2008 August

Three simple words can direct a lot

August 31, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

So many choices, every day.

Out of the blue, three words popped up recently that are helping me to quickly decide how to use the always-limited resources of attention, energy, money and time.

Here are the three words that are working for me:

- Clear

- Create

- Connect

This simple structure is helping focus action and move me closer to achieving several significant goals (including writing a book…the first of several, I hope).

Perhaps these three words don’t work for you.

If not, find the ones that do. Use those.

Whatever you do, keep your eye and your resources focused on your priorities. Find simple ways to experience, to do the things that really matter to you.

Time is marching on.

Filed Under: Musings, People at Work, Serendipity

Calm in the middle of the storm

August 29, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Calm in the middle of the storm, originally uploaded by jcgr.

Action, energy, disarray, some dismay.

But there…in the center of the action…calm.

In this particular case, Abby, our older Golden Retriever, waits for the crowd around her to settle into a clear direction. She has the presence. She has the time. Things will be OK. Ultimately, they always are.

What do you do to find your calm, your presence in the middle of a storm of chaos or uncertainty?

Filed Under: Images, Musings, People at Work

Creating in the space between constraints

August 27, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Maybe it’s the game of pushing against the boundaries, but some of the most creative ideas and solutions can happen within limits.

Here are just a few thoughts:

A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
Thomas Huxley

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Horace

What is not constrained is not creative.
Philip Johnson-Laird

Man built most nobly when their limitations were at their greatest.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Know your limits. Also know how to break them.
Geraint Straker

In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer knows what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.
Henri Matisse

Just a thought.

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes

Sometimes boundaries lead to great results

August 27, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Really.

Put some borders, some edges on your project or your field of play. Too much freedom can make people uncomfortable. Unable to gain traction. To see progress. To get results.

My father used to say that projects needed "ends in view," the tangible goals people knew they were working to. But they also need the edges of the track, the field, the pool.

Really.

A good friend swam – or meant to – from Alcatraz recently with her daughters and a friend.

The moms were celebrating the milestone of 2008 birthdays divisible by 10. The high school daughters? They were along for the shared experience, and to test themselves to see if they could do it. They weren’t sure they could.

All four women were used to the mileage of the swim. They were very used to that.

The moms, though, were not used to the chaos of the waves, the wind, the current. They were also frightened, when it came right down to it, with the freedom of a boundaryless swim. No visible shore. No comforting pool perimeter (not that they needed the edge to hang onto – they don’t – but knowing that it is there? Comforting, somehow).

When there was freedom but no reference point? A mild panic set in. And it didn’t let go.

They could swim the distance. They’d done double that distance in the pool before. But that recollection and body memory of prior success abandoned them when the waves and the current were taking control.

And…so…they sadly and gladly and madly climbed into the rescue boats.

Multiple times.

The daughters? They’re water polo players and are used to the rough and tumble of that sport. They know the waves, the need to get focus in spite of the chaos, gaining and getting direction and propelling themselves through the unruly water. They would go again.

But my friend and her friend from college days?

"NEVER AGAIN! EVER AGAIN!," they both swore.

They should be proud that they tried, that they got those pesky wetsuits on, and that they even got out of the boat and somehow got to shore.

But the exuberance they’d hoped for? I felt sorry for them that they didn’t have that, no matter how hard we in the cheering squad tried to make them feel good about what they HAD done (they were hilarious, in the self-deprecating humor of their frustration. Humor can be a great way to release the frustration of wrestling with the unknown and, win or lose, being able to just let go).

So remember the lesson of the seeming freedom of their swim:

Put some boundaries around your work if you’re having trouble getting traction, action, results. Create a context, constraints within which to optimize your work.

"Constraints shape and focus problems and provide clear challenges to overcome. Creativity thrives best when constrained," notes Marissa Ann Mayer of Google in this Business Week article.

Filed Under: Leadership, People at Work, People watching

Enjoying the height after the hike

August 26, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Enjoying the height after the hike, originally uploaded by jcgr.

Refresh well after good, hard labor, whether your work is physical or mental, solo or with a group.

Here a few visitors to Crater Lake National Park pause after a steady hike to the beautiful view that the Watchtower provides them.

Filed Under: Images, Leadership, People at Work

Ending well and moving on

August 26, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Good endings, and ending well is on my mind these days. We’ve seen several endings recently, and others are ahead:

- The end of the Olympics 2008

- The end of summer 2008, the beginning of a new school year, if you have kids

- The end, sooner than we know, of this long, historic election year in the US

Here are thoughts on endings that others have had:

Education is not a product, mark, diploma, job, money in that order; it is a process, a never ending one.
Bel Kaufman

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course on where you stop your story.
Orson Welles

Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.
Pauline Kael

Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned. Unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.
Peter S. Beagle

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
Gilda Radner

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
Lazarus Long

And on the other hand:

You’re searching, Joe, for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings – there are no such things. There are only middles.
Robert Frost

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Musings, Quotes

Check in regularly during a major change process

August 25, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

A computer change is underway at a good friend’s company today.

