Technology is Not the Problem

by: stacey - February 28th, 2012   Filed under: Communication, Leadership, Personal Development Add Comment

For the techies out there (and I’m one of you), consider this… how many times in your career have you been faced with a truly incredible technical challenge? Not many, I bet. What you consider to be the great challenges of your career are, in fact, challenges to get things done within a tight schedule, not to invent some amazing new technology. The typical company does not take a massive amount of risks, and incredible technical challenges equals amazing technical risks. While every company will take a few for the sake of competitive advantage, companies that roll the dice too often are few and far between.

On the other hand, how many communications and training challenges have you faced? How many meetings have you had with business folks trying to convince them that a fairly simple technical change is not going to go wrong and wreck their business, or worse, if they don’t embrace it, their business will go down the tubes?

Technology is becoming more and more of a commodity every day. If the people that you have on staff can’t do something, you can always find a sea of consultants that can help. Communication, on the other hand, remains an art in the workplace.

I have posted on this before and cannot emphasize this enough- the ability to communicate, influence, develop and use credibility effectively are vital skills and possibly the most vital skills in IT today. Remember this when you choose what skills to work on. Remember it as well when you make your hiring and promotion decisions. How useful is the best technical specialist you know if he can’t communicate what he knows to anyone? What if, worse, he hacks off users with his rudeness and poor attitude? Make your choices carefully, both as a manager and as a techie deciding how to better your career. Your opinions on Microsoft versus linux may be fascinating lunch conversation for your and other techies, but the end users are not interested- they’re interested in doing their job, and you doing yours. Their jobs often involve specialized knowledge that you do not have. Your job is usually to supply specialized knowledge that they do not have. In the long run, you are both commodities to the company. Your communications skills, tact, judgement, reliability, leadership, ability to take ownership of problems and find solutions for them rather than passing them along the chain… these are the things that make a difference. Remember these skills. Develop them. Use them.

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Is This Yours?

by: stacey - February 23rd, 2012   Filed under: Communication, Leadership Add Comment

Are there business problems in your company that no one owns? I am willing to be that there is. You may not be able to identify it, but it is there somewhere. If it isn’t, your company is probably in trouble. If there is any creativity at all insude your company, then someone eventually is going to think of something new, something that no one has thought of before, and therefore that does not fit into the current structure of responsibilities within the company. What happens then? Does your company even have a policy for dealing with such things? Where is the “suggestion box”? Or the “risk box”? Or even the “WTF” box?

New ideas need owners. New problems need owners. These problems do not always fit into your existing structure. Do you have a way of dealing with these problems in your company? Is not, then you are not alone. I personally have worked for and with a number of companies that do not have a well-defined method of doing this. The bigger the company, usually, the fewer methods to bubble up ideas and problems from the lower levels.

There is a good reason for this phenomena. Usually, people in upper management are bombarded with ideas as is. They get ideas from their direct reports, from their managers, from their customers, from vendors, from all over the place. They can’t act on all of these things. They therefore insulate themselves. Departments organize themselves into tightly-knit specialized groups, and ideas from one group on how to improve another group are often ignored as coming from “non-experts”.

The thing is, this is horrible for your company. Yes, there is no way that you can act on every idea that happens in your company. Yes, many of the ideas will possibly be junk, as often lower-level employees have ideas that do not take in the entire picture. That does not change that it is vital to catch these ideas and hear them. Your lowest level employees are facing tactical problems on a daily basis. This daily exposure often will reveal patterns of issues to them that are not visible from above. You need a way of hearing about these problems and ideas, and more importantly, of finding someone and making it their job to fix these problems. At the very least, someone needs to explain what is really going on to the lower level employees.

Trapping small problems that occur en masse can be a boon to your company in many ways. It shows your employees and customers that you hear them. It gains you efficiencies. It can save you money. It also avoids a worse trap though, and that trap is powerlessness in your employees. Make your lower-level workers feel unheard, and they will begin to feel powerless. They will begin to feel like upper management doesn’t care, so they don’t need to care either. They will let the problems go unchecked. They will become unmotivated, and it will hurt your company’s bottom line.

Customers, on the other hand, will be anything but powerless. Customers can always find another vendor who will hear their problems if you won’t.

For that matter, so will your best employees. Want to see them working for the competition?

Part of management’s job is to manage. Unheard and unowned problems are, simply put, unmanaged. If you do not manage your business, you won’t be in business long. Create a process for capturing lower-level input. Make it real. Find a way for things that need to be done to get to a committee of management with the knowledge to recognize the right people to own the problem and the authority to get the right people to do so. You will be surprised how much just solving the problems you have hiding quietly in the corners near the copy machines and around the water coolers of your business will improve your bottom line and your company morale.

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The Four Impressions

by: stacey - February 13th, 2012   Filed under: Customer Relations, Personal Development Add Comment

We all know that Project Management is to a great extent about communication.  Drop all the tools, and you can manage to get a project done with effective enough communications.  Drop all communication, and the tools will fail you.  The same goes for management, and really, your career in general, right down to the job hunt.

That’s why impressions matter.  Someone’s impression of you colors every interaction.  Their impression of your department, your project, or your company does the same.  First impressions are always a strong dominant factor in overall impressions.  Libraries are filled with books on this topic.  Today I want to talk about the four impressions as they apply to you, your project, your department, and your company – and, therefore, to your career.

Personal Impressions:

1.  The first meet: This is the first time you meet someone.  There’s dozens of factors that apply here- your handshake, your demeanor, whether you use their name to greet them, the list goes on and on.  There’s dozens of resources already out there on this, but you should go and investigate them if you haven’t yet.

For your project, this is the first pitch someone hears about your project.  Try to communicate the value and need for your project.  People’s willingness to support, assist, and give resources and time to your project are directly tied to the perceived value of your project in their eyes.

For your department, an extension of your own reputation.  If you work in IT, and IT’s reputation in the company is bad, your work will always be colored by that.  You might be seen reliably and very positively, but people will still hesitate to ask you for things because you’re part of “them”, and they are unreliable.  Unfortunately, first impressions of departments in companies often come by rumor mill, or during the beginning orientation process, when sometimes new hires are pushed through the system hurriedly to get them to productive.  The first interactions with your department should be as positive and helpful as possible to help create a positive image.

For your company, first impressions include your website, your public-facing staff, your phone staff, your offices, your business cards, your handouts and presentations- do they look professional?  Is there an eye for detail and care?  If you don’t care what you look like to them, why would you care about what the work you do for them looks like?

2.  The first “sale”: This is the first time the person asks you for something.  As an individual, this is your opportunity to turn from “someone I know” into “reliable resource”.  As a company, this is an opportunity to build trust.  To establish yourself as reliable, you want to be sure to do a number of things:

  • Pay attention.  Be sure to understand what they need.
  • Acquire agreement.  Discuss what you understand the deliverable to be, so you’re sure you deliver the right thing and at the right time.
  • Deliver on time.  Be clear in communications if you fail to be on time.  Let them know beforehand.
  • Be sure you both agree on priorities, or if not, at least that they understand your priorities.  If something is going to get in the way of your delivery, or affect the quality of what you deliver, they at least understand why you’ve made the choices you’ve made.
  • Deliver value.  What you deliver might not be exactly what is requested, but be sure what you deliver is worth the effort that the person put in to acquire it.
  • Above all, treat them how you would want to be treated if you asked for something.

3. The First Resale: This is the opportunity to validate the first sale.  People are always willing to believe they “got lucky” the first time.  All of the principles of the first sale apply again here.  In addition, be sure to be consistent or better than the first experience.

4. The first customer service: This is the first time they come back to you with a problem.  You delivered something, you tried for it to be the right thing, but something’s wrong.  What’s their experience with you like?  Are you accountable?  Are you reasonable?  Do you listen to their side of things?  If you disagree, are you clear in helping them see your side of things?  Did you share enough of your values with them that they can understand your side of things?  Fair in one person’s eyes is not always fair in everyone’s eyes.  You have to help people understand your position and values in conflict.  Your goals during a customer service moment should be:

  • Try to make things right for the customer.
  • If you can’t, try to be fair to the customer in the customer’s eyes.
  • Help the customer understand the values behind why the solution is fair.  They may not agree with your solution, but it doesn’t mean you can’t establish respect for the decision behind it.

The goal of impressions for yourself, your company, or any group should always be to be seen as accountable, responsible, reliable,d fair, and worth the effort to interact with under a viable value system.

 

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