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Vision, Manifestation, Growth

27 March 2011, 5:56 pm

I once worked for a CIO that trumpeted the mantra “Think big, start small, scale fast”. Unfortunately, it never seemed to take hold in the organization. People just did not get it or understand what it meant to them.

For some reason, I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that it is the entrepreneurial process and also part of successful projects. Think big, start small, scale fast.

Think Big = You need to have and effectively communicate a vision of what the future looks like and how you (or your project/proposal) can add value and not just incremental value. Without vision, your team will lack direction and enthusiasm.

Start Small = Achieving great things is never done in a day. You have got to get started and demonstrate in a small way how the vision will change the world (or at least your company/division etc.). In addition, a small investment may be worth the risk but greater risk shall not be taken until people understand the vision and how to achieve it. This is also similar to the recent idea “Action Trumps Everything”, take action, see what happens, and then adjust accordingly. It is a growing learning process. (This step is why so many companies fail to innovate.)

Scale Fast = Once the idea takes hold, you need to be able to move quickly to harvest the benefits. If your idea (and its manifestation) can not scale, it will never realize the vision (Think Big). Thus, once it has momentum it has to be free to grow at a rapid pace.

Each step requires special skills. To think big you need to have a vision and articulate that vision to others. The others need to understand it and mentally commit to it. To start small, you need to garner resources to get things moving and take action to validate the vision and demonstrate to the other 95% that the vision is of value. Lastly, to scale fast means you need to expand rapidly by executing without hesitation.

Without these skills IT, or any business function, can not meet the ever changing demands of the marketplace nor develop a competitive advantage.

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IT takes too long

7 March 2011, 6:30 pm

I recently read an article lamenting IT’s inability to deliver at the speed of business. It reminded me of conversations that I had on the topic more than 15 years earlier.

In the mid-1990s, there were a few of us who discussed how it was becoming increasingly difficult to add value quickly. Our group felt that our productivity as measured by our ability to quickly deliver meaningful solutions to our business partners had declined dramatically. We never reached a conclusion as to why this was but it was a continuing frustration.

In the end some of the changes had to do with the evolution of IT. In the early days, it was easy to awe our users with quick, simple tools. It could be seen as low hanging fruit. As IT evolved and the business learned how to more fully leverage IT tools, the solutions became more complex. What is interesting is that these more complex solutions offer greater opportunities for competitive advantage but also require greater investments.

We have all evolved and we need to look at our businesses in new ways. IT is an integral part of the business landscape and is just one more tool to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. This integration is now forcing IT to operate at the speed of business, not as mere suppliers of services. IT needs to understand, anticipate, and contribute to business change not just respond to the latest business challenge.

We need to stop acting as if it is IT and the Business are separate. There are not two separate organizations, it is one that needs to work together as one. This will require IT staff to have ever greater business skills and develop close relationships with personnel across the organization. Are we ready?

Filed under Getting it Done, Project Management.
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Standards Overkill

7 January 2011, 6:28 pm

In listening to a recent PMO podcast, I was reminded how many PMO managers and consultants subscribe to the belief that standards should be rigidly applied. These same people also deem failure to get results a failure to follow the standard. They are wrong on both counts.

Just as we need to adapt a plan during execution, we need to adopt a flexible framework for project management. Without flexibility, our methods are incapable of supporting the diversity of projects and styles within the organization and become an administrative burden. They not only limit project managers ability to exercise their professional judgement and resourcefulness but impede progress and increase non-productive costs.

PMOs need practice guidelines that provide direction to project managers and stakeholders while ensuring consistency of practice across the organization. The goal should always be to optimize the balance between control and efficiency.

Standards need to guide not control!

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Desire to Success

2 January 2011, 5:24 pm

Happy New Year!

With a new year often comes new goals but goals are not achieved without a plan. Desire leads to a plan which is the manifestation of (how we achieve) desire. Next is commitment to the plan, the latter takes discipline and this is likely the hardest part. Of course, plans rarely go as planned (expected) and thus we must adapt which does not mean giving up our plan (stay committed to the goal and reassess the plan for better options and keep going). Do it all well and your goals shall be achieved!

Desire -> Manifestation -> Commitment -> Success in 2011 and beyond!

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PC Maintenance

1 September 2010, 2:35 pm

As a child, I was taught the importance of maintaining mechanical equipment and I continue to believe the old adage that an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. All machines will perform better and more reliably with proper maintenance; this applies to personal computers.