The troops – and he is one, in this circumstance – are nervous.

Confidence is low (very low) that they have enough information and the right tools to be able to work as fast and accurately as they must. And confidence is low that the new system will be an improvement on the one they have now. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. Time will tell.

At some point all they can do is jump in and try to swim.

Or as my manager said about a person involved in a large change at a high tech company where I once worked, "The train is leaving the station and he can go along, or not. If he doesn’t get on board now, he WILL be running to catch up. This train is starting, and it’s not stopping."

And so, with the computer system change underway today, the team will board the train. Or they will swim. However it happens, they throw themselves into this living experiment.

But to make that uncertainty less uncertain, the troops in this case are campaigning for regular times each day to gather, as a group, if they need to – not that they must.

The want the check in as a time they know they can ask questions, collect their bearings, and maybe to feel less alone as they work their way down the path of a change they cannot stop.

If you are going through – or planning – a major change at your company, how can you add regular team check-in points? They can help significantly to:

- Reinforce learning
- Strengthen confidence
- Commiserate, laugh, break the tension of the change process
- Share benefits of the change, as they become apparent
- Provide additional support, coaching or training when it becomes clear where it is needed
- And when the time is right, and the change is taking hold, you can begin to celebrate that you’re through the woods

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, Leadership, People at Work, Process Management

Less than perfect conditions for a landing

August 24, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Chilly landing, originally uploaded by jcgr.

Sometimes you just have to stop.

Here, a butterfly at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon lands on a snowbank. (It was August, believe it or not).

And whether these were the conditions he or she wanted, these were the conditions he found for a quick rest stop.

Filed Under: Images, Musings, Serendipity

Secret shop your own business

August 23, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

This is a cautionary tale. Not in the Life Drama sense.

But it is in the sense of preventing or reducing the daily hassles of life. Making it easy for people to do business with you instead of chasing business away.

The problem: I’ve been working my way through a shift in wireless internet providers. It was promised to be easy. It has been anything but.

Most lately, I recall these lessons:

- One change begets another.

- In the process of change, secret shop your own.

See if the changes you’re making are working as you hoped. Or if, instead, you’re driving business away.

I thought the many changes involved in this technology change were done. (Well, almost). But on a walk the other night with Zoe, the livelier of our canine companions, I thought I’d better secret shop by own business, and give my business landline a call.

The result?

Something sounding like an 1800’s phone line. (I know, I know…there were no phone lines in the 1800′s. My point, overall. It was a purposeful but frustrating call).

And so…

One more of many times in this process, I picked up the problem-solving thread and followed it:

1. Was it a problem with AT&T’s provisioning of changes in the phone line?
(There had been problems with that already. The order had to be re-placed after they dropped the ball at the point of order entry the first time around. We danced the dance a second time a week later. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t "fun" the first time around).

2. Or, did my own phone have to change now, too? (For so many reasons, this experience has made getting rid of the landline – already tempting – even more so).

I set up a few experiments, as I always do, to narrow down the possibilities, to try to shorten the cycle of "problem-solve."

After a little information gathering, it looks as if my equipment might need to be upgraded. I’ll give it a try. But if I’m right, it would have been nice to know.

Easy. Customer-focused. Creating a business environment in which the customer is, and continues to be, glad they’re doing business with you. Making it easy for them to stay (rather than looking for your competitors’ website and sales information).

Instead? I’m still schlumping from one problem to the next, trying to get each surprising new problem solved.

Again, then:

Secret shop your own business, and your own changes, whatever they are. See if they’re really working as well as you thought.

Filed Under: Business Results, Customer Focus, Knowledge Management, Process Management

Marketing and operations mismatch at the fast food counter

August 21, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

“I wish people would quit buying shakes!”

“We just sold five more! Two banana, three chocolate!” said the counter clerk to the cook, each doing his best to try to catch up with the orders rapidly building up.

We were waiting at the drive-through window of a fast food restaurant for the banana shakes that were taking FOREVER to make. I was also keeping an eye in the rear view mirror on the line of cars building up, angrily, behind us.

My reaction when I heard his lament?

I laughed. It was a great, graphic example of what happens at many companies when marketing and operations are mismatched.

Marketing had done its job in creating customer desire for a new product that they were diligently, creatively, effectively promoting.

But where someone had failed was in checking to see if operations – in this case, the kitchen and counter staff at individual restaurants – could actually make those shakes as rapidly and well as the advertising and marketing materials could sell them.

The net result?

We enjoyed our shakes during the long, last leg of a weeklong road trip.

But we also learned never to go back, if good, FAST food was what we really wanted (this isn’t our first experience with this company’s s…l…o…w service. The last time was long ago and we thought they might have changed).

The restaurant staff did the best they could, in the circumstances. But there was a big mismatch between what the advertising promised – what we were "taught" as customers to expect – and what they could actually deliver.

And that? Well, that’s not, ultimately, marketing success.

Filed Under: Customer Focus, People at Work, Process Management, Serendipity