Find a question to answer and you’ll keep your direction

by: stacey - November 17th, 2011   Filed under: Leadership, Product Management, Project Management Add Comment

Dane Carlson posted an interesting quote from Paul Graham over on his Business Opportunities blog last week (many moons ago).  The quote is from an essay on ideas for startups, and the essay itself is on seeing your original business idea as a business question that you want to answer, and letting the company grow into an answer to that question.

This is a great idea for startups, but it’s also a great idea for keeping direction in general examples include:

1) Finding direction in projects
At some point early in a project, you must decide what question your project is answering. It could be anything from “how can we share spreadsheets better?” to “How can we get orders to customers faster?”. This is the core of your project. Never lose sight of this question. You will write a scope to your project that defines what you intend to do in your project. When you develop that scope, it better answer your initial question. When you write requirements, they better trace back to that question. When you build the prototype, it better offer an answer to your question… you get the idea. If your project ever reaches a point at which you aren’t answering that original question anymore, then you’re off-track. You better fix it or start over.

2) Finding direction in product lines
“The question” can also drive the development of your product line over time. How many times have you seen this: you’re on a project, it completes successfully, everyone is happy, then a thousand ideas pop up for how to ‘improve’ the product. You have manpower to do maybe five of these things over the next year. How do you choose what to do? Simple. Look at the question you set out to answer. Which ideas support that? Which ideas move you away from it? Ditch the ones that move away; if you follow those, you may undo all the progress you made. Go with the ones that support your original goal. Repurposing a product is very practical, but if you change the purpose of the product in the process, you’ve lost the solution to your original question.

3) Maintaining and marketing your Brand
If you have a brand, it means something. It answers a question. When I think “How do I find what I need to know?” I think “Google it”. The google brand answers questions for users. When I think “Where do I get coffee?” I think Starbucks. See? Brands answer questions. They become associated with very specific ideas in a customer’s heads. A customer can usually associate and recall about as many things with a brand as they can keep in short term memory easily- that is, five to seven things. Get outside of this, and your customer has to stop and think about it before they can decide what your brand means to them, and you’ve diluted your brand too far. Therefore, you should develop a question that your brand answers, and stick with that question. When you decide how to expand your brand, stay close to that question. Starbucks would seem like they didn’t do this with putting music CDs in their stores, right? Ahh, but no. When I think of Starbucks, I think of drinking coffee, sitting in a coffee house, reading, relaxing, and listening to good music- which begs the question: why doesn’t Starbucks sell books? Probably because they locate some shops inside book stores, and that would be biting the hand that feeds them. Book stores need more space than a Starbuck’s does, anyway.

See the point? A single question drives so many things in business. It brings focus. Find your question to answer, and it will help you keep focus in what you do as interruptions, new ideas and distractions pop up in your day each day.

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Moving With Purpose

by: stacey - November 11th, 2011   Filed under: Leadership, Management Add Comment

A manager of mine once had a decision to make regarding twenty thousand dollars worth of customized work that our company would have to outsource.  There was no easily identifiable ‘hard’ value of it, but it was something that appeared to be a good idea. Determined to make a good decision and not waste company assets, he held meetings, called in experts, and studied the situation.  The thing is, when your company is a high-end company, and the people your experts are so expert that their time is very valuable, you can only afford to study things so much.  As one of the consultants involved, I kept pointing this out in subtle ways.  Finally, one day after yet another meeting, I pulled him aside.

“Look, you have everyone’s opinion, and it’s obviously split on this.  You need to make the call.”

“Yeah, but twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money.  I think we need to make an informed decision.”

“You better make it soon.  You’ve spent ten thousand dollars in manhours studying it.”

After a quick discussion of the cost per hour of the people involved, he saw I was right.  He made the call the next day.

Another, similar scenario that I’ve seen many times is the ‘hanging decision’.  Everyone knows that the company needs something, but there’s more than one solution to the problem, so the company studies the options.  And studies.  And studies.  The worst is when there’s more than one right answer.  People lose faith in leadership’s ability to lead, because leadership can’t make the call.

Research has shown (here, for example) that firm decisions are better in the long run for your own morale.  It’s better for your people and your company as well.  Will it be the right decision always?  No.  But keeping things in motion is important.  If a decision is important enough, study it, but always remember that the clock is ticking.  People come to work every day and get paid every day, whether they are working to implement your new idea, taking the next step in your project, or waiting around the coffee machine, gossiping over when the boss (that’s you) is finally going to decide something.

There’s been a few things like this in my new job- things that were set aside and considered nice to do’s, that I’ve been deferring.  Last week, I bit the bullet and started calling teams together to take action on all of it.  The response so far is phenomenal.  People are volunteering to work extra hours to implement things that apparently they had been waiting for leadership to take action on for years now, but no one had said the word.  Morale is soaring.  The workplace is getting better instantly.  All because I stepped up to the plate.  If any of the calls I’m making are wrong, the team is still behind it, and we’ll simply revise and cope with it.

Be careful, study things, avoid risk, but do something.  People want leaders to lead, not ponder.  If you have two right options to choose between, pick one and do so with confidence.  If it turns out to not be the best decision, own your mistake, take action to correct it.  People will admire you more for making mistakes but owning them and leading with authority than they ever will for waffling and being indecisive.

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The 90 Day Treadmill

by: stacey - November 10th, 2011   Filed under: Leadership, Planning Add Comment

If you’ve worked in business for almost any time at all, especially in management, you’ve probably heard those fateful words: the end of the quarter. How many of you have been pushed to close a sale, complete a project, or make a far-reaching technology decision by a given date because of ‘the end of quarter’?

The end of the business quarter typically marks a reporting milestone for the accounting and finance folks. For better or worse, it’s become a time when the measuring sticks come out. Businesses have come to measure progress in 90-day sprints. Think about some of these goals we end up saddling ourselves with:

  • Close the sale before end of quarter! -why?  Will the money be worth less next week?
  • Wrap up the project so we can get the billing in on this quarter  -again, I ask, why?  Does money become worth less next week?  If it shows up this quarter, doesn’t that just take away from next quarter?
  • We need to make a buy decision this quarter, because we have budget now  -aha, maybe this is it, if money magically has a shelf life of 90 days…

Some of these decisions do, I realize have real financial implications to the accounting and finance world, so please don’t fill the comments with explanation.  My point is this:  too many times in business we make decisions or we hurry work and get sloppy results, not because there’s a business imperative, but because there’s a perceived financial imperative driven by the need to look good on paper.

This happens in projects as well.  Sometimes something comes up in a project that warrants changing the schedule or cost- the company’s future is at stake on the project, and it can’t be done wrong- and yet PMs will escalate and try to force the hand of the people doing the work because they don’t want to look bad by having a note on the PMO’s executive summary for that month saying that they’re off-schedule or over budget.

My point is this:  is it ever a good decision to allow how you look on a report drive cutting corners and hurrying processes?  Of course you can’t just ignore reports.  They’re there for a reason, and it’s a good reason.  Still, you must consider trends over time and how you will be judged long-term.  If a sale or project close out after the quarter mark, yes, it robs this quarter, but didn’t you get a nice bump in the next quarter as a result?  Even if you cross fiscal years, is that really so wrong?

Don’t let pressures to look good drive you to make poor long term decisions- not for your department, your company, or your project.  Keep your eye on the long-term ball and stick to strategy and delivering successfully.  Delivering a shoddy product early has never been a successful strategy with customers- delivering the right solution at the right time does.  They don’t care about your quarterly report; they care about receiving quality.  Companies succeed over years and decades, not 90 day sprints.

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