I was reminded of this parable when a small business client mentioned that a family member’s laptop was not working. I have worked with this client for 20 years and in that time we have never had a problem that resulted in data loss. Even more remarkable is that we have only had three failures of any kind.

So, why did the family member’s laptop fail; lack of maintenance. The problem, a disk failure, could have been prevented or at least anticipated. The result was a great deal of frustration for the user and additional costs to repair the machine versus the cost of maintaining it.

A regular regime of maintenance could have prevented this and other issues. In addition, regular maintenance keeps PCs running faster so they continue to have that new PC feel.

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iPhone 4

5 August 2010, 9:20 pm

The iPhone 4 has been out for over a month and eager users have real world experience. Based upon comments from the field most users are happy, very happy. A “>summary of one journalist/user that reflects comments I have heard was written by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.

Most importantly, the antenna issues reported soon after its release have not been a problem. As noted in Walt Mossberg’s article, the problem appears to be over stated and exaggerated by a software flaw that has already been corrected. In addition, it appears that in some situations the iPhone4 out performs the iPhone3 in reception but interestingly not all situations. In any event, the iPhone4 and iPhone3 appear to be similar in their reception and excellent based upon my experience.

No, I have not upgraded to an iPhone4 yet and I think that gets to the heart of the matter. I am waiting in hopes of a better solution to the antenna problem but from a practical standpoint it really makes no difference.

Many people love Apple and expect great products and the iPhone4 fits that bill. The high expectations and demand for near perfection have left people feeling let down. The real issue is emotional not practical. It is that emotion that has driven Apple’s success and led to a loyal following that are willing to pay a premium for Apple products.

So like many people, I want to feel better about my upgrade. Thus, I will wait to see what Apple does and either get a better iPhone or have dealt with my emotional angst.

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The good old/new telephone

26 May 2010, 3:08 pm

It’s time to think about our telephone service and ensure that we are getting the functionality we need at the best possible price. There are three service options: traditional land line, voice over IP, and mobile. The traditional land line or plain old telephone service (POTS) as it is known and voice over IP are direct competitors. To a lesser degree mobile phones have replaced wired lines but in most cases they are an additional service.

First let’s look at mobile phones. If an individual is the only user of a land line phone then eliminating the land line for the convenience of a mobile phone makes sense. Mobile phones offer great functionality and of course are mobile. The only issue that may prevent a mobile only approach is the quality of sound in your home or office. A change in carrier may resolve this problem or you may need a wired phone in your home, office or home office. If the latter is the case keep reading.

We are all familiar with plain old telephone service (POTS) with services such as call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail and more. What’s relatively new is Voice Over IP (VOIP). VOIP provides the same services as the traditional telecommunications companies (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) and more (three way calling, voice mail notification and online account management to name a few) at a lower cost.

The big difference between the two is telecommunications companies run across a large expensive private networks while VOIP runs across the internet (large public infrastructure). If you already have a high speed internet connection then VOIP may be for you. Not only does VOIP cost less but it offers more features and capabilities.

There are two reasons people do not sign up for VOIP service, sound quality and inertia. There is a general fear that voice quality is not as good. The reality is that the voice quality is sufficient for comfortable voice communications. As for inertia, we are used to a phone bill each month and accept that that is the way that it is. We need to break that cycle and move forward.

I chose to purchase my own VOIP hardware for about $35 to save money by avoiding monthly equipment lease payments. Some carriers sell the hardware as part of the initial setup and this is an excellent choice as it offers easy setup and support by the provider. If you do purchase your own be sure to purchase a product that is widely support to ensure that your provider can support you.

The big benefit of VOIP is cost savings. My monthly phone bill went from approximately $45 per month to $12 per month. In addition for my $12 I get more features such as the ability to forward voice mails to one or more email addresses and notifications that new voice mails have arrived. There are also online records of calls received, missed and placed. There are other features as well that make VOIP services very attractive if saving $33 per month is not enough.

Short List of Consumer VOIP Providers

There are many other providers for both consumers, businesses or both. A quick search of the web will result in hundreds of providers but as usual all are not equal.

There are numerous VOIP providers that specialize in business communications. They provide everything from a single phone number to complete virtual PBX systems. Just as with any system, a little planning is in order to determine your requirements and find a suitable vendor.

