, this is a very serious question. And it's not just how we improve Managerial Skills. How do we learn anything? We can sit in classrooms, we can review case studies, we can study theories. But how do we integrate that into our daily behavior that makes us more effective?

Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal is adamant about how managers learn. "MBA classrooms overemphasize the science of management while ignoring its art and denigrating its craft, leaving a distorted impression of its practice. This calls for another approach to management education, whereby practicing mangers learn from their own experience. We need to build the art and the craft back into management education, and into management itself."

I first read Mintzberg more than a decade ago. He is likely the single most powerful influence on the way we structured Working Leadership Online. It's not about case studies, it's about you. It's about you, working as a manager, in real life, struggling with limited resources, under the pressures of time, the recession, a toxic team member. It's not Leadership. It's Working Leadership.

Yatish, I am enrolling you in a Free Trial. And I am extending the same to the readers of Management Skills Blog. This is my Friends and Family program and the community is growing.

Working Leadership Free Trial

Our next Subject Area kicks off on March 15, Managing Time, Managing Yourself. Hope to see you online. -Tom Foster

"Great looking list," I commended. "So, how do you work it?" We had been talking about Marie's project list and her daily to-do lists.

Her brow furrowed. "I look at the list, and really, I just start working on whatever I think is easiest to get done right then. Or I try to pick off an A priority. But here's the rub. We just spent half an hour working on this list, and it's likely I won't even look at it again until next Tuesday. I don't use it to focus, I mean, I don't even look at it. And I don't know why. And then something falls through the cracks."

"What do you use to focus?" I asked.

"My calendar. I have a lot of meetings," she replied. "I live and die by my calendar. I look at it ten times a day."

"Then, stop making to-do lists," I challenged.

"But, I thought, as a manager, that I had to make to-do lists? It's one of those big Time Management ideas."

I smiled. "That's the trap everyone falls into. There are only about seven Time Management principles and the dirty little secret is that you cannot use them all, some principles won't work for you and you won't work some principles. So stop. Stop doing what doesn't work and stop feeling guilty about it."

"So, if to-do lists don't work for me, how do I keep things from falling through the cracks?"

"What do you use to focus?" I repeated.

"My calendar?"

"Then, everything goes into your calendar."

"Won't my calendar get kind of messy?"

"What does it matter? You look at it ten times a day. It's what helps you focus."