VOIP has significant benefits for both consumers and small business. Let us know if we can assist you in setting up VOIP for you and/or your company.

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Apple iPad Business Reviews

11 May 2010, 6:07 pm

There are many perspectives on the Apple iPad and everyone is still trying figure out if it makes sense. Everyone that is except those that have one.

The bottom line is that for a consumer it only needs to justify itself to that individual. However, a business needs to show that such a device provides some return to the shareholders in the form of new capabilities or improved efficiency.

Tech Republic recently posted a business focused review on one of their blogs. The review is mostly focused on the user as opposed to the IT department but it seems clear that the iPad has very good utility for the user. The latter has always been Apple’s strength.

Lacking in the review were some critical questions that may not keep the users up at night but keep IT staffs wondering. The questions, as with the iPhone, are primarily about security and manageability. Once again, this is not Apple’s strong suit.

The other drawback, which is a strength from the users and consumers perspective, is the Apple ecosystem. This is well documented and I find it hard to believe that Apple is not thinking about this very hard. They need to reach a difficult balance between accessibility and security (an age old IT trade off).

There will be more discussion to come and it will be interesting to watch as the tablet market grows, matures and changes in the coming months.

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Websites

23 April 2010, 12:20 pm

Websites no longer need to be maintained by “technical” people with knowledge of HTML and other “programming” languages. Thankfully for many, those days are long gone but I suspect many people have not taken advantage of the new tools available.

In the past, maintaining a website meant having to create pages in HTML using a “tool” or even a text editor. In addition, if you wanted more than just simple content, you needed to write code and create or edit images. Then there were issues with different browsers looking differently. It was a lot of work and not only did it require specialized knowledge but it took time away from other more enjoyable and important work. The result was that most people chose to not have a website, made do with what they could do or hired someone to create the website for them. All of these represent missed opportunities as the websites were not necessarily professional looking or were not continually updated to reflect new information and keep the consumer engaged.

Today there is an increasingly popular trend toward Content Management Systems (CMS). Content Management Systems are being used by more and more sites for the simple reason they make it easy to maintain a consistent, professional website. This site is managed with a CMS (WordPress) as are sites like the Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) and parts of CNN’s site (cnn.com).

These tools are not only inexpensive and easy to use but offer professional looking sites. In addition, many offer “extensions” for just about anything that you would like to add to your site. For example, the weather and news on the right hand side of this site are “plugins” that were dragged and dropped to organize them. The same is true of the links on the left. The process of adding the weather and news (two separate plugins) was less than five minutes. There are literally thousands of extensions to meet just about every need and desire.

At first a CMS may seem daunting but there is lots of help available. There are professionals who specialize in helping companies setup and customize CMS. In addition, there is plenty of help on the web for people that want to do it themselves. It is also important to note that there are hosting providers (bluehost.com is one example) that provide a point and click installation and setup for popular CMS tools like WordPress.

It only takes a few minutes to setup a WordPress based site and then as much time as you want to spend finding a “theme” which determines the look and feel of the site. You can change themes as often as you like and all of your content will continue to be presented in a consistent manner. In addition, you can add various extensions for news, weather, or whatever you like and they are also displayed properly with different themes. Thus, you can keep your site fresh with minimal effort.

So what are you waiting for? Make your life easier and your site more useful to your customers and friends. We are available to help so please email us if you have questions or would like to speak with us about making your site easier to manage.

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Apple iPad

18 April 2010, 2:21 pm

The iPad is a great tool for consumption of information but without a practical keyboard not information production. This does not diminish its usefulness but rather frames the situations where its value is greatest.

One question many have asked is where does the iPad fit in the technology ecosystem? Will it replace laptops, netbooks etc? My answer is no primarily because it is focused on information display and does not offer external ports (USB, display, etc.). Thus, it will likely be a popular add-on or niche device.

With this in mind, the iPad has value for both consumers and businesses. For consumers, it is an easy to use attractive device for reading books, surfing the web (with the big exception of Flash), watching video and managing email. For business, it is an ideal device for one-on-one sales presentations and sharing a portfolio of work with clients and prospective clients. For both it offers Apps for almost any need and connectivity where ever you may be.

In summary, the iPad has value and will be successful. In addition, it has raised the standard for slate computing which should drive competitors to offer more user driven devices with greater, more accessible functionality.